Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Daily we are deluged with gloom about how we are overwhelming the Earth’s ability to sustain and support our growing numbers. Increasing population is again being hailed as the catastrophe of the century. In addition, floods and droughts are said to be leading to widespread crop loss. The erosion of topsoil is claimed to be affecting production. It is said that we are overdrawing our resources, with more people going hungry. Paul Ehrlich and the late Stephen Schneider assure us that we are way past the tipping point, that widespread starvation is unavoidable.
Is this true? Is increasing hunger inevitable for our future? Are we really going downhill? Are climate changes (natural or anthropogenic) making things worse for the poorest of the poor? Are we running out of food? Is this what we have to face?
Figure 1. The apocalyptic future envisioned by climate alarmists. Image Source
Fortunately, we have real data regarding this question. The marvelous online resource, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) statistics database called FAOSTAT, has data on the amount of food that people have to eat.
Per capita (average per person) food consumption is a good measure of the welfare of a group of people because it is a broad-based indicator. Some kinds of measurements can be greatly skewed by a few outliers. Per capita wealth is an example. Since one person can be a million times wealthier than another person, per capita wealth can be distorted by a few wealthy individuals.
But no one can eat a million breakfasts per day. If the per capita food consumption goes up, it must perforce represent a broad-based change in the food consumption of a majority of the population. This makes it a good measure for our purposes.
The FAOSTAT database gives values for total food consumption in calories per day, as well as for protein and fat consumption in grams per day. (Fat in excess is justly maligned in the Western diet, but it is a vital component of a balanced diet, and an important dietary indicator.) Here is the change over the last fifty years:
Figure 2. Consumption of calories, protein, and fat as a global average (thin lines), and for the “LDCs”, the Least Developed Countries (thick lines) . See Appendix 1 for a list of LDCs.
To me, that simple chart represents an amazing accomplishment. What makes it amazing is that from 1960 to 2000, the world population doubled. It went from three billion to six billion. Simply to stay even, we needed to double production of all foodstuffs. We did that, we doubled global production, and more. The population in the LDCs grew even faster, it has more than tripled since 1961. But their food consumption stayed at least even until the early 1990s. And since then, food consumption has improved across the board for the LDCs.
Here’s the bad news for the doomsayers. At this moment in history, humans are better fed than at any time in the past. Ever. The rich are better fed. The middle class is better fed. The poor, and even the poorest of the poor are better fed than ever in history.
Yes, there’s still a heap of work left to do. Yes, there remain lots of real issues out there.
But while we are fighting the good fight, let’s remember that we are better fed than we have ever been, and take credit for an amazing feat. We have doubled the population and more, and yet we are better fed than ever. And in the process, we have proven, once and for all, that Malthus, Ehrlich, and their ilk were and are wrong. A larger population doesn’t necessarily mean less to eat.
Of course despite being proven wrong for the nth time, it won’t be the last we hear of the ineluctable Señor Malthus. He’s like your basic horror film villain, incapable of being killed even with a stake through the heart at a crossroads at midnight … or the last we hear of Paul Ehrlich, for that matter. He’s never been right yet, so why should he snap his unbeaten string?
APPENDIX 1: Least Developed Countries
Africa (33 countries)
Angola
Benin
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Central African Republic
Chad
Comoros
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Djibouti
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Ethiopia
Gambia
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Lesotho
Liberia
Madagascar
Malawi
Mali
Mauritania
Mozambique
Niger
Rwanda
São Tomé and Príncipe
Senegal
Sierra Leone
Somalia
Sudan
Togo
Tanzania
Uganda
Zambia
Eurasia (10 countries)
Afghanistan
Bangladesh
Bhutan
Cambodia
East Timor
Laos
Maldives
Myanmar
Nepal
Yemen
Americas (1 country)
Haiti
Oceania (5 countries)
Kiribati
Samoa
Solomon Islands
Tuvalu
Vanuatu
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Not quite sure where your oil production diagram comes from – perhaps it’s BP only.
http://localfuture.org/charts/20080301/20080301WorldOilProductionWissnerLarge.GIF
Willis, I maybe a pessimist (at least in regards to politicians) but I agree with you on this.
My favorite say for this subject is “LEAD, FOLLOW or get the heck out of the way.”
Instead we have Donkey’s rears like Paul Ehrlich grabbing the ear of the politicians and preaching “de-development of the USA” or John Dewey messing up the US education system to produce mindless followers for socialism. Despite the obstacles the Malthusians and others have thrown up we have had major increases in our food supply. As a farmer, the only reason I can see for this not to continue is because government and regulations get in the way.
I noticed a big argument here about oil…
So how about mini and micro nuclear.
