XPost: or.politics, seattle.politics, ca.politics
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On 9/13/23 15:01, David P wrote:

Delusional population projections lead us sleepwalking into catastrophe
By Jane O’Sullivan, Sept 13, 2023, The Overpopulation Project

The Elon Musks of this world think there can never be enough humans. When we fill up Earth, we will conquer the Universe! But most people think population growth is not a problem because it’s stopping soon anyway. Those “population alarmists”

must be naïve, or motivated by racism. But what if growth is not stopping as soon as we think, and what if those extra numbers make it impossible to avoid widespread famines and run-away climate change?

In a newly published paper, I show how the UN projections have consistently underestimated global population growth this century. According to the UN’s 2022 data, there were 253 million more people on Earth in mid-2022 than the UN expected there

would be in its projection from the year 2000. While they then estimated an annual increment under 80 million and falling, the actual increase has been roughly 90 million per year, with no sure sign of diminishing.

[CHART]
Figure 1. The UN’s estimate of world population, given in 2010, 2012, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2022 revisions (solid pink line) and the projected population from each of those revisions (dashed blue lines). For full citations, see Jane O’Sullivan,

Demographic Delusions: World Population Growth Is Exceeding Most Projections and Jeopardising Scenarios for Sustainable Futures.

There are several rival projections, the most widely known being the Wittgenstein Centre (the “shared socioeconomic pathways” or SSP series), Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s “Earth4All”

project. All three anticipate far more rapid deceleration and lower peak population than does the UN. Hence, all are even further from reality.

Worryingly, these unrealistically low projections are being used in research efforts to model sustainable futures, which explore what it would take to avoid dangerous climate change and meet everyone’s needs within planetary limits for resource use

and environmental damage. The SSP projections are particularly widely used in modelling. They then present sustainability as a viable (if highly challenging) possibility, when greater population numbers would breach environmental limits even under the
most techno-optimist scenarios.

[CHART]
Figure 2. Projections of world population by the UN, Wittgenstein Centre (SSPs), IHME and Earth4All. For full citations, see Jane O’Sullivan, Demographic Delusions: World Population Growth Is Exceeding Most Projections and Jeopardising Scenarios for

Sustainable Futures.

One reason for this underestimation is attributing fertility decline to socioeconomic circumstances, such as reducing infant mortality, improving girls’ education, urbanisation and industrialisation. None of the models assigns any importance to

deliberate interventions such as voluntary family planning programs. While family size does correlate with each of those factors, all of the models treat fertility as the ‘dependent variable’, not considering how family planning programs might have
contributed to lowering infant mortality, improving girls’ access to schooling and accelerating industrialisation and income growth.

The UN’s model is calibrated over the decades in which family planning programs were well supported and many countries had relatively rapid fertility transitions. However, since this support was withdrawn in the 1990s, fertility declines slowed

globally and even reversed in a few countries. The UN doesn’t seem to have adjusted its calibration to account for this slow-down. On the contrary, it has recently recalibrated to increase the rate of future fertility decline, with no apparent evidence
to back this change. Its rhetoric flatly denies that past family planning programs played any role at all, and is silent on its own projections’ poor record at predicting growth over the past two decades.

Regular readers of this blog might recall my critiques of each of these projections (here, here, here, here and here). In my most recent paper, I bring these together in the context of scenarios for sustainable futures. While few such studies have

explored the influence of different population assumptions, those that did have found it impossible to achieve sustainable food systems and low enough emissions to avoid more than 2oC of global heating, no matter how rapidly and universally we change our
production technologies and consumption behaviours, if the world population exceeds 10 billion. Yet, at this point it seems that only massive calamities will prevent the human population exceeding 10 billion.

Letting nature do the culling for us is not in anyone’s preferred playbook. Nobel Laureate Henry Kendall once said, “If we don’t halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature, brutally and without pity—and

will leave a ravaged world.”

If we go down in wars, famines and environmental disasters, we will take a great deal of biodiversity with us. Hungry people eat the roots of plants, the bark of trees, and anything that crawls, digs, swims or flies, if they can lay their hands on them.

Protected areas become a meaningless concept. Hunger soon gives way to violence and failed states.

