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.
“Where is the graph showing the number of self proclaimed prophets/experts who claim the end is near?”
Oh you mean these people?
Both agree that massive behaviour change on the part of the citizens of the rich West..
“The rich West”? Wake up you moron – there has not been a “rich West” for half a century.
Just Steve says: @ur momisugly July 7, 2013 at 12:09 pm
Oh great, Paul Erlich redux. In the liberal world, nothing succeeds like failure.
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And it makes such a GREAT excuse as to why we all have to be herded into Transit Villages while the transnational ag corporations continue to jack food prices through the roof.
We already have the technology to feed the world if the Regulating Class would just get the heck out of the way.
Note the words ‘Sustainable Future’ and ” Israel’s water monitoring and allocation system is phenomenal – every drop of water, from freshwater resources to desalinated water, is accounted for, priced accordingly, and delivered to the end-user….For we Californians, it was surprising and inspiring to hear about the innovative strategies….” in this National Geo article on Israel’s desalinization.
GAG, even the World Nuclear Association is spouting the same Politically Correct garbage.
hydrogen from water…. —-> see Drilling For Hydrogen
Jim south london (July 8, 2013 at 1:30 am) says:
“He must be really popular at parties”
Indeed. Katie Mitchell, who directed the stage show of “Ten Biillion” at the Royal Court said in an interview:
“I really love this scientist, and I love the engagement with his mind and his way of looking at the world. Every single thing that you do with him, if you eat or you travel on a train, he just looks at the world in a completely different way. So if you have a salad with him, he tells you about all the processes by which the f*cking lettuce got onto your plate. So it’s – you can see, now I’m a bit, you know, low. Because I did about six hours travelling with him yesterday. So I had to look at the world from his devastatingly depressing point of view. And it has got to me, I have to say, now.”
When I was young we were presented with a similar book of doom: “Report of the Club of Rome, Limits to Growth”. No, it was not the Roman Catholic Church that produced it but a self-appointed club of “expert” doomsayers. We were not to make it to 2000 unless we repented.
I had sleepless nights about it until I recognised it for what it was: glorified astrology. I’ve been a sceptic ever since.
DirkH says: @ur momisugly July 7, 2013 at 12:43 pm
….All in all, one should use really computationally first rate scientists who know how to create really good graphs. Hmm, why does this sound like an advertisement for Björn Lomborg’s The Skeptical Environmentalist?…
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Because Björn Lomborg is a political ‘scientist’? (An oxymoron if I have ever heard one)
And here I thought he was talking about John Kehr The inconvenient Skeptic or A. J Strata’s Strata-sphere temperature Error and the newest one How Climate Models Prove There Is No CO2 Driven Warming or Dr. Roy Spencer link
@Mike Ozanne: Ridicule is indeed a most effective method of getting perspective. More is needed. Indignation and logic and reason only go so far and fail to reach many minds. Ridicule on the other hand seems to speak to all.
Sorry Geoff just entertaining our troops.Question anybody else think hes pissed off Zara Philips and Mike Tyndal are having another Royal Baby.
Gore Vidal wrote Kalki in 1978 to highlight just how far this kind of thinking can go . .
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalki_(novel)
It always boils down to “kill the others, but not me” it’s for their own good.
Keitho,
Kalki was a very scary book. Especially scary because, as Vidal pointed out, there are organisms that kill as he described.
[PS: if you have any intention of reading Kalki, don’t click on Keitho’s link above or it will ruin the ending.]
Jimbo says: @ur momisugly July 7, 2013 at 1:12 pm
…..Take a look at this shocking hockey still on world fertility rates. We are doomed.
http://www.krusekronicle.com/kruse_kronicle/2013/05/world-total-fertility-rate-1960-2010.html
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No politician in the EU or the USA will mention this is the real reason for loose immigration standards. Nor mention the rotten schooling in the USA.
sirboabtree says:
July 7, 2013 at 3:13 pm
So another tome on how mankind is going to destroy the planet. In fact we aren’t going to destroy the planet, we may make it uninhabitable for mankind but we aren’t about to turn it into a used BBQ briquette.
