Updated UN data on the world population

In a post published in this blog in December 2015, Julio A. Gonzalo and I analyzed the data on the world population provided in 2012 by the UN, along with their future forecasts until the year 2100. A few months ago, the UN has updated those data and forecasts with the figures available in 2019. As seven years have elapsed, it is possible to compare the forecasts made in 2012 with the real situation just now.

The dominant ideology dares to censor science

In one of the most read and controversial posts in this blog, What science says about human life, which had 92 comments in its Spanish version (so far the blog record), I explained how, for purely ideological reasons, supporters of abortion close the eyes to what science says, which asserts clearly (and has done so for a century and a half) that the life of every human being begins in the fertilization of the ovum by the sperm. Faced with this, abortionists insist on making false statements like these: a fetus is only a part of the mother’s body; a fetus is not a human being; a fetus is nothing but a set of cells (so what are the abortionists?).

A cover of The Lancet

Denouncing one more step towards the ideological control of scientific research, the British journal The Lancet, second in impact factor in the field of Medicine, has published an article accusing certain abortion NGOs and the government of the United Kingdom of interference in scientific research.

The scientists signing the article are part of a team working for the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, which undertook the evaluation of a project aimed at reducing deaths due to unwanted pregnancies in 14 countries in Africa and Asia (i.e. the number of deaths caused by induced abortions). The project, which was allocated £140 million in funding, was sponsored by the United Kingdom's Department for International Development (DFID) and carried out by two major NGOs working on international reproductive health (an euphemism hiding the word abortion, although those organizations don’t hide it in their websites).

Catastrophes and catastrophism

Chernobyl disaster

From time to time catastrophes occur, usually unforeseen, sometimes causing tremendous damage. Let's look at some relatively recent ones:

• July 28, 1976: Tangshan Earthquake (China), intensity 7.5 on the Richter scale. The official death toll was 249,419, though some say it was actually three times as big.
• December 3, 1984: Bhopal disaster, a leakage of methyl isocyanate from a pesticide factory that caused some 20,000 deaths and affected about 600,000 people.
• 26 April 1986: Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Disaster, which caused 31 direct casualties. It is estimated that the number of deferred deaths due to the effects of radiation could approach 80,000, although the estimates may not be reliable.

A global conspiracy?

Isaac Asimov

In 1976, at the peak of the pessimistic forecasts about the catastrophic rise in global population, foreseen by the first report of the Club of Rome (1972), Isaac Asimov published a science fiction short story (The winnowing), which suggested a (highly unethical) way to stop this catastrophic increase in population. This is the summary of the story:

In 2005, the unstoppable population growth causes famine in the third world countries. To contain it, the world authorities (the UN), controlled by the developed world, decide to apply a triage to the world population. To do this, a scientist (who does not want to do it, but is threatened with reprisals against his family) is ordered to develop a protein, poisonous for 70% of the population, but harmless for the remainder, depending on each individual DNA, so that its effects will be dramatic, but random. The protein will be introduced in the food sent to alleviate famines, so as to bring the world population down to more manageable levels. The project is not applied exactly as planned, because the biologist who must develop the protein gives it to eat to the world leaders without their knowing, so that 70% of them will die. As the protein has been adapted to the scientist’s DNA, by eating it he commits suicide, thus escaping the consequences of what he has done.

Malthus’s mistake

Thomas Robert Malthus

Since the end of the eighteenth century, apocalyptic warnings as regards the unstoppable increase of the world population have followed one another. In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus published An essay on the principle of population, as it affects the future improvement of society, with remarks on the speculations of Mr. Godwin, M. Condorcet, and other writers. This essay includes the famous quotation:

Assuming then my postulata as granted, I say, that the power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man.

Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will shew the immensity of the first power in comparison of the second.