By Ronald Stein
Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure, Irvine, California
For thousands of years before 1900, the population of the world hovered around one billion on the entire planet. In the short 200 years since 1900 the world population has “exploded” to the current 8 billion now living on this planet. What caused that quick growth from 1 to 8 billion?
Before 1900 most people never traveled 100-200 miles from where they were born. Life expectancy throughout Europe hovered between 20 and 30 years of age. Food shortages and insecurity were leading concerns in the 18th century, especially in Europe, and these were exacerbated by reduced harvests yields. Disease was another leading cause of death, with rats and fleas being the common carriers of disease, specifically plagues, during this era.
Questions pervade like:
- Why didn’t the world have electricity before 1900?
- Why didn’t the world have, a medical industry, electronics, communications systems, militaries, and transportation infrastructure like planes, trains, automobiles, trucks, and ships before 1900?
- Why didn’t we have more than 6,000 products before 1900 that the wealthier and healthier countries now use daily?
One answer is that it could be that electricity is a secondary energy source that we get from the conversion of other sources of energy such as coal, natural gas, and oil. These sources are known as “primary sources, but electricity itself is not a “primary source”. Like electricity, the products used in industries and infrastructures are all dependent on products are manufactured from “primary sources” of energy like petroleum ‘
The causation of the world’s population exploding to 8 billion may be as simple as the fact that those products that are now used in every modern-day infrastructure and economy CANNOT be made FROM a “secondary” energy source like electricity. Those products need a “primary source” of energy for the manufactured derivatives that are the basis of those products.
Today, we are inundated by the gross fatalities being caused by humanity induced air pollution. These numbers are very important, but pale to the many other causes of fatalities that are impacting the 8 billion on earth.
While the pandemic has accounted for more than 600,000 fatalities just in America, the numbers pale when compared to those poorer countries that are experiencing 11 million children dying every year. Those infant fatalities are from the preventable causes of diarrhea, malaria, neonatal infection, pneumonia, preterm delivery, or lack of oxygen at birth as many developing countries have no, or minimal, access to those products from oil derivatives enjoyed by the wealthy and healthy countries.
When you include fatalities of “other than children” the world numbers get even worse…
- More than 40,000,000 abortions performed each year
- More than 8,000,000 world cancer deaths per year.
- 5,000,000 tobacco related deaths per year, and current trends show that tobacco use will cause more than 8,000,000 deaths annually by 2030.
- 3,800,000 deaths every year because of household exposure to smoke from dirty cook stoves and fuels.
- 2,300,000 women and men around the world succumb to work-related accidents or diseases every year per.
- 1,800,000 from the coronavirus in 2020
- 1,230,000 world traffic deaths per year.
- 270,000 pedestrians killed on roads each year.
- 585,900 premature deaths caused by drugs per year.
After that slice of morbidity, I’d like to present a tad of relatively good news that may be of interest to supporters of zero-emission electricity, and that is the worlds usage of nuclear. Probably due to the safety of nuclear power reactors, today there are about 440 nuclear reactors operating in 32 countries around the world with 50 more new ones under construction. Significant further capacity is being created by plant upgrading of existing reactors.
Politicians and the media have been successfully suppressing from public knowledge the worldwide total of nuclear deaths – not annually, but from inception of nuclear – including Three Mile Island (March 1979), Chernobyl (April 1986) and Fukushima (March 2011) are LESS than 200 over 4 decades, versus the more than 50,000,000 annually from previous mentioned causes.
Many of the healthier and wealthier countries are mesmerized with subsidies for electricity from breezes and sunshine. Those countries are also slowing down efforts toward drilling for oil. By reducing the supply of oil, the supply chain to refineries is being reduced to manufacture the oil derivatives and fuels that are the basis of economies. Getting off fossil fuels is going to negatively impact lifestyles and the following industries and infrastructures that are dependent on “primary sources” of energy, after 1900:
- The almost 20,000 Private jets for the elites of our world.
- The almost 10,000 superyachts over 24 meters in length, again for the elites of our world.
- Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin sub-orbital spaceflight services company, for the very wealthy want-to-be astronauts.
- Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic sub-orbital spaceflight services company, for the very wealthy want-to-be astronauts.
- Commercial aviation, with 23,000 commercial airplanes worldwide that have been accommodating 4 billion passenger annually.
- The 56,000 merchant ships burning more than 120 million gallons a day of high sulfur bunker fuel moving products worldwide worth billions of dollars daily.
- The military equipment from each country consisting of aircraft carriers, battleships, destroyers, submarines, planes, tanks and armor, trucks, and troop carriers
- The more than 300 cruise liners, each of which consumes 80,000 gallons of fuels daily, that have been accommodating more than 25 million passengers annually worldwide
Today, more than 200 years past 1900, the most important fact about today’s environmental movement, the book “Clean Energy Exploitations” explores how the healthy and wealthy countries of the United States of America, Germany, the UK, and Australia representing 6 percent of the world’s population (505 million vs 7.8 billion) could literally shut down, and cease to exist, and the opposite of what you have been told and believe will take place.