What would it take to avoid these calamities? The only answer is a much faster fall in birth rates in all high-fertility countries than is happening now. Such fast transitions have happened in the past, but only when contraception and small families

were strongly promoted through active family planning programs.

It is an extraordinary tragedy that the global community shuns this opportunity, on the grounds that we are defending the poor from abominations like China’s one-child policy. We should instead be championing the great family planning successes such

as in Thailand, Tunisia, Costa Rica, South Korea and Iran. Instead of emulating these successes, the high-fertility countries in Africa and elsewhere are being served an insipid and ineffectual reproductive health agenda, in denial of the harms wrought
by population growth. It is supposedly centring women’s rights but effectively impedes women’s emancipation through lack of funding and political will for the services they need to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and through lack of a clear motive to
challenge the patriarchal cultures that limit women’s roles to motherhood.

Population projections, like all complex modelling exercises, are rarely questioned because their details are difficult for the average person to fathom. However, models are only as good as their assumptions and data. The current crop of global

population projections embed the myth that rapid fertility decline can be achieved through indirect socioeconomic drivers, together with the myth that direct promotion of contraception and small families is ineffective and incompatible with human rights.

Lulled by these fantasies, plans for achieving sustainable futures exclude population measures. We need a more integrated approach across the environmental and social justice agenda, which acknowledges the essential role of rapid population

stabilisation in climate change mitigation, biodiversity protection, poverty reduction, food security and world peace. Unless we take a more proactive approach to ending population growth very soon, we will miss our last chance to avoid a hungry,
hothouse world.

https://overpopulation-project.com/delusional-population-projections-lead-us-sleepwalking-into-catastrophe/

Well, David P., you have certainly posted a Point of View.

And that PoV concerns an important area of concern for much of
the world.

I would think that you probably posted it to 'sci.military.naval'
because you think overpopulation problems might be a contributing
cause on a major naval war. OK.

But this topic is very much an economic and political issue also.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Thursday, September 14, 2023 at 12:23:58 PM UTC-4, a425couple wrote:

On 9/13/23 15:01, David P wrote:

Delusional population projections lead us sleepwalking into catastrophe
By Jane O’Sullivan, Sept 13, 2023, The Overpopulation Project

The Elon Musks of this world think there can never be enough humans. When we fill up Earth, we will conquer the Universe! But most people think population growth is not a problem because it’s stopping soon anyway. Those “population alarmists”

must be naïve, or motivated by racism. But what if growth is not stopping as soon as we think, and what if those extra numbers make it impossible to avoid widespread famines and run-away climate change?

In a newly published paper, I show how the UN projections have consistently underestimated global population growth this century. According to the UN’s 2022 data, there were 253 million more people on Earth in mid-2022 than the UN expected there

would be in its projection from the year 2000. While they then estimated an annual increment under 80 million and falling, the actual increase has been roughly 90 million per year, with no sure sign of diminishing.

[CHART]
Figure 1. The UN’s estimate of world population, given in 2010, 2012, 2015, 2017, 2019 and 2022 revisions (solid pink line) and the projected population from each of those revisions (dashed blue lines). For full citations, see Jane O’Sullivan,

Demographic Delusions: World Population Growth Is Exceeding Most Projections and Jeopardising Scenarios for Sustainable Futures.

There are several rival projections, the most widely known being the Wittgenstein Centre (the “shared socioeconomic pathways” or SSP series), Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s “Earth4All�

� project. All three anticipate far more rapid deceleration and lower peak population than does the UN. Hence, all are even further from reality.

Worryingly, these unrealistically low projections are being used in research efforts to model sustainable futures, which explore what it would take to avoid dangerous climate change and meet everyone’s needs within planetary limits for resource use

and environmental damage. The SSP projections are particularly widely used in modelling. They then present sustainability as a viable (if highly challenging) possibility, when greater population numbers would breach environmental limits even under the
most techno-optimist scenarios.

[CHART]
Figure 2. Projections of world population by the UN, Wittgenstein Centre (SSPs), IHME and Earth4All. For full citations, see Jane O’Sullivan, Demographic Delusions: World Population Growth Is Exceeding Most Projections and Jeopardising Scenarios

for Sustainable Futures.

