The new population estimates are already being misunderstood

Source: ASI

New estimates of future population size have only been out a day and already they’re being misunderstood. Firstly they’re being misunderstood by the people who actually made them:

Rising population could exacerbate world problems such as climate change, infectious disease and poverty, he said. Studies show that the two things that decrease fertility rates are more access to contraceptives and education of girls and women, Raftery said. Africa, he said, could benefit greatly by acting now to lower its fertility rate.

Piffle, stuff and nonsense. It’s a well known finding that access to contraception drives, at most, 10% of changes in fertility. It’s the desire to limit fertility which, unsurprisingly, drives changes in fertility. And the education of girls and women, while highly desirable, is a correlate, not a cause, of declining fertility. Economies that are getting richer can afford to educate women: economies that are getting richer also have declining fertility. It’s the getting richer that drives both.

But that’s not enough misunderstanding. We’ve also got The Guardian displaying a remarkable ignorance on the subject:

Many widely-accepted analyses of global problems, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s assessment of global warming, assume a population peak by 2050.

That’s not just piffle that’s howlingly wrong. The IPCC assessments do not assume any such damn thing. For example, the A2 family, which is the family that the entirety of the Stern Review is based upon (and yes, it’s one of the four families used by the IPCC) assumes a 15 billion global population in 2100. That is, it assumes a significantly larger population at that date than even these new estimates do. But you can see how this is going to play out, can’t you? Population’s going to be larger therefore we must do more about climate  change: when in fact these new estimates show that population is going to be smaller than the work on climate change already assumes.

As we might have said here before a time or two we don’t mind people being misguided in their opinions and thus disagreeing with us. We pity them for their mistakes of course, but that’s as nothing to the fury engendered by people actually being ignorant of the subjects they decide to opine upon.