Simply put, in these healthy and wealthy countries, every person, animal, or anything that causes emissions to harmfully rise could vanish off the face of the earth; or even die off, and global emissions will still explode in the coming years and decades ahead over the population and economic growth of China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam that plan to build more than 600 coal power units and African countries that are planning to build more than 1,250 new coal and gas-fired power plants by 2030.
The healthier and wealthier countries fail to recognize that at least 80 percent of humanity, or more than 6 billion in this world are living on less than $10 a day, and billions living with little to no access to electricity, These poor folks need abundant, affordable, reliable, scalable, and flexible electricity while The healthier and wealthier are pursuing the most expensive ways to generate “secondary” intermittent electricity from breezes and sunshine.
The book “Clean Energy Exploitations” helps citizens attain a better understanding that just for the opportunity to generate intermittent electricity that is dependent on favorable weather conditions, the wealthier and healthier countries like Germany, Australia, Britain, and America continue to exploit the most vulnerable people and environments of the world today.
Ronald Stein,
P.E. Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure
http://www.energyliteracy.net/
I attribute the population growth to 3 things… 1) vaccines, 2) antibiotics, 3) cheap energy. That last allowed/allows all our modern conveniences, contributes to overall improved health, and provides not only sufficient but possibly excess food production cheaply enough that even the poorest rarely go hungry, and produces that food on less land (total? or just per capita?) than it took to feed the 1 billion at the beginning of the 19th century, and with far fewer people growing it (98% of the U. S. population were farmers in 1800, today it’s 2%. Go ahead someone check my figures, I’m going by memory.)
Common Core Math. 1900 was 121 years ago. And unless you are using the same thanks shit as “11 million illegal aliens”, world population is only 7.5 billion if even that.
“… almost 10,000 superyachts over 24 meters in length, again for the elites of our world.”
That’s odd, I’ve never thought of myself as elite.
Meanwhile:
“Why didn’t the world have … militaries … before 1900?”
They probably had militaries in the Eemian.
1)If you compare the numbers of babies that are aborted with the number of children who died before they got out of childhool, you will find that your beliefs have no basis in reality.
2)If you think that there are more resources in cold places, I suspect that you have never actually left that city that you love. PS: It takes more calories to live in cold places. Once again, your beliefs have no basis in reality.
3)Economic growth is fake? So the fact that we have more stuff, better quality stuff and live much better than do people 100 years ago is just a figment of our imagination? Your beliefs have no basis in reality.
4) I guess if you are just going to make stuff up, something that insults liberals isn’t to bad.
5) Why should anyone care what the the steel that is being manufactured is made from? There was little recycling back in the 50’s, so of course more steel is made that way today.
You are ignoring the fact that much steel making has moved offshore.
You are ignoring the fact that modern products use a lot less steel than did the products of the 50’s. Your opinions have no basis in any form of reality known to modern science.
I think you’re a complete idiot.
Stop being ridiculous. What are you, 8 years old? Grow up for heaven’s sake.
Lalalalalala …
We don’t want to hear this. The END is nigh anyway …
I take it you mean 1800 not 1900. Secondly, no navy operates battleships any longer.
And why hasn’t fossil fuel delivered electricity and a grid to those increasing millions of people without electricity over the last 50 years?
what credible plans and intentions are there to supply them via fossil fuel?
Ask China.
Wind and solar as energy sources pre-date fossil fuels, and yet they’ve failed to deliver a grid to those increasing millions of people too, so what’s your point (oh wait, I forgot this is the griffter I’m speaking to, the only point is the one on the top of his head).
That those people don’t currently have a grid has nothing to do with the proven ability of fossil fuels to power such a grid and everything to do with the political realities of the countries those people live in.
If abortion replaced infant mortality, why has the population increased? Why have the statistics for infant mortality decreased in most countries, irrespective of whether that country has legalised abortions and independent of statistics on abortion rates? Why do we have records of abortions being performed for thousands of years if they are just now replacing infant mortality?
For seven years I was on the County Cemetery Commission. It was a five person body of all volunteers that had a $20,000 a year budget. Our mission was to identify and repair old cemeteries not covered by the perpetual care act or being maintained by a Church or other society.
We would identify the cemetery, get the land owner to turn it over to the county (they got a tax break for doing so) and then fix it up and fence it in, record the burials. We would reset and repair the grave stones, order new ones from the VA for veterans if they did not have one or if theirs was damaged. Landscape and fence it in and put up a sign with the name of the grave yard. Once completed the cemetery became the responsibility of the township trustee to maintain.
Some things one learns doing such work on cemeteries from the 18th and 19th centuries. .
8. Hmm. I do but it may differ from the later tradition that was created to explain the alignment. A lot of early non-christian cultures buried their dead on a roughly north-south (feet towards south) alignment. In order for baptised Christians to show their faith after death, they turned the burials round to a west-east (feet towards east) alignment. This also coincided with the early Christian practice of facing east to pray, and the early churches often being on an east-west alignment (with the important part of the church towards the east end). The idea that graves faced east to see the second coming was a much later invention.
