Guest essay by Geoff Chambers
“Ten Billion” by Stephen Emmott – a 120-page paperback Ehrlich-style Doomfest – is due out in the next few days, published by Vintage in the USA and Penguin in the UK. German, Italian and Dutch translations are also due. Publication was brought forward hurriedly because of the appearance in Britain of a spoiler – “Population: Ten Billion” by Danny Dorling.
Very briefly: Emmott argues that a combination of population growth, rising consumption, climate change, species loss and environmental depredation will lead us to catastrophe by the year 2100, and there’s nothing we can do about it. In his inimitable catch phrase: “We’re f*cked”. Dorling agrees with Emmott’s basic thesis but adds: “Yes we can”.
Both agree that massive behaviour change on the part of the citizens of the rich West is a necessary condition for saving the planet , change which no democratically elected government could implement. You’re left to draw your own conclusions. The conclusion Emmott draws is contained in an anecdote which is mentioned in practically every discussion of the book. Confronted with the dire predictions emanating from the work done by Emmott and his team of forty scientists at the Microsoft Laboratory in Cambridge, England, the reaction of one of the team was that the only thing to do was “teach your child to use a gun”.
The simultaneous publication of both books means that the conditions have been realised for a phony debate in Britain between “optimists” and “pessimists” over what to do, or whether anything can be done – a debate from which sceptics are excluded, since both sides implicitly accept the worst expert predictions found in official sources- a population of 10 billion and a 6°C rise in global temperature.
Emmott’s book is based on a one-man-show performed by Emmott himself at the Royal Court theatre in London in July 2012 – a show which got rave reviews from the green-leaning British press. Emmott is no actor and a very poor public speaker, but his position as Professor of Computational Science at Microsoft’s Cambridge Lab, plus visiting professorships at Oxford and London Universities, lent authority to his views, which were swallowed unquestioningly by the British press. Interviews in the Observer and the Financial Times established Emmott as an expert to be reckoned with, and there was talk of a TV series or a TED talk. The final format chosen for getting his thesis out to a wider public was a popular paperback.
The original playscript was never published, but Alex Cull and I gathered as much material from the play as we could find from interviews and critics and analysed Emmott’s thesis in a blog post at
http://www.climate-resistance.org/2012/08/it’s-a-fct-we’re-fcked.html
As more information became available, we followed up with a series of posts at
http://geoffchambers.wordpress.com/category/stephen-emmott/
Wherever we could check Emmott’s claims, they turned out to be false or exaggerated. His claim that a Google search uses as much electricity as boiling a kettle was the subject of a retraction at New Scientist, following a complaint from Google that the claim was out by a factor of a hundred. His claim in a talk that species lost is running at more than a thousand times the natural rate was based on a 20-year-old source which estimated loss at “a hundred to a thousand times the natural rate”. Emmott simply took the upper estimate and added “more than”. It’s true that there is an official UN estimate of a population of ten billion by the year 2100 (in a 2010 online update to the last official report in 2004) but Emmott fails to mention that the report has population flatlining by this time, and declining thereafter.
We haven’t read the book yet, but an extensive extract published by the Observer at
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/jun/30/population-growth-wipe-out-life-earth
makes it clear that his basic thesis hasn’t changed. Nor have his two key catch-phrases, since “We’re f*cked” and “Teach my son how to use a gun” appeared at the top and bottom of publicity material issued by Penguin Books a couple of days ago at a number of news sites, for example at
http://www.buzzfeed.com/lukelewis/13-graphs-that-suggest-the-planet-might-be-totally-screwed
The publicity handout is a collection of thirteen graphs, which I’ve analysed very briefly at
The Emmott / Penguin graphs in detail
They are, quite simply, terrible. They’d be a disgrace in an essay by a first year university student. In at least two cases, the timescale on the x axis changes half way along with no indication. They appear to have been drawn by hand by someone who can’t use a ruler. Decadal changes appear to happen roughly every 12-15 years. Scales are deliberately chosen to create hockeysticks. Future population growth is represented as a vertical line, instead of the S-shaped curve which every serious demographic study supports.
Since first putting up these graphs, Buzzfeed have added footnotes giving sources. In every case the graphs are “adapted from..” or “compiled from…”. In other words, they are the responsibility of the author.
