In light of new data showing China's population shrinking for the second year running, a Shanghai-based think tank has drastically changed its 2100 forecast.
Science, science can predict it. We have models that were created over 40 years ago that predicted current global warming trends.
We have models that accurately predict population trends as well. But it’s pretty simple, when you have an agrarian based economy people tend to have many children because they are helpful around the farm. When a society urbanizes having a dozen kids is now a burden and birth rates plummet.
China urbanized within a generation. Stack on the effects of the one child policy and they are no longer reproducing at a rate to replace their current population.
Social sciences and hard sciences are not the same thing. Social “sciences” are largely unfalsifiable and dominated by the “unless modified by human action” caveat that breaks predictions. You can predict very general trends like “fewer births”, but in 1949 you couldn’t look at the populations of Mongolia, China, and South Korea and know that they would have vastly different birth rates 75 years later.
Science, science can predict it. We have models that were created over 40 years ago that predicted current global warming trends.
We have models that accurately predict population trends as well. But it’s pretty simple, when you have an agrarian based economy people tend to have many children because they are helpful around the farm. When a society urbanizes having a dozen kids is now a burden and birth rates plummet.
China urbanized within a generation. Stack on the effects of the one child policy and they are no longer reproducing at a rate to replace their current population.
Social sciences and hard sciences are not the same thing. Social “sciences” are largely unfalsifiable and dominated by the “unless modified by human action” caveat that breaks predictions. You can predict very general trends like “fewer births”, but in 1949 you couldn’t look at the populations of Mongolia, China, and South Korea and know that they would have vastly different birth rates 75 years later.