Predictions of Environmental Doom

Additionally, to address what you've had to say about immigrants...

I think that immigrants, for the most part, assimilate.
I think that within one or two generations, the family size of a migrant family approaches that of the host nation.
I think this is well illustrated by Pakistani immigrants to the UK.
As near as I can figure, on average Pakistani immigrants to the UK have around 2.7 children per family, however, for example, I also know that there are as many pakistani immigrant families in the UK that have 1 child, as there are that have three - a very flat distribution which is probably diagnostic of precisely the kind of transition I'm talking about (the average familiy size of white folk in the UK is more like 1.8).
Compare this to the average size of families in Pakistan which is more like 3.2

I'm also given to understand that naturalized immigrants in Germany are considered "Germans of immigrant descent" until the third generation, however, Germans of immigrant descent are still Germans, which suggests that the 'Live Births' line on the graph I posted earlier includes births to those people who have immigrated to Germany and become naturalized citizens of Germany, which tends to be supported by the positive excursion in live births between 1987 and 1993, which coincides with a larger period of growth in the German population, an increase, and subsequent plateu in the number of foreigners in Germany, and the current events and politics of this time which meant that:
1. There was an incentive to move to Germany (East or West) and/or
2. It was easier to migrate to Germany.

All of which seems to suggest that your objections are unfounded.

 

Yes, you are ignoring the factors that seem to have driven the growth in the first place. If you were considering them, you would have realized that beginning with the collapse of the Soviet union in 1990, through until the tightening of requirements for political asylumn in 1993, the pressures causing the large amount of immigration seen starting in 1987-1989 relaxed substantialy - a hypothesis that so far seems to be supported by the available evidence.

I've addressed all the trends displayed in the available data, so it's a moot point.

Natural change is a well defined term in demographics, it's not something that I have just made up. Which, you might have been able to infer, if you had explored the link provided to you by Adoucette.

No, I disagree, I believe, based on the evidence in front of me that if the natural change maintains its current range, and the immigration maintains its current range, then the population will stay at approximately the level it is now, barring things like the German government trying to encourage immigrants (which would increase the foreign population and force growth), or some event that results in an increase in the number of refugees to Germany, or the German Government incentivising child birth (which research suggests probably won't work anyway) or perhaps a massive grass roots movement gripping the country pushing people out of the cities and back into the country (rural populations tend to have higher fertility rates then urban populations).

Stop being so lazy and prove it - if you don't have excel, there are plenty of other tools you can use.
As to this statement: "increase nowhere near being obscured by inter-annual" this is a strawman hypothesis, I never claimed that it was true in all cases, only in cases where indefinite growth occurs at a rate aymptoticaly approaching zero.

Wrong - I've provided you with the graph of the world population, and I stated at the time that you could fit it with a linear least squares with an R[sup]2[/sup] of 0.85 which is a far better fit than, say, most climate change data.

I quantified the claim WRT 'plateuing', this changes nothing.

There seems to be some confusion in your post.
At the moment, the trend in the global population is for the second derivative to be negative, and to follow a trend with a negative slope. The trend with the negative slope (in the second derivative) extends back to 1970 or so. In order for the second derivative to remain negative, but increase amysptoticaly towards zero - which is the scenario you described, it must first pass through an inflexion - a sign change.

This is a strawman hypothesis - the second time it's been presented in this post. I never claimed that it was true that in all cases interannual variability would swamp a growth signal, I only claimed that it was true in scenarios where the growth asymptoticaly approached zero.

Strawman hypothesis, I didn't claim that it was a model, only that there were features in the data set that it failed to model (or account for).

The hypothesis forwarded by Fraggle Rocker, and supported by myself, and by Adoucette, is one that is supported by all of the available evidence, a portion of which has been presented in this discussion. You've been presented with facts, figures, statistics, graphs, and even causal mechanisms, however you've rejected it all out of hand, much of it without seeming to have given it any consideration, and favoured instead speculation which you have been utterly unable to substantiate.

Actually, I have specifically deigned to notice, and even addressed some of the aspects of the physical reality, even tried to draw your attention to them, seemingly to no avail.

Asked an answered in this thread.

You're wrong here as well, whilst it might be true of one, specific scale, it won't be true of all scales. It would take something like... The Rapture, divine intervention, or maybe the detonation of a nuclear weapon in a major metropolitan center to produce that kind of change. A change of 5 million people over two months is still smooth and differentiable across its entire length.

Do you want to invoke divine intervention to support your argument?

 

The rate at which births exceed deaths in a naturalized population is irrelevant to a discussion of the growth of that population?

Are you sure? Because that sure doesn't sound right to me.

I think it's up to you at this point to prove that it's irrelevant.

Prove they're relevant.
Prove they fit all of the aspects of the data - including the apparent levelling off of the first derivative.
Prove they're capable of accomadating a sign change in the first and second derivatives.

Otherwise, they're useless.

My point is that my assumption fits the measured data. My hypothesis (for lack of a better word) matches obervation, therefore it is not "wrong in describing that as the current trend".

No it isn't, I used the wrong word, I'm surprised you didn't pick it up. I have (mistakenly) been using the term 'Inflexion point' where what I have been describing is a stationary point. I was also discussing two seperate scenarios, those two sentences should have been seperated into different paragraphs.

