Skeptics Stack Exchange
Skeptics Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [population]

23 questions
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Can Zipf's power law be applied to the population of European cities?

According to Wikipedia and io9, Zipf's law can be applied to "big cities" and agglomerates of big cities (e.g. San Francisco and Oakland). More specifically, according to the Wikipedia article, the power law fits with a factor of 1.07: When Zipf's…
ChrisR
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Have 107 billion people lived?

"The Population Reference Bureau estimates that approximately 107 billion people have ever lived." Reference: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2097038/Are-really-people-alive-today-lived-Earth.html I think that the above claim is a…
Carlo Alterego
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Will the human population reach 8-9 billion around 2050 and then decline?

In a January 2019 Guardian article, What goes up: are predictions of a population crisis wrong?, Darrel Bricker and John Ibbitson claim: the human population will top out at somewhere between 8 and 9 billion around the middle of the century, and…
einpoklum
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Is there more than one registered motor vehicle for every adult in the US?

According to the US Census Bureau's table of estimated population as of July 1 each year, there were 268.3M people 14 years of age or older, including 260.1M people 16 years of age or older, including 251.6M people 18 years of age or older, as of…
WBT
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What is the impact on climate change of having a child?

I found one study from 2017 that says (emphasis mine): We recommend four widely applicable high-impact (i.e. low emissions) actions with the potential to contribute to systemic change and substantially reduce annual personal emissions: having one…
EM0
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Does increasing the middle class result in lower birth rates?

I saw an article or two about the phenomenon of well off upper class families having large families. It claimed that his broke the trend of increased economic status resulting in smaller families that has been occurring in developed and developing…
Lausten North
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Were there 2.48 million Syrians living in Saudi Arabia in 2018?

GMI claims As per the data from 2017-2018, more than 30% of the Saudi population are expats. The total number of non-Saudis in the country is estimated to be 10,736,293. Nearly a quarter of this are Syrians fleeing the war in their country. Almost…
Fizz
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Do humans, pets and livestock drastically outweigh all other land mammals?

Does this picture demonstrate the actual proportions well (from xkcd)?
sashkello
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