{"id":640202,"date":"2026-03-08T04:55:30","date_gmt":"2026-03-08T04:55:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/640202\/"},"modified":"2026-03-08T04:55:30","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T04:55:30","slug":"how-do-you-lose-track-of-a-billion-people-a-controversial-study-says-earths-population-is-way-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/640202\/","title":{"rendered":"How Do You Lose Track of a Billion People? A Controversial Study Says Earth\u2019s Population Is Way Off"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a data-ylk=\"elm:icon;slk:Popular Mechanics;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><img alt=\"Popular Mechanics\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"129\" height=\"40\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"pr-2.5 max-w-[150px] max-h-[40px] min-[601px]:max-w-[115px]\" style=\"color:transparent;max-width:auto;max-height:100%\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2edbf1a0-244d-11eb-beba-ffa5d3038302.png\"\/><\/a>Fri, March 6, 2026 at 7:19 PM UTC<img alt=\"commuters walking at shibuya crossing, tokyo\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1242\" height=\"828\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" class=\"standard-img w-full w-full h-auto\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/7568bf0b2c2cd6f294c7a1eddc9bf768.jpeg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>How Do You Lose Track of a Billion People? \u00a9 Marco Bottigelli &#8211; Getty Images<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s generally understood that Earth\u2019s population is somewhere around 8.2 billion people. That\u2019s the baseline we use to plan everything from food supply to vaccines to climate policy.<\/p>\n<p>But what if that number is wrong? Actually, what if it\u2019s way wrong?<\/p>\n<p>That\u2019s the premise behind one of Pop Mech\u2019s most eye-popping recent stories, \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/science\/environment\/a70202293\/human-population-miscalculated-study\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Oops, Scientists May Have Severely Miscalculated How Many Humans Are on Earth;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link rapid-noclick-resp\">Oops, Scientists May Have Severely Miscalculated How Many Humans Are on Earth<\/a>.\u201d A study suggests global population datasets may be dramatically undercounting people living in rural regions\u2014by as much as 53 to 84 percent in some areas.<\/p>\n<p>Watch Pop Mech editors Andrew Daniels and John Gilpatrick talk about how researchers arrived at the stat by examining records from hundreds of dam construction projects around the world. Why dams? Because when a dam floods an area, every resident who lives there must be counted and compensated before relocation. That creates a rare dataset of precise population tallies, especially in remote places with fuzzy census data.<\/p>\n<p>Andrew and John break down how modern population models actually work, why those techniques might miss people in isolated communities, and whether the global population could really be off by billions.<\/p>\n<p>Watch the full episode above now, and find more installments of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.popularmechanics.com\/astounding-pop-mech-show\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:The Astounding Pop Mech Show;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" class=\"link rapid-noclick-resp\">The Astounding Pop Mech Show<\/a>\u201d on PopularMechanics.com.<\/p>\n<p><strong>You Might Also Like<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fri, March 6, 2026 at 7:19 PM UTC How Do You Lose Track of a Billion People? \u00a9&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":640203,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[164103,272530,746,159,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-640202","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-andrew-daniels","9":"tag-earths-population","10":"tag-environment","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-unitedstates","14":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116191777620245883","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640202","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=640202"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/640202\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/640203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=640202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=640202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=640202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}