Even the Indian grave yards from the 19th century laid their graves out with their feet facing east. Probably because they had been converted. Their head markers were simple triangular unfinished stones with no engraving. I should have said that ALMOST invariably they are buried with their feet to the east. There are a few facing west, including one of the revolutionary war veterans.
There are 12 Revolutionary War Veterans buried in Madison County, IN that we know of. We had not identified the locations of several of their graves however. One veteran of the war of 1812 had served in a Virginia regiment, part of which was in Ft. Sumter that famous night and part of which was posted just outside the fort. Either way he witness the “rockets red glare” first hand. Another was a Captain that fought in the battle of the Thames where the war chief Tecumseh was most likely killed.
The old stones are often really works of art. Softer stone used back then does not preserve so well but they really did put a lot of work into those who could afford it. We cleaned all markers that needed it before resetting them. Stones that were broken we repaired with epoxy and then framed with aluminum angle set into a concrete foundation. When originally mounted they were set into a rough piece of flagstone with a grove cut into it to receive the grave marker. probing for the foundation stones was a very effective way to identify grave locations when the stone had been displaced or was gone. Often the markers had been knocked over and then over time covered by a layer of dirt.
I was the one that came up with ideal of mounting the stones in concrete and I received a ration of crap from various others on Cemetery Commissions in other counties for doing so. But really setting them in a concrete foundation deep enough to be below the frost line and then having a 4″ high curb above grade was the best way I could figure out to prevent damage from mowers and trimming with string trimmers which over time cut into the soft stone. It also made it less likely the stone would be displaced by tree roots.
The four greatest enemies of such preservation are:
My time on the commission ended when I became a truck driver and could not make it to most of the monthly meetings. I had become pretty disgusted by some of the politics involved also.
Here is a link to the Commission website. Pioneer Cemeteries and Their Stories – Madison Co., IN (cemeteries-madison-co-in.com)
Good comment, rah.
One summer, long ago, I worked in Colorado relocating a Native American cemetary to another place to make way for a highway.
I had the job of digging the holes for the new graves, which was mostly done by a backhoe, with me and another guy keeping an eye on things.
There were always relatives showing up as the new coffins were reburied in the new graves.
A job like that will make one think about a lot of things.
Fascinating. Thank you
Another lesson learned. Working with the dead is one hell of a lot easier than working with the living.
So is this blog post from the future, or am I missing some kind of subtle humor, or what…?
I mean I only made it through differential equations in college math, so subtracting 1,900 from 2,020 shouldn’t be that hard, but you never know how math education changes.
The 80% living on less than $10/day is 2005 data. It is below 71% in 2015 and must be even lower today.
121 years since 1900
If you survived passed age 5 the actual average age of death was in the high 40s early 50s.
No, no, no…
“Among 378,048 death certificates from 2020 listing COVID-19, 5.5% listed COVID-19 without codes for any other conditions.”
To put it plainly, 5.5% – 20,793 died from Covid
https://archive.is/6TirP#selection-755.0-755.121
UNCLE! I give up, Charles Rotter.
There is a glitch I’ve seen a few times before on other threads in a long string of replies. I got bit by the glitch above.
It seems that after a certain number of replies, when you hit reply it posts it right beneath the preceding comment and credits it as a reply to that person, regardless of which comment you actually replied to.
The crossed up two of my replies, showing one to Mark ingraham as a reply to MarkW and then, when I carefully made note of the error to MarkW, it posted that as a reply to Mark ingraham.
In a previous life, I used a program that would crap out after a certain large number of iterations, a large number that was rarely reached. Perhaps something similar is going on here.
Of course there’s always the old-fashioned way of replying using “@so-and-so. I think I’ll go back to that; belt and suspenders.
I’ve wondered since I was old enough to think for myself, why didn’t anyone invent a bicycle until the 19th century?
(Before 1900)…Life expectancy throughout Europe hovered between 20 and 30 years of age.
Okay, nitpick time.
First “Before 1900” is a big place with poor signposts. 1899 was before 1900. So was was the Roman Era and all of Pre-History. Not really setting us good goal posts here.
Second, Life Expectancy is not the same as Life Span. The common error here is to look at Life Expectancy and assume every died Logan’s Run style before their first grey hair and Ye Olde Times were filled with 20 year olds.
This is grossly incorrect. The reason Life Expectancy figures were so low was that childhood was almost literally murder. Infants died in numbers hideous to comprehend and dying during childbirth was a real and common threat to mothers.
The point being casually orbited around by the original author – being ‘modern’ is better for your health – is still completely valid, and if you are successfully out of childhood these days then you should unironically give thanks to your First World Solutions to real and deadly Fourth World Problems, but I have always found ‘Life Expectancy’ to be lazy writing and a close cousin to clickbait.
Okay – nitpick rant over.
” In the short 200 years since 1900″
“Today, more than 200 years past 1900, ”
Once could be attributed to a simple typo, but twice in the same article? Perhaps the author should have spent more time checking his maths and facts and less time hawking his book. Because this article’s errors aren’t doing anything to convince me that his book is worth a look.
‘In the short 200 years since 1900 ..’ Oops!