Hey, my sincere apologies for my other reply. I had too much of Lemmy yesterday... after several DUMBASS replies trolling me (like putting words into my mouth, then ridiculing those straw man concepts - really though, I should have known better than to say that I like Mac OSX, even in a non-Linux, general-technology community, anywhere on the Fediverse, as that never fails to bring out the trolls from under the bridge... whenever will I learn!?:-P), I started to presume guilt everywhere I looked, and essentially unwittingly fed forward that negative behavior onto you, so again my apologies. This community I hope will remain better than that.
Thanks, I was going to let it go because I was sure you just misunderstood what I was saying, and honestly it isn't worth arguing over. But I appreciate you following up.
Where are you seeing "Latin America" - wait for it - as a continent, on this graph?
It is to the left of North America, and to the right of Africa, itself after Asia and Europe. In other words, that entire line is the list of continents.
This is known as the "legend", which is placed there in order to explain the coloration. e.g. all Latin American nations (consisting of only Brazil & Mexico in this map of only the "biggest countries") are purple, b/c 'Latin America' is colored purple in the legend. And Asian countries are green, USA is red, Africa is orange, European ones are blue.
Do you see "Latin America" anywhere else, other than the legend? I tried & tried but could not...
So what is the UN predicting to happen in the next 76 years for the DRC (population 109 million) to surpass the US (population 334 million)? The DRC historically doesn't have the stability that would lead to explosive population growth, and with the climate continuing to warm and the DRC being on the equator it's going to feel the effects of climate change particularly severely.
Nigeria (pop 230 million) seems more likely, though it also is going to have the same problems with climate change the rest of the middle latitudes will have.
I never realized that the USA was in the top 3. Wow, what a rapid drop-off then, from roughly a billion or so people to a mere ~0.3. India and China truly stand apart, towering above so many others combined.
Since that is the case, it might be neat to show the EU then, if that helps close the gap to make them more comparable? But maybe that would be too improper a comparison.
I think it's odd to see how China does not include Hong Kong or Taiwan. Like... of course it doesn't!? I kinda get why someone wants to be precise to say that, but also it feels like giving in to a grumpy toddler child who claims that the whole world belongs to them - just bc they say it, doesn't make it true!? Maybe there's some other way to convey it that avoids that stigma, like "China refers only to the Mainland areas" or some such.
Or even more generally, "imperial powers like UK and China do not include their territories or projections" (whatever that last word should be). Similarly, does "USA" include things like Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, etc.? Maybe the population numbers don't statistically matter for those situations, but then do they matter for China? It's odd to see China uniquely called out then, like someone going out of their way to not anger Pooh-bear, when there may not even be a need to say anything about it at all?
But this graph goes back to 1950? So like, did that data point exclude it, and then the 2100 one... who knows? It seems to bring up far more questions than answers.
Not sure if this is correct or not, but https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/HKG/hong-kong/population says that the population is only 7 million, despite being so dense but also overall the geographic area is small, and used to be like 2 million in 1950. Which is only 0.007 billion - not really significant.
But the two of them together are only 0.03 billion - and as you mentioned, why include another sovereign nation into China's figures? It demeans Taiwan, appeases a country that may use violence to take it over... well anyway my original point that I need to stick with that if the goal is to avoid politics and convey information most accurately, then this disclaimer still seems to single out China, to the exclusion of every other nation in the world that might make a claim on other areas as well. And despite how the HK situation that was mutually agreed upon for a time and is more significant, the Taiwan situation is what seemed to bring "politics" into this, whereas I mentioned possibilities that would have made it more truly apolitical, and removed the focus from specifically China to highlight how most imperialistic nations have such territories associated with them.
Also, even in just your link alone, 300,000, in units of thousands, is still 300,000,000, hence 300 million. They should have used a better unit there imho... knowing that it would lead to exactly this misunderstanding.
Always distrust everything that you read - you are right about that!:-)