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 It’s not peer-reviewed as far as I can determine.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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Mr Lynne,
I agree with your assessment that it is the lack of frontiers that is the problem. It’s a nice idea about going to colonize mars, but I can’t imagine who would want to do it. It is not only inhospitable to life, but there are no economic benefits to be obtained – and it was pursuit of economic benefits that led to the pioneers developing the frontier , not a desire to test their character.
Perhaps humans are destined to decay with apathy anyhow, and AGW and Earth days etc, are just a symptom, along with a preoccupation with reality tv shows and celebrity status.
@ur momisugly Pull My Finger, PWL
Population growth is a good thing?
Remember the old stat that if we all want to live like Americans, we’d need another four planet Earths? How is it going to be possible for us all to have more when there are more of us?
If we put more land under the plough then it’s biodiversity that will suffer.
Someone in the UK calculated we can provide for 30 million with our own resources. We presently have 60+ million and therefore rely on imports and our own wealth relative to the rest of the world.
Various countries are now buying up good agricultural land around the world. They predict a crunch. Why don’t you guys?
Wow, stuff like this really makes my heart ache, but it hasn’t made it into the scientific literature, and I’m sure it never will.
How can people be so obsessed with agenda that they can’t see reason; when their own data is staring them in the face, contrary to what they themselves are saying?
Any biologist, like myself, will tell you that populations always stabilize at a stationary phase once the ratio of numbers to available resources (including space) reaches a certain point. Humanity is no exception, and we’ll hit our own stationary phase soon enough. Already several 1st world countries have, and are a model for the process at the global level.
Scottish Sceptic says:
March 17, 2011 at 7:08 am
“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?”
The natural trap for them would be an academic degree beyond the Phd. Way beyond.
This may be the beginning of a new word in the dictionary. We could see “romm” replace “wrong” in cases of extreme errors. A teacher grading a paper might write on the top … “your work is terribly romm”. Or, we may get a new expression of severe problems with a theory … “not even romm”.
Yes, Joe might live on in infamy.
Wow. Two comments on CP regarding this article, and I’m already banned from making further comment.
I only asked Romm to give credit where credit is due for him picking up the phone and calling one of the co-authors. He apparently can’t handle the truth.
…the “ecological footprint” has nothing to do with science. It is an advocacy tool.
The same can be said for most of climate science as well.
I love it when the debunking takes less than 20 minutes, it saves us all a lot of time.
I use a logarithmic scale too, called the ADI, or “alarmist debunk index”, which is log10(debunk seconds). This one, I’m guessing, was less than 15 minutes total time to demolish, so is rated as a log10(15*60), or 2.95, a “fairly robust” finding in climate alarmist circles since it took more than a few seconds to debunk. Some studies take only microseconds for the even the most casual observer to debunk and would thus be rated -6. Others can take weeks or months to debunk, with one year being equivalent to an ADI rating of 7.5 .
Normally the vast majority of this time is used in the extraction of data through FOI requests and is thus not an indicator of alarmist strength, but deception strength. This becomes easier to understand once the user applies the ADI to non-real-world problems in practice. Further analysis reveals useful subdivisions of the ADI index into its component terms.
I tried to post a short comment with a few facts and a few questions on Romm’s site about his article, but it didn’t get through moderation. Apparently a comment by a Jom Jermey referencing this WUWT article did get through moderation … until it was later cleansed. This comment remains:
nen says:
March 17, 2011 at 5:22 am
Jon Jermey:
Willis admits he didn’t read the paper. If he had bothered to read it he would have found:
“Figure 7 shows that the growth rate of the World population was a strongly
increasing function of time till the late 1950s. A sharp decrease of the growth
rate occurred, then followed by a resumed acceleration till its peak in 1964,
from which a slow decrease can be observed.”
The comment by Jom Jermey is no longer there.
My comment that didn’t make it through moderation was:
21. puzzled says:
Your comment is awaiting moderation.
March 17, 2011 at 9:49 am
nen says:
March 17, 2011 at 5:22 am: “Jon Jermey:”
What Jon Jermey? There’s no comment by anyone with that name. ???
“Figure 7″
Did you notice that Figure 7 shows the current population growth rate is ~1.2%?
In footnote 2 this paper says that the present growth rate is ~1.8%. ???
That’s a 50% discrepancy.
How much confidence can be placed in a paper when there is a 50% internal discrepancy in one of its two primary subjects?(Abstract:”We analyze the growth rates of atmospheric carbon dioxide and human population”)
When such a bland comment is censored & doesn’t make it through moderation & another comment that mentions a critique of his article is removed, it is blatantly obvious that Romm isn’t interested in facts or truth … just propaganda.
