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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Andrew W says:
September 9, 2010 at 12:52 am
This is a very light weight post, all you’ve done Willis is extrapolate a trend.
Whether or not the planet can feed 8 billion or 10 billion people hasn’t been addressed in any sensible way. The planet feeds more people now because we consume more resources, those resources are finite, technology gives us the ability to use what’s there, not the ability to create resources that aren’t there.
WRONG! Technology opens up whole new resources which did not even exist before (i.e. things that were not resources prior to the appropriate technology existing). A thing is only a “resource” because it can be used by humans. For example, oil was not a “resource” 200 years ago (discounting oil lamps and cooking oil). The motor engine had not been invented, and so oil was of no use and no one talked about “peak oil.” As we contiue to come up with other technologies, so new resources are opened up for use. Nuclear material only became a “resource” after the nuclear reactor was invented.
Apart from all that, it’s utterly naive to think we’re anywhere near peak oil now. Of course we’re not. There are myriad untapped oil fields in the world, which will be exploited as soon as it is economically feasible to do so (i.e. when current sources run dry). If oil was in any danger of running out soon, the Green idiots wouldn’t be screaming so loud about limiting its use.
And please stop your bed wetting, it became boring a long, long, long time ago.
>>>Berenyi
>>>Food supply is adequate and growing.
This is not a simple calculation of food production, based upon farming techniques. This is the total interconnectedness of civilisation, that is dependent on each of its many spokes operating, to maintain everything in motion.
If one spoke breaks, like the political spoke, the whole thing collapses. And the more people there are in the world, the quicker it can collapse.
Take the Holodomor, for instance. Stalin destablilises the economic/political system that organises agriculture in the USSR, and up to 10 million people starve in the Ukraine.
Yes, up to 10,000,000 people starved, in just one small region.
Think it cannot happen again? Take a look at Rhodesia. Breadbasket of Africa in the 1950s. Change the political system, and the place is now starving. The problem being, the greater the world population, the more will starve to death.
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>>Tenuc:
>>Nuclear power stations currently produce around 15%
>>of the worlds demand for electricity
Yes, but electricity only accounts for 8% of total energy demand. So nuclear power is still a very small percentage of our power – I make that 1.2% of total energy supply.
Mike was right, there has been little change in our energy supply materials for two or more centuries.
And if the oil/coal prices rises, due to shortages in supply, then the price of food will rise alongside it. You may find that much of the expanding world population could not afford to eat, even if the food was able to be grown.
And don’t talk to me, please, about pulping our precious food and turning it into petrol (or diesel). That, is the most barmy idea ever contemplated.
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GM,
Your idea that the laws of thermodynamics impose an imminent cap on growth is an intriguing one, but is a little short on detail. Could you flesh it out a bit for those of us less intellectually endowed?
Sorry, Willis, but I think Malthus had a good (if incomplete) point — with limited land and natural resources and generally diminishing marginal products, the marginal product of labor has to diminish as population increases unless capital (produced factors of production neglected by Malthus) and/or technology increase at a sufficiently rapid rate. Remarkably, they have, but we can’t count on this to continue.
In any event, clearly the biological reproduction rate is untenable. My own Scotch-Irish ancesors bred like bunnies (about 8 children surviving to marriage per marriage) until their ministers read Rev. Malthus in the early 19th c, and suddenly the rate dropped to 2 kids per generation. If it hadn’t, they would still be on the brink of starvation, just as their ancestors were in Ireland and Scotland, and with nowhere left to emigrate to.
The solution is not Chinese-style quotas on babies, but merely to require both biological parents to support their offspring. President Obama admirably preached “responsibility” during his campaign, but I haven’t heard much about it since his election…
I purchased a copy of Malthus’s Essay on Population a few years ago to see what he actually said, but haven’t gotten around to it yet. 🙂
In the long run (say over 10,000 yrs), the survival rate has to be between 2.0 and 2.1 per generation, or else we would be up to our ears in babies: 1.05^(10,000/20) = 3.9E10. Historically, (over the past 100,000 years say), this has been enforced by famine, epidemics, infanticide, monasticism, and/or genocidal warfare. Fortunately now we have birth control.
@ur momisugly David, UK says:
September 9, 2010 at 10:02 am
“Apart from all that, it’s utterly naive to think we’re anywhere near peak oil now. Of course we’re not. There are myriad untapped oil fields in the world, which will be exploited as soon as it is economically feasible to do so (i.e. when current sources run dry).”
Oh yeah? What are some examples of those myriad of untapped oil fields? Now keep in mind, these will have to be pretty big to keep pace with current demand, and a whole hell of a lot of them.
GM likes to think of people as “useless eaters”.
GM and Catton are like a bad disease.