Asked and answered.

I was discussing a specific case, the case fraggle mentioned, and a case you discussed, and a case that I have explicitly stated I was discussing repeatedly - that where the population grows indefinitely, but asymptotically approaches some fixed value.

No, I have been quite clear, and quite explicit that that reference was regarding situations where the growth rate aymptotically approaches zero.

Scare quotes are un-neccessary - your sentence structure clearly demonstrates non acceptance of terminology, and neutral distancing - unless you're trying to use them in an attempt to ridicule.

The simple fact of the matter is that the scenario posed by Fraggle Rocker has mutliple, independent lines of evidence that support it - ranging from the demographics of almost any European Country you might choose, to the changes in behaviour of immigrants from poorer countries to more propserous countries, to the contrasts in the demographics of Pakistan. A clear correlation can also be shown accross multiple countries. Several causal mechanisms have been proposed, some, or all of which have been mentioned in this thread, or linked to in this thread.

The point being, that on my side I have emperical evidence, and causal mechanisms. You have speculation.

Well, it has, in fact, been discussed.

Tsk tsk, it's comments like this that cause flame wars to start.

It's a valid point, if you consider what it means for something to be 'smooth and differentiable' or 'continuous'. It requires some kind of discontinuity (eg, the behaviour of y=1/x at x=0). It requires a vertical slope or something similar to that shown by y=|x|. To acheive this would require the sudden, instant, and simultaneous removal of members of the population - something that can only be achieved through things like divine intervention or the use of nuclear weapons, anything less will result in a line that has a large, but still finite slope.

I'm not claiming to be omiscient, nor is omniscience implied by anything I have said.

I have, hence some of the other comments I have made in this thread, however those points may have been too subtle for you.

Obviously I've considered it - it was me that bought it up, after all. How can I bring somethign up if I haven't considered it?

It might cause more deaths, but the problem you face is one of time and timing. In order to produce a curve that isn't smooth and differentiable, you need to be able to generate a vertical slope. Not a slope that is vertical at some scales, not a slope that is to all intents and purposes vertical, but a slope that is genuinely vertical at all scales. This requires the death of large numbers of people simultaneously, because anything less, at some scale on the time access will produce a line that has a large, but still finite slope.

And no, I don't consider the death of one person to cause an discontinuity, because we're describing a discretized variable.

Come to think of it, a Nuclear bomb probably isn't that great an example, because the death causing agents travel outwards at a finite speed.

 

Actually, you know what?

Don't bother.

 

No, we are not.

To elaborate further - what we are in agreement on is that your 'technical quibble' is nothing more than that, because the models or analogs that it describes are irrelevant to the discussion, and here we seem to differ on the reasons why they're irrelevant.

What's posted above is a series of irrelevant distractions, that some might consider trolling.

 

I have discussed the assumptions, you just haven't recognized or understood it.

Soem point in time, or some point in the furture. And what, precisely is your point here?

You seem to be making an assertion against something that hasn't actually been said, and contradicts several things that have been - neither myself, nor fraggle rocker, nor adoucette, for example, are arguing that the population has reached a plateu.

The information available suggests probably, yes.

You seem to be concerned about future rapid declines, you've bought it up on several occasions, why is that?

You do understand, don't you that if the currently observed trends - the observed relationship between prosperity and fertility, for example, continue (you have produced zero information to suggest otherwise) then any population must enter a state of decline before even re-equilibriation can occur. And it doesn't even neccessarily have to be about lack of food, or fresh drinking water either - all it takes is a couple of generations of people having on average < 2 kids (assuming zero infant mortality and the like).

 

Quit trolling, you've been provided with several mechanisms, you've just refused to discuss them.

No false reassurances have been made.
Prosperity isn't just about wealth, but wealth can be used as a measure of prosperity.
It has been directly addressed.

More trolling.
I have made no backfilled corrections.
My claims have not changed. The worst I am guilty of is assuming that you're capable of retaining the context and flow of a conversation.

The mechanisms have been precisely considered, and are directly relevant to the OP.

Yes, I imagine you are.

 

No I don't.
And it has been addressed, not just named.

Multiple specific mechanisms have been addressed.

No, they aren't.

Strawman hypothesis - not the claim that was being made.

No bogus mathematical incantations were made - you just ran into trouble when you took statements out of their context.

The rest of what you describe tends to be the observable pattern, aside from one point, there tends to be a small negative adjustment after the boom - it's visible in the UK age pyramid, for example, followed by a much subdued 'echo boom'.

Are you still banging that drum?

Time to support your claims - either provide one single shred, just one iota of evidence, that the growth in population observed in Germany between 1985 and 1995 was caused by anything other than one time political pressures influencing immigration (some of which happen to be some of the most important events in modern world history).

 

Not just by you.

The original support has not actually been invalidated, more-over, the point remains that the models that you bought into the discussion were deemed to be irrelevant, by you.

You seem to have confused yourself, to be expected when you fail to retain context, I suppose.

And yet you fail to recognize the significance of it in relation to the plateuing of Germany's population - it directly implies that if current socio-political trends continue, then the current trends observed in population chart will continue.

In otherwords, you agree that, excluding exceptional circumstances, for example a change in German foreign policy regarding asylumn seekers, that the german population will continue to plateu, and may even begin a gradual decline.