One reason for this underestimation is attributing fertility decline to socioeconomic circumstances, such as reducing infant mortality, improving girls’ education, urbanisation and industrialisation. None of the models assigns any importance to

deliberate interventions such as voluntary family planning programs. While family size does correlate with each of those factors, all of the models treat fertility as the ‘dependent variable’, not considering how family planning programs might have
contributed to lowering infant mortality, improving girls’ access to schooling and accelerating industrialisation and income growth.

The UN’s model is calibrated over the decades in which family planning programs were well supported and many countries had relatively rapid fertility transitions. However, since this support was withdrawn in the 1990s, fertility declines slowed

globally and even reversed in a few countries. The UN doesn’t seem to have adjusted its calibration to account for this slow-down. On the contrary, it has recently recalibrated to increase the rate of future fertility decline, with no apparent evidence
to back this change. Its rhetoric flatly denies that past family planning programs played any role at all, and is silent on its own projections’ poor record at predicting growth over the past two decades.

Regular readers of this blog might recall my critiques of each of these projections (here, here, here, here and here). In my most recent paper, I bring these together in the context of scenarios for sustainable futures. While few such studies have

explored the influence of different population assumptions, those that did have found it impossible to achieve sustainable food systems and low enough emissions to avoid more than 2oC of global heating, no matter how rapidly and universally we change our
production technologies and consumption behaviours, if the world population exceeds 10 billion. Yet, at this point it seems that only massive calamities will prevent the human population exceeding 10 billion.

Letting nature do the culling for us is not in anyone’s preferred playbook. Nobel Laureate Henry Kendall once said, “If we don’t halt population growth with justice and compassion, it will be done for us by nature, brutally and without pity—

and will leave a ravaged world.”

If we go down in wars, famines and environmental disasters, we will take a great deal of biodiversity with us. Hungry people eat the roots of plants, the bark of trees, and anything that crawls, digs, swims or flies, if they can lay their hands on

them. Protected areas become a meaningless concept. Hunger soon gives way to violence and failed states.

What would it take to avoid these calamities? The only answer is a much faster fall in birth rates in all high-fertility countries than is happening now. Such fast transitions have happened in the past, but only when contraception and small families

were strongly promoted through active family planning programs.

It is an extraordinary tragedy that the global community shuns this opportunity, on the grounds that we are defending the poor from abominations like China’s one-child policy. We should instead be championing the great family planning successes

such as in Thailand, Tunisia, Costa Rica, South Korea and Iran. Instead of emulating these successes, the high-fertility countries in Africa and elsewhere are being served an insipid and ineffectual reproductive health agenda, in denial of the harms
wrought by population growth. It is supposedly centring women’s rights but effectively impedes women’s emancipation through lack of funding and political will for the services they need to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and through lack of a clear
motive to challenge the patriarchal cultures that limit women’s roles to motherhood.

Population projections, like all complex modelling exercises, are rarely questioned because their details are difficult for the average person to fathom. However, models are only as good as their assumptions and data. The current crop of global

population projections embed the myth that rapid fertility decline can be achieved through indirect socioeconomic drivers, together with the myth that direct promotion of contraception and small families is ineffective and incompatible with human rights.

Lulled by these fantasies, plans for achieving sustainable futures exclude population measures. We need a more integrated approach across the environmental and social justice agenda, which acknowledges the essential role of rapid population

stabilisation in climate change mitigation, biodiversity protection, poverty reduction, food security and world peace. Unless we take a more proactive approach to ending population growth very soon, we will miss our last chance to avoid a hungry,
hothouse world.

https://overpopulation-project.com/delusional-population-projections-lead-us-sleepwalking-into-catastrophe/

Well, David P., you have certainly posted a Point of View.

And that PoV concerns an important area of concern for much of
the world.

I would think that you probably posted it to 'sci.military.naval'
because you think overpopulation problems might be a contributing
cause on a major naval war. OK.

But this topic is very much an economic and political issue also.