“Toshiba has developed a new class of micro size Nuclear Reactors that is designed to power individual apartment buildings or city blocks. The new reactor, which is only 20 feet by 6 feet, could change everything for small remote communities, small businesses or even a group of neighbors who are fed up with the power companies and want more control over their energy needs….” http://www.nextenergynews.com/news1/next-energy-news-toshiba-micro-nuclear-12.17b.html
“In 2007, Toshiba initiated the process for preliminary review by the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission of the 4S system, a next-generation, super-small nuclear reactor system, with a view to securing commercialization of the system.
The targeted date of commercialization of the 4S system is after the mid-2010s. “
http://peswiki.com/index.php/Directory:Toshiba%27s_Home_Nuclear_Fusion_Reactor
Don’t like that one , how about one small enough to power a cargo ship or perhaps a train?
“John Deal, the Hyperion CEO, says that such micro nuclear reactors should cost about $25 million each. In the U.S., where people spent more energy than in other parts of the world, such a reactor should be able to deliver power to only 10,000 households, for a cost of $2,500 per home. But in developing nations, one HPM could provide enough power for 60,000 homes or more, for a cost of less than $400. This is quite reasonable if you agree with Hyperion, which states that the energy from its HPMs will cost about 10 cents/watt.
On its home page, Hyperion gives additional details about these reactors and their safety. “Small enough to be transported on a ship, truck or train, Hyperion power modules are about the size of a “hot tub” — approximately 1.5 meters wide…” http://www.zdnet.com/blog/emergingtech/a-micro-nuclear-reactor-in-your-garden/1089
Those are just two, ready to run now from a quick look on the internet. The only thing keeping us from progressing is the people who “know what is best for us” and the politicians who believe them.
“The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it.” — H L Mencken
Smokey says:
September 9, 2010 at 4:27 pm
Supporting Dr Gold’s hypothesis are the methane seas on Titan, a moon of Saturn. Did ancient organisms create those hydrocarbons, too?
Ancient organisms create oil in the same way as flour creates bread. They are an ingredient, not a manufacturer.
Organisms are not the only source of carbon and hydrogen, it’s just that on Earth, they are the best concentrators of them. It’s that pesky “oxygen” stuff you see…
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 9, 2010 at 4:02 pm
Hu, thanks for your comment. While that may be your point, Hu, Malthus never said anything even remotely resembling your claim. He said that population goes up geometrically, and food supply goes up arithmetically. Since neither of those is even remotely true, what is left of Malthus’s claim?
Look at the graphs I posted earlier – both are doing very good impressions of being true.
GM says:
September 9, 2010 at 10:54 am
Once again, GM, you are making claims without numbers.
Total sunlight hitting the earth’s surface = ~ 170 watts/metre squared
Energy hitting the earth = 170 W/m2 * 5.1E14 square metres of earth surface = 8.7E16 watts continuous
8.7E16 watts continuous * 365.25 days/yr * 24 hours/day = 7.6E20 watt-hrs/year
Humans produce and use about 1.3E17 watt-hrs/year from all sources (renewable, nuclear, fossil, etc).
This means that our total human energy use, for everything, is less than a five-thousandth of the sun’s energy. So I don’t think we’re near the limit of food production yet …
Finally, you said:
This is a very bad thing to do. You have invented an imaginary quotation. Jaye did not say that. In fact, Jaye didn’t say anything at all about how much food we can theoretically grow. When someone starts putting words in someone’s mouth, I know that they have lost the argument and are looking for a quick escape …
Jim Smith says:
September 9, 2010 at 11:23 am
I have not said that Malthus will always be wrong. Anything is possible. However, after a theory has been wrong in hundreds of countries over half a century, and after his basic claims (population increases geometrically, food increases arithmetically) have been shown to be incorrect, the odds of his being right get pretty slim …
PAST PEAK OIL PREDICTIONS:
– 1885, U.S. Geological Survey: “Little or no chance for oil in California.”
- 1891, U.S. Geological Survey: “Little or no chance for oil in Kansas and Texas”
- 1914, U.S. Bureau of Mines: “Total future production limit of 5.7 billion barrels of oil, at most a 10-year supply remaining.”
- 1939, Department of the Interior: “Oil reserves in the United States to be exhausted in 13 years.”
- 1951, Department of the Interior, Oil and Gas Division: “Oil reserves in the United States to be exhausted in 13 years.”
