Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
UPDATE: Romm at CP makes some significant concessions to error with additions, but can’t bring himself to mention WUWT, credit Willis, or allow any commenters to do so either. He has been “disappearing” critical comments as evidenced by our own commenters reposting their disappeared comments here. It is comical to watch. – Anthony
UPDATE: That’s too funny, Anthony. He’s pulled out his entire section on population … ooops. The foolish part is not giving credit. I don’t care about the credit, I find I can get anything accomplished if I don’t care if someone else gets the credit. But it’s bad tactics, makes him look petty and unprofessional. I suppose now that he (and the Authors) have removed the population claims, I’ll have to look at the New! Improved! Now with ‘Super-exponential CO2’ part of the paper. Ooooogh … – w. [Later] The new analysis is now done, see”Not Evil, Just Destructive“.
Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Anthony asked me to take a look at Joe Romm’s comments on a new paper called “Evidence for super-exponentially accelerating atmospheric carbon dioxide growth”, by A.D. Husler and D. Sornette. The paper is available on Arkiv. It’s not peer-reviewed as far as I can determine.
I started to review the paper. I got to the opening comments (and the footnote) on Page 1 referring to the “ecological footprint”. This is a very bad sign, the “ecological footprint” has nothing to do with science. It is an advocacy tool.
Figure 1. Population density expressed as height. Image Credit
Then I got to the footnote on Page 2, and I could go no further. It says:
Thus, a constant growth rate corresponds to a population growing exponentially, with a doubling time given by (log2)/r. As the present growth rate is r(2010) ≈ 1.8% per year, this gives a present doubling time of 38.5 years. If nothing changes, the present 6.8 billion people will be more than 13 billion in 2050! This is in contradiction with projections of OECD for instance and other international organizations, which optimistically expect human population to stabilize around 9 billion individuals.
Other than the gratuitous exclamation mark, why did this stop me from even considering the rest of the paper?
I’ve mentioned before that one of my strengths is that I’m a generalist. Back in 2004 I did an extensive analysis of the relationship between population growth rates and nutrition. No reason, it was never published, I was just curious.
My results showed something very interesting. By and large, if the population growth rate in a country, region, or the world is decreasing, average nutrition (daily calories, protein, and fat per capita) increases. On the other hand, if the population growth rate is increasing, the country cannot feed itself, nutrition declines. The absolute growth rate is not important. It is the direction of the change in growth rate that determines whether people can feed themselves.
In any case, as a result of that 2004 research of mine, I knew that his talk of a “constant growth rate” for global population was nonsense, global population growth rates have been dropping for years. I also thought I remembered the growth rate being lower than 1.8%. I went back to the wonderful FAOSTAT database and updated my figures (note that their figures post-2008 are estimates). Figure 2 shows the actual global population growth rates since 1961:
Figure 2. Annual increase in population as a percentage, 1961 to 2008.
Now that we have the real data on the population, let’s examine his claims.
1. He assumes a constant population growth rate. In fact, the growth rate has been dropping for half a century.
2. He says the 2010 growth rate is 1.8%. In fact, it hasn’t been that high in about a quarter century.
3. He says that the population will be “13 billion in 2050”. This assumes a) the current growth rate is 1.8% and b) the growth rate is constant. Neither one of those assumptions is anywhere near true, so the conclusion is also invalid.
I calculate that if the trend continues, the growth rate will reach zero sometime shortly after mid-century. At that point I calculate the population will be about 9.5 billion. This is in good agreement with the UN FAO midrange estimate of the expected maximum population.
So that’s why I quit reading their paper right then and there. If they can get something bozo simple like the population growth rates that wrong, I fear I don’t really have time to hack my way through their more outré propositions regarding “super-exponential acceleration”, whatever that may be.
Joe Romm swallowed this one whole, opining (emphasis mine):
The paper itself is mostly for math and statistics junkies. It is essentially agnostic on climate science. But the conclusions are as stark as any in the climate literature:
• The human population is still growing at an exponential rate and there is no sign in the data that the growth rate is decreasing. Many argue that economic developments and education of women will lead to a decreased growth rate and an eventual stabilization of human population. This is not yet observed in the population dynamics, when integrated worldwide. Let us hope that the stabilization of the human population will occur endogenously by self-regulation, rather than by more stringent finite carrying capacity constraints that can be expected to lead to severe strains on a significant fraction of the population.
