Global Warming Causes Human Migration - Evidence and Projections 2000 - 2050 AD

Climate change in the late 20th and early 21st centuries caused considerable human migration away from areas that became too hostile for living. This migration included First Nations and Native Americans that moved away from the area around the Alaskan North Shore because the shore line was eroded up to there villages. They needed to move at least 60 miles inland to escape the flooding and to find new food sources.

The United Nations and the leaders of the EU state that migration also includes peoples along the northern shorelines of the Eastern Hempshere, migrating southward into the Economic Union countries of Europe to escape such occurences as the ice-boulder field left after the large flood of a Greenand lake in the photo above form 2008.

Europe is expected by 2050 to have a base population, on average, at age 47 tears - up from 39 in 2008. Senior citizens are expected to outnumber children so that there will be twice as many elderly as children in Europe. Into this population, people will migrate form Greenland, the MIddle East, Northern Africa, and possibly India and even as far away as China. As the shorelines erode and thre deserts widen, people will move inward toward the EU.

Particularly interesting is that while the Arab world is rich in oil, it is poor in water and growing poorer, relying on Israel and otehr nations for fresh, clean water.

Check population statistics on several continents at these links:

• United States of America

• Canada and Individual Provinces

• China

• India

1. California - 37,253,956
2. Texas - 25,145,561
3. New York - 19,378,102
4. Florida - 18,801,310
5. Illinois - 12,830,632
6. Pennsylvania - 12,702,379
7. Ohio - 11,536,504
8. Michigan - 9,883,640
9. Georgia - 9,687,653
10. North Carolina - 9,535,483: Increased enough to displace NJ at No. 10

1. California 36,132,147
2. Texas 22,859,968
3. New York 19,254,630
4. Florida 17,789,864
5. Illinois 12,763,371
6. Pennsylvania 12,429,616
7. Ohio 11,464,042
8. Michigan 10,120,860
9. Georgia 9,072,576
10. New Jersey 8,717,925

Data are from the CIA Factobook and the US Census Bureau

1. China - 1,330,141,295
2. India - 1,173,108,018
3. United States - 310,232,863 (mid-2011)
4. Indonesia - 242,968,342
5. Brazil - 201,103,330
6. Pakistan - 177,276,594
7. Bangladesh - 158,065,841
8. Nigeria - 152,217,341
9. Russia - 139,390,205 (Declined since last count - see trable below)
10. Japan - 126,804,433 (Declined again since last count)
11. Mexico - 112,468,855
12. Philippines - 99,900,177
13. Vietnam - 89,571,130 (significant increase)
14. Ethiopia - 88,013,491 (significant increase)
15. Germany - 82,282,988
16. Egypt - 80,471,869
17. Turkey - 77,804,122 (significant increase)
18. Democratic Republic of Congo - 70,916,439 (significant increase)
19. Islamic Republic of Iran - 67,037,517
20. Thailand - 66,404,688
    
    

In researching the current populations of the nations of the world, one finds conflicting data on the Internet. Some of this data is that available from the CIA World Factbook. Other figures come from United Nations estimates. Still others originate with the US Census Bureau.

While the United States government and private sectors can boast of some of the world's leading scientists, mathematicians and statisticians, this fact does not mean that America has accurate access to the numbers of all people living in all foreign countries. This fact is borne out in the conflicting data found. Howewver, there is enough information avaialable and the poplation clocks are excellent enough to provide some convinceing evidence of population sizes and growth trends.

In addition, people are being born and killed every minute all around the globe and this cannot be stopped. This makes population counts almost a "continuous variable" like blood pressure -- Blood pressure is different second by second, but if you stop it to take an accurate never-changing count, the patient dies. This is simply a source of statistical error in population counts and accounts for some of the conflict.

However, some of the data found for July 16, 2007 [see the table] shows that certain populations in particular nations decreased in just one or two months or even less time. This cannot be a looseness in the figures, but indicates that something else is happening. This could be mistakes in estimates, deaths from famine or war, mass migrations, or a number of other possibilities.

It does seem certain that France dropped off the Top 20 list into 21st place, though. Where are the French going?

Most Populous Countries in the Caribbean

1. Cuba 11,308,764
2. Dominican Republic 8,833,634
3. Haiti 7,942,419
4. Jamaica 2,713,130
5. Trinidad and Tobago 1,096,585

Most Populous Countries in Central America

1. Guatemala 14,280,596
2. Honduras 6,823,568
3. El Salvador 6,587,541

Most Populous Countries in South America

1. Brazil 184,101,109
2. Colombia 42,310,775
3. Argentina 39,144,753
4. Peru 27,544,305
5. Venezuela 25,017,387

1. United States $11,750,000,000,000
2. China $7,262,000,000,000
3. Japan $3,745,000,000,000
4. India $3,319,000,000,000
5. Germany $2,362,000,000,000
6. United Kingdom $1,782,000,000,000
7. France $1,737,000,000,000
8. Italy $1,609,000,000,000
9. Brazil $1,492,000,000,000
10. Russia $1,408,000,000,000
11. Canada $1,023,000,000,000
12. Mexico $1,006,000,000,000
13. Spain $937,600,000,000
14. South Korea $925,100,000,000
15. Indonesia $827,400,000,000

Whatever the most accurate numbers for the leading top 20 nations in population, it is a certainty that the world is filling up with people. If it continues to do so, it will one day be able to support no more people - not even one more.

This has been the topic of science fiction and science research for decades.

In the 1980s, a group of American doctors drew up a proposal for a Medical Moon Base for chronic victims of uncontrollable hypertension and related maladies. That might be a lot of people, acting as an escape valve to siphon off the populations of the Earth to some extent. On the Moon, with 1/5 the gravity of the Earth, blood pressures would decrease for these patients, However, they might not be able to get back to Earth, because returning, if they survived the G-forces of re-entry, would raise their blood pressures so quickly and dramatically that they would have strokes.

At the same time as this proposal, other interested parties decided that the Moon should become a penal colony just as Australia was when formed and was first settled by prisoners.

This is likely not a workable solution to overpopulation. However, a good story about the possibillity is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein, first published in 1966. It is also about about the penal colony's revolt against the Earth government, filled with interesting and libertarian views, as well as an English language laced with Russian terms.

Written in the middle of the Cold War, Harsh Mistress was a pointed conceptual focus - colonies combining elements from former enemies fir survival on a new world. It is a good piece of science fiction with an interesting ending. It won the HUGO award for Sci-Fi.

The Mars Society is pushing for Martian colonization in part to ease Earth's population woes. They do some fascinating things, like having volunteers living in Mars-scapes of a sort in the desert of the American West as a training and research mission. Other groups are being created to think of additional ideas for population overgrowth on our planet. See below.