Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
For a while, I taught a course in human-powered machinery for the Peace Corps. You know, bicycle powered generators, treadle powered pumps, that kind of thing. One of the very rough rules of thumb regarding human energy is that an adult human can put out about a hundred watts on an ongoing, constant all-day basis. If you were to hook up a bicycle to a generator you could generate a kilowatt-hour every day … if you were in good shape and you put in a ten-hour day. Sounds like work to me.
Figure 1. Human-powered aluminum can crusher, Burning Man 2012.
I got to thinking about this number, one kilowatt-hour’s worth of electricity for a long ten-hour day’s work, in the context of the discussion about energy costs. Some people think raising energy costs to discourage CO2 production is a good thing. I say that raising energy costs, whether to discourage CO2 or for any other reason, trades a certain present loss for a very doubtful future gain. As such, it is an extremely bad idea. Here’s why:
The existence of electricity is perhaps the one thing most emblematic of human development. With electricity, we get refrigeration to preserve medicines and foods, light to extend the day, electric heat, power to run machinery, the list goes on and on. Now, as I showed above, we can hire somebody to generate electricity for us, at the rate of a kilowatt-hour for each ten-hour day’s work. Where I live, this day’s worth of slave labor, this thousand watt-hours of energy, costs me the princely sum of about thirteen cents US. I can buy an electric slave-day of work for thirteen cents.
That is why I live well. Instead of having slaves as the Romans had, I can buy a day’s worth of a slave’s constant labor for thirteen measly cents. That is what development consists of, the use of electricity and other forms of inexpensive energy in addition to and in lieu of human energy.
Now, here’s the next part of the puzzle. Out at the farther edges of society, where people live on a dollar a day or less, electricity is much more expensive than it is where I live. In the Solomon Islands, where I lived before returning to the US in 2009, electricity in the capital city cost fifty-two cents a kilowatt-hour, and more out in the outer islands.
Now, let us consider the human cost of the kind of “cap-and trade” or “carbon tax” or Kyoto Protocol agreements. All of these attempts to decrease CO2 have the same effect. They raise the cost of energy, whether in the form of electricity or liquid fuels. But the weight of that change doesn’t fall on folks like me. Oh, I feel it alright. But for someone making say $26.00 per hour, they can buy two hundred slave-days of work with an hour’s wages. (Twenty-six dollars an hour divided by thirteen cents per kWh.). Two hundred days of someone working hard for ten hours a day, that’s the energy of more than six months of someone’s constant work … and I can buy that with one hour’s wages.
At the other end of the scale, consider someone making a dollar a day, usually a ten-hour day. That’s about ten cents an hour, in a place where energy may well cost fifty-two cents per kilowatt-hour. Energy costs loom huge for them even now. I can buy six months of slave labor for one hour of my wage. They can buy a couple of hours of slave labor, not days or months but hours, of slave labor for each hour of their work.
And as a result, an increase in energy costs that is fairly small to me is huge to the poor. Any kind of tax on energy, indeed any policy that raises the cost of energy, is one of the most regressive taxes known to man. It crushes those at the lowest end of the scale, and the worst part is, there is no relief at the bottom. You know how with income tax, if you make below a certain limit, you pay no tax at all? If you are below the threshold, you are exempt from income tax.
But energy price increases such as carbon taxes don’t even have that relief. They hit harder the further you go down the economic ladder, all the way down to rock bottom, hitting the very poorest the hardest of all.
So when James Hansen gets all mealy-mouthed about his poor grandkids’ world in fifty years, boo-boo, it just makes me shake my head in amazement. His policies have already led to an increase in something I never heard of when I was a kid, “fuel poverty”. This is where the anti-human pseudo-green energy policies advocated by Hansen and others have driven the price of fuel so high that people who weren’t poor before, now cannot heat their homes in winter … it’s shockingly common in Britain, for example.
In other words, when James Hansen is coming on all weepy-eyed about what might possibly happen to his poor grandchildren fifty years from now, he is so focused on the future that he overlooks the ugly present-day results of his policies, among them the grandparents shivering in houses that they can no longer afford to heat …
Perhaps some folks are willing to trade a certain, actually occurring, measurable present harm to their grandparents, in order to have a chance of avoiding a far-from-certain distant possible future harm to their grandkids.
Not me.
I say let’s keep the old geezers warm right now, what the heck, they’ve been good to us, mostly, and lets provide inexpensive energy to the world, and thus encourage industry and agriculture to feed and clothe people, and let the grandkids deal with the dang future. That’s what our own grandparents did. They didn’t dick around trying to figure out the problems that we would face today. They faced the problems of their day.