CURRENT RESERVES:
– 1.3 Trillion barrels of ‘proven’ oil reserves exist worldwide (EIA)
- 1.8 to 6 Trillion barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Oil-Shale Reserves (DOE)
– 986 Billion barrels of oil are estimated using Coal-to-liquids conversion of U.S. Coal Reserves (DOE)
– 173 to 315 Billion (1.7-2.5 Trillion potential) barrels of oil are estimated in the Oil Sands of Alberta, Canada (Alberta Department of Energy)
- 100 Billion barrels of heavy oil are estimated in the U.S. (DOE)
- 90 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in the Arctic (USGS)
- 89 Billion barrels of immobile oil are estimated recoverable using CO2 injection in the U.S. (DOE)
– 86 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Outer Continental Shelf (MMS)
- 60 to 80 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in U.S. Tar Sands (DOE)
– 32 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in ANWR, NPRA and the Central North Slope in Alaska (USGS)
– 31.4 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in the East Greenland Rift Basins Province (USGS)
– 7.3 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in the West Greenland–East Canada Province (USGS)
– 4.3 Billion (167 Billion potential) barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Bakken shale formation in North Dakota and Montana (USGS)
– 3.65 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Devonian-Mississippian Bakken Formation (USGS)
- 1.6 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Eastern Great Basin Province (USGS)
– 1.3 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Permian Basin Province (USGS)
- 1.1 Billion barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Powder River Basin Province (USGS)
- 990 Million barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Portion of the Michigan Basin (USGS)
- 393 Million barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. San Joaquin Basin Province of California (USGS)
– 214 Million barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Illinois Basin (USGS)
- 172 Million barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Yukon Flats of East-Central Alaska (USGS)
– 131 Million barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Southwestern Wyoming Province (USGS)
- 109 Million barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Montana Thrust Belt Province (USGS)
– 104 Million barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Denver Basin Province (USGS)
– 98.5 Million barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Bend Arch-Fort Worth Basin Province (USGS)
– 94 Million barrels of oil are estimated in the U.S. Hanna, Laramie, Shirley Basins Province (USGS)
.
And the deeper they drill, the more oil they find. The only thing standing in the way of cheap and plentiful oil and gas is the government.
@smokey
yet US oil production in the US has been declining since the 1970’s as predicted despite heroic and nearly unlimited efforts to stop it
pedex says:
September 9, 2010 at 11:24 am
No, no, no. Malthus was neither right nor premature. He claimed that a) population increases geometrically (wrong) and b) food supply increases arithmetically (wrong), and thus c) population would always and inevitably outstrip food supply (really wrong).
Where in that is there anything which is either right or premature?
Andrew W says:
September 9, 2010 at 12:05 pm
My point is that without technology, no matter what you might call it, iron ore is useless and is not a resource in any sense. It’s just rusty dirt.
If 6 billion could have lived in stone age conditions then they would have so lived. Early death was what prevented it then and we only have the number we have now because use of fossil fuels enabled us to extend average life expectancies.
With our ingenuity we could support lots more than 6 billion but as it is advances in freedom, wealth and education for individuals means that we are likely to top out at around 9 billion later this century and then start a voluntary managed decline to long term sustainability.
Acting on Malthus’s ideas then would have caused untold damage. Acting on similar misguided fears now would be truly catastrophic.
There’s nothing like pessimism and authoritarianism for destroying life and hope.
We can reach our accommodation with nature in less than 100 years, a mere blink of the eye of history. Sit back and help it happen instead of attempting to destroy all hope and billions of lives along with it.
So often do the blinkered righteous carry out works of evil.
Z is correct, pressure forms hydrocarbons. But there is still that question about where Titan’s methane sea came from. The anvil experiment is also convincing. Common materials that are found in great abundance in the mantle are compressed to mantle pressures, and ordinary hydrocarbons form.
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 9, 2010 at 12:58 pm
Oh, please. What does “overshoot” mean on a farm? Does it mean that we are eating next year’s crops? And how does that work?
Overshoot on a farm means you’ve used more fertiliser out of that big barn of yours than you’ve bought to replace it. Everything is fine for years until the barn is empty.
Then things go “not fine” all of a sudden.
out of all his works which are many you are going to cherry pick two and call the entire game and his work bunk?
please, don’t waste our time
the basic premises of his work regarding what determines population and carrying capacity are pretty basic and hard to refute, most are pretty self evident actually, even when written in 1798 considering the conditions then
These aren’t predictions of Peak Oil, Hubbert published his papers later than all these dates except for the last one. Those were estimates of remaining reserves, but they were made at time that discoveries hadn’t peaked. They have peaked globally in the 1960s, which gives you a very good idea, based on past experience in individual oil provinces and countries when the global peak will be. It is not very complicated. And it works, as evident by the fact that Hubbert got the year of the US peak pretty much exactly right.
[snip]
[snip. Strike two. ~dbs, mod.]
Vince Causey says:
September 9, 2010 at 11:50 am
I should have pointed out as well, it is universally accepted that coal is a fossil fuel. It is only oil that has the alternative theory.