Willis, you were spot on in not bothering to read further.
Romm’s screed is straight out of the George Soros playbook. That makes sense, since Soros funds Romm.
If Soros’ planned World Government ever commandeers the supply and production of food, there will be immediate and long lasting shortages – AKA: famines. No doubt that is George’s plan. He had no hesitation about being the Nazis’ Judas goat, herding his people into cattle cars in WWII.
The U.S. really needs to evict the corrupt UN and have nothing more to do with it. We can make mutually beneficial alliances with friends and allies while getting rid of the parasites. Soros has $14 billion, he can be their sugar daddy.
This is what I posted at CP verbatim;
___________________________________________________________
*4 Good paper.
That’s it? ROTFLMFAO
This is a prime example of an extremely bad paper.
It hasn’t even been peer reviewed, suffers from poor english grammer throughout (four exclamation points even), uses Occam’s Razor once and variations of assume 17 times.
Note that the authors present in Figure 1, an FTS power-law using past population growth with the singularity (tc) of 1988AD, that’s right, the human population reached infinity 23 years ago.
Didn’t know that. 🙁
Figure 2 shows, as far as I can tell, a nearly linear relationship between total population versus time (no need to try fitting FTS or exponential relationships to such a small period of near linearity, if you were to ask me), based on the period, 1970-2008 (or 39 years in total), yet gets an FTS of 3939AD, an extrapolation of ~50X.
Figure 3 has an FTS of 2304AD, meaning that CO2 goes to infinity at that time. Don’t think so.
Figure 4 has an FTS of 2132AD, …
Figure 5 uses CO2 time intervals of as short as five years for FTS.
Figure 6 says that different equations do different things. D’oh!
Figure 7 shows population growth actually decreasing from the mid-60’s onward, no continued exponential growth in population, thank you very much.
Figure 8 closes with the phrase “super-exponential growth” yet not a single empirical data point appears anywhere in that figure. What’s up with that?
Figure 9 shows CO2 data from “ice drill cores” (their phrase, in the body of their text, not mine) and Mauna Loa. Well they got one thing right, they can copy data, good for them.
Figure 10 shows an FTS of 2129AD, not much difference between the End Times shown in Figure 4 (2132AD), meaning that their curve fitting is dominated by the latter part of the curve (the instrumental record at Mauna Loa).
What else is missing you ask?
Very weak in the theory department, mixing population estimates, labor force estimates, technology level estimates, available capital level estimates, and CO2 estimates. Ansatz indeed.
No CDIAC CO2 emissions or fossil fuel data anywhere to be seen. They jumped straight from population to atmospheric CO2 without batting an eye. We know this data exists, why is it not presented here in this paper? I’m just doing my own ansatz, but I figure that actual emissions data would paint a different figure, than the figure the authors have put forth.
No sum of squares values, no RMS values, no R^2 values. Nowhere to be seen.
Further, one can reverse engineer their values for their constants from Equations 3/6 (alpha/alpha’ c/c’) and from the values presented in Figure 4, within less than 30 minutes in Excel, do sum of squares, RMS values, and R^2 values, and guess what?
A simple polynomial of order two (quadratic) is a better fit to the empirical data from Mauna Loa than either the FTS or exponential fits, by all metrics.
Note, that I’m not suggesting that one fit a low order polynomial (even a degree one polynomial (linear fit) results in an R^2 of 0.98591 vs 0.99901 for a quadratic vs 0.99873 for an FTS vs 0.99881 for an exponential), or an FTS or an exponential curve to 40-50 years worth of data and then go about extrapolating said curve fit 2X, 3X, or 50X.
That’s not science, that’s curve fitting, for the sake of curve fitting alone. In other words correlation does not equal causation.
Probability that future super-exponential growth of CO2 was proved in this paper? Zero.
I think I’ll name my next pet Paper, then I’ll get to say “Bad Paper, bad Paper, you made a mess.”
If this post disappears, I’ll know why. 🙁
___________________________________________________________
To those curve fitting the Mauna Loa data to power/exponential, the paper does not use the form y=a*e^(b*t) or y=c*t^d, see Equations 3/6.
REPLY: Thank you sir, on this we agree – Anthony
Just a side note. Every other day we get a little political outburst from Joe about the koch Bros. They of course compete on one hand with Soros agenda for whom Joe works. On the other hand, Joe and the Koch bros all attended MIT. Ooops. I hope Joe’s roots aren’t showing.
