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History of #World, #US and #Harris County Human #Population

History of World, US and Harris County Human Population

 

On my office wall I keep a graphic to help me remember our place in the world, and recall that our world is likely only one of many billions right now scattered throughout the universe that may never know one of another's existance.

 

(L to R)

 

Graph 1: World Population (in gray) 10,000 BCE to today. It's not possible to see the size of the United States in this photo, but it is there at the bottom RH corner of the first graph, a tiny orange triangle about 3 pixels high and 3 pixels long.

 

Graph 2: U.S. (Non-native) Population (in orange) about 1760 to today. This second graph at the bottom center of the photo enlarges the tiny orange triangle about 89 times. It's almost impossible to perceive the size of Harris County's population in this second graph, though it is right there at the bottom RH corner of the second graph...a tiny blue sliver of 4ish million county residents below the 310ish million orange U. S. residents in 2010.

 

What is most interesting about this photo is the thick blue marker line. It shows the gray world population from the first graph multiplied in length and width by just under 9 times each to fit exactly the scale of the second (central) graph.

 

You can compare the history of the U.S. population with that of the world's population of modern humans by noting the marker-thick blue line above the second graph. It more or less accurately traces world population beginning around 0 CE (estimated between 50 and 200 million people to give you a sense of the error bar; I've shown O CE world population as 100 million). At the scale of the second graph (1" Y = 112 million people, and 1" X = time since the Industrial Revolution, about 150 years), periods of tremendous human loss and suffering since the time ascribed to Jesus of Nazareth are picked out with red bars. You'll notice a repeating pattern in this graph...massive war coupled with pandemic disease is the sickle responsible for culling the modern human species.

 

The first red bar lies to the right of the losses that bottomed out about 1348 CE. That period of human tragedy was known as the "black death." From 1338–1351 and from China to Europe plagues killed war- and famine-weakened individuals from within a few hours to one week. Mongol and Tartar invasions (1207-1472), the big war that began the Ming Dynasty in China (1340-1378), and food shortages due to natural climate cooling contributed too. With only 450 million people in the world, the loss of between 100 and 200 million people over the years leading to the "black death" became the worst percentage decline in human population of the "Christian Era." It took at least 200 years for the human population to fully recover, and soon after it took another big hit. (geography.about.com/od/culturalgeography/a/Impacts-Of-The...).

 

Permanent European populations in the "new world" had just taken hold about the time of the second red bar, 1618-1648. Those years marked the "30-years war" in Europe, and also a time of terrible disease and famine both in the wake of war and with the opening of the pristeen American continents to European imperialism and diseases. Total losses appear to have been roughly half those of the black death period 300 years before, but at least 75 million (over 22 million American natives were lost usually to smallpox between 1492 and 1650, including over 6 million Mayans and nearly as many Amazonians, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_history_of_American_indi...). The world's overall human population however was able to recover in a much shorter time, about 100 years.

 

Two more red bars are visible at the scale of the second graph, both near the top of the poster-sized sheet upon which the three graphs were printed. These were World War I and World War II, again smaller losses than the 30-years war or black death periods we've already discussed, but both happening and recovering so quickly that no break in population growth is visible even on the life-size graphics on my wall. Still the 1914-1918 war and 1918 Spanish Flu claimed 65 million persons when population had reached about 1.8 billion people. Then shortly after recovering to pass the 2 billion mark about 1927, the Sino-Japanese and 1939-45 Second World Wars with their related diseases and famines took 72 million souls from among the living. Again, the population loss and recovery occurred so rapidly that the blue line of exponential population growth appears unbroken. Both of these horrible world wars killed a few less than the population lost to the 30-years war that preceded them by roughly 300 years.

 

Since 1946, human population has continued to pass 3 billion in 1960, 6 billion in 1999, and 7 billion this last year (March 2012, see Milestones by the billions at Wikipedia, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#Milestones_by_the_...). The eighth billion may arrive on Earth by about 14 years from now, 2027 (2025 per United Nations?), barring another population collapse that academics believe is inevitable given the amazing size of the human population bloom recently. That point (8 billion in 2027) can be visualized as straight up from the pink marker flag at the current end of the blue line, to just beyond the top end of the photograph. IF we can find our way through the bottlenecks academics from many and various fields warn about, the human population may settle at the OTHER end of an S-curve (a Gompertz function en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gompertz_function) in a somewhat skewed reverse mirror reflection of growth to 1999 (the position of the ceiling edge). Modern human population may then settle to oscillate around 12-15 billion for the next couple thousand years, and hopefully remain viable much longer than that on the Earth and/or elsewhere.

 

Graph 3: Scaling up from the second graph a bit more than 38x38 times, Harris County's population rise in Texas becomes visible, from about the time of the industrial revolution up until present. At a touch over 4 million at the time of the 2010 U. S. Census, Harris County (Houston area) remains one of the few places in America experiencing a substantial natural increase in population for a while longer yet. Even now, about half of Harris County growth is due to immigrants from elsewhere in the U.S. and the world. If you can imagine a thin blue dot three pixels high at the lower RH corner of the second (central) graph, rising from zero about half way through the (orange) US population growth, then you can imagine my county's place in the almost fully anthropocentric world both now and into the future.

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Uploaded on December 26, 2012
Taken on December 20, 2012