Population

On 31st December I noticed an irritating but interesting book about population and other matters by one Danny Dorling. Irritating in large part because of his breezy but implausible expertise in all kinds of matters well outside the normal field of vision of a geographer, even one who is the Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography of the School of Geography and the Environment of the University of Oxford. Interesting in large part because of his claim that the the world's population would stabilise at below 10 billion, rather than some much larger number of the sort scouted around by rubbishy professional demographers, and that population was not at all the biggest problem that we face on earth.

So I was interested to see in the Guardian a couple of days ago that one Adrian E. Raftery, both paddy and professional demographer, has led a team which has decided that population will continue to grow steadily throughout the current century to reach 11 billion by the end of it, with the troubled Nigeria growing to humungous proportions. Good job that they have got some oil to help them feed them all.

Being so prompted to look back at Dorling this morning, it is easy to see why he was so irritating first time around. Right know all. And, as lawyers tell us in courtroom dramas on television, nothing so bad on the stand as an expert witness. You can always get one to back whatever story you want and they often seem to go around in circles, sometimes ever decreasing. Never give you a clear, clean answer to anything.

But I was interested to see that the Bayes word is prominent in Raftery's CV, to which I shall come back to in due course. It seems to be a lot more respectable these days than it was where I learned my probability.

And maybe Dorling could get a role as a prof. in a forthcoming episode of 'Lewis'. That apart, I think I shall now leave the question of population growth, or not, aside.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=dorling.

Reference 2: http://www.demographic-research.org/authors/1565.htm.