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
Sponsored IT training links:
Pass your RH302 certification exam on first try using up to date 70-270 dumps and 646-985 practice exam .
Why don’t all these people that can predict the future, do something really useful…
….tell me which lotto numbers to pick
Ah yes, because only you have “real insight”, anything else is just fake insight.
With our agricultural capabilities still underutilized, huge piles of food going to waste every year, and a declining first-world population, I suggest your book is most likely nothing more than another excuse to cut down trees.
It’s strange that so many people think having more people on Earth is a bad thing. The good news is that most of the leaps forward mankind makes is down to geniuses who, often working alone, come up with world changing ideas.
Only about 2% of the population meet Mensa’s standards and can be defined as real geniuses. Based on today’s population there are about 120 million people worldwide who would qualify for Mensa membership. As world population grows, the extra geniuses will improve the chance of further major leaps forward, in areas no one can envisage now.
Mankind’s future is bright provided world population continues to grow.
…
While I am not 100% sure it is the real Catton who posted, you should indeed read his book and fix the deficiencies in your education. (snip)
People like Catton have hundreds of years of research in ecology plus thousands of years of human history to back up their predictions. The exact timing of collapse after overshoot will be hard to predict, of course, there are so many unknowns, but it is 100% certain that it will happen. To deny that, you have to deny one or all of the following:
1. Such things as the laws of thermodynamics and physics
2. Basic principles of ecology and population dynamics such as the already mentioned ecological overshoot-population collapse sequence of events. Things that have been observed hundreds and thousands of times in the wild and in the lab and are absolutely indisputable
3. That 1) and 2) apply to humans. This is the essence of the “technology will save us” mantra that gets repeated so often by economists and which the majority here have completely bought into. Yet it all really boils down to denial of 1) and 2) (usually caused by total lack of understanding of those fields, which in turn is caused by the complete failure of our educational system but let’s not go into that)
Willis, how do you spell “peak oil”. IIASA assumes no limits to fossil fuels. Oil exports peaked in 2005, and total world oil supply is set to go into decline by 2013 at the latest. Before people start jumping on me about Venezuelan bitumen, Athabasca tarsands and shale oil think “stocks and flows”. It doesn’t matter what the stock is if the flow is low, and decades and billions of dollars have not solved the flow problem. If we really succeed in developing shale gas (and that is likely unless polluted water supply becomes a major issue) we can substitute some oil for a few years, bu then NG will peak before 2040. If we double or triple coal production as an offset, coal will peak before 2050. Before I get jumped on about the vast coal deposits in the USA think flows again, ie depth of deposits and thickness of seams. The gains in food supply are from cheap abundant energy, and those days are numbered. Murray
Very interesting. All the Malthusians who have answered don’t understand the concept of technological development. They share this with 80% of the population.
A market ripe for the taking (again… and again…).
Ah, I was waiting for that canard to come up.
First, your 2% is in all likelihood only true for developed countries. In the Third world (and probably in the US too) where the majority of population growth occurs, it is much lower.
Second, by the way you worded your post, I take it that you definitely don’t belong to those 2% and you have never taken one of those tests. So let me enlighten you – the vast majority of those 2% are neither capable of nor will they ever contribute anything to the advancement of humanity (by becoming scientists or engineers which is what you imply), they will go on to such not just unproductive but totally counterproductive activities such as becoming bankers, lawyers, etc. There isn’t much correlation between MENSA scores and scientific productivity, it is more like a necessary but far from sufficient conditions. Those 2% tests are a joke anyway so it is laughable to call the people who pass them geniuses.
Third, what proportion of he population right now is involved in productive R&D activity that will help (in your pipe dreams, not in reality) raise the carrying capacity of the planet? 2%? Or much much lower than that. And what proportion is useless eaters? Wouldn’t it be wiser to aim for a smaller population with a much larger proportion of people involved in productive activity? Say, instead of having 10 million out of 7 billion involved in R&D, having 50 million out of 100 million?
Because, and this is fourth, no amount of technology can beat the combination of exponential growth against very finite carrying capacity, much less in the time frames we are speaking of right now (for those who haven’t woken up to reality yet, we basically need a miracle in the next decade or two, and miracles only happen in works of fiction like the Bible and the Quran). So you either face reality and shrink or you overshoot and collapse.
“I think it’s seriously possible that the alarmists’ picture of Peak Oil is badly exaggerated. But I remain unconvinced that there is no problem here at all. ”
http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/GOF_decline_Article.pdf
http://www.jfcom.mil/newslink/storyarchive/2010/JOE_2010_o.pdf
http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/PeakOilAge.pdf
http://www.tsl.uu.se/uhdsg/Publications/IPCC_article.pdf
http://www.ukerc.ac.uk/support/tiki-index.php?page=Global+Oil+Depletion
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50234
https://www.msu.edu/~ralsto11/PeakOil.pdf
New report by the German Military who are taking it very seriously:
http://energybulletin.net/stories/2010-09-01/german-military-study-warns-potentially-drastic-oil-crisis
The fact is for every calorie of food we eat there is 7-10 calories of oil energy in it.
Access to water will be the limiting reagent on human population growth.
“It confirms Anna V who says “I tend to go with the Russian school who think that oil is endogenous to the earth mantle and is created/rises continuously.””