You managed to ignore so many factors that your entire thesis is bunk. Population growth rates have only dropped off among certain subgroups and even that drop off is do to artificial means such as available birth control, force such as in China and land carrying capacity being exceeded in parts of Africa, India, South America and China. The starvation’s in these regions over the last 50 years give a natural slowing to population growth but this is hardly the desirable way to reach zero growth is it
? These are one time only inputs that your attributing to natural repeatable tendencies.
A few things we know for certain, the current population simply can’t exist without the high return on investment energy source of fossil fuels. That fossil fuel reserves are an inarguable finite quantity and every day the energy input to energy output climbs and will eventually balance making the remaining reserves unrecoverable. That as the worlds fuel tank gets closer to empty every day, we manage to actually be accelerating their depletion with not only more individuals using energy but an increase per person as well. That alternatives like solar is still a net energy producing pipe dream in spite of the crap energy accounting the greenies preach. Not only do they fantasize 30 year life times for solar panels, a length of time that other outdoor exposed materials like paint or even robust stone and tar shingles rarely meet, they ignore all energy costs of the labor force producing them not directly attributable to the production facility. These workers have an energy expense that even at slave levels include food, housing and clothing. But they’re not slaves and they each can be expected to have energy expensive private lives just like the rest of us. That even wind is most likely a net negative energy producer as evidenced by the fact that even though windmill technology has existed for 500 plus years as mechanical energy, it enjoyed little unsubsidized success in the historical world. That modern electricity production from wind is exponentially more energy input expensive than historical construction methods that saw limited viability uses such as grain grinding and water pumping. Today’s windmills have the added energy expenses of energy expensive transmission network build-outs, energy expensive storage methodologies and large losses due to conversion and transmission inefficiencies.
We should be in panic mode not only of increasing populations but even a stable population at levels that can’t exist when we loose this valuable gift the earth has given us, fossil fuels. Until this glaring threat to the health, safety and happiness of future generations has been definitively eliminated, we should be using the earth and it’s very finite resources with Ebenezer Scrooge like stinginess.
The threat of energy depletion to humanity is at this time a certainty and will be catastrophic as it unfolds. This is what i find frustrating with public policy. If you were on a small island with a finite non renewing resource of food (energy), you’d hardly be encouraging the population to increase it’s size and increase the food consumption per person as well. The only intelligent option would be to go on strict rations and population control buying time for a hoped for eventual rescue from the impending disaster of food depletion.
If even after 100 plus years of work by profit driven fossil fuel replacing would be inventors, 50 years of well intentioned environmentalists, 70 years of government subsidized alternative energy research (The Germans and Japanese during WWII, the U.S. at least as far back as 1973) we’ve failed to find even one source of energy that is self supporting in the market place. At best technology has fabricated a fantasy of a mirage of a life boat on the horizon of our island encouraging the all to attractive denile of the seriousness of our situation
This is not yet observed in the population dynamics, when integrated worldwide.
Invariably the population bomb worriers look at birth rates and death rates.
Birth rates and death rates only provide a picture of today.
Fertility rates tell the story of what the world will be like 40 years hence.
I.E. The fertility rate in OECD countries has been at or below replacement for 40 years. But the group now in the 40-60 age category is double the size of the 60-80 category. It is the woman who are now 60-80 that had 4 or 5 children.
Hence, population will continue to grow in OECD countries for the next 20 years.
It’s just a flesh wound!
Jit says:
March 17, 2011 at 9:08 am
Yeah, I remember that nonsense. It was a scam promoted by Mathis Wackernagel of Ecological Footprint fame, who knows well that it’s bogus, we’ve discussed it at length.
w.
EFS_Junior says:
“This is a prime example of an extremely bad paper. It hasn’t even been peer reviewed, suffers from poor english [sic] grammer [sic]…”
You were saying…?
I’m not saying it’s good per se, just saying that the late 20th Century saw an explosion in technology that allowed populations across the globe to increase without the dire predicted consequnces of the 19th century philosophers. Agricultural production in the US and other modern states has sky rocketed both in aboslute terms and in terms of inputs to outputs and this has carried over to many developing nations. Speaking purely theoretically, feeding 7 or 8 or 9 billion people on this earth is not a problem.. at all. The problem is that the majority of people on earth live under governments that are autorcratic/authoritarian who have no real interest in “the people”, only in protecting their rule or are so sclerotic that they cannot maintain the logistics to support the number of people they are capable of feeding. Heck, the US pays farmers not to produce in order to keep prices high enough for farmers. The US could sustain a population many times what it is today. The quality of life of citizens has a lot less to do with available resources, there is plenty to go around, it is the lack of universal human rights, the lack of property rights, and the lack of a codified AND enforced civil law enforcement and judicial system.