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By adding back the sequestered CO2 we are ‘Greening” the planet and saving trees and other C3 plants that would otherwise become extinct during the next glaciation or two.
Carbon starvation in glacial trees recovered from the La Brea tar pits, southern California
If there is a ‘Mass Extinction’ some time soon it would be from glaciation and the wild climate swings accompanying a descent into glaciation as the climate switches from one mode to the other. The climate seems to be Bi-stable, so it is the time near transition that gives wild climate.
Richard B. Alley of the U.Penn. chaired the National Research Council on Abrupt Climate Change. From the opening paragraph in the executive summary:
David in Michigan @ur momisugly July 7, 2013 at 12:49 pm
“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.” Is that statement or its equivalent actually in the book(s)?
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It is certainly stated point blank in the book co-authored by Obama’s Science Czar Holdern and the Ehrlichs.
Sure sounds like an earlier version of Agenda 21 and that scares the … out of me. Remember Maurice Strong was chair of the First Earth Summit in 1972, was on the UN Commission on Global Governance, and thanks to Bush was chair at Kyoto.
And that thread leads to From Carroll Quigley to the UN Millennium Summit which gives a nice concise outline of the different pieces of the plan to be implemented.
Steve C says:
July 8, 2013 at 12:48 am
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.
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They already tried that routine. It was called the USSR. It didn’t work.
BTW the worlers’ paradise had a worse environmental record than any “rich” western country. We all know what kind of environment the people’s rebublic/i> has.
Will 10B ever be reached? It is a serious question. Fecundity is dropping like a rock, world wide. We have never seen anything like this in recorded history, the closest thing was the Plague. But that was not really world wide. We may be steeply negative earlier than anyone could ever imagine.
RE: But it did not slow down in the Muslim world, just the opposite, the richest Muslim countries are among those with the highest reproduction rates.
In those countries only the 1%ers do that. The masses do not. Not unlike the West when you think about it.
A serious response to dystopia books that use dystopia to justify ‘green’ scams that do not work on an engineering level or an economic level would require a completing book. This is the Coles notes response.
1) Green Scams
It should be noted that trillions of dollars have been spent on ‘green’ scams and atmospheric CO2 continues to increase. The critical problem to solve is how to stop wasting of trillions of dollars on ‘green’ scams.
I believe global cooling should help resolve this problem as will the start of economic collapse of the countries that persist in the green scam madness.
2) Climate Change
The planet is going to cool (significantly) rather than warm, so the climate change problem is going to be global cooling rather than global warming. The greenhouse gas mechanism saturates due to an incorrect radiation assumption in the higher regions of the troposphere. The majority of the warming in the last 70 years was caused by solar magnetic cycle changes, rather than the increase in atmospheric CO2. I have no idea what is the solution to global cooling. Let’s wait until the subject of global cooling comes up on the talk shows.
3) Extinction of animals and environmental protection and how to feed 10 billion people
The majority of the extinction of animals and plants is due to a loss of habitat, as more and more of the planet’s arable fertile land is used for agriculture. The conversions of food to biofuel based on the current mandates will require all of the available land to be used to grow food to convert to biofuel. As people still need to eat, more virgin forests must be cut down to provide food for people and food to convert to biofuel. If all energy inputs are measured there is almost no net benefit (reduction in carbon dioxide emission) to convert let say corn to ethanol, yet 45% of the US corn crop is now converted to ethanol. The food to biofuel mandates are madness and will create food wars if it is not stopped.
