Hacker News Reader

For the last 5 decades or so we've been stuck on linear growth. ~ +80m/yr, 12-14 years per +1b. That looks like it might be the middle straight line part of a sigmoid curve that started exponential and transitioned to linear.

There's no real evidence yet in the stats for the next transition to a drop in the absolute growth numbers per year.

View on HN

Just to be clear, who is "we" in that? I'm assuming it's "people living in industrialized nations," but if it's just "humans," then that seems like it could be misleading -- linear growth internationally with exponential births/deaths (net effect -- linear) in undeveloped nations, combined with scarce essential resources is already a severe problem, leading to global strife.

"We" is global human population growth. Trend is no longer exponential, since ~1970, but it is still growing linearly.

UN historical & projected data:

https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Graphs/1_Demographic%20Profiles/...

https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com