Depending on when you set the cut off for the “Post Industrial Revolution Modern World”, let’s say 1945, we’ve seen that the most productive and powerful nations ultimately are based on the seeds of English Common Law. They can be Parlimetary or Federalist, Socialist, Conservative, whatever, but they have to be popular and egalitarian. State Control systems only work so well, ultimately the masses have no skin in the game, they can’t advance economically beyond a certain point, we’ll see how China plays out over the next decades. Autocaracy only works for the autocrat. Religious states need to convice their citizens that their true reward lies in the next life, not this. They deprive almost by design. And of course deny a quality of life to any who are not of their belief system or are marginalized by their religion.
Anyway, all this rambling just means that proving “fat and happy” world of 9 billion people is less a function of resource than of government.
Jit says:
March 17, 2011 at 9:08 am
@ur momisugly Pull My Finger, PWL
Population growth is a good thing?
Remember the old stat that if we all want to live like Americans, we’d need another four planet Earths? How is it going to be possible for us all to have more when there are more of us?
@TomRude
Yes, Sornette is widely used in everyday life French : http://translation.babylon.com/french/to-english/sornette/
Fossil fuels will eventually run out, everyone has a guess as to when, but there is an awful lot of oil, gas, and coal left in the ground, the US just has a self-inflicted ban of extracting them. Maybe were just waiting for the Middle East to run dry so we can be Bi-Winning in the 22nd Century. 🙂 But seriously, I find it hard to believe that with the miraculous advances in biotech, nanotech, chemisty, etc in the last decade or two that we can’t synthesize fossil fuels or the eqiv when push comes to shove. Yea, it’ll be more expensive short term, but like everything else it will be improved and perfected… and cheap.
And of course nukes. No sain and rational person should discount them despite the ongoing saga in Japan, which other than the poor guys fighting out in the plant, the 40 year old plant, has done little damage. Now if they just had superexponential batteries!
Ah, but Mars will be much nicer after the terraforming begins. And there are plenty of mineral resources. Read Robert Zubrin’s book.
I have often thought that all it would take to get us back into space in a big way would be the discovery of gold on the Moon. Some think that He3 in the lunar regolith is potentially valuable enough (for use in fusion reactors) to start a rush, once we master the technology. So we use the He3 on the Moon to provide the energy we need to terraform and colonize Mars, and the Mars colonies will become magnets for a new ‘westward migration’.
We’ll never know if we don’t try.
/Mr Lynn
If they make Donald Trump President of Mars instead of one of the witless nimrods that are in charge of most the world today, I may just sign up to save my sanity.
—–
Mr Lynn says:
March 17, 2011 at 11:23 am
Vince Causey says:
March 17, 2011 at 9:02 am
Mr Lynn,
I agree with your assessment that it is the lack of frontiers that is the problem. It’s a nice idea about going to colonize mars, but I can’t imagine who would want to do it. It is not only inhospitable to life, but there are no economic benefits to be obtained – and it was pursuit of economic benefits that led to the pioneers developing the frontier , not a desire to test their character. . .
Ah, but Mars will be much nicer after the terraforming begins. And there are plenty of mineral resources. Read Robert Zubrin’s book.
Excellent..
I see this garbage daily over here in the UK. The BBC daily broadcasts stupid reports that even I can pull apart.
Air pollution causes early deaths
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4283295.stm.
Air pollution is responsible for 310,000 premature deaths in Europe each year, research suggests.
Barbara Helfferich, an environment spokesperson for the Commission, told the BBC: “There are number of ways of doing this.
“We can reduce burning of fossil fuel, we can use alternative energy sources, we can restrict traffic in inner cities.”
All you have to do is compare the death rates with smoking rates you will find your answer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_cigarette_consumption_per_capita
Like Willis shows, it not hard. After a while you get your own BS detector. I feel like I am living in the Matrix.. I know its all a lie but know one believes me.
One of the most basic principles in biology is that a species or population will grow until it reaches its limits of food and/or predation. Humans have reached that point–with 20th century and earlier agricultural practices. One poster above said the global birth declined from 170 million to 140 million. I just checked Demographia and it said there were about 130 million in 2009.
But the carrying capacity of the Earth itself can be increased. Deserts can be irrigated, and http://www.sonicbloom.com shows another method of explosively increasing the productivity of farmland. There are other breakthroughs out there, too.
Nor do the breakthroughs benefit only Homo sapiens and our direct symbiotes–wildlife abundance and diversity is being increased as well. We have just started to learn how. But we are carbon based life forms. The carbon has to come from somewhere. Fossil fuels and only fossil fuels fill the bill.
1st picto-gram reveals lots of room to put more people south of Tripoli once we ratchet up so much CO2 that the world becomes wet.