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On Tuesday, The Guardian published an article that admits the climate agenda is the depopulation agenda.

What is also notable is the article boldly claims the global human population is increasing by 200,000 people a day.  The world’s population is a guesstimate, so how can they know it is increasing by that number?  The truth is they don’t.

It simply isn’t possible to be sure exactly how many people there are on the Earth at any one time.  If it is uncertain how many people there are, it is even less certain by how many people the population is increasing, if indeed it is increasing.

The Guardian was publicising a report by a group of “experts” who had written a declaration of a ‘Warning of a Climate Emergency’ in 2020 for “scientists” worldwide to sign.  Their recent report was designed to solicit additional signatories.

How did The Guardian’s journalist miss that the “expert’s” report was merely activism? The article was written by a 20-year environmental reporting veteran who won this year’s press award for his “agenda-setting journalism on the climate crisis.”  He didn’t overlook the activism; he was helping to set the agenda.

On Tuesday, The Guardian reported that a group of “expert” climate scientists have said Earth’s “vital signs” have hit record extremes, indicating that “the future of humanity hangs in the balance.”

The Guardian was referring to the ‘The 2024 state of the climate report’ published in the journal BioScience.  It’s an annual report. If you scroll down to the ‘acknowledgement’ section it’s clear the purpose of the report is to encourage more people to sign the Alliance of World Scientists’ “The World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency paper (Ripple et al. 2020).”  Which is mentioned again in the ‘supplementary data’. 

The “report” from a “group of expert climate scientists” is unashamedly an activist outreach.  Rather than recognise this, The Guardian amplified the “report.”

The Guardian gave its highlights of the “report” which demonstrates that the climate agenda and the depopulation agenda are indeed the same agenda:

More and more scientists are now looking into the possibility of societal collapse, says the report, which assessed 35 vital signs in 2023 and found that 25 were worse than ever recorded, including carbon dioxide levels and human population. This indicates a “critical and unpredictable new phase of the climate crisis”, it says.

The temperature of Earth’s surface and oceans hit an all-time high, driven by record burning of fossil fuels, the report found. Human population is increasing at a rate of approximately 200,000 people a day and the number of cattle and sheep by 170,000 a day, all adding to record greenhouse gas emissions. [Emphasis added]

Earth’s ‘vital signs’ show humanity’s future in balance, say climate experts, The Guardian, 8 October 2024

To the last sentence in the quote from The Guardian, The Byte adds “On top of the large amounts of deforestation required to farm some of them.”  The Byte of course didn’t mention the deforestation being done to accommodate wind turbines or solar panels; the 17 million trees cut down since 2000 to develop “renewable” “green” wind farms in Scotland, for example.  Or Bill Gates’ project to cut down trees and bury them.  No.  It is only deforestation for farming that is mentioned.

Further reading:

Human Population Increasing

The figure of 200,000 for the daily increase in the human population comes from The World Scientists’ Warning of a Climate Emergency paper (Ripple et al. 2020), the same paper ‘The 2024 state of the climate report’ wants more people to sign in response to their “report.”  

Unsurprisingly, William J. Ripple, from the Department of Forest Ecosystems and Society at Oregon State University (hardly an “expert climate scientist”) and the director of the Alliance of World Scientists, is the lead author of both the 2020 paper and the 2024 report. He’s not the only author the two documents have in common.

We shall from now on refer to the “report” The Guardian publicised as “Ripple’s report” and the paper/declaration the “group of expert climate scientists” want others to sign as “Ripple’s paper.”

On Oregon State University’s ‘Alliance of Scientists’ page, is a condensed version of Ripple’s paper for people to sign.  The full paper is behind a paywall; most signatories will not have had the benefit of reading it. 

Embedded at the end of the condensed version and immediately after a request to donate to their project, the page provides a hyperlink to ‘Global Human and Livestock/Methane Counters and Emissions Trackers’. 

One of the “counters and emissions trackers” is the ‘Global Human and Ruminant Livestock Counter’, the only one to include humans, all the others relate to livestock.  Explaining how the counter is increasing in supposedly real time, it states: “Human population was predicted using the FAOSTAT [Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations] projected population for 2020 and 2021. A constant rate of growth over this periodwas assumed. Ruminant population size was predicted using FAOSTAT world livestock data from 1961-2019.”