No sign in the data that the global population growth rate is decreasing?
You go, Joe.
w.
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Romm : “But the conclusions are as
starkjunk as any in the climate literature”Can we take it that it has now had its first peer reveiw – and does it need any more?
Well done Willis.
Willis’ common-sense approach to horse-s**t is refreshing, but I am puzzled as to why Romm bothered with this obvious nonsense – he can’t be that desperate for reading matter, surely.
Is Joe attempting to gain support from the misguided neo-Malthusians?
Willis,
You should have been an editor.
Do you think that 40,000 deaths per day (mainly children) from starvation could be slowing the population growth rate?
It’s pet population that’s more worrying!
/sarc off
The paper is a worrying sign of things to come, history has shown what happens when we start to think population and control thereoff are crackerjack good ideas!
Willis: thanks for saving us all a lot of time and trouble. Your epistemological screen –continue reading until the writer fails the Bozo Test– is very attractive as a general method. As for the substance of what you say (what matters is not the first derivative of the population function, i.e. growth rate, so much as the second derivative, i.e. the change in growth rate) it makes sense to me. We can see the impact of the changing demographic right now, even though the actual “roll off” in population will play out over decades.
Arkiv is a Princton U site where you can upload research that you expect to publish but will allow its use by other researchers in the meantime. I’ve been wondering if this is a good way to protect your scientific ideas from theft. Anyone know? In any case the offerings are not peer reviewed. I can see from this paper that another good idea is likely to be ruined by ideologues as has happened with wiki.
Willis
There’s another statement in Joe Romm’s opinion that you did not highlight, and that is just as damning as the one you did:
“The paper … is essentially agnostic on climate science”.
Eh? The title of the paper is “Evidence for super-exponentially accelerating atmospheric carbon dioxide growth” – and it is agnostic on climate science? What the hell is Joe Romm trying to get us to swallow here?
He is an impassioned AGW supporter interpreting a study in a way the backs up his conviction. And of course claiming that the quoted study is completely impartial. Sorry, Romm – the very title of the study telegraphs its purpose.
Talking of reviewing papers, I’ve got a German copy of the “What does CO2 really contribute to Global Warming” paper by Hermann Harde. At over 50 pages in length it’s quite a struggle to translate, but as far as I can gather it’s just how you would expect to approach the problem of determining the direct effect of CO2 doubling on the planet with a projected warming without feedbacks of around 0.45C
Unfortunately, neither the author nor I can explain why his figure is lower than the other calculations (estimates), largely because the other estimates are so opaque providing little information on the methodology they use (which isn’t something you can criticise Hermann Harde for).
So, this is really a general call asking for help securing details of the other climate models. (Contact me via my blog linked name above)
Why….why…..how dare you actually research any of the facts! (sarc)
I have thought about asking the community one question for months now. After this, I just have to do it. I apologize in advance, but I must ask.
When considering the group(s?) of those who are leading the “gloom and doom” charge, am I the only one who is reminded of Sid the Sloth (of the Ice Age animateds)? Every time I read or hear about articles like this I can hear Sid screaming, “We’re going to die!”
Brilliant title! Not Evil, Just Romm
Ecological footprint means civilization footprint, we live in 2010, not the Roman times!!!
Of course the operative word is omni-present in all these loony studies. That is that wonderfully vague & meaningless word, “if”! If this happened, if that happened, if it carries on like this then……………………..! What evidence is ever put forward to conclude that the if turned out to be “did”! I have certainly never heard of one disaster scenario that actually occurred. As pointed out by others, no account seems to have been taken of the thousands who die each year, many pointlessly. No account seems to have been taken of the deaths of random, (yet curiously impendingly more frequent disasters due to AGW) events like the Asian earthquake & tsunami, & the recent ones, & the deaths due to drought, heatwave, freak torrential Asian storms, etc. I wonder why?
OT, BBC The One Show last night did its best to slaughter the nuclear debate. (The shape of things to come?) They ran the story of the 1956 Windscale/Sellafield reactor fire which has only recently been revealed. (the topic prompted by problems in Japan.) Curiously after trying everything they could to extinguish it, they simply turned off the fans driving air into the building which had the effect of extinguishing the fire almost immediately according to one interviewee who was there, thus saving the local inhabitants from impending doom! Matt Baker (presenter, decent bloke, all rounder, from northern farming stock), stated at the end of the piece with some degree of authority that there were some 260(?) cancer cases that “could” have been related to that incident. The tell tale give away was of course the “could”, which equally have been “could not”! More interestingly still, all the interviewees were either present at the time of the incident, or in the locallity at the time. All appeared to be in their 70s/80s & in fine fettle! Not one mention of anyone who subsequently died from radiation poisoning or cancer as a result of said incident! Go figure!