I would not think of poisoning my mind with such pretentious fluff.
“Die-offs” “Peak everything” “collapse” of this or that .
Remember “Peak Whale oil” and Peak Horses” and “Peak buggy Whips” ?
Give it a break Einstein.
These nihilistic pronouncements of death upon apparently MOST of humanity are and have been prominently disproven over and over again.
The suggestion that we forget about any future progress and hunker down to live like SERFS in the vain and really personally vain , ( based on a paranoia ) effort to continue in perpetuity to live an unambitious life in an unchanging status quo ,
would make your “Utopia” far more useless than the useless eaters you decry.
You sicken me, sir.
Forgive me, I like TV. I notice a distasteful show called “Life after people” and a book of the same name, and I see the the gleeful scientists, proving their dislike for people by predicting the decay of our civilization.
But there is another show, where the REAL scientists and engineers explain their inspiration
for many of the developments you are using right now.
So I ask you, “Haven’t you ever seen Star Trek “?
>>Bryan:
>>Here in Britain they pay farmers not to produce food.
That was called the “set-aside” policy, because Europe had a grain surplus.
But with Europe’s increasing population, that policy was abandoned in 2008.
If you are looking for unsustainable, exponential Hockey Sticks, there are plenty to be found in population charts.
http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/wp-content/uploads/popgrowthsince_1500.jpg
.
1. It appears that the unit of food produced for each hectare per human is going up.
2. The population is self correcting, transformative demographics I believe is the term.
Predator/prey models not withstanding about the only thing that will sink us as a population is if we give up on less land intensive sources of energy (like coal, oil and nuclear power) and stay away from land intensive renewable energy like biofuels, wind mills (much more land use, material use (concrete and steel) and fewer dead birds than your average nuke plant).
I suppose people like you were the ones proclaiming that London would be 10 meters deep in horse poop by the early 20th century. Try getting a prediction right, then people will listen. Did you note the bits about Ehrlich/Holdren’s utterly incorrect dismissal of transformative demographics and Ehrlich’s bet about present value of minerals? Have people like Ehrlich ever been right about anything? Not bloody likely.
Everyone recognizes natural varying climate cycles, warming equals prosperity, cooling equals disaster ! WHO is doing the science on what will happen with the earths population is and when we encounter the next LIA, it will happen sooner or later. This is part of the AGW disaster the inability to do any science that runs counter to the AGW dogma.
Hu,
But they didn’t keep on breeding like that did they? Populations, as they get wealthier, tend to regulate their breeding rate. No worries on that I’m afraid.
Benjamin P. says:
September 9, 2010 at 9:09 am
“@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.
”
Really ?
Methane is classified as a “fossil fuel”.
Finding not just abundant but omnipresent Methane on Titan where there are , arguably NO Fossils, kind of blunts your resistance.
Benjamin P. says:
September 9, 2010 at 9:16 am
@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.
=========================
The article refers to thousands of papers, not just those of Kudryavtsev. It has already been shown that oil can be manufactured in laboratories using enormous temperatures and pressures, and the chemical reactions are well understood. Of course, none of this proves oil is abiogenic – it merely shows it is chemically possible.
Seamus Molloy says:
September 9, 2010 at 1:35 am
What interests me is the amount of arable produce (wheat, rice, barley, potatoes, sugar beet etc.) that is used to make alcohol. The figure I have been told is about a quarter of the worlds production. Can anyone confirm this?
I also understand that 80% of grapes grown are used for making alcohol and as we can see from the Muslim world alcohol is not needed to sustain a healthy life, so an awful lot of good food is grown not to feed people but just to make them drunk!
I am taking strong exemption with above statement
http://www2.potsdam.edu/hansondj/AlcoholAndHealth.html
Alcohol And Health
Moderate drinkers tend to have better health and live longer than those who are either abstainers or heavy drinkers. In addition to having fewer heart attacks and strokes, moderate consumers of alcoholic beverages (beer, wine or distilled spirits or liquor) are generally less likely to suffer hypertension or high blood pressure, peripheral artery disease, Alzheimer’s disease and the common cold.
Sensible drinking also appears to be beneficial in reducing or preventing diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, bone fractures and osteoporosis, kidney stones, digestive ailments, stress and depression, poor cognition and memory, Parkinson’s disease, hepatitis A, pancreatic cancer, macular degeneration (a major cause of blindness), angina pectoris, duodenal ulcer, erectile dysfunction, hearing loss, gallstones, liver disease and poor physical condition in elderly.
Moderate drinkers tend to live longer than those who either abstain or drink heavily.
A Harvard study found the risk of death from all causes to be 21% to 28% lower among men who drank alcohol moderately, compared to abstainers. (Camargo, C. A., et al. Prospective study of moderate alcohol consumption and mortality in US male physicians. Archives of Internal Medicine, 1997, 157, 79-85.)
