what i find interesting in this is that the over population scaremongers have been claiming for decades that our population is doubling every 7 years, yet the record shows that it is only doing so every 40 years.
one of the biggest contributers of the population growth of the late 20th century was china, yet now, they are doing what the goverment there can to stop the growth and perhaps reduce it.
another major contibuter was india and they are working on reducing their increases already. after that we will have to worry about the population of africa. If these three are brought undercontrol, the population growth will be substantially reduced, if not stopped altogether.
as to something taking us out, i really dont think anything will take out the entire population. i feared at one point a few months ago that two of the super valcanos were about to erupt and, if they did in close temporal proximate, would wipe out the entire population. It possible that it would wipe out the us part of civiliaztion if long valley erupted. If it were one of the ones in the south pacific, it might take out a large part of the oriental population. either would cause a sevire food shortage that would wipe out a large part of the population, but not all of it. not by a large percentage. At worse it would knock out civiliation about 2000 years back, but little more than that. the same is true with most asteroids. dispite what the scare mongers tell you Avian flu is not likely to make that large of a dent in the world population even if it does cross to humans. there is no evidence that is happening yet. personally, i think what will reduce the population of earth is when we finally figure a way to travel in space easier. then there will be tons of people moving into space habitats. Just dont hold your breath waiting for it. its likely to take a few decades minimum for that, a couple of centuries perhaps.
oh, and i had already heard about the risks of Apophis. its been discounted as very unlikely.
