Just one year to go to check on the accuracy of this prediction, claimed by warming proponent George Monbiot in 2002.
Within as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world’s animals or it continues to feed the world’s people. It cannot do both.The impending crisis will be accelerated by the depletion of both phosphate fertiliser and the water used to grow crops. Every kilogram of beef we consume, according to research by the agronomists David Pimental and Robert Goodland, requires around 100,000 litres of water. Aquifers are beginning the run dry all over the world, largely because of abstraction by farmers.
Guardian. Why Vegans Were Right All Along.
And it wasn’t just eating meat, that Monbiot was demanding we ditch – “vegetarians who continue to consume milk and eggs scarcely reduce their impact on the ecosystem”. As the title puts it, “Vegans were right all along”. Give up meat, eggs, cheese, butter and milk, or we’ll all be starving within as little as ten years, he warned.
…
Monbiot is not a racist. He is not even a neo-Malthusian. But in his eagerness to impose austerity on everyone, he gets taken in by the arguments of those who are. It’s why he earnestly believed the patently ludicrous claim that it took 100,000 litres of water to make 1 kilogram of beef, a risible claim that anyone not ideologically blinded would instantly dismiss as nonsense, as he himself was forced to do as 2012 approached.
It is the anti-immigrant and anti-human agenda of the people who warn of “scarce resources” and “too many people” that is the real danger, not the idle bravado and loose chatter of a bunch of guys on an internet chat-room.
More here at Haunting the Library
h/t to Andrew Bolt
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I believe “misanthrope” is the word you are looking for.
just think of all the green credits I can capture by opening a cattle ranch and deciding NOT to raise any cattle …
I’ll be rich !!!
Monbiot is realizing that his only real mistake – a mistake that his fellow travelers are now correcting – was to make his prediction for 10 years and not for 100, or 1000. Obviously the only predictions that one will never have to apologize for will be those for a time frame much greater than the lifespans of any potential responders.
Follow that guideline and chant the warmists mantra: “You can’t prove it’s not true!!!!”
Just how much farming is actually based on water from aquifers by the way? Almost all farming in the temperate zone and in monsoon areas is rain-based. Most irrigation agriculture is rain-based too, although the rain has often fallen far away.
About the only exceptions I can think of is oasis agriculture in desert areas and stock-keeping in the Great Artesian Basin of Australia and in some parts of the American West.
Wouldn’t it be nice if Monbiot checked out all the numbers he uses BEFORE he writes his alarmist rubbish?
How long would it take to google around the net to debunk the 100,000 litre claim, for example?
Anthony
You have recently published a number of articles maskerading as research which demonstrates how these propagandists (for they are not scientists) are anti-human. The nub of the CO2 issue is that if we adopt the proposed cure (to halt nearly all CO2 emissions within the next 30 to 40 years), this will result in hundresds of thousands if not millions of deaths and will condemn most of the developing world to live in abject povery without electrity for at least many generations to come. What could be more anti-human than that?
“…so many centuries after the Creation it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value.”
Committee advising King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain regarding a proposal by Christopher Columbus, 1486.
“Rail travel at high speed is not possible, because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia.”
Dr Dionysius Lardner (1793-1859), professor of Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, University College London
“What, sir, would you make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her deck? I pray you, excuse me, I have not the time to listen to such nonsense.”
Napoleon Bonaparte, when told of Robert Fulton’s steamboat, 1800s
“The phonograph has no commercial value at all.”
Thomas Edison, American inventor, 1880s
“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”
Lord Kelvin, British mathematician and physicist, president of the British Royal Society, 1895
“Within as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world’s animals or it continues to feed the world’s people. It cannot do both.”
George Monbiot, 2002.
Maybe he will be right because it will be too cold to grow crops.
‘Jeff : just think of all the green credits I can capture by opening a cattle ranch and deciding NOT to raise any cattle …
I’ll be rich !!!’
Not the experience of some who tried to raise cattle in Australia and were not allowed to, due to government interference!
simply wow, who knew cows were a closed system that destroyed water? I guess the missing water is on vacation with the missing heat.
Monbiot is just a clever journo who jumped on the AGW bandwagon early and has been feted and well paid for many years now as he clocked up airmiles evangelizing.
Now that the wheels are coming off that bandwagon he’s clearly suffering the loss of authority and status that he craved (hopefully income too).