It all sounds very scientific and accurate!

The increase of 200,000 people a day is an estimated constant growth rate applied to a projection that is 3 years old.  Yet, as Ripple’s report in 2024 claims, “more than 15,600 signatories from 165 countries” have signed Ripple’s condensed 2020 paper.

Do you think the signatories are scientists?  If so, do you think they follow evidence-based science? Or do they follow activist-based “science”?  It seems there are at least 15.600 activists from 165 countries who agree the climate change agenda is the depopulation agenda, unless some have signed more than once.

But how did The Guardian miss such a blatant scam?  The answer lies in the author of the article.

The author of The Guardian’s article amplifying Ripple’s report is Damian Carrington who has been writing about the environment for The Guardian since 2008 and is currently an Environment Editor.

Carrington won the 2024 Press Award because he “has published a wide range of agenda-setting journalism on the climate crisis, from exposing plans by the world’s fossil fuel giants … to rigorously compiling and analysing all of the scientific evidence [cough] on human-caused extreme weather events.”

“Agenda-setting” is not journalism.

How Accurate is Ripple’s Population Estimate?

Ripple writes as if the population increasing by 200,000 per day is a fact, even though it is an estimate of a 3-year-old projection.  So, what is the world’s population and is it increasing by 200,000 people a day?  The truth is no one knows. The United Nations (“UN”) doesn’t know, neither does Ripple, Carrington nor The Guardian.

In a 2019 blog, Happy Antipodeon noted the caveats on world population estimates given by the World Bank and the UN. It can be summed up by one sentence which Happy Antipodean quoted from the World Population Review’s website, “It simply isn’t possible to be sure exactly how many people there are on the Earth at any one time.” The World Population Review’s webpage titled ‘World Population 2024’ still includes these words.

Striking the death blow to Ripple’s ‘Global Human and Ruminant Livestock Counter’, the World Population Review also states, “The process of tracking the exact number of births and deaths in every country and territory in the world in real time – and maintaining a precise tally of the number of people alive on the Earth at any given moment – is logistically infeasible.” 

Here are some of the reasons why attempts to estimate the global population cannot be made with any accuracy:

• Historical population data before the 18th century are scarce and often based on rough estimates.
• Different organisations and researchers may employ distinct methodologies, different assumptions and different data sources to estimate population sizes, leading to variations in the numbers.
• The accuracy of population estimates relies heavily on the quality of underlying data, such as census records, vital statistics and surveys. In many developing countries, data collection and recording systems may be incomplete, inaccurate or unreliable. Many countries, especially in Africa and Asia, do not conduct regular censuses or provide reliable population estimates.
• Population estimates are typically reported to the nearest million or billion, which means that the actual figure may be significantly different from the reported value.
• Future population projections are subject to even greater uncertainties, as they rely on assumptions about demographic trends, fertility rates, mortality rates and migration patterns. Small changes in these assumptions can result in significant differences in projected population sizes.
• Population estimates and projections may vary significantly across regions and countries, due to differences in demographic trends, data quality and methodology.

In 2014 The Guardian published an article stating that the population numbers “and most of what we think of as facts, are actually estimates.”  Carrington needs to read this article.  The article began:

You know a lot less than you think you do. Around 1.22 billion people live on less than a $1.25 (75p) day? Maybe, maybe not. Malaria deaths fell by 49% in Africa between 2000 and 2013? Perhaps. Maternal mortality in Africa fell from 740 deaths per 100,000 births in 2000 to 500 per 100,000 in 2010? Um … we’re not sure.

These numbers, along with most of what we think of as facts in development, are actually estimates. We have actual numbers on maternal mortality for just 16% of all births, and on malaria for about 15% of all deaths. For six countries in Africa, there is basically no information at all.

Development data: how accurate are the figures? The Guardian, 31 January 2014

A 2023 article published by the Chartered Professional Accountants Canada detailed some of the problems in obtaining accurate data:

When it comes to global population estimates, “152 out of 237 countries reporting to the United Nations had a population census or population registrar as recent as 2015,” [Canadian professor of demography Don] Kerr explains.

“India, the world’s largest country, with an estimated population of 1.4 billion, is still trying to complete a 2020 census that was held up by logistical problems from the covid-19 pandemic,” Kerr said.