There is a net reduction in land required to feed people by a factor of roughly 2 if we convert to veganism. Roughly 80% of the Western diseases: most of the common cancers, atherosclerosis (cause of heart attacks, strokes, and so on), dementia, diabetes, arthritis, and so on are due to comically high levels of animal protein, fat, sugar, and salt in the Western diet. 18% of the US GDP is currently spent on health care and is projected to increase to 30%. People’s ideas about diet come from the food manufacturing industry (silly myths) and have no basis in science. If you are interested in the subject of science of diet read Forks over Knifes (or watch the DVD of the same name) and read MacDougall’s books which provide additional research and MacDougall’s clinical work to treat Western Health problems with diet as well as MacDougall’s extensive research paper summary to justify and explain the science for why a change in diet eliminates the health problem. The data and research is astonishing as is the practical change in how one fells and the immediate elimination of health problems due to a change in diet. The point of discussing health care at the same time as discussing environmental protection is each country has a limited amount of money to spend on services and programs. Western governments currently spend more money on entitlements than they take in taxes. That is not sustainable.
If you are interested in failure of the current green party anti industry, anti people, anti economic growth policy I would highly recommend the book ‘Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility by Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger.
One of the points of the books is to have money to spend on clean air and clean water in let say African countries, there needs to prosperous country an industrial base. The note also that there is a significant reduction in population growth as income increase and women enter the work force.
They noted why specific dystopian scenarios are incorrect and they note no one will engage the population with ‘I have a nightmare’ as the start of your speech to justify their solution which is a massive reduction in living standards, rationing of energy, forced population control, end to vacation traveling by plane, and so on.
4) Solution to Energy Problem
We should be investing in nuclear energy either Thorium reactors or Breeder Reactors as nuclear energy will work however there are technical issues that need to be worked out. Prototypes and limited build test reactors need to be installed to work out the bugs and to optimize.
It is interesting that the author of the Break Through book is also the producer of the film Pandora’s Promise. That film presents basic facts that shows ‘green’ energy will not work and outlines a case for the use of nuclear power.
http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/videos/environmentalists-go-pro-nuclear-in-pandoras-promise-trailer-20130430
“After sifting through the anti-nuclear choruses and the considerably smaller pro-nuclear groups in an attempt to find the truth about the advantages and disadvantages of nuclear energy, Stone found his answer with Michael Shellberger, the president and co-founder of the Breakthrough Institute: “We can have a world living modern lives without killing the climate.”
William: We are not ‘killing’ the climate. As noted above a very strong argument can be made to support the assertion that the planet will cool rather than warm, however, rather than spending money on green scams that just waste trillions of dollars spending money on nuclear would provide a useful long term option to fossil fuel. There is roughly a billion years of uranium available using uranium extracted from sea water.
Comment:
A strong argument can also be made that earth’s hydrocarbons and surface water comes from deep core released CH4. That likely removes the running out of access able hydrocarbons for hundreds or thousands of years.
Manfred says: @ur momisugly July 7, 2013 at 4:52 pm
…But it did not slow down in the Muslim world, just the opposite, the richest Muslim countries are among those with the highest reproduction rates….
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Yes, and they IMPORT FOOD. If the USA Ok’s the Keystone pipeline, fracks natural gas and invests in thorium nuclear, the Muslim world is going to be sitting with a large population and no way to feed them as oil prices drop. What in heck do you think the ‘Arab Spring’ was really about?
One of the causes of the 2008 food riots – How Goldman Sachs Created the Food Crisis
When I was in college in the early 70’s, Paul Ehrlich was required reading. We were doomed then. The year 2000 would be one of mass die-off of the human population. I look at these graphs as a testament to the rapid advance over the last 250 years of science, technology and the rise of humanity. And that’s a good thing. BTW, the CO2 graph is a total farce. Global CO2 levels have been much higher in the past…did he forget about volcanoes?
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I don’t know whether to say, “It’s now more than just words.” or “It’s worse than we thought!”
http://portal.wowway.net/tv/3/player/vendor/Newsy/player/fiveminute/asset/newsy-female_inmates_sterilized_illegally_in_c-gnrc
H.R. says:
July 7, 2013 at 6:05 pm
….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….
