From the “Paul Ehrlich is still spectacularly wrong” department:
Malthus Chokes on Bumper Wheat Crop
A generation after leading scientists and experts warned the world of an escalating series of horrendous famines, the crop gluts continue. The latest kick in the pants to the Malthusian doomsayers is a bumper global wheat harvest. Defying not only the Club of Rome doomsayers, but also the climate Chicken Littles who have been warning about damage from rising temperatures to world agriculture, food production is booming even as meteorologists call July 2016 the hottest month ever.
The FT reports:
Extensive planting and benign weather have forced analysts to repeatedly raise crop outlooks. The International Grains Council last week increased its global wheat production forecast to a record 743m tonnes, up 1 per cent from last year. […]
The recent US winter wheat harvest was 45m tonnes, up 21 per cent from 2015, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Merchants who have run out of room in silos are piling wheat outdoors.Storage concerns are also growing in Russia, which is this year set to become the largest wheat exporter after hauling in more than 70m tonnes. In Canada, the government anticipates the second-largest wheat crop in 25 years, of 30.5m tonnes. Australia’s imminent wheat harvest is forecast at 26.5m tonnes, the most in five years.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t problems and worries in the world, but the combination of human ingenuity and the complexity of natural systems means that science is never quite as settled as publicity seeking scare mongers want people to think.
That good news is from The American Interest
But wait, there’s more:
From Marketwatch, record low wheat prices after harvest forecasts have been bumped up:
December wheat WZ6, +1.14% fell 4 cents, or 1%, to settle at $3.88 1/4 a bushel in Chicago. Prices, based on the most-active contracts, logged their lowest settlement since August 2006 and ended around 4% lower for the month, to tally a year-to-date loss of almost 17%, according to FactSet data.
Harvest pressure here and abroad, record [crop] yields in the U.S., a record crop in Russia are all weighing on the markets,” said David Maloni, president of the American Restaurant Association Inc.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture raised its estimate on Russian wheat production for the current crop year by 7 million metric tons to 72 million metric tons, citing “[e]xcellent growing conditions throughout the country and harvest reports showing very high yields.” It said that Russia is expected to be the world’s largest wheat exporter for the first time.
Meanwhile over at the National Climatic Data Center, they see worrisome temperature in bright red colors over Russia all year, saying it was the second warmest July ever.
Add wheat harvests to the list of official unmentionables and pass along to CNN for the silent treatment.
Fascinating, this is. I had no idea that prior to global warming, it never rained too much, the summers were always just the right warmth for growing whatever grain was needed, winters were mild and no one lacked for anything. It was so perfect that nothing evolved—there was no competition for resources, so all the creatures of the earth lived together in perfect harmony and stasis. Then came the nasty global warming and things just became intolerable and not survivable.
I call it the Cider-with-Rosie syndrome (after the book by Laurie Lee). Everybody just knows the summers and the environment were perfect when we were children.
The EPA can rule that CO2 is pollution and the governments can invent a term for those that refuse to accept “the science is settled” “debate is over” but us “deniers” seem to be seeing things quite a bit more clearly when it comes to the effects of CO2 on life.
More record crop yields of course is something we’ve predicted, while alarmists stated otherwise. The record crop yields are not coming “in spite of” the huge beneficial increase in CO2 and slight beneficial increase in global temperatures but BECAUSE OF IT.
They can control the beliefs of many, make silly agreements, rules/laws and put what is thought to be the best equations into global climate models to project the weather/climate out to the year 2100 based on a speculative theory but there is one thing that they will never be able to do………….repeal the irrefutable law of photosynthesis:
6CO2 + 6H2O+Sunlight Energy —————–> C6H12O6 + 6O2
CO2 = carbon dioxide(known to some as “pollution”)
H2O = water
Light energy is required
C6H12O6 = glucose
O2 = oxygen
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/CropProd/CropProd-08-12-2016.txt
without water
which will fail to come to the great plains of America
as per historic data
your equations won’t work….
since the world was poisoned with its oxygen atmosphere, that equation has always worked and is the source of all life here and with 70% water world, how can that fail?
Hi Bubba
rainfall follows certain patterns
if it looks chaotic to begin with, you are on the right track…
just break it down into the 4 [full] solar cycles
this will give you the picture
[of your area]
always remember to count 86.5 years back if you want to know where we [on earth] are wrt to the sun
One of the more amusing items related to the “Exon knew” scandal, was/is the question of “what were the damages?”
If Exon really did know that we would be experiencing the best weather/climate and growing conditions in the last 1,000 years(since the Medieval Warm Period) like we have the past 4 decades, should they be held accountable…………….by compensating unprepared farmers/producers with more storage bins and silos for all the record crops?