For Nigeria, the largest country in Africa, the UN is working with a 2006 census. The last time Afghanistan had a census was in 1979. For Lebanon, it was 1932.

Patrick Gerland, the UN’s chief of population estimates, confirms the difficulty in producing an accurate number in some cases. “The political situation of a country like Lebanon has prevented a census,” he says. “Likewise, the Democratic Republic of Congo hasn’t been able to do a census since 1917.”

For countries torn by war and political unrest, the UN relies on limited data and assumptions must be made. “This includes humanitarian situations, like those in Syria and Yemen,” says Gerland, “because you have millions of displaced people and refugees.”

The factors included in the UN’s margins of error vary tremendously by time and place … For example, China ended its one-child policy in 2016, but up until that point, many children were not being reported out of fear of penalty. “In this case, the only way to figure out how many children were alive in China was to wait until they grew up,” [Gerland] says. Eventually, they appear in both the census and the education statistics, so there are two independent data sources to work with, enabling more accurate projections.

8 billion and counting: How accurate are population estimates? Chartered Professional Accountants Canada, 10 July 2023

Even in the West where records are relatively reliable and it is assumed periodic censuses are accurate, they’re not entirely correct.  In the 2020 US census, for example, it was estimated that somewhere in the region of 4.8 million people were “missed” while some were counted twice.

And in Britain, the picture may be less accurate still.

How Many People are Living in Britain?

There is no consensus on an exact figure for the number of people living in Britain, The Spectator reported yesterday.  “The idea that the real population is much higher than stated is not only plausible, but likely – and with significant consequences for most public services.”

The discrepancy in population estimates was highlighted during the Brexit process, where the number of European Union citizens living in the UK without settled status was initially estimated to be 3 million, but later found to be 5.7 million.

Since then, different authorities have had different estimates.

During the covid vaccine roll-out, the National Immunisation Management System (“NIMS”) estimated the adult population of England to be 49.7 million, whereas the Office for National Statistics (“ONS”) figure was 44.5 million.

NHS records revealed 63 million registered general practitioner (“GP”) patients in England as of September 2024, which is higher than the population of England according to the 2021 census (59.6 million) and the ONS figure for 2022 (57 million).

GP registration data might provide a more accurate picture of the population than census data, as people are more likely to register with a doctor for free healthcare than fill out a census honestly. 

Although the discrepancy in GP patient numbers has raised suspicions of fraud, it is also possible that the higher GP patient numbers are due to illegal immigrants, estimated to be around 745,000, who do not have to declare their status while registering with GPs.

As The Spectator points out, the true population of Britain remains unknown due to the lack of accurate data and the complexities of tracking population numbers, particularly migration.  The Spectator noted the following points.

The UK Home Office has admitted to not knowing the whereabouts of over 17,000 asylum seekers whose claims have been discontinued and also does not have data on the number of people arriving on small boats who have been returned.

The Migration Advisory Committee is unable to estimate how many graduate visa holders leave the country before their visa expires, and the Home Office is currently unable to supply this data.

The UK’s method of recording people who come in and out of the country is through the International Passenger Survey (“IPS”), which involves hiring staff to ask random travellers about their life story, but this method only covers a small percentage of ports and airports and not all of the time.  The IPS nationwide sample works out at just over 1% of Heathrow’s annual traffic of 78 million people, resulting in an estimated 601,000 people expected to leave the UK between 2015 and 2017 not having an exit recorded.

The UK does not have a central register of residents or citizens, and people prove their identity through random documents, making it possible for people to cross the border undetected, especially by sea and rail.

The ONS uses an outdated methodology to estimate net immigration, which relies on people accurately reporting their residency, but this is not plausible in modern Britain due to housing and immigration policies that incentivise people to misrepresent their residency.

Britain’s population is growing rapidly, primarily due to immigration, with estimates suggesting that around 3.6% of the population has arrived in the past two years. 

The 2021 census reported a population of 67 million for the entire United Kingdom.  However, according to The Spectator, it is likely that the actual population has already exceeded 70 million.

Migration does not increase or decrease the global population.  But it is conceivable that migrants are guesstimated twice, once in the UK, for example, and again in their country of origin.  While the numbers for a single country may not be large enough to have a significant impact on guesstimations for the global population, what is the effect of this double “counting” globally?  The truth is, no one knows.

Featured image taken from ‘5 possible solutions to overpopulation’