Besides, according to the IPCC, fifty years from now those buggers are going to be several times wealthier than we are now. So why should I be worried about Hansen’s and my likely wealthy grandkids in preference to today’s demonstrably poor children? My grandkids will do just fine. Heck, they’ll probably have the dang flying cars I was promised, and the fusion power I was supposed to get that would be too cheap to meter, so let them deal with it. We have plenty of problems worrying about today’s poor, let’s focus on that and let the future take care of their poor.
The real irony is that these folks like Hansen claim to be acting on behalf of the poor, in that they claim that the effects of global warming will hit the poor hardest. I have never found out how that is supposed to happen. I say this because the effects of global warming are supposed to hit the hardest in the extra-tropics, in the winter, in the night-time. I have a hard time believing that some homeless person sleeping on the sidewalk in New York City in December is going to be cursing the fact that the frozen winter midnights are a degree warmer … so exactly which poor are they supposed to be saving, and from what?
w.
Without having looked into the details and history, from what I have read, the experience in recent Indian and Pakistani history disproves Malthus, in that the use of human ingenuity in the form of a new GM wheat variety developed by Norman Borlaug nearly doubled producton and so prevented mass starvation. If Malthus was right, that new variety would not have been developed and mass starvation would have happened.It was, and it didn’t.
I agree with Richard Courtney, on 2 counts, (i) you can’t fault someone’s writing and thesis for not being able to see the future, and (ii) when proved wrong, folks like Malthusians need to stop defending the indefensible and move on. This second count is also clearly evidenced in the climate debate regarding the greenhouse effect, now demonstrably wrong.
Simon, you wrote, “from what I have read, the experience in recent Indian and Pakistani history disproves Malthus, in that the use of human ingenuity in the form of a new GM wheat variety developed by Norman Borlaug nearly doubled producton and so prevented mass starvation. If Malthus was right, that new variety would not have been developed and mass starvation would have happened.It was, and it didn’t.”
Of course once the population doubles again from eating all that nice new GM wheat then Mr. Malthus may once again come a’knockin’ at the door…
– MJM
michaeljmcfadden says:
January 5, 2013 at 9:19 am
Of course once the population doubles again from eating all that nice new GM wheat then Mr. Malthus may once again come a’knockin’ at the door…
– MJM
MJM please do not start from the beginning. It was discussed up in the thread that human population does not multiply like bacteria in a Petri dish. It was shown that the relative increase in human population was 2% in the 1960s and is 1% now – not through “checks” by famine and war.
It was also shown that majority population projections see a stabilisation and decrease of the human population in the future, not through “checks” by famine and war and possibly no need for draconian Malthusians laws.
So you can get old and wait for the population to double and it may never happen again, not due to Malthusians limitations.
And very probably if the trend continues and the humans have the chance we will be then richer and better.
And as Willis explained above “The crazy part is, no matter how many false alarms of Armageddon are issued by failed Malthusian serial doomcasters, that doesn’t dent Malthus’s followers in the slightest. ” there will be another Malthusian that will post later again very soon the same sentence that you post now irrespective of what anybody else has written, irrespective of what it happens…
michaeljmcfadden:
At January 5, 2013 at 9:19 am you write
Of course you are right. Similarly, once pigs grow wings they may fly.
Many things may happen, but we have real problems to deal with. Considering hypothetical and improbable possibilities that may happen at some future date is a distraction which inhibits dealing with real problems.
Poverty is a real problem in India. And once the Indian population becomes sufficiently affluent then India’s population will decline (n.b. ‘will’ and not ‘may’). So, if you really care about avoiding India’s population doubling then help to deal with the real problem of India’s poverty.
You can ensure the potential problem you state will become a real problem by inhibiting India’s ability to develop by insisting India uses the Medieval technologies of windmills and biomass instead of using fossil fuels and nuclear power.
Richard
MJM says “Of course once the population doubles again from eating all that nice new GM wheat then Mr. Malthus may once again come a’knockin’ at the door…”
This is called a “guess.”
guess
[ gess ]
predict something: to form an opinion about something without enough evidence to make a definite judgment
conclude something correctly: to arrive at a correct answer
to conjecture about something
suppose something: to think or suppose something
Synonyms: deduction, conjecture, supposition, presumption, speculation, estimate, guesstimate
And this is what makes Malthus an augur, or a soothsayer, and not a scientist – along with all others who predict doom and shortages for the human race in the future. He may not have known what the future of agricultural developments were, but as a scientist, he should have known that too. It is the inability to recognize one’s own speculations for what they are that make common environmental activist the biggest plague upon us right now. But the scientists and academics who garb their speculations and conjecture about the future into sleek scientific language are utterly abusive of science and possibly frauds.
