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Re: Yuri receives hypocrite of the week award (was Re: Ecological Economics and Entropy)





jw <jwas@ix.netcom.com> wrote in article 
> No: the absolute growth is already decreasing:
>    year       populatiion        rate     absolute
>                                           increase
> -----------------------------------------------------
>     1989     5,194,206,959       1.67     87,337,583
>     1990     5,281,544,542       1.58     83,947,792
>     1991     5,365,492,334       1.52     82,302,295
>     1992     5,447,794,629       1.48     81,284,496
>     1993     5,529,079,125       1.44     80,305,662
>     1994     5,609,384,787       1.45     82,033,007
> 
>     1995     5,691,417,794       1.41     80,933,222
>     1996     5,772,351,016       1.38     80,362,443
>     1997     5,852,713,459       1.36     79,912,950
>     1998     5,932,626,409       1.33     79,640,559
>     1999     6,012,266,968       1.31     79,210,215
> 
>     2000     6,091,477,183       1.28     78,710,475
> 

First of all, by listing 10 significant figures (even for the year 2000
estimate) you show a lack of understanding of this kind of data.  None of
these numbers are accurate to better that a few million (at best).

Anyway, the absolute growth by year from the Britannica annuals (which list
copious data from each country separately) looks like

year        population increase (in millions)

86		56
87		87
88		76	
89		100	
90		111
91		112	
92		79	
93		47
94		81
95		59
96		94

The inconsistency of these numbers is to be expected when trying to collect
actual data yearly (rather than mathematical estimates) from all countries
of the world.  I personally would not trust any of this until one could
take a decade average.  That is, the useful numbers are those looking at
the numbers for the 50s,60s,70s,80s, and eventually the 90s.  However, in
order for the absolute growth to be slowing, the percentage growth has to
be dropping by a little more than .02% per year.  This drop must be
sustained over decades.

Rick Tarara



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