Benjamin P. says:
September 9, 2010 at 10:26 am
“Oh yeah? What are some examples of those myriad of untapped oil fields? Now keep in mind, these will have to be pretty big to keep pace with current demand, and a whole hell of a lot of them.”
OK, here are some examples. Montana has an untapped oilfield amounting to 40 billion barrels. Alaska has an untapped oilfield of about 10 billion barrels. The Bakken is the largest one we currently know of – the Energy Information Administration (EIA) estimates it at 503 billion barrels. Need any more examples, Mr Oh Yeah?
>>Anna:
>>I tend to go with the Russian school who think that oil is
>>endogenous to the earth mantle and is created/rises continuously.
Brilliant !!
So who puts the Foraminifera into the oil deposits, and the fern leaves into coal deposits eh??
Oh, yes, I remember – the same guy who put fossils into rocks, to make us think the rocks were much older than they really are……. 😉
.
Simple. Entropy always increases in a closed system, human bodies are a very low-entropy system, human civilization as a whole is at even lower entropy. So you need an external source of energy/negative entropy to keep things from falling apart. The size of the external flows of negentropy puts a hard limit to the growth of any human civilization
1. OOIP = Original Oil In Place
2. URR = Ultimately Recoverable Reserves
URR < OOIP.
URR <<<< OOIP if rock porosity is very low. So it happens that the Bakken shale has an extremely low porosoity (which is why it is shale and you can't just poke a pole in the ground and collect the resulting gusher as people were doing in Texas and the Middle East back in the days). Which makes you 530 billion barrels more like 1 or 2, and at a very meager flow rate on top of that
Historically, only particular kinds of political transformations have caused famine. Movements away from free trade to central planning and despotism are usually the culprits. Occasionally, the absence of government has resulted in a flourishing society. Italian trading cities in the early Renaissance being a prime example.
Some nice viewpoints on the reality of population size vs the size of the available land. (Texas, Ireland) When in doubt, I always find it comforting and enlightening to estimate that the entire world population could merge into one organism probably less than half a cubic kilometer in size. While that would be a formidable creature, it would be barely a speck of dust on the surface of the earth. Now exactly how unsustainable can that be? I don’t claim to know, but I do find it a reality check.. Earth really is huge, and man filled with hubris as to his own importance….
Benjamin P. says:
September 9, 2010 at 9:13 am
Easy, its first product is Methane C (Carbon) plus 2H2 (hydrogen from water)=CH4.
During WWII Germans synthesized fuel from mineral carbon and water.
July 2009 worldwide commercial synthetic fuels production capacity is over 240,000 barrels per day (38,000 m3/d), with numerous new projects in construction or development.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_fuel
It can not go higher than the theoretical limit of conversion of sun light into chemical energy by photosynthesis. and sun light is very limited. So much for your “we can grow as much food as we want” fantasies.
>>>Patrick:
>>>You were aware that Afican’s had no concept of borders,
>>>until the “whiteman”
Pffff !!! What utopia world do you live in?
There were tribal borders in Africa thousands of years ago, and they were and are every bit a real as any national border today. And if you went into the wrong tribal area, there was every possibility that the machete or its equivalent would get an outing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_Genocide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gukurahundi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Darfur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007–2008_Kenyan_crisis
etc: etc:
(At their heart these are all tribal wars, a continuation of millennias of tribal conflict.)
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What produces starvation, poverty, etc. it is not reproduction of people but the unconscious reproduction of bad politicians. An example:
Now he tells us: Cuba economic model doesn’t work, says Fidel
http://www.smh.com.au/world/now-he-tells-us-cuba-economic-model-doesnt-work-says-fidel-20100909-153bb.html?from=smh_sb
Mister Mr says:
September 9, 2010 at 12:53 am
Excellent post. As someone who has spent time as a relief worker in some of the worst refugee camps on earth, I can relate from first hand experience…
________________
Reading your post reminds me of Stalin’s starvation of Ukrainian farmers, where millions died as the food they produced was stolen and exported. The worst horror was the way Westerners, eating that food, consistently denied that the atrocity was taking place. http://www.ukemonde.com/news/rferl.html
WHEN SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL visited Stalin at the Kremlin in August, 1942 he asked: ” … Have the stresses of the war been as bad to you personally as carrying through the policy of the Collective Farms?”
“Oh, no” he (Stalin) said, “the Collective Farm policy was a terrible srtuggle … Ten millions,” he said, holding up his hands. “It was fearful. Four years it lasted. It was absolutely necessary …” http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/gregorovich/
I agree crap/evil politicians are the real problem.