Overpopulation activists have very much in common with eugenics movements, and I am always going to be in the group that there should be less of, I guarantee you that.
It is wrong to assume you understand the systems of the earth and the state of future science enough to make such sweeping prophecies, and it is outside of the purview of science to convince others that you see the future well enough to base totalitarian policies on it. This is the error of the Save the World for the “public good” crowd. They are not scientists, they are activists, every single one. Don’t let them do you any favors.
WTF is a “malthusian”? Do you mean Darwin? Wallace? Are they “malthusians”? Are the principles of evolution “malthusian”? Is the study of population dynamics “malthusian”? Keynes was influenced by Malthus’ theory of rent and his ideas on surpluses. Does this mean that Keynesian economics in fact “malthusian”? P—- on those who go around saying “malthusian”. I never do.
Demographers, biologists, ecologists, all who study populations are familiar with this man’s work and employ his principles. Are all of these to be sneeringly labeled “malthusian” by the red-eyed haters of Erhlich and such?
If Willis were as brilliant as he likes to think, he would see that the principles of Malthus could be used to refute the likes of Erhlich and the other catastrophists, but I doubt that Willis can ever clear the red from eyes concerning Malthus, that profound thinker, long enough to read him.
mpainter says:
January 5, 2013 at 5:58 am
Yes, I did read him. Again. Once again found nothing of note, sorry. Near as I can tell his words haven’t changed in the last few days, he’s still wrong.
And I quoted him. Again. And I asked you, for the third time, to comment on the quotes. And for the third time, you have wandered off into irrelevancy, talking about anything and everything but Malthus’s actual words. You’d rather accuse me and abuse me than answer simple questions about Malthus.
When you gonna have the balls to actually answer the questions, mpainter?
w.
PS—If your interpretation of my words is that I want you to “spoon-feed” me Malthus, you desperately need a reading comprehension class. I can think of few things more unpleasant than the image of you actually trying to “spoon-feed” knowledge to anyone, particularly me. Your bizarre claim that I “expect [you] to spoon-feed [me]” brings up nausea-inducing images, and is a testament to your misunderstanding of the world.
mpainter says:
January 5, 2013 at 10:47 am
Ah, yes, another desperate attempt to not answer the questions. mpainter, if you don’t understand what a Malthusian is, don’t worry. The folks that need to know, do know, so there’s no reason for you to trouble yourself with things you don’t understand.
Instead, how about answering the questions you are running so hard to avoid?
w.
PS—since both the dictionary and the encyclopedia have definitions for “Malthusian”, and since you are obviously an admirer of Malthus, your claimed ignorance on the definition of “Malthusian” is, well, somewhat difficult to understand.
What’s even stranger is asking me and the rest of the folks for a definition. Do your homework if you don’t know what a Malthusian is, mpainter, wikipedia has a reasonable article on the subject, you could start there.
mpainter says:
January 5, 2013 at 10:47 am
Malthus can be used to refute Ehrlich? Do tell. Give us some quotes from Ehrlich and refute them with some quotes from Malthus to back up your cheap talk, mpainter, or that claim joins your other fanciful ideas in the circular file.
w.
PS—Is there anyone here who actually believes mpainter’s claim? Because I think that mpainter will never make the slightest effort to back this claim up. I doubt we’ll ever see mpainter put up a quote from Ehrlich, along with a quote from Malthus that refutes Ehrlich.
I could certainly be wrong, mpainter could come back with the goods, and if so he gets my apology … but I doubt it will happen. Ehrlich is spouting the straight Malthusian line (those who don’t know what that is, go stand with mpainter).
I copy myself from above:
If Willis were as brilliant as he likes to think, he would see that the principles of Malthus could be used to refute the likes of Erhlich and the other catastrophists, but I doubt that Willis can ever clear the red from eyes concerning Malthus, that profound thinker, long enough to read him.
S.Meyer says:
January 3, 2013 at 1:54 pm
@ur momisugly Gail
I enjoy your posts, but I have to nitpick a little.
About adding to your carbon footprint by exhaling…..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The comment was with tongue tucked firmly in cheek. I just could not resist because a case could be made using Climastrologist’s logic.