Abiotic theory of oil formation was shown incorrect:
http://static.scribd.com/docs/j79lhbgbjbqrb.pdf
A priori reasoning gives birth to Malthus and his clones. It is the kind of reasoning that teenagers with no experience give their parents. Their theses are always “obvious”. In Malthus’s case, he saw cities spreading so wide that horse-drawn carts could’nt deliver the goods necessary. In his a priori (linear) he thinking didn’t perceive buildings rising above a few stories, he couldn’t anticipate more efficient, speedier transport, not only for goods but for people too. They keep dusting off this old preacher’s idea because they can’t escape his kind of thinking. They don’t believe we will taper off in pop growth, which demographers give us sensible reasons for this development. I haven’t read much about the man himself, but from his clones, I would surmise he hated people, too, like Erhlich.
Was it Lincoln who said, “God loves ordinary people – that’s why he makes so many of them.” ?
What we are seeing is ‘Eugenics’ by the back door.
Posted on the oil drum yesterday:
Peak Oil, Carrying Capacity and Overshoot: Population, the Elephant in the Room – Revisited
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/6924
E. M. Smith, I love your certainty, even though it is clearly based on “a little bit of knowledge being a dangerous thing.” I repeat “stocks and flows”. when we go back in to recover oil from old fields the flows are from 2% to (rarely) 10% of peak flow. Oil wells used to decline in a bell shaped curve. for 2 decades wer have been using “maximum reservoir contact” wells, especially in Saudi Arabia. When they “water out”, and they will, they will “drop off a cliff”. Abiotic oil is a myth, as explained several times by Jean Laherrere. the decline rate of existing oil production is now quite well established (until MRCs start to go down), and new projects have just kept pace within plus or minus 3% for the last 5+ years. It takes 6 years or so to bring a new project on line, and the new projects under way are well known (see the Megaprojects wiki). the coming decline is baked in the cake. Argue as you will. You also overestimate both coal reserves and their recoverability. time to do your homework. Murray
GM – well said! I just barely qualify for Mensa, and I feel really stupid compared to the much much smaller number of very bright people, and of that much smaller number how many get the education needed to innovate in today’s state of technical advancement. 2%??? ROFL.
Marvin the Robot on Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “What’s the Use?”.
Marvin was depressed because he had no hope. Marvin was a machine, a computer with attachments.
Beware the Malthusians, who ersatz mankind’s dreams all day long with dread & fear.
pedex says:
September 9, 2010 at 6:10 am
the oil situation is gonna put a big dent in people’s idea that we are going to just keep breeding like rabbits
Do you know what happens in the bottom of the seas with all the organic residues, under such pressures and in some places (thermal vents) with temperatures up to 400 C (water does not boil up at those pressures)?
This is a well kept secret..an oily secret…
I believe that the term that you’re looking for is TPLAC 🙂
The problem with nearly all of these predictions is that future technology, inventions, processes, discoveries, improvements, and energy sources are never accounted for. You cannot take a population trend and extrapolate that out to infinity while using current technology to infinity. The creativeness of humans is infinite, and with population growth we will have more humans around to think of new inventions. Add to that the fact that necessity is the mother of invention and there is no foreseeable limit to human population on earth. We can live and grow plants underground, underwater, and in space. There is no limit.
@ur momisugly DT says:
September 9, 2010 at 6:51 am
I’d like your sources on the estimates you provide for the amount of oil in the green river shale. And what does that mean when you say, “We have over a century worth of oil in the Green River shale formation”? Does that mean, oil to fuel all of the US for 100 years? or we will be able to extract oil, even if it is only a half-barrel a day for 100 years?
@ur momisugly anna v says:
September 9, 2010 at 1:16 am
“I tend to go with the Russian school who think that oil is endogenous to the earth mantle and is created/rises continuously. The finding of a Titan, I think, satellite with methane speaks to that.”
Really? Just because? That idea is total nonsense.
I don’t often look into the overpopulation issue, but from what I gather it’s that the population in the future (9 billion by 2050, the UN projects) that may cause problems. Or maybe not, I don’t know.
“We have doubled the population and more, and yet we are better fed than ever.” I think you’re making an implicit assumption that because we doubled the population in the past and nothing bad happened, we can increase it by a third again in the future and nothing bad will still happen. I don’t have any data with me but I have to wonder, is that a valid assumption?
@ur momisugly Enneagram says:
September 9, 2010 at 9:01 am
Please expand with what you are saying. I can’t wait to hear your oily secret!
@ur momisugly Phillip Bratby says:
September 9, 2010 at 2:21 am
Nice article. Too bad it’s junk science. The sources for the article you cite come from Kudryavtsev N.A work in the 50s, all of which has been shown false.
You folks just believe anything you read if it fits your narrative?
@ur momisugly Richard Wakefield says:
September 9, 2010 at 8:37 am
Thank you for paying attention.
>>Espen:
>>when a country reaches a certain level of development (and thus,
>>of food supply and energy consumption), it reaches the “fourth
>>phase of demographic transition” and fertility plummets.
That has been true of the Western world, but it has not been tried and tested in the Islamic world. Islam promotes reproductive incontinence, as a method of dominating a region, through demographic saturation.
There is no reason for Islam to stop their irresponsible behaviour, however rich they become. Bin Laden, for instance, was one of about 120 children in his family.
.