Or maybe he's just another one of those trolls who posts in every place he can type.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

XPost: or.politics, seattle.politics, ca.politics
XPost: alt.economics, alt.law-enforcement

On 9/14/23 09:23, a425couple wrote:

On 9/13/23 15:01, David P wrote:

Delusional population projections lead us sleepwalking into catastrophe
By Jane O’Sullivan, Sept 13, 2023, The Overpopulation Project

The Elon Musks of this world think there can never be enough humans.
When we fill up Earth, we will conquer the Universe! But most people
think population growth is not a problem because it’s stopping soon
anyway. Those “population alarmists” must be naïve, or motivated by
racism. But what if growth is not stopping as soon as we think, and
what if those extra numbers make it impossible to avoid widespread
famines and run-away climate change?

--------------snip------------

https://overpopulation-project.com/delusional-population-projections-lead-us-sleepwalking-into-catastrophe/

Well, David P., you have certainly posted a Point of View.

And that PoV concerns an important area of concern for much of
the world.

I would think that you probably posted it to 'sci.military.naval'
because you think overpopulation problems might be a contributing
cause on a major naval war. OK.

But this topic is very much an economic and political issue also.

Anyway David P., this disaster by human overpopulation is
indeed a concern. It is also a common Science Fiction topic.

I suggest you go to a library and check out this book.
(or buy it and get it delivered to you door for just over $6.00 US)
It is a collection of sci-fi short stories.
I think you might find the first story,
Twilight Falls, - A Joe Ledger Rogue Team International Adventure
by Jonathan Maberry
a very interesting read.

https://www.amazon.com/Fantastic-Hope-Laurell-K-Hamilton/dp/0593099206

The book is:
Fantastic Hope Paperback – April 7, 2020
by Laurell K. Hamilton (Author, Editor), Patricia Briggs (Author),
A collection of sixteen sci-fi and fantasy stories edited by #1 New York
Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton and author William McCaskey.William McCaskey (Editor)


Twilight Falls
A Joe Ledger Rogue Team International Adventure
Jonathan Maberry

"(A threat/warning) was directed at the government of India and was
filled with political and quasi-religious histrionics. All about how the current world is corrupt and that overpopulation is proof of a
deliberate desire to pollute and destroy the world. The viewpoint of the
group amounts to the belief that humanity has become a kind of thinking
virus on the skin of the living earth. What was once a symbiotic
relationship, back when humanity could be counted in the tens of
thousands, has been thrown out of balance by industrialism and
overpopulation. The group consider themselves to be the voice of reason.

Their "reasonable" suggestion, sent via email to the heads of state of
the fifty most populous countries, was for the leaders to initiate a
lottery to pick ninety percent of their populations and systematically euthanize them. Failure to do so would result in the group launching a
program of bioweapon releases. How they planned to do that, and where
they would get these bioweapons, was something we were working on
figuring out.

The limited releases were incentives. Kicks in the ass.

That's why everyone with a gun was out hunting these freaks.

All we had for the group was a name-Silentium. Latin for "silence,"
which didn't tell us much. However, from the rhetoric in their messages
it was pretty clear they were some kind of millenarian cult. Their rants
were all about how mankind was corrupt and how a new age was going to
dawn after the manufactured cleansing program. There were going to be
seven years of violence, struggle, and death before the population was
whittled down to a number in harmony with the earth.

Funny how these groups present a model of a societal golden ideal that
is any rational person's concept of a dystopia.

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 9/16/23, a425couple wrote:

On 9/14/23, a425couple wrote:

On 9/13/23 15:01, David P wrote:

Delusional population projections lead us sleepwalking into catastrophe >> By Jane O’Sullivan, Sept 13, 2023, The Overpopulation Project

The Elon Musks of this world think there can never be enough humans.
When we fill up Earth, we will conquer the Universe! But most people
think population growth is not a problem because it’s stopping soon
anyway. Those “population alarmists” must be naïve, or motivated by >> racism. But what if growth is not stopping as soon as we think, and
what if those extra numbers make it impossible to avoid widespread
famines and run-away climate change?

--------------snip------------

https://overpopulation-project.com/delusional-population-projections-lead-us-sleepwalking-into-catastrophe/

Well, David P., you have certainly posted a Point of View.

And that PoV concerns an important area of concern for much of
the world.

I would think that you probably posted it to 'sci.military.naval'
because you think overpopulation problems might be a contributing
cause on a major naval war. OK.