In response to a comment on my article that I was “nit-picking”, I acknowledged that the graphs were probably the work of some hard-pressed intern at Penguin Books with an impossible deadline to meet. Since then, I’ve seen a paywalled interview with Emmott in the Times
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/life/article3805225.ece
in which the interviewer says:
“…all the graphs in his book, which you suspect he carries around in his head as well – graphs for world population, CO2 parts per million, global ocean heat content and loss of tropical rainforest and woodland, for instance – are lurching upward in ways they never have before.
‘It’s precisely because of those graphs that I think we are in trouble,’ he says.”
… which makes it pretty clear that the graphs belong to Emmott, the Microsoft Professor of Computational Science who, in a recent speech to a government-funded innovation thinktank, spoke of the need for:
“…an entirely new generation of entirely new kinds of scientists, of scientists … who are computationally first rate, and I don’t mean people who know where the on button is on their Macintosh, I mean conceptually and mathematically computationally first rate.”
I invite WUWT readers to amuse themselves by going through the graphs with a ruler and a fine tooth comb. It may be nit-picking, but there are an awful lot of nits, and it’s best to comb them out now before they hatch and we’re all scratching ourselves to death.
It always irks me when someone complains there are too many people on this planet, yet somehow it’s me that should leave, not them. No thanks. I’m not leaving until my allotted time is up.
I’m paying my way by one of the time-honored means of creating value while here on earth, manufacturing, out of the big 3 of mining, manufacturing, and agriculture (the 4th – distribution – is arguable). I do resent it when someone living scott-free off the excess produced by wealth-creating individuals has the gall to tell me I’m the one who is dead weight and needs to leave.
If I didn’t suspect that we’re all too busy minding our own affairs to get together on a little protest, I’d suggest everyone in mining, manufacturing, or agriculture take a 6-month vacation all at the same time as a small demonstration of who actually provides the payroll for this party that we call civilized society. But hey! That’s just me when I’m irked. YMMV.
I suspect that the Emmott Penguin is close to extinction.
I like the graphs. Most of them chart success. Any species that isn’t successful is in danger of extinction.
The charts however, reek of chartmanship. Plotting as few as 2 data points and extrapolating isn’t science.
How can we exorcise the ghost of Thomas Malthus. He seems more persistent than Sauron, the various dark lords of Shanara, or a bad case of athletes’ foot.
And this is why we need to get off this planet ASAP.
Not because there’s going to be some horrible overpopulation disaster, but because the anti-human nutters are going to do their best to kill us of first.
Fake irrelant graphs.
Left-wingers, environmentalists salivate.
The Earth is fine. Mama Nature likes us or she wouldn’t have put us so much in charge. The environment in developed North America and Europe seems to be perfectly fine and it is, in fact, becoming a species haven.
But then, fake graphs seem to work with 40% of our species. We can’t win with logic and real graphs with them. We need to move to the emotional level where they live.
Manfred says:
July 7, 2013 at 5:50 pm
Why please would you not go with that study? What do you find wrong with it?
That some Muslim countries are not yet undergoing demographic transition is no reason to assume that they won’t soon follow others since the Industrial Revolution began. It’s not because the people don’t want to have fewer kids, but because they don’t know how to limit the size of their families, because they haven’t been shown how to, or their regimes don’t want them to do so.
http://www.irinnews.org/report/96969/analysis-tackling-pakistan-s-population-time-bomb
The future is bright. The last enclaves of pre-Industrial reproductive patterns are converting.
Blade-
MS or its affiliated Gates Foundation are financing much of the curriculum coming to a classroom near you anywhere on the globe. No thinking mind left with what is being pushed. No need to worry about a garage competitor with that ed vision.
http://atc21s.org/index.php/about/team/ is the ed vision. Talk about toxic to the mind.
Plus the gaming emphasis coming to education so students are “engaged” is apparently an xbox boondoggle.
Lose. Lose. Win if politically connected.
milodonharlani says:
July 7, 2013 at 6:49 pm
Manfred says:
July 7, 2013 at 5:50 pm
Why please would you not go with that study? What do you find wrong with it?
——————————————
Because, as I said, it reflects behaviour of parts of the population and is temporal. Take Pakistan again, for example.
Only 27% of the population believes family planning is moral, but 84% favour making Sharia the law of the country and 76% of those favour death penalty for leaving Islam.
http://www.pewforum.org/Muslim/the-worlds-muslims-religion-politics-society-beliefs-about-sharia.aspx
So, the 27%, who may be responsive to family planning may try (if the majority allows), but this will just make them an ever smaller minority in the future.
