I can't remember the name of the book right now. It was a clinical text book and I read it a few years ago. I did find a couple of links which support my contention though.
Well....
When you remember the name of the book and its author let me know... Ah yes, and it would also help what is their ideology.
As for your links supporting your contention:
1. Two of the links are by the same author i.e. Nicholas Eberstadt. Essentially the same article.
Speculations about Global De-population
Nicholas Eberstadt
American Enterprise Institute
Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies
March 1998
hsph.harvard.edu
The Population Implosion
By Nicholas Eberstadt
Copyright 1997 Dow Jones & Co., Inc
junkscience.com
The second paper makes reference to Mr. Eberstadt:
"What is happening now has simply never happened before in the history of the world," said Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer based at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "This is terra incognita. If these trends continue, in a generation or two there may be countries where most people's only blood relatives will be their parents."
[I wonder if the website title "Junkscience" has any bearing on his conclusions]
More on that later... but first:
2. Your contention is that we will be entering a population "implosion" by the year 2040... meanwhile, you accept the "low variant" probability of the UN studies that by the year 2040 we will reach around the 8 billion figure.
Hardly an implosion I would say.
Now, you yourself, and most papers accept that many of these studies are only projections and there could be "errors" and that it is "difficult" to asses what will the picture will look like in the future.
Mr Eberstadt writes:
Let us be clear: demographic techniques are reasonably accurate for some kinds of forecasts. Under ordinary conditions, for example, they are rather good at predicting how many people from a current cohort will be alive a given number of years hence. (This insight is the basis of the modern life insurance industry.) But no one has yet devised a sound technique for estimating the unborn in advance--and no one is likely to do so, so long as parental preferences determine fertility patterns.
My point here is...
I hope you are right, however I doubt it very much, since you already accept that up to the year 2040 there will be an INCREASE of population reaching 8 billion (and actually I think the figure is more like 9 billion) (plus or minus a few MILLIONS).
This, together with the fact that: (Mr. Eberstadt again)
This is not, to be sure, the first time that population specialists or others have raised the prospect of long-term population decline. Some sixty years ago, expectations of an imminent depopulation were widespread in the Western world. In the 1930s, in fact, "the fear of population decline", to recall a phrase , was palpable in a number of European countries--or at least in their leading political and intellectual circles.
We now know, of course, that those predictions of depopulation were famously off the mark. Indeed: at the very time when they were supposed to be entering into permanent negative growth due to sub-replacement fertility--the decades of 1950s and 1960s--Western countries actually turned out to be in the midst of a demographic surge driven by a post-war "baby boom". There is no compelling reason to put greater faith in the predictive properties of demography in the 1990s than there was in the 1930s, as we shall see in a moment. The UN's new "low variant" projections in particular can hardly be said to provide a sure vision of the future. But they do offer a glimpse of one particular and by no means fantastic version of the future: a version, as yet, whose outlines have scarcely been described, and whose ramifications have scarcely been pondered. At a time when all manner of potential "population problems" seem to be regularly accorded official attention by national and international authorities, the neglect that has to date greeted the possibility of a long-term reduction of human numbers is all the more striking.
Now...
Given the fact that 8 billion is a sure thing by all counts...
I WOULD WELCOME A DE-POPULATION TREND NO MATTER WHAT !!!
But I strongly doubt it will happen.
Well... let's have a look at the junkscience site:
From their definitions page:
Junk science?
"Junk science" is faulty scientific data and analysis used to used to further a special agenda. The junk science "mob" includes:
The MEDIA may use junk science for sensational headlines and programming. Some members of the media use junk science to advance their and their employers' social and political agendas.
PERSONAL INJURY LAWYERS may use junk science to bamboozle juries into awarding huge verdicts. Large verdicts may then be used to extort even greater sums from deep-pocket businesses that may be fearful of future jury verdicts.
SOCIAL ACTIVISTS, such as the "food police," environmental extremists, and gun-control advocates, may use junk science to achieve social and political change.
GOVERNMENT REGULATORS may use junk science to expand their authority and to increase their budgets.
BUSINESSES may use junk science to bad-mouth competitors' products or to make bogus claims about their own products.
POLITICIANS may use junk science to curry favor with special interest groups or to be "politically correct."
INDIVIDUAL SCIENTISTS may use junk science to achieve fame and fortune.
INDIVIDUALS who are ill (real or imagined) may use junk science to blame others for causing their illness.
junkscience.com
Hmm that's for starters. Are you saying that the UN and all other "population clocks" out there have an agenda ? and they are simply "scaring us" ?
I have no idea why you believe in a "de-population" trend when you accept a continuous growth up to 8 billion, then all of a sudden, like magic we start a "de-population trend at such point"
I would like to believe that. As much as I would like to see less crowded cities, (with less pollution etc etc etc.)
Just for my own clarification of things... would you answer this question?
Are you in favor of a family planning strategy that would include abortion?
Simple answer please YES or NO it will help me understand your "contention" of a "de-population theory"
Thanks. |
