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 It’s not peer-reviewed as far as I can determine.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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R.O.M.M. = Ranting Over Mendacious Meanderings
To Romm = Expounding upon anything “exponential”
Exponential = A growth curve characterized by a “hockey-stick” shape.
Super-Exponential = Having to do with “hokey-shtick”
tmtisfree says:
March 17, 2011 at 2:59 am
“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.”
I thought that too, but I don’t think Willis is attributing any causality in his statement – just that lower growth rate and increased nutrition go together.
This is a good example of the “correlation/causation” issues since you can make an argument that increased population growth leads to reduced average nutrition (ignoring human ingenuity, as Mathusians do), but the corollary – that decreased population growth leads to increased nutrition doesn’t seem as realistic. Trying it the other way round also gets weird, so this seems to suggest that there must be a third (at least) factor that links the two.
“You go, Joe.”
Because knowing is half the battle.
Excellent critique, by the way.
I always observed that people who eat better have less children.
The most prosperous countries have the lowest or even the negative population growth.
I think it’s not the other way around (more people, less food); it’s more food, less people.
Caprica Six to Gaius Baltar: “{Your species has} such an amazing capacity for self deception, how do you do it?”
It’s very difficult to back away from belief systems, guys. Romm should be pitied at this point. Also, and I am in no way suggesting that anyone change their behavior on my account, people who believe a lie do not respond in a positive way to attacks on their beliefs. To quote hollywood again:
Bruce Lee (as played by Jason Scott Lee): “You can’t change people with your fists, I’ve learned that.”
Those who have exposed themselves believing a lie have to be allowed back-off-space. Constant attacks just keep them in a defensive posture on the crumbling ramparts of their belief system. It’s only through cease-fire that those in the failed structure can see the plainly obvious outside their circled wagons.
Again, I enjoy the humor Willis, I will never say no to a good laugh. I’m just saying we can never expect the Romm’s of the world to see sanity as long as we’re publicly humiliating them.
/hows that for a backhand?
Sam the Skeptic 4:39:
Or maybe even “Romman times just around the corner”?
superexponentiation, eh?
I suppose the next headline we’ll see is: “Global warming shown to be PSPACE-complete!”
Didier Sornette also claimed the be able to predict the future of the stock market.
As that didn’t turned out as predicted by his model,
it appears that he has to look for funding elsewhere.
Grumpy Old Man says: March 17, 2011 at 3:56 am
“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.”
Therein lies a big question. Would it be better for the world for them to continue with their preoccupation with “global warming”, which although costly could be thought to be no less harmful than trainspotting or stamp collecting and keeps them all busy … but unquestionably at a price.
Or do we really want all these eco-consultants, and eco-lobbyists and eco-profiteers and eco-blackmarketeers and eco-mumbojumboprophets to be set free to wreck havoc elsewhere where the price could be a lot higher? Or would it be higher?
In some senses, the world has already been inoculated against this madness, so their epidemic is largely self-contained by those already infected. But, we aren’t protected against the next worldwide alarmist scare, so perhaps the last thing we want to do is burn down the barn and for the rats out and force them to new areas because that will just spread the sickness elsewhere!
The impact of population growth and decline is well documented here for the U.S. and runs counter to the Malthusian arguments. The impact can also be seen in the economic stagnation of Japan and the revolts in t he middle east.
http://www.longwavepress.com/Baby_Boomers_Generation_X_SCv1a.pdf
It’s funny and sad, a simple search of the internet on “world population” turns up the wikipedia page (of course) that says in it’s opening paragraph:
“The world population is the total population of humans on the planet Earth, currently estimated to be 6.91 billion by the United States Census Bureau.[1] The world population has experienced continuous growth since the end of the Bubonic Plague around the years 1348-1350.[2] The highest rates of growth—increases above 1.8% per year—were seen briefly during the 1950s, for a longer period during the 1960s and 1970s; the growth rate peaked at 2.2% in 1963, and declined to 1.1% by 2009. Annual births have reduced to 140 million since their peak at 173 million in the late 1990s, and are expected to remain constant, while deaths number 57 million per year and are expected to increase to 80 million per year by 2040. Current projections show a continued increase of population (but a steady decline in the population growth rate) with the population expected to reach between 7.5 and 10.5 billion in the year 2050.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
It appears that the information about declining population grown rates declining is readily available for the authors of the paper, A.D. Husler and D. Sornette, and our not evil anti-hero, Romm.
A few months back I looked into this because a number of friends (real ones) were going on that the biggest problem is out of control population growth rates. They didn’t like to hear that the rate is declining. They actually want a one child policy imposed upon the whole world. Yikes.
As for modeling with “current trend” projections it seems like a flawed notion in many cases as the thing being modeled isn’t a linear phenomenon so wouldn’t it be better to use a range of possible projections in a paper and not commit to any one of them? It seems strange that the authors would commit to one soothsaid doomsday scenario. Well maybe not given some humans need for a bleak doomsday future as if it’s really going to happen.
Also, I wonder, if we’re feeding more people we’d obviously have more food production which means more CO2 being absorbed by plants how would that impact CO2 in the atmosphere?
[Love the title by the way Willis, it brought a smile even before opening the full article].
That population density grid – anyone try using it to grid “temperature” change as well?
Great job on the image.
No proof but it looks like justification is being ginned up for central control of the worlds food supply. And there is a hint here of control of the human population growth as well.
