Yes, but that is a subjective statement.
Sure is. But it's not the reality-denying, truth-isn't-real statement that you claimed it was.
I'm not the one who has turned this into a Monty Python sketch. Although, I do believe that this parrot is definitely deceased.
"No it isn't!"
Some people maybe living longer, some definitely aren't. Either way, the population is still rising.
Yup. That's what happens when there's a big boom in population: it keeps rising even after birth rates lower. And those birth rates tell us what'll happen next. And they tell us it's going to slow significantly, and possibly reverse if trends continue. It certainly doesn't show us that we're currently in line to just keep growing wildly.
You're probably right about this, Third World migration is an issue in Europe at the moment. I do hope that your view of the long term does in fact come to fruition. I still don't trust statistics.
Alright then. This, by the by, was kind of the essence of my Kansas analogy. People's views of these problems can often be based in little more than the problems they face on a day-to-day basis. I imagine people who live in Manhattan are more worried about overpopulation than people in Nebraska.
Obviously, I don't agree with the idea that we can or should throw blanket distrust over all statistics...however, even if we do that, we're led to the inexorable conclusion that there's really no way to know much of anything. We do not experience enough directly to have opinions about things like overpopulation at all if we do not first accept other people's accounts of what's happening in the places of the world we cannot see. Doubt about statistics, then, only makes one argument: an argument for not having an opinion about this issue (and many others).
Admittedly I have a deeply ingrained bias against anything that the UN claims. Which is one of the reasons I doubt those figures.
I'm not a fan of the UN for a variety of reasons, but I have difficulty comprehending what they would gain from this kind of lie. I also have difficulty believing such an unwieldy organization would be much good at keeping a secret or so adroitly manipulating statisticians and field researchers. That's difficult to believe. And without checking, I'll bet the estimates at least somewhat jibe with other sources, which makes me think any kind of systematic attempt to skew the numbers would be borderline impossible.
The only reasonable argument left to someone afraid of overpopulation, then, is that it's insanely hard to measure population and therefore there is no attempt to skew anything, but merely a general incompetence in doing so. But that leaves us with no idea of what's happening with population numbers, including whether or not they're growing anywhere to begin with. Again, the position you've articulated does not defend fear over overpopulation, but leads only to an insistence that none of us knows anything.
You'd better ask them then.
Amusing.
But if I ask them they'll say that they didn't make them up and they're perfectly legitimate. You're the one doubting them, so I'm asking you. I'm asking you if there is any even remotely specific reason for doubting them.
Yes, but you are claiming that my argument is essentially Malthusian thus in error. I'm saying that just as Newton's laws weren't totally displaced by Einstein, Malthus' errors in previous population estimates may not be incorrect when being applied to a massively expanding global population.
That could mean a lot of different things, so whether or not I agree would depend on what you mean, specifically. And to be honest, I'm having trouble even guessing as to what this could mean or how it could reconcile Malthus' errors to reality.
I will say, however, that certain major parts of Malthus' reasoning are clearly wrong regardless of whether or not things change. Particularly the second of his propositions: "That population does invariably increase when the means of subsistence increase." We're seeing that's not true right now. Really, the whole theory is that population is directly tied to the "means of subsistence." That's pretty blatantly wrong, no matter what happens going forward.
No, this is just logical posturing. You are positing a debate on whether I choose to accept your statistics from the UN or not. You still haven't proven anything, apart from the fact that you have discovered some UN statistics which may or may not be true.
How is it logical posturing? It is logically inevitable that one of the two things I listed must be true. If you say this is not the case, please explain why. Merely contradicting it again has no explanatory or argumentative power.
I'm not guessing that the population of the entire planet is 7 billion & growing.
Certainly not; and since you're not guessing about that, I'm not disagreeing with it. I disagree with the inferences you draw from that fact: chiefly, the guess that population will continue growing at the same rate, or even continue growing indefinitely at all. And, by implication, the guess that this will doom us all, presumably because our ability to use resources more efficiently (or make new ones economically viable) will be outstripped by the immediate needs of this growing population. Those are the areas where guesswork starts to dominate, and those are the ones I therefore call guesses.
You can safely assume, in other words, that if you'd said something like "there are 7 billion people on the planet and population is currently rising," I would not have contradicted you. Though I likely would have guessed the implication of this statement of fact. And that, of course, is the whole discussion: not the fact you mention above, but the inferences and implications drawn from it.