Population Numbers Keep Dropping
Amid the constant clamor from population propagandists who point to the world’s alleged “population explosion,” a curious fact has gone almost unnoticed: the estimated numbers of the planet’s future inhabitants have been steadily dropping. This fact, evident in recent editions of the World Population Data Sheet of the Population Reference Bureau (PRB),1 is remarkable when one considers the sources for these continually eroding figures — the UN Statistical Office and the “long term population projections of the World Bank.” These two groups, and the PRB, have been among the most vociferous proponents of population control measures to cope with the world’s allegedly burgeoning population, which their own documentation now reveals to have been overstated.
Thus, an examination of the last five Population Data Sheets, discloses the following: the world’s population “projected to 2000” on the 1989 Data Sheet, 6.323 billion, was shaved to 6.292 billion in the 1990 edition, while the population “projected to 2020” plunged from 8.330 billion to 8.228 billion, a year-to-year decline of more than 100 million.
In 1991 PRB switched its reference years to 2010 and 2025, thereby making direct comparisons with earlier years’ data impossible. This change was apparently made because the year 2000 was fast approaching — or could it have been to keep the population numbers as high as possible even as the data continued to show a steady decline?
The population numbers on the 1991 Data Sheet were 7.189 billion for the year 2010 and 8.645 for the year 2025. On the 1992 Data Sheet these numbers fell to 7.114 billion and 8.545 billion, respectively, the latter another year-to-year decline of 100 million; 1993’s Data Sheet indicated further declines, now to 7.041 billion and 8.425 billion, respectively. The latter figure was a drop of 120 million from the previous year.
Along with the continual population drops came similar declines in the world’s population growth rates and the population “doubling time,” the years for a given population to double while increasing at a particular rate of growth. The annual rate of growth of the world’s population, said to be 1.8% in 1989 fell to 1.7% in 1991 and then declined again to 1.6% in 1993. Meanwhile, the doubling time, rose from 39 years in 1989 to 40 years in 1991, 41 years in 1992 and 43 years in 1993. Rather than a population explosion, could it be the world is on the verge of a population implosion?
Worldwatch “Water Scarcity” All Wet
In the PRI Review (Jan/Feb 1993) article “Worldwatch Hypes ‘Water Scarcity,”’ this writer took sharp issue with the claims of Worldwatch researcher Sandra Postel’s claims regarding 26 “water-scarce” countries whose annual per capita supplies of fresh water were allegedly less than 1,000 cubic meters.
Now a new publication from Population Action International (PAI), titled Sustaining Water: Population and the Future of Renewable Water Supplies,2 although advancing the same old thesis that water supplies cannot keep up with population growth, provides additional information refuting the bogus data Ms. Postel tried to foist upon the public. In particular, tables in Sustaining Water give the lie to Postel’s phony per capita water supply figures for the allegedly water scarce countries of Belgium, Botswana, Egypt, Hungary Libya, Mauritania, Netherlands, and Syria. The new data, based on 1990 population figures, puts the per capita water supplies of Botswana at 14,540 cubic meters (versus Postel’s alleged 710), Hungary at 10,897 (versus 580) and the Netherlands at 6,023 (versus 660). Readers may recall that Ms. Postel was able to concoct her numbers via the deliberate exclusion of all exogenous water supplies, those flowing in from neighboring countries.
Although we had previously independently found seven of the above eight countries, we had somehow overlooked Syria (2,087 cubic meters per capita water supply vs Postel’s claimed 550). Adding Syria to our previous nine countries (the other seven above, plus Algeria and Kenya), gives a new total of ten nations that Ms. Postel shoe-horned into her list of 26 “water-scarce” countries. At best, Postel’s list of 26 nations actually reduces to just 16 barely populated lands, with only Saudi Arabia (16.1 million) and Yemen (10.4 million) having more than 10 million population. The remaining 14 allegedly water-scarce countries have a total population of just 40 million, or little more than 2.85 million per nation!
Yet over-population propagandists would have us believe that too large a population or excessive population growth is the key factor behind current water problems in these lands.
Audubon Graphics for the Birds
The March-April 1993 issue of Audubon magazine, the bi-monthly publication of the National Audubon Society, carried an article “The Landscape of Hunger,” full of the usual apocalyptic villains of famine, deforestation, desertification, soil erosion, etc., all allegedly caused by overpopulation. One of the charts accompanying the article purported to illustrate “World Population Growth” for the century 1950 to 2050, with that 100 year interval set out along the horizontal axis.
But the 40 year time interval 1950–1990 was depicted by the same length line as the 60 year interval 1990–2050! This statistical fraud, usually presented as exhibit A in texts of “How to Lie With Statistics,” dramatically changed the angle of ascent of the line depicting population growth into a far steeper one, thereby falsely indicating a sharply accelerating rate of growth.3