But this topic is very much an economic and political issue also.

Anyway David P., this disaster by human overpopulation is
indeed a concern. It is also a common Science Fiction topic.

I suggest you go to a library and check out this book.
(or buy it and get it delivered to you door for just over $6.00 US)
It is a collection of sci-fi short stories.
I think you might find the first story,
Twilight Falls, - A Joe Ledger Rogue Team International Adventure
by Jonathan Maberry
a very interesting read.

https://www.amazon.com/Fantastic-Hope-Laurell-K-Hamilton/dp/0593099206

The book is:
Fantastic Hope Paperback – April 7, 2020
by Laurell K. Hamilton (Author, Editor), Patricia Briggs (Author),
A collection of sixteen sci-fi and fantasy stories edited by #1 New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton and author William McCaskey.William McCaskey (Editor)

Twilight Falls
A Joe Ledger Rogue Team International Adventure
Jonathan Maberry

"(A threat/warning) was directed at the government of India and was
filled with political and quasi-religious histrionics. All about how the current world is corrupt and that overpopulation is proof of a
deliberate desire to pollute and destroy the world. The viewpoint of the group amounts to the belief that humanity has become a kind of thinking virus on the skin of the living earth. What was once a symbiotic relationship, back when humanity could be counted in the tens of
thousands, has been thrown out of balance by industrialism and overpopulation. The group consider themselves to be the voice of reason.

Their "reasonable" suggestion, sent via email to the heads of state of
the fifty most populous countries, was for the leaders to initiate a
lottery to pick ninety percent of their populations and systematically euthanize them. Failure to do so would result in the group launching a program of bioweapon releases. How they planned to do that, and where
they would get these bioweapons, was something we were working on
figuring out.

The limited releases were incentives. Kicks in the ass.

That's why everyone with a gun was out hunting these freaks.

All we had for the group was a name-Silentium. Latin for "silence,"
which didn't tell us much. However, from the rhetoric in their messages
it was pretty clear they were some kind of millenarian cult. Their rants were all about how mankind was corrupt and how a new age was going to
dawn after the manufactured cleansing program. There were going to be
seven years of violence, struggle, and death before the population was whittled down to a number in harmony with the earth.

Funny how these groups present a model of a societal golden ideal that
is any rational person's concept of a dystopia.

----------------------------
Asimov believed that "science fiction ... serve[s] the good of humanity". He considered himself a feminist even before women's liberation became a widespread movement; he argued that the issue of women's rights was closely connected to that of population
control. Furthermore, he believed that homosexuality must be considered a "moral right" on population grounds, as must all consenting adult sexual activity that does not lead to reproduction. He issued many appeals for population control, reflecting a
perspective articulated by people from Thomas Malthus through Paul R. Ehrlich.

Asimov's defense of civil applications of nuclear power, even after the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant incident, damaged his relations with some of his fellow liberals. In a letter reprinted in Yours, Isaac Asimov, he states that although he would
prefer living in "no danger whatsoever" than near a nuclear reactor, he would still prefer a home near a nuclear power plant than in a slum on Love Canal or near "a Union Carbide plant producing methyl isocyanate", the latter being a reference to the
Bhopal disaster.

In the closing years of his life, Asimov blamed the deterioration of the quality of life that he perceived in New York City on the shrinking tax base caused by the middle-class flight to the suburbs, though he continued to support high taxes on the
middle class to pay for social programs. His last nonfiction book, Our Angry Earth (1991, co-written with Frederik Pohl), deals with elements of the environmental crisis such as overpopulation, oil dependence, war, global warming, and the destruction of
the ozone layer. In response to being presented by Bill Moyers with the question "What do you see happening to the idea of dignity to human species if this population growth continues at its present rate?", Asimov responded:

"It's going to destroy it all ... if you have 20 people in the apartment and two bathrooms, no matter how much every person believes in freedom of the bathroom, there is no such thing. You have to set up, you have to set up times for each person, you
have to bang at the door, aren't you through yet, and so on. And in the same way, democracy cannot survive overpopulation. Human dignity cannot survive it. Convenience and decency cannot survive it. As you put more and more people onto the world, the
value of life not only declines, but it disappears."
--
--

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)