Such belief systems may change over decades, but I do not see this happening anymore, with Saudi/Qatar oil money vigorously spreading the most conservative form of Islam around the world and the Western world strangely supporting them.
Geoff Chambers writes:
‘The conclusion Emmott draws is contained in an anecdote which is mentioned in practically every discussion of the book. Confronted with the dire predictions emanating from the work done by Emmott and his team of forty scientists at the Microsoft Laboratory in Cambridge, England, the reaction of one of the team was that the only thing to do was “teach your child to use a gun”.’
Isn’t this the vision that was embodied in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution back in 1789? Didn’t the Supreme Court reaffirm it a couple of years ago? Now Emmot is suggesting that for Europe it will become a popular but desperate measure taken in response to an unprecedented crisis?
The measure did not seem desperate 225 years ago when the US adopted it as a fundamental right. It did not seem desperate when Chief Justice Roberts reaffirmed it a couple of years ago. The vast majority of Americans might wonder why England and similar countries did not adopt the measure long ago. Let’s hope that the Second Amendment is adopted as a fundamental right by every country in the world.
The 7th graph labeled “Global Temperature Increase” shows a 1.2 C increase in temperature since about 1913. NOAA says that temperatures have risen 0.74 C over the past century. So how does Emmott justify a graph that shows a 1.2 C rise over the past 100 years?
I think its a fine idea to teach your children how to handle a gun, for a variety of reasons, including basic firearms safety, personal defense and what may end up being necessary survival skills when the current bubble finally, really, bursts.
Malthus and all Malthusians treat humans as unevolved chimpanzees that are incapable of creating wealth. Malthusianism surely ranks as a hate crime on Ivy League campuses.
10 billion ain’t enough, we’ve got a whole universe to populate!
PS: Convienient he’ll be long dead before 2100 and prediction fail.
The bogusness of expected population growth is very similar to the bogusness of expected global warming. For example, population models (with all those assumptions that may or may not be valid) predict a population peak of 9-10 billion However, when past empirical data is used as the basis, the data suggests a peak of 8.5 billion. I’m afraid we have 10 more years of scaremongering regarding over-population before people realize the peak will be in 2050 or thereabouts. Also, about the point of rising consumer demand for the population as a whole, the counterpoint to that argument is that most of the 8.5 billion are old people, and old people don’t buy stuff. The people who buy stuff are growing families, and they will be in short supply post 2030.
Wouldn’t it be nice if they were all to the same scale and ended at the same time.
Perhaps some sort of labelling to suggest the point of departure from fact to fiction (projection) would also be nice.
Selective ending of some graphs before the current time whilst others are projected into the future sometimes with counterintuitive step ups (e.g. coal consumption) when the slope at the current time is decreasing.
Well at least we know the reality of this nonsense before people get all hyped up about it.
Indeed. Thanks for that link. You gotta love this …
This has always been a pet peeve of mine ever since Apple and Microsoft started infiltrating K-12 by become fashionable budget items in school budgets, the so-called “education market”, as if it is a market at all ( it is a captive market where school districts spend fleeced taxpayer dollars at will and repeatedly return to the taxpayer well for increases annually ).
Ironically, It seems that ATCS21 has failed mathematics themselves. Last time I checked an Earth day still ran about 24 hours, a week 7 days and an Earth year is still 365 days and change. To paraphrase an old saying: ‘They ain’t making no more hours in a day’, which means the school day is still the same length. So if schools are to take on their curricula, exactly what parts of “reading, writing, mathematics and science” gets thrown away to make room? ~Crickets~
When computers first appeared in schools ( not for administration but in classrooms ) in the mid-1980’s I was a lonely voice saying the same thing as now, exactly what is being removed so that kids have this time to even use a computer? ~Crickets~ Gates, Jobs, Allen and Wozniak never even saw a computer in K-12, exactly what are kids supposed to learn on a computer. K-12 is NOT vocational. Here’s the truth, invading the classroom ( and our kids minds ) is all about one thing – turning them into good little consumers of Windows, Macs, Office and now Internet and Social sites. At least that was the purpose at first. Now it would appear that in typical camel nose under the tent fashion, they are progressing further to blatant indoctrination. And why not? Schools are the babysitter taking the kids off the parents’ hands for a sizable chunk of the day.
This is what happens when there is no pushback in the beginning. Suddenly one day you wake up 30 years later asking how the hell we got to this place.