When my firstborn was ready to get his first immunizations, I took te immunization scare seriously, and read a bunch of studies. It was quickly apparent that immunizations don’t cause autism.
I then thought: well, I sorted through the hype without too much trouble. I will investigate original-data articles on the man-made global warming. –It really did not take long to figure out it was an attempt just to grab power and money from all of us little guys.
So, I then saw something about “overpopulation.” I thought: how much food do we need? So, I took a population estimate of 9 billion, and considered how many calories would be needed for a year if each were on a 2,000-cal/day diet for that year. Lots of zeroes in all of that maths.
-I then figured out how many cobs of corn in a bushel, and figured out how many calories in a cob. So, I had a figure for calories per bushel of corn. I then figured out United States corn production, in bushels, per year. For a couple recent years. By this simple effort, I figured out U.S. corn production in a typical year would supply one-third of a 2,000 calorie per day diet for a year to each of 9 billion people.
–This is not even looking at wheat, oats, soybean, legumes, vegetables, etc.
So, as far as calories are concerned, we are not starving due to over-population, and will not anytime soon.
I then used google maps to figure out my lot size in my suburban neighborhood, and translated that into square miles (well, a fraction thereof). I multiplied that by the 9 billion people. I then looked up the area of Texas in square miles. I subtracted out some portion, realizing not every square inch is suitable for a residence. The rivers, for example.
All 9 billion of us could have a suburban sized lot and all live in Texas. Thus, no worries . Plenty of space for us all.
Regarding “over-population” the only reasonable limit I see is potable water. But if we really test the limits of potable water, I believe that our current desalinization technology will all of a sudden look really interesting, and will propagate drastically and quickly. So, yet another solution looking for a problem.
I’ve done much the same research as you and come to the same conclusions. In the context of this thread I’d just like to add that we have enough food in the world right now to feed everyone. Hunger today is a function of geopolitics and social bigotry. Hunger will end when people stop trying to tell others how to live and creating tyrannical governments to enforce their views.
If we were to ever start running out of food, which we aren’t. We could free up vast amounts of food for all of us by simply reducing how much meat each of us ate.
PS: No government programs would be necessary for this to happen. As food became scarcer, the price of grain would go up. Naturally the price of meat fed by grain would also go up. This would result in people eating less meat because they couldn’t afford it.
PPS: This would also free up some of the land that is being used to raise cattle, pigs, chickens, whatever. Additionally, that ground is currently well fertilized.
PPPS: This doesn’t include those animals currently being raised on land that isn’t suitable for farming, but is suitable for grazing.
Isaac Asimov wrote several Ehrlich-like essays on population:
http://www.asimovonline.com/oldsite/Essays/overpopulation.html
In one of them, “The End”, he did a rough calculation that the Earth could support up to 40 trillion people, provided there was no other animal life and the only plant life was edible algae. On this world, the ultimate limit on population was incoming sunlight, which was necessary for agriculture.
I think you will find that similar math applies to water.
The rain that fell on Louisiana during the recent flood was enough to supply the water needs for everyone on earth for an entire year, and then some.
The only problems are uneven distribution, lack of adequate storage, and no good way to transport it from where it is plentiful to where there is not enough.
More record crop yields of course is something we’ve predicted, while alarmists stated otherwise. The record crop yields are not coming “in spite of” the huge beneficial increase in CO2 and slight beneficial increase in global temperatures but BECAUSE OF IT.
They can control the beliefs of many, make silly agreements, rules/laws and put what is thought to be the best equations into global climate models to project the weather/climate out to the year 2100 based on a speculative theory but there is one thing that they will never be able to do………….repeal the irrefutable law of photosynthesis:
6CO2 + 6H2O+Sunlight Energy —————–> C6H12O6 + 6O2
CO2 = carbon dioxide(known to some as “pollution”)
H2O = water
Light energy is required
C6H12O6 = glucose
O2 = oxygen
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/CropProd/CropProd-08-12-2016.txt
I greatly dislike my reference to “we” and “they” in the above. It may be accurate to some degree but I wish this hadn’t turned into a sort of war, with each side cheering when evidence appears to support “them” and seeking out evidence that supports “their” side(us, so to speak) and contradicts the other side(them).
Authentic science and the truth cannot be legislated or imposed and takes only one form. Objective scientists should align only with that and not search for ammo to defeat those that disagree with them.
“There is only a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.” – Arthur C. Clarke.
Yeah, but it’s all carbs.
Wow, carbon dioxide and hot weather make plants grow faster! Who would have guessed that, aside from anyone who’s ever used a greenhouse.
I think it capital ignorance to write an article and give meaningless or obscure facts without explaining them or at least putting them into some context for the reader/intended audience. There are simple basic rules of the trade for writing articles, especially info pieces, yet the badly written drivel that gets printed is mountainous. Those guilty of such crimes against the mind should lose digits. Didn’t see anyone else complaining…wheat, bread, cost of a loaf, cost of basic ingredients?