OK, let me get this straight.
Coal is a fossil fuel – it is produced in the mantle.
If you heat coal you can get oil from it, as the Germans proved during WWII.
Oil is not a fossil fuel, because there is something in the mantle preventing the heat from converting the coal there to oil.
Have I got that right?
GM says:
September 9, 2010 at 3:30 pm
So now, you are defining overshoot as using irrigation, fertilizer, or oil to produce food? That is the strangest definition of “overshoot” that I have ever seen.
This is why I asked for a definition of overshoot. Given your bizarre definition of “overshoot” as being exemplified by me using well water to irrigate my backyard garden, you are correct. I have completely failed to understand whatever it might be that you are calling “overshoot”.
Finally, if using fertilizer shows that we are in “overshoot”, and we have been using fertilizer on our crops for at least two millennia … perhaps you could explain why the “time lag between entering overshoot and the onset of collapse” has been lagging for 2,000 years and counting. Perhaps you could also let us know how we will recognize the “onset of collapse” when it starts to happen …
Stephen Wilde says:
September 9, 2010 at 4:55 pm
If 6 billion could have lived in stone age conditions then they would have so lived. Early death was what prevented it then and we only have the number we have now because use of fossil fuels enabled us to extend average life expectancies.
Fossil fuels do not increase average life expectancies. They allow us to feed more people off a given area of land.
The prize for increasing life expectancy and for breaking the link between increased population density and increased mortality goes to anti-biotics.
Look at the history around living in ancient Rome for the story of that. Grim is not even close to the word for it.
Smokey, volatiles like H2O, CH4, and NH3 are common in the outer solar system. they’ve been there since dot.
If abiotic methane was as common as you imagine the CH4 content of volcanic gas, at least in some places, would be significant.
How do you get from abiotic methane to abiotic crude oil?
Oh, and if natural gas deposits were abiotic they’d have a composition similar to volcanic gases.
pedex says:
September 9, 2010 at 4:49 pm
@smokey
yet US oil production in the US has been declining since the 1970′s as predicted despite heroic and nearly unlimited efforts to stop it
_______________________________
And the prices have been sky rocketing much to the delight of those selling it.
pedex, how about looking behind the curtain and figuring out who is pulling the string of government here in the USA and else where???
As smokey just showed you “peak oil” has been used again and again to scare the public. So how about doing a little reading about Rothchild, Rockefeller, Warburg, Cargill, Maurice Strong, Adnan Khashoggi, the Council on Foreign Relations, Committee for Economic Development, the International Food and Agricultural Trade Policy Council and the World Trade Organization, and the World Bank/IMF SAPs and see how the world is actually run.
You might want to start with Confessions of an Economic Hit Man
and World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) Structural Adjustment Policies:
http://www.whirledbank.org/development/sap.html
Smokey says:
September 9, 2010 at 4:56 pm
Z is correct, pressure forms hydrocarbons. But there is still that question about where Titan’s methane sea came from.
From a star most likely. Everything other than hydrogen and helium are formed by stars. The surface of an expiring star is cold enough not to rip methane apart. A few novae later and you have vast clouds of the stuff wafting across the galaxy.
There’s a possibility, the large plasma clouds that lay beyond our solar system could also synthesize it – but that’s conjecture at this point.
Hydrogen is common in the universe, carbon is common and there are a large number of persistantly warm areas in most galaxies. No real surprises there.
Overshoot can be prolonged when significant deletable resources are available, in terms of crude oil we’re undoubtedly in overshoot (and have been since we started using it), oil production will probably be in decine before mid century, the worry is whether or not we’re giving ourselves the time to develop alternative energy sources.
Willis Eschenbach says:
September 9, 2010 at 5:11 pm
Finally, if using fertilizer shows that we are in “overshoot”, and we have been using fertilizer on our crops for at least two millennia … perhaps you could explain why the ” time lag between entering overshoot and the onset of collapse” has been lagging for 2,000 years and counting, and you could alsolet us know how we will recognize the “onset of collapse” when it happens …
Using fertilizer does not mean your are in overshoot. Using more fertilizer (or indeed any resource as it was just an illustration) than you are producing means you are in overshoot.
Before the 1800’s we used fertilisers from horses, cattle and people. That was sustainable. Looking at the graphs I offered earlier, you will see the very flat line of the population graph. Then we started using guano from the pacific. That was in overshoot as we were using it faster than the birds were producing, and stocks of guano depleted rapidly.
You should look that up. It’s all about differences between production and consuption.
You will know about the “onset of collapse” when the resource runs out. In the case of the parable of your fertilizer barn, the “onset of collapse” is when it is empty.
You weren’t expecting a bell to ring to warn you were you?