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.
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You would like Doreen’s LET THEM EAT GRASS After the food safety modernization act passed I took my farm out of production permanently (Only a fool wants to chance millions in fines and ten years in jail.) Now it only feeds me. However the ruling class has that covered too.
(This is enough to make me gag)
In 1934 Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Rexford Tugwell, part of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first “Brain Trust,” said “[Our] future is becoming visible in Russia.”
“Food is a weapon,” said Maxim Litvinov, Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs
” The Socialist Revolution in the US cannot take place because there are too many small independent farmers there. Those people are the stability factor. We here in Russia must hurry while our government is stupid enough to not encourage and support the independent farmership.” V. Lenin, the founder of the Russian revolution
1932 to 1937 “The Collective Farm Policy was a terrible struggle, Ten million died. It was fearful. Four years it lasted. It was absolutely necessary.” Joseph Stalin
And in September 1995 at the UN’s 4th World Conference on Women: Beijing, China, Catherine Bertini, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program, and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, stated “Food is power. We use it to change behavior. Some may call that bribery. We do not apologize.”
I do not see much change in attitude. Nicole Johnson has an excellent well documented summary of the carefully crafted takeover of US family farms link At least it was done gradually here in the USA.
Blade says: @ur momisugly July 7, 2013 at 9:07 pm
… 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….. 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.
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Actually it was a heck of a lot longer ago than that. I got used for a ‘Progressive Reading Experiment’ in the early 1950’s. See Dumbing Down America by Dr. Samuel Blumenfeld and the discussion over at EM Smith’s website (Don’t miss Robin’s Info either, click on his name.)
David in Michigan says: @ur momisugly July 8, 2013 at 6:44 am
…Ridicule is indeed a most effective method of getting perspective….
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I really want that bumper sticker for all my trucks that says:
FEED A TREE, BURN COAL
Gunga Din says: @ur momisugly July 8, 2013 at 2:13 pm
…. I don’t know whether to say, “It’s now more than just words.” or “It’s worse than we thought!”
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BOTH!
The only good thing is people are starting to wake up to what is happening. The bad news is we (in the USA) have lost complete control of our government. The link given above, America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution is a great synopsis of the current situation and how we got there.
@Ed Zuiderwijk:
That same Club of Rome are indirectly behind the AGW scare promotion.
The “Limits to Growth” started the computer fantasy “projection” and fear mongering (and all their “projections” failed miserably). This is that same old hash, reheated and served with more sour sauce…
It is simply that it is far easier to scare stupid people into a panic than to get them to think critically about the fear mongering. So the control freaks have learned to promote fear and panic to gain more power and control.
In the old days, when IBM used that tactic to sell against the competition, it was called “FUD”. Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. It still works…
So for whatever reasons, the Club Of Rome is pushing FUD, and has been since the ’70s, as a means to garner more money and power to “the right people”… Using population fears and resource scares the whole way. Use an exponential growth curve against a static supply and call it a catastrophe.
Same game now, but it’s a “hockey stick” against an imaginary flat history (of static temperatures that never was…).
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/08/there-is-no-shortage-of-stuff
http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/03/20/there-is-no-energy-shortage/
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/ulum-ultra-large-uranium-miner-ship/
I’ve done the calculations several times. They keep coming out the same. We MIGHT have a problem at about 100 Billion population. Less than that? Not a problem. As it stands, everyone can have an ocean view apartment and leave ALL the inland area empty. Or have all the world live a standard U.S. Suburban lifestyle in an area about 1000 miles on a side (Texas is 918 miles or so edge to edge…) with the rest of the world empty. That’s single family detached homes on their own plot of land…
Most of the world is empty. It’s just the same folks that call it “fly over country” complaining about how crowded it is in New York City and thinking that represents the world. It doesn’t. They need to get out of the airplane and try to cross Kansas by car… on country roads…
Oh Well. “Stupid is as stupid does.”…