Super-exponentialexpialidocious
No disrespect, but I think you have it backwards: it is because the people are feeding themselves better that the population growth rate decreases, ie the welfare of a population determines its (inversely correlated) growth.
Obviously Husler & Sornette is nonsense.
But so are the FAO’s projections. They are hopelessly optimistic. Try insteading of plotting the percentage growth rate in global population plot the absolute global population growth rate.
In the past 10 years of real numbers, we have added a steady 79 mill to the world every year – obviously this shows up as a declining percentage increase because the base is getting higher.
The projected FAO figures for absolute population growth fall off a cliff in a couple of years such that the global increase falls by a mill a year. It’s a plateau followed by a cliff. I’ve plotted it
These extrapolations are done for political reasons. This is the UN, after all.
Roger Carr says:
March 17, 2011 at 2:25 am
Glad someone got the allusion.
w.
What will people like Joe Romm and the equally vacuous Bob Ward (Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change) do when the increasingly unstable Climate Change bandwagon falls off the tracks?
Jail time? Nice thought, but unlikely. Almost certainly morph seamlessly to the next big scare and carry on regardless.
Now that really riles me.
Willis, the CIA Fact Book estimate of the world population growth rate for 2011 is 1.092%, that’s even slightly below your trend line if I’m eyeballing correctly.
What’s really confusing about this Swiss paper (they’re from a well-known Swiss university, but hey, they’re economists, so as a mathematician I don’t trust their sanity at all ;)), is that the footnote you’re quoting is in stark contrast to their figure 7, which shows the correct rate of decrease in population growth rate, down to just above 1% in 2008. Can’t they even read their own figures??
This paper is the worst piece of mathematical bullcrap I’ve read (or glanced through, I have no intention to work through all the details) in a while. They’re playing with simple mathematical methods trying to convince us that growth, through positive feedbacks, is strictly faster than exponential, while they’re completely ignoring well known observation from the real world: That economic growth means better education (and more working women), which creates a strong negative feedback on population growth! Just look at South Korea, which has changed from an “exploding” population to a situation where the fertility rate (1.23) is so low that they will have an “imploding” population in just a few years.
A great read on population growth and other development/prosperity issues: “The Rational Optimist” by Matt Ridley.
Do we think this paper might be referenced in AR5?
One aspect of the declining global population growth rate that I have often pondered is the economic question.
Our entire current global economic system is based on growth, growth and more growth and when the global population increase finally slows down to a stop and becomes a static global population of around the 9 to 9.5 billion then global economic growth will also slow right down.
There will still be an enormous numbers of that huge global population that will be need to be raised up to much better living standards, a development not that dissimilar to what we are now seeing in China, Asia and India.
But ultimately the decline in global population will begin as the population ages.
As populations age they also earn less, are less productive and spend less, need more of limited resources spent on them and so limiting resources available for other sections of the economy and so the economy then also starts to go into a long decline.
The canary in the global economic mine right now is Japan with it’s aging population, it’s declining work force with the Japanese now relaxing some of their xenophobic restrictions on immigrants to try and bolster their work force, and it’s stagnant economy and it’s increasing economic malaise and stagnation and it’s slow decline in it’s ability to innovate as the numbers of bright young graduates from where most innovation originates also starts to decline.
Japan’s economy [ even without the catastrophe of the last few days ] and changing social structures and problems are the blue print for the global economy when global population growth and it’s accompanying global economic growth also stop increasing and then start to decline.
So mankind’s choices in the long ahead future may well be a long slow decline in the population and it’s accompanying global declining economy with steadily declining living standards and economic stagnation becoming the norm.
Or the development of a new economic [ and political ? ] structures that can cater for the changing global social and economic circumstances.
The political Left exists by establishing a “Cause” to “fight” for. When the wheels fall off CAGW, some other quixotic idealism will be found to trap the bright but clueless.
IMHO, Romm and many other climate catastrophists, including the late Steve Schneider, are Malthusians and that is what drives a lot of their apoplexy.