Wednesday, July 21, 2010

So I was curious about overpopulation...

A few weeks ago I overheard a group of people discussing China's concerns of overpopulation. I began to think...A) Is the earth overpopulated? and B) I should learn to eavesdrop on cooler conversations. Anyhow, I decided to see how much of the earth humanity would inhabit should we all live together in one giant city.

Math people: check my math. I think my numbers are right but I am too lazy to double check.

The Texas Panhandle, according to the infallible wikipedia, is 25,823.9 square miles. 25,823.9 square miles could =
160.698 miles X 160.698 miles =
848,486.3073 feet X 848,486.3073 feet =
7.19929E+11 square feet =
a lot of square footage in the Texas Panhandle.

Translation: if you divide the Texas Panhandle into 10x10 lots (100 square foot lots) you would end up with 7,199,290,138 100 square foot lots in the Texas Panhandle.

The population of the world is estimated to be 6,854,901,988 according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

So, if every person in the world was given a 10x10 plot of land we would all fit in the Texas Panhandle with some room to spare. Granted, Humanville (that's what we would call it) would be a cest pool of socialistic depravity; but, it would leave the rest of the world free to be green...99.9% unihabited (I made up 99.9%, but it seems about right). Here's a visual in case you aren't sure what the world looks like:



So what's my point? I don't really have one. Scratch that, I do have one. Dear China, there's enough room in the world for your people to have babies.

Disclaimer: yes, I know that the overpopulation issue is more an issue of consumption than it is space. I don't care. I was curious how much space we took up. Perhaps I'll deal with consumption issues in a future boring blog post.

2 comments:

  1. Josh;

    Great Blog Post. I rather enjoyed reading your insight into the over population problem of the Chinese.

    But I'm afraid that if everyone moved into their 10 X 10 plot in the Texas Panhandle we would have some immigration issues to deal with. Oh yeah, not to worry, at this point our Federal Government is choosing not to enforce the immigration laws so no problem there.

    By the way, I checked your math, it's correct! How about checking my tax return next year before I submit it to the IRS!

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  2. Can you imagine the line at Wal-Mart!

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