The bloat in their egos and ambitions is enormous and two of them would probably not fit into a football stadium or the Grand Canyon. Only the entire world is big enough to satisfy their comfort zone, for now.
Like most plagues, people will stop expanding once the feedstock runs out, or maybe, just maybe, there will be a clamour for more CO2 in the atmosphere to speed and enhance plant growth. (sarc)
“Les Johnson says: March 17, 2011 at 5:27 am
Willis: I just plotted the Mauna Loa numbers, and, technically, one of the claims of this paper do hold up, that CO2 is increasing exponentially. Barely.”
Yes. I did the same thing a few months ago and came to the same conclusion. Considering the ambiguity of everything else, it really doesn’t makes much difference in most projections if one assumes the increase is linear, but it really does seem to be exponential with a very small exponent.
Smokey says @ur momisugly March 17, 2011 at 5:21 am
The other thing that happened is women left the war time workforce in huge numbers. And since actions have consequences, the population exploded. We also had production over-capacity and a rather modern manufacturing capability. There was a huge burst in manufacturing exemplified by hobby interest production which created new but short-lived markets in electronics (amateur radio, for example), private aviation, boating, travel trailering/campers/motor homes, and any number of other now defunct activities. Manufacturing de-diversified, companies pooled like mercury drops, and changed focus. Working in a high-tech industry, my pay doubled in the period 1985-1995, for example, even though my responsibilities did not change much. I didn’t need the second job any longer, and my kids were out on their own. I’m a baby boomer – born on the first day of the baby boom, 1/1/1946, and the oldest living boomer from a certain large city in the Pacific Northwest. Life was suddenly good, for a while.
A huge amount of leisure time was created and a leisure class, less willing to exert effort and far better educated than recent generations, turned to intellectual pursuits and less so to manual labor as a career path – an education gap emerged. Such physical labor jobs as could be were outsourced over seas, import labor grew (dare I say exponentially), and the result is the lowest tier of manual labor and service labor in the US today cannot claim English as a first language.
This subset of the population also has a high reproduction rate. A ripple effect is the children of these same people followed the indigent population into higher education and are now displacing the indigent population in all levels of the work force, and, because they also don’t care to work at physical/menial labor, the need for continued imported labor grows even as the population grows.
As a knock-on side effect, intellectuals, always being mischievous, decided the melting pot model was flawed and that we needed to celebrate our diversity. We never really melted that much anyway, but now we’re not even trying. We are becoming very polarized in many more of life’s pursuits than before, and fragmented, as a physical population.
We no longer go to the grange hall to exchange our concerns and ideas – we are pooling like balls of mercury again but at places like Facebook and Twitter, and blogs such as WUWT. We are becoming isolated shut-ins grouped into chat rooms by populist/defacto aggregation, and guided in our discourse by “The Hot Topic of the Day”.
Romm’s conclusion/theory is common in history. Population growth has, in the past, outstripped agriculture leading to at least localized famines or to the Crusades and other aspects of colonization. Robert Malthus’s essays, six of them, published starting in the late 1790s, opposed the Enlightenment view that the world was getting better and would continue to do so, until perfection was achieved. Of course Malthus could not know of the immense agricultural lands just opening up in America, both North and South. In addition, the rapid acceptance of easy and inexpensive contraception methods by developed countries in the mid 20th Century plus the desire for fewer children has really slowed population growth.
Population growth could continue apace but probably will stabilize as more peoples reach higher economic development. Although we are in danger of being barely able to feed our population, new methods such as Hydroponics and fish farming, both potentially very useful, will increase our food production.
Mr Lynn: “PS Reminder to all (including ROM): The possessive of IT is ITS, not IT’S, which is short for IT IS. I know everyone hates grammatical nit-pickers, but the editor in me cringes every time I see one o’ them li’l buggers.”
Amen! And let’s mention the oft-misused “there’s”…
Good stuff, Willis. Adam Smith talked about this – 1n 1776! “A poor woman in the highlands of Scotland will bear on average 18(?) children in her lifetime, while a woman in London can scarce bear two” (approximate quote from memory).
They be lemmings, we are between them and the cliff.
We should stand aside and help them when they reach bottom.
It is the right thing to do when others are in need.
DP @ur momisugly 7:49 AM: you got that right. Admirable summary of the demographic/economic/cultural ripples. Without arguing too strongly for causality here, I would also offer “demographic=>economic=>cultural ripples” as a general dynamic, or at least a handy heuristic when thinking about such phenomena. Demography describes a population’s fundamental character. And, as the Greeks said, “character is destiny.” (See also George Friedman’s “The Next 100 Years” where geographical considerations play as big a role as demographics).
Hmmmm… Posted under “This entry was posted in Uncategorized.”
What – no category for “Unadulterated Garbage”?
Robert R. Clough – Thorncraft says:
I think the research should look at the actual current trends, not historical values. It seems the value of 1.8% cannot be substantiated, and that is what Willis is on about.
Sornette(s)!
“Joe Romm swallowed this one whole, opining (emphasis mine):”
Joe swallowed this one because the conclusion matched his religious beliefs –
[1] That Humans are a virus, and a curse on the planet that will mindlessly consume every available resource before destroying themselves.
[2] Humans are wrecking the planet.
etc…. Typical, mindless, evidence avoiding green nut.