So, for all those who did not put their hands up to ask the question….
One bushel of wheat yields approximately 42 pounds of white flour OR 60 pounds of whole-wheat flour = 60Ib grain. Rough calcs follow…
$3.88 per 1/4 bushel. $15.52 per bushel. ($1 = €0.89 & 1kg = 2.204Ib)
$15.52 / 40Ib = $38.8 / 100Ib = $00.388 / Ib
$855.15 / 1000kg = 85.5 $cent / Kg = 76.1 €cent/Kg
Or $3.93 fine ground wheat.
Assume 1 bushel = 40Ib white flour
So Kg white wheat flour costs €00.761. (Brown wholewheat costs around 60c/Kg)
800g white loaf takes, typically, 500g white flour = €00.38
“Paul Ehrlich is still spectacularly wrong”
When was Ehrlich ever right, at all (spectacularly or otherwise)?
“The recent US winter wheat harvest was 45m tonnes, up 21 per cent ”
That’s a whopping big increase. I would be looking at the rainfall records for the US wheat belt. The only likely influence temperature could have over this is maybe a late spring in 2015
Meantime I am saying, ” Its water guys!”
Remembering that ‘Winter harvest’ means: planted in the spring, grown over summer. It probably should have read ‘Autumn Harvest’ Maybe they harvest late over there.
Actually Winter Wheat Harvest is harvested in June from a crop planted in Sep/Oct of the prior year, sprouted, then goes dormant over winter in the cold. If it were planted in Spring it would be just wheat not winter wheat.
My wheat harvest of soft white winter wheat completed one week ago (winter wheat that was planted one year ago on Sept. 10 2015) in Washington State USA this year gave the highest yield I have ever experienced without irrigation of 94 bushels per acre (2.82 tons per acre) which includes comparing results during the years that my father and grandfather operating. Test results of quality of my wheat crop this year were also spectacular with wheat rating #1 in test weight and ranking in the upper 95% of falling numbers test scores. The crop was so large that the straw or the plant debris that remains presents a problem for the usual conventional tillage that I practice.The wheat price ($4.03 per bushel or 6.7 cents per pound) however is insufficient to support operating a wheat growing operation as a person cannot afford the costs required to stay in business while expecting to also earn a living too. The answer in the plant debris is not no or low till practices since those present other disadvantages of their own.
Been proven that increased CO2 level result in more rapid and greater plant growth. I don’t know if we have had enough CO2 increase to help grow larger crops but I suspect it has had an effect. We shouldn’t be surprized that the earth system is self balancing. More CO2 means more plants, more plants means less CO2, the only people who can’t see how well earth works are those who want to tax the commoners into submission.
I’ve been thinking for the past 2-3 years that the next financial crisis may be in the ag sector. Land prices skyrocketed when corn was $8/bu and soybeans were $15. People who bought land at inflated prices and need $8 corn and $15 beans to service the debt are underwater now that grain prices are half those prices. I just don’t know the dollar amount of the loans underwritten at peak land/grain prices or how large that is relative to the entire financial/mortgage sector so that it would create a crisis. In other words, it may be a problem, but manageable, so most of the general public may never be made aware of the problem.
Looking for the price of WHeat thins to go down any minute now.
Wait, what did you call them?
https://youtu.be/B1Vcbm-XWtg
To those that sneer at Malthus, I have a simple question: Do you think the world can support an infinite population?
If not, what is the limit, and how close are we?
Leo, good question. While we may dispute AGW there is no case for denial of the massive human footprint on Earth. There has to be consequences e.g. marine population change. International waters are still the Wild West.
The world has not even admitted the existence of the 500 KG tiger in the room to which we are firmly attached on the tail: economics. No democratic Government will promote policies that don’t promote economic growth. So far no system has been found that includes growth without an ever increasing birth rate, or immigration of young people. Countries like Germany, Japan, and Italy are in near panic over the median age of their population: too few tax payers and too many superannuation recipients. It gets worse in the near future
We are not in control of the climate or current economics that need population growth. Clearly, somewhere down the track the tiger will turn and severely maul us, if not devour us completely.
Just my view
Cheers
M
Leo Said “Do you think the world can support an infinite population?”
This is a rather silly formulation of the real question.
The slightly better question is: can the global population continue to increase at exponential rates.
And the answer is, of course, no. Nothing continues to grow forever at exponential rates.
An even better question would be: When will our earth no longer be able to support exponential human population growth?
This general question has been pondered for eons.
There’s a succinct discussion here: http://www.paulchefurka.ca/Population%20Limits.html
One thing is for sure… a warmer, wetter climate with more CO2 in the air and longer growing seasons will support more population than a colder dryer climate with less CO2 in the air and shorter growing seasons.