As noted in Overpopulationisamyth.com , there are 3 UN population survey spreadsheets published together. The only one that has ever been accurate, or close to it, is the Low Band one. It currently projects a peak under 8 billion around 2045, declining thereafter. Depopulation will be the crisis then, I presume! Personal service robots may have to take up the slack.
Robin says:
July 7, 2013 at 7:10 pm
”
http://atc21s.org/index.php/about/team/ is the ed vision. Talk about toxic to the mind.
”
Interesting, from the FAQ:
“Q: What are the founder countries, and why were these countries selected?
A: These countries have been chosen on the basis of national education quality; technological advancement, particularly in education, geographic and cultural balance; and experience in international cooperation in education:
Finland, Singapore and Australia are high performers in PISA and are heavily engaged with the use of ICT in education.
Before 2009, Singapore had not participated in PISA; however, the 2009 PISA study showed that Singapore tests above average and is one of the highest-performing countries in international studies, such as the TIMSS. It is also a substantial user of ICT in education.
The U.S. is a major international player in advancing the use of ICT in education.
”
So, the “founder countries” have been “chosen”? What definition of “founder” is THAT?
Second – Finland and Singapore are ABOVE the PISA average – so the goal can obviously not be to improve – because then you would start with something to improve. The goal must be to wreck.
ICT probably means “Information and communications technology”, even though it could also be
“Internationalist Communist Tendency, the new name of the left communist group formerly known as the International Bureau for the Revolutionary Party”
( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalist_Communist_Tendency );
so given it is the former it is this keeping a file for life on every kid and control and change its behaviour until it accomodates to the globalist multicultural vision of the communitarians / monopoly capitalists.
Microsoft currently looks viler by the minute.
“Both agree that massive behaviour change on the part of the citizens of the rich West is a necessary condition for saving the planet , change which no democratically elected government could implement.”
No argument there. The first “massive behaviour change” we need is to throw out the democratically elected, but bought-and-paid-for, parasites who currently form our governments, and to replace them with people whose purpose is transparently to represent the interests of their populations rather than those of their current financial and corporate owners. Then we need to get those governments working together to exert democratic control over the banks and corporations and force them to act responsibly – both in paying their taxes and in cleaning up the vast acreages of emvironmental damage and countries full of social damage they have already caused. Then they’ll have to rip out the current superstructure of self-styled “global governance” demons and start working out an international structure which is likewise answerable to the people of the world. Then …
Yes, there’s a lot to be done. The sooner we start, the sooner it’ll be done. And while I agree that none of our present “democratically elected” governments will voluntarily give up their corruptly gotten gains, that doesn’t make the job any less necessary – rather the opposite. So, let’s get started!
He must be really popular at parties
@DirkH:
You bet. I downloaded a 100 MB application for connecting my phone via USB. Hello? Ok, ok I’m a thief so I’m not allowed to access my phone like a disk drive and must be controlled by a supposedly helpful guard.
But on installing I was told there must be access to the internet to download some more. Hello? Fortunately, my admin account has no internet access.
This additional download(s) must be unrelated to the application to be installed because otherwise the 100 MB would contain it. Microsoft wants to install something or get informations out of my system in supervisory mode. This ‘something’ also cannot be delivered with the application to be installed because someone would find out…
You should read the license indoctrination, too. They allow themselves to do everything inside your computer, otherwise you are not allowed to use the software. Well, agreed, I will not.
…a combination of population growth, rising consumption, climate change, species loss and environmental depredation will lead us to catastrophe by the year 2100, and there’s nothing we can do about it. …
Aha…. back in the 1960s it was going to be catastrophe by the year 2000.
That gave them 40 years of doom-saying. I see that they have now learnt, and have allowed themselves 100 years.
Two quotations by the great H. L. Mencken seem appropriate:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
“the urge to save humanity is always a false front for the urge to rule it.”
Manfred said: “Take Pakistan again, for example. Only 27% of the population believes family planning is moral, but 84% favour making Sharia the law of the country and 76% of those favour death penalty for leaving Islam.”
Manfred, I think you are a little off base. The patriarchal nature of Islamic culture may well enhance the birth rate. But that comes more from pressures from parents and not from religious beliefs about family planning (i.e. contraceptives). The wife (or wives) can easily make their own decisions as the society becomes more wealthy with more leisure or employment opportunities. OTOH, that economic advancement may be retarded to the extent that Islam may permit more autocracy. But that is also improving, not monotonically, but slowly improving with the overall advance of mankind from hunter-gatherer with 20 children (mostly dead before reproducing) to urban technocrat with no need or desire for children.