Just watching him squirm is good enough for me!
So, any chance we may get a apologia and retraction like he did over climategate? Not likely, but there is always hope.
He probably meant there are 100,000 litres of water falling for every kg of beef produced,just a slip of the tongue.
Not exactly in defense of Monbiot, he was certainly right in considering phosphat to be a limited resource (as is earth’s surface, btw).
—water running out??? Tell that to the Australians!
I have steak credits for sale.
I promise not to eat a 12oz filet mignon in exchange for a $32 “Steak & Trade” coupon. The way it works is: You send me $32, and I send you a coupon which allows you to eat a 8-12oz filet mignon steak (the cost of the steak to you is additional). Should you choose an alternative cut of beef, the coupon value will be increased accordingly to a 10% maximum.
Proceeds from the Steak & Trade program will be used to fund the purchase of renewable foodstuffs, such as truffles or saffron. (We are also planning on sequestering CO2 bound in grape juice in 750ml bottles long term at a later date)
Although I have yet to formalize the system, I am accepting deposits for the coupons, and as soon as I have them printed they will be forwarded. Please note that they will be sold only in blocks of 10.
George Monbiot has a fast mouth and he is a self-confessed hypocrite.
“How many of us can claim to live as we urge others to live? Most environmentalists — myself included — are hypocrites.”
Heat, London, Allen Lane, 2006, p. 215 & 287.
George Monbiot on Green hypocrisy & his own hypocrisy
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/06/30/save-us-from-ourselves/
He also said something about flying by plane will soon be as unaceptable as child abuse after which he went on a Canadian book signing tour!!!!! (Did he fly, did he row, did he float on a hot air baloon?). Monbiot is a green hypocrite. He has attacked people with too many rooms in their home and he is divorced with 4 rooms. Humbuggery!!!
George Monbiot has clearly never heard of the law of diminishing returns…….
The more outlandish his predictions, the less chance there is of them coming true.
End result : He winds up losing what little credibility he may have had in the first place.
The 100,000 liters of water per kilogram of beef is shocking. I saw a number of that size on PETA website once. They also published the millions of tons of cow poo that didn’t line up with actual farming inputs/outputs. When we put 400 pounds on cattle at pasture in 100 days in the Flint Hills, using their math, that means cows would be urinating at 70 gallons per minute less amount lost from evaporation. The amount of litres from rainfall is irrelevant because it rains on agriculture whether plants are harvested or not.
Only one more year before we run out of water? Then why all the fuzz about peak oil? I’m buying evian shares.
I ate a kg of beef last week.
It was good.
’nuff said
d
PS I mass 75 kg, just have a high metabolic rate.
[d]
Well it’s nice to know that, according to Paul Nurse (sorry I don’t do the Sir bits) head of the Royal Society thinks that only scientist can do science and the rest of us just have to sit back and believe everything they tell us. Sounds a bit like Roman Catholic dogma. I found his attitude patronising and arrogant, but hey I’m only and engineer and a university lecturer (got a science degree too).
As for his analogy to cures for cancer, well fifty years ago the cures for cancer killed my father in law, today’s cures would have saved him. So much for that analogy.
But then I’ve heard of white washes, I guess it wasn’t long before we had science washes too. But then I guess he didn’t get to that position by not scratching a few backs. I just hopes he’s still around when the data shows that it’s not CO2 but that ruddy great big yellow thing in the sky and complex sea currents that causes climate fluctuations. As for Monbiot, he’s just another communist/fascist/controlist using any excuse (in this case AGW) to try to control the rest of us. It’s never going to happen, but he’s too stupid to realise it.
Jeremy, why have put a trashy bloggist Moonbat quote alongside the likes of Kelvin and Edison? A little faux pas, for sure.
As for Monbiot’s prediction – FAIL as with James “Death Trains” Hansen. FAIL, FAIL AND FAIL AGAIN!!! Prepeare tar and feather.
There is no difference between this joker and anyone else that wishes to force the rest of the world to live the way they see as correct. Osama Bin Laden wants everyone to be a faithful Muslim, this idiot wants us all to eat lettuce. In the end they each want to force everyone else to their worldview. The 10:10 people do the same thing.
There is something inherently wrong with those that demand everyone live by their views of what is right. I am rather sick of other people trying to decide what is best for me.
John Kehr
The Inconvenient Skeptic