I thought the opening remark conveyed that.
gnomish says:
January 4, 2013 at 3:29 am
people do starve – by the millions, annually. do you suppose that has no effect on population? what presently limits the world population – or do you think the population is increasing unchecked?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Actually it is not food that is the limiting factor. It is other things. A high standard of living is the best way of limiting the human population. We do have the ability to feed people but the infra-structure to deliver is not there.
The USA now has a similar problem, as I mentioned in my other comments Want food security? Bring back a national grain reserve and Grain Reserves
India is also getting her population explosion under control. The Fertility Rate is now 2.58 and ” the number of deaths of infants under one year old in a given year per 1,000 live births in the same year” is 46.07 deaths/1,000 live births
A FR of 2.1 is generally considered a replacement rate.
For comparison:
USA FR = 2.06, baby deaths = 6 deaths/1,000 live births
Uk FR = 1.91, baby deaths = 4.56 deaths/1,000 live births
If people do not think some of their children will die before adulthood, they will produce less and invest more in the ones they do have. Most countries in the world now are below a FR = 3.00 except for Africa.
Willis Eschenbach says:
January 5, 2013 at 1:44 am
…And this fundamental misconception, this mistaken paradigm that food production is a function of the power in the earth and not a function of human imagineering, kept him from ever envisioning the possibility that the population could double, and that at the same time the food production could more than double…
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
That in a nutshell is the difference between Skeptics and the Catastrophists. We believe that humans can think themselves into a better future if others would just let us get on with it.
The Catastrophists want to hamstring the human race because of their fears.
Gail, it seems we both have a bit of a tongue in cheek problem. Folks, I was *not* pushing the Malthusian argument in any sense seriously in my “once the population doubles again” statement: I’m fully aware of the existence of lots of different and fairly unpredictable variables out there. However … it’s certainly interesting to consider the question of just what would have happened to the world’s population over the last 30 years without that advance? Would we have truly seen mass starvation in the billions? Or would other social mechanisms have intervened? (If this has already been dealt with, please ignore the question: I’ve admittedly only skimmed the arguments in this thread: too many other noodles stirring in my post-holiday pot here!)
— MJM
Can’t we credit CO2 here, just a little bit, for its synergistic affect of enabling more food growth…
Tell you what Willis, I never read Erhlich. I never read that sort of crap, it’s a waste of time. So I can’t cite Erhlich or any of those types.
But I imagine that these catastrophists who cite Malthus try to pass him off as a sort of prophet of doom. He was not, but you (and others) have imbibed your Malthus from them, and so you think so, too.
Assumingly, they paint a dreadful picture of mass starvation, food riots, etc. Well, this is unlikely, according to the principles of Malthus, who gave his understanding of how things worked. It is all upthread in my postings. Simply put, people behaved in such a fashion to keep population within the bounds of resources, meaning food, and so the specter of starvation was allayed, to a certain extent (keeping in mind that his day saw massive crop failure occasionally). In effect, Malthus explained why starvation was not an ever present spectacle in his day, even though the potential was there via the innate capacity of increase. He attributed to population a behavior that acted as a “governor” of increase. Presumably, the catastrophists ignore this aspect of Malthus, because it indeed refutes their doomsday panic-peddling of bunny rabbits multiplying exponentially.
Like I said, it’s upthread, but I recommend Malthus rather than myself. In effect, mass starvation ain’t gonna happen because people ain’t gonna let it, barring some terrible unforeseen disaster, such as massive crop failure. Population tends to adjust behavior so that the problem of provision of food is not exacerbated, as postulated in the principles laid down by this profound thinker. The catastrophists ignore these aspects of Malthus, it seems. I would imagine that they have closed their minds to the postulates of Malthus that show how population behaves to avert catastrophic food shortages (as you have). So by this, you can turn Malthus around to use against them and refute their wilder “malthusian” claims. They cannot ignore their own “claimed” authority. Sitting ducks, you see.
This simplifies Malthus. Malthus did indeed view food supply as the ultimate arbitrar of population, but much of his writings were concerned with how populations behaved to avert that “ultimate” point. Also, much of his writing on population also involved economics, because it all had to do with the behavior of “population”, though at a fairly basic level.
You have read Ehrlich, not I. So go to. Write yourself up a great Erhlich-bashing essay with the help of the profound thinker. Go read Malthus.
Regards mpainter
mpainter said @ur momisugly January 5, 2013 at 10:47 am
Well, in Malthus’ day it was pretty much synonymous with political economist. His writing certainly played a role in the institution of the first general census since the Domesday Book. Of course that generated data and a concomitant rise in the use of statistics to analyse the world.
