[_ Old Earth _] Where's all the people?

[Jeff W]

Hello,
I have been very concerned with people who say that man has been on this planet for over a million vears.
Here is an academic formula for figuring out the population over many years.

At the growth rate of 1 per cent anually, every eighty five years the population automatically cut in half to make up for wars pestilences etc.
With this formula it was computed back 41,000 years, which BTW is a drop in the bucket compared to a million, or even 100,000 when you look at exponential growth. Well, in just a meer 41,000 years the population of this planet would be 2 to the 89th power. Can you imagine computing exponentially to just 50,000 years or 100,000 years compared to a million. WOW!! We would be stacked on top of each other to the end of our solar system! There should be that many bones today.

Even if many cataclysms happened there still should be much more bones and skeletal remains then we have found. The population growth curve does not add up when it comes to time.

This same formula was used and taken back to just 6000 years and the population was consistant with actuality.

 

[Asimov]

Hello,
I have been very concerned with people who say that man has been on this planet for over a million vears.
Here is an academic formula for figuring out the population over many years.

At the growth rate of 1 per cent anually, every eighty five years the population automatically cut in half to make up for wars pestilences etc.
With this formula it was computed back 41,000 years, which BTW is a drop in the bucket compared to a million, or even 100,000 when you look at exponential growth. Well, in just a meer 41,000 years the population of this planet would be 2 to the 89th power. Can you imagine computing exponentially to just 50,000 years or 100,000 years compared to a million. WOW!! We would be stacked on top of each other to the end of our solar system! There should be that many bones today.

Even if many cataclysms happened there still should be much more bones and skeletal remains then we have found. The population growth curve does not add up when it comes to time.

This same formula was used and taken back to just 6000 years and the population was consistant with actuality.

Does it account for catyclysms? The Ice Age? The low population rate due to humans only recently being agricultural?

 

[jwu]

At the growth rate of 1 per cent anually, every eighty five years the population automatically cut in half to make up for wars pestilences etc.

Actually that is not the general formula that is being used, and it seems to be nicely tailored to produce the desired results.

Besides...even if it was the correct formula, it doesn't predict 6 billion people after 6000 years with a starting population of 2. Actually it predicts a world population of no more than 100,000.

Let's apply it to Noah's flood....eight survivors ~4400 years ago. Now we should have a world population of 22,000...

It doesn't take into account for limiting factors at all. Exponential growth simply doesn't work in order to predict long term development of population growth, which is why a logistic growth formula (i'm not sure if it's the correct word, as English isn't my first language) is most commonly used.

jwu

 

[reznwerks]

Hello,
I have been very concerned with people who say that man has been on this planet for over a million vears.
Here is an academic formula for figuring out the population over many years.

Obviously your theory is wrong. When scientists encounter this they go back and redo the hypothesis and testing to see where they went wrong.

 

[Blazin Bones]

Hello,
I have been very concerned with people who say that man has been on this planet for over a million vears.
Here is an academic formula for figuring out the population over many years.

Obviously your theory is wrong. When scientists encounter this they go back and redo the hypothesis and testing to see where they went wrong.

No they don't rez, at least not all of them. Some scientists seek an unbiased truth, and this has been a theory accepted by many scientists.

 

[Asimov]

[quote="Jeff W":f09da]Hello,
I have been very concerned with people who say that man has been on this planet for over a million vears.
Here is an academic formula for figuring out the population over many years.

Obviously your theory is wrong. When scientists encounter this they go back and redo the hypothesis and testing to see where they went wrong.

No they don't rez, at least not all of them. Some scientists seek an unbiased truth, and this has been a theory accepted by many scientists.[/quote:f09da]

That's what they should do, anyways. Creation scientists (oxymoron) OTOH....

 

[cubedbee]

[quote="Jeff W":56247]Hello,
I have been very concerned with people who say that man has been on this planet for over a million vears.
Here is an academic formula for figuring out the population over many years.

Obviously your theory is wrong. When scientists encounter this they go back and redo the hypothesis and testing to see where they went wrong.

No they don't rez, at least not all of them. Some scientists seek an unbiased truth, and this has been a theory accepted by many scientists.[/quote:56247]

I don't want to be rude, but I don't think you know what you're talking about. Have you taken any sort of biological modeling classes? .If you do, you will learn that the exponential model is not accepted by any scientists of any sort as being valid for long term population growth. It can only be used in the short term when population density is relatively low.

The logistic model, which another poster mentioned and which has a built in limit to the population, is the kind of model actually used for population projections. Unlike the exponential model, the growth rate in a logistic model is not constant. It accounts for the fact that small populations can rapidly grow because they have the resources, while extremely large populations will run out of resources and the growth rate will slow.

 

[Barbarian]

Here's a way to test that idea;

Fruit flies reproduce every 10 days. Let's say they have four offspring, doubling each generation. Let's say that they are 0.25 mm in volume.
In less than 10 years, The universe will not have room for them all.