If/when the earth drops out of this interglacial period of plenty into another glacial period, things will get very difficult for billions of people.
Who says we have to stay on this rock ? What do you suppose the limit is to growth in in this solar system ? The only limits are the ones in your mind.
More people today enjoy better health, wealth, and quality of life than even the richest of kings could ever dream of in the past. The future is unlimited.
I sneer at Malthus.
Can the planet support an infinite population? No.
What is the limit, and how close are we?
Malthus was circa 1800. He saw this logical necessity then, and assumed we could not be too far off.
The current belief, that the population problem can confidently be discerned with “modern” science, that we will “overload,” and “crash,” the planet / our ecology, got its legs circa 1900. Those fear-mongers assumed we could not be too far off.
Soon after, the classist Eugenics movement was able to co-opt the planetary-crash hypothesis and fuel their planet-wide efforts to suppress the birth of lower class people, especially people who are brown or black, with the apparent support of “science.”
Soon after, Margaret Sanger was spotted in India, and in Japan. Sadly, wherever Ms. Marple happened to visit or vacation, a death was sure to have occurred. And, sadly, wherever Margaret Sanger happened to show up, the governmental and or science establishment of the country began forcing population reduction goals.
They used “science” as their cover. But these countries had a leading goal of buddying up to the wealthy Anglosphere.
In the atomic age, Harrison Brown and others made us blinkingly perceive the end of humanity as a very real thing. Realizing they had some duty to reign in the nukelar monster, they stretched their wings and decided to embrace the “planetary ecological crash” as a twin cause celebre. Using “science.” –Surely, we must listen to intellectual overlord Brown, since he held the power of life and death in his bomb?
I believe we are very far from “planetary overload.” I think all of this fear-based hand-wringing is a mish mosh of mis-founded good intentions, knee-jerk unscientific reaction disguised as good science, opportunistic classists and racists fearing that the hand that rocks the cradle rocks the world, and Marxists wanting to control society form the top-down by replacing the Family and God as they decide who gets to reproduce, as well as controlling who does what job, what the wage will be, etc.
It makes no sense for us to kill ourselves off to avoid the spectre of – a massive kill of us by nature.
Wha? Rather than using abortion and population goals to avert some unknown crisis, why don’t we just carry on until there really is a problem? –I am sure some plague will decrease our population when we hit some unsustainability level.
But we are far from that. Very far. The material of our existence is here on the planet, whether that carbon, nitrogen, etc., is in the form of a human, or latent in soil, or in the form of ants, or whatever, It is just matter and energy cycling through the environment.
Looks like global warming is greatness.
According to precip. data published by Alley from GISP2 Ice Core data, warmer = wetter. Strong correlation.
A warmer climate with a longer growing season and wetter weather in addition to more free fertilizer in the air (CO2) should mean record crops. Et voila!
It’s important that we don’t continue to allow these doomsdayers to continually groom our children into believing our natural world is going to Hell in a handbasket when it’s not true-
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us-says-most-humpback-whales-no-longer-endangered-210902909.html?ref=gs
http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/it%E2%80%99s-official-giant-pandas-are-no-longer-endangered/ar-AAiA5je
Endangered species and shrinking natural habitat occur wherever there are subsistence human conditions due to a lack of non-human energy and associated economic development. Compare China and Giant Pandas with Africa and Rhino, Gorillas, etc and you can see the bleeding obvious, just like the West’s higher valuation placed on the environment before them.
It’s like this-
http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/790/economics/different-types-of-goods-inferior-normal-luxury/
The environment is a luxury good if you’re at subsistence level but as Chinese find they can afford more Pandas with development and concerns about air quality, etc like the West has. OTOH some Westerners need to be careful they’re not overly indulging themselves in Veblen goods with environmental seeming rather than doing and wasting the great gifts they’ve been given on conspicuous consumption.
Time to crush and recycle the gas guzzling Rainbow Warrior now chaps and recycle the 340 tonnes of steel, etc as we won’t be needing the 30 conspicuous consumption Veblen good types on board any longer-
http://www.greenpeace.org/international/en/about/ships/the-rainbow-warrior/
The dismal science teaches you all about the meaning of tradeoffs and what it can cost to save Giant Pandas among other things-
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-06/millions-of-chinas-children-left-behind/7816010
and can give you an acute appreciation of our ancestors sending their children down the mines instead, before we go tut tutting at such behaviour.
@vukcevic
Henry said
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1927/to:2015/trend/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1927/to:2014/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1927/to:1972/trend/plot/sidc-ssn/from:1972/to:2015/trend/offset:8
so it follows that sc 25 will be more or less equal to sc 17
Henry asks:
are we both on agreed on that?