One of the problems in this discussion is that Malthus’ writing is being read outside of the context of his day. Indeed, outside of the context of his other writing on political economy. If The Git were a complete cynic, he might conclude that we were gradually being led toward accepting Malthus’ severest critics for our guides: Engels, Marx and Lenin.
As mpainter wrote very much earlier in this thread, Malthus’ essay was a reaction to Rousseau and his ilk.
From Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality
Mario Lento said @ur momisugly January 5, 2013 at 2:06 pm
Yep! About 15% over the 20thC. Dunno how much is due to improved machinery, but it would be a huge amount compared with improved varieties and fertilisers. As I have pointed out in this place before, the major crop-limiting factor is water. Roger Pielke Sr (IIRC) has pointed out that we now harvest about half of the rainfall on the planet.
mpainter said @ur momisugly January 5, 2013 at 2:24 pm
Sorry mpainter, but it doesn’t work that way.From the Wiki-bloody-pedia:
Sorry git, let’s stick to the subject, please. You knew that I was not talking about genocide. Please do not pretend that was the issue.
Concerning the famine of the Ukraine, I was there way before you. I read the book on Lazar Kaganovitch, aka The Wolf of the Kremlin. Genocide was not within the purview of Malthus, as far as I know.
Suppose our grandparents had decided to “dick around” and pre-solve our problems for us. I can’t think of one thing they could have known about, anticipated, or done anything about if they had. What are the odds we’d fare any better, esp. in view of the much touted accelerating rate of change of human knowledge and society? “Prediction is hard, especially about the future.”
@ur momisugly mpainter
I am sticking to the subject matter: food and mass starvation. Your claim that “mass starvation ain’t gonna happen because people ain’t gonna let it” is plainly false. Famine from political causes has happened all too often within living memory. Given the food surpluses of the 20thC that means they were genocidal. This is not outside the purview of Malthus; he was a historian and political economist. Not to mention a curate who in the fashion of the time would have sermonised about the “poor, starving Chinese” and asked his congregation to contribute money for their relief.
The Pompous Git says: January 5, 2013 at 10:21 pm
This is not outside the purview of Malthus
======================================
The famine of the Ukraine was genocide. Malthus did not address genocide in his writings.
[snip – this video is inappropriate, and pointlessly presented – Anthony]
Apologies Anthony, was not intended to upset anybody.
mpainter says:
“He attributed to population a behavior that acted as a “governor” of increase. ”
Yes, I can see how he would think that. For centuries, population sizes remained fairly static – they occasionally crashed such as during plagues, but grew back to achieve a new status quo. It is obvious that the population limited itself to available means.
Nowdays, technology has advanced so much, that the new status quo is very high indeed. The human population doubled to 7 billion in the latter half of the twentieth century, and food production increased likewise. This is an example of the population readjusting to the new reality of available resource.
What you have said about Malthus does run counter to what most people seem to attribute to him. Perhaps if Malthus were alive today, he would not be a Malthusian.
Vince Causey said @ur momisugly January 6, 2013 at 6:59 am
Except populations didn’t remain static for centuries. For example, Medieval Britain suffered 95 famines, and France at least 75. The famine of 1315–6 is estimated to have killed at least 10% of England’s population (500,000). This was a period of relative food abundance (think Medieval Warm period). The Little Ice Age saw a great increase in the number of famines.
Two massive famines struck France between 1693 and 1710 killing over two million people.
In the 1690s Scotland’s famine reduced the population by 15% or more. The famine of 1695–96 killed 10% of Norway’s population. Nine severe harvest failures were recorded in Scandinavia between 1740 and 1800, each resulting in a substantial rise of the death rate. The Great Czech Famine (1770-71) killed about one tenth of the population (250,000). In northern Italy there were 111 famines in 316 years. I could go on, but you get the picture. Famines were frequent and recovery from them usually very slow. Peasants ate their draught animals and seed stocks hampering recovery when growing conditions improved.
A major role of government until modern times was implementation of measures to minimise the impact of famine. Malthus, among others, advocated a changed approach to famine management that resulted, as I wrote earlier, in the first general census, and the establishment of demographics as a discipline. The idea that knowing the statistics (literally information about the state) could lead to the formulation of a more rational approach to the then ever present problem of famine was opposed by the Romantics. These latter were vehemently opposed to labour-saving machines, the dehumanisation of people by counting them, and measuring things. Today, we call them the Greens.
So, to my mind calling Paul Ehrlich a Malthusian makes about as much sense as saying Vlad the Impaler was compassionate toward his enemies.