News Spinning wheels of Global Warming

[russ_watters]

Just to put a small caveat on this:

When your environmentalism kills people or threatens to kill people to further the cause, that's terrorism (that's the definition of the word "terrorism"). In this case, it killed people.

It isn't quite the same for most environmentalists. For terrorists (including typical enviroterrorists), killing or the threat of killing is a means of persuasion. What happened in Africa is actually due to an indifference to the effect of the policy on human life. Ie, protect the genome even if it means killing a few million people by rejecting the food that could feed them.

That's probably closer to just being pure murder based on the indifference to the value of human life. But is that better or worse?

 

[russ_watters]

http://earthtrends.wri.org/updates/node/61

Btw, it isn't too difficult to throw the starting assumptions (1.1% growth rate, 6 billion initial population in 1999) into an Excel spreadsheet and duplicate their results. Attached is a few minutes of playing with the numbers. Some things I found:

-If the growth rate continued geometrically at 1.1%, we'd have a doubling time of 63 years.
-By trial and error, I found that their projection (finding a 9.1 billion population in 2050) requires a 1.1% annual drop in growth rate.
-At a 1.1% annual drop in growth rate it takes a very long time for the growth to flatten out, but the doubling time quickly goes into the hundreds of years (ie, the population in 2200 would only be 14.5 billion).
-This calculation does not allow for negative growth rates. It should and I'm trying to figure out how to do that (probably needs a 3rd term...).

 

[edward]

Russ, that is very impressive but it does not deal with the large number of variables that constitute the global population growth vs food supply question. For instance animals are not efficient producers of calories.

Dietary factors in world food shortage

The numbers of people potentially supported by the global food supply depend heavily on the kind of diet people consume. The World Hunger Program calculates that global food supplies have been more than adequate, since the mid-1970s, to support the world's population on a vegetarian diet (table 3.1). But they would support only 74 per cent of the 1993 population on a diet where 15 per cent of calories come from animal foods (Uvin 1996). Only 56 per cent of the 1993 world population could have been provided with diets where 25 per cent of calories came from animal foods (Uvin 1996).

http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/uu22we/uu22we09.htm#is there a world food shortage

This clearly shows that in 1993 world food calorie production would only have been sufficient to provide the then population with adequate calories if the people were vegetarians.

When all of the factors such as, the economy, water supply, energy supply, and yes even oil supply [since most fertilizers are derived from petroleum], are added into the equation. The picture isn't all as rosy as you indicate.

 

[russ_watters]

I'm skeptical of those numbers because they do not mention the fact that much of the food consumed by livestock is not suitable for humans, so I presume it doesn't factor that into the calculations.

Also, there is a difference between how much food is produced and how much can be produced. Clearly, starvation exists in some places so we clearly are not feeding everyone. But that doesn't mean we couldn't if we wanted to.

 

[denverdoc]

Maybe you don't realize it, but that graph still supports my point. All the way up until the middle of last century, population growth was almost pure geometric, with doubling times of around 30 years (it is a little tough to see, but somewhere around 1960, the graph went from concave up to concave down). That time is over and it is very possible that the world population will not double again.

But as to whether it levels off at 8 billion or 12 billion, I didn't make a prediction. And in any case, there is a massive plague that is afecting the growth rate, but it is not factored into those numbers. That and the fact that I am optomistic that the current trend of rapid development will continue (developed nations are culturally inclined to have lower growth rates) is why I tend to see the lower estimates as being more likely. True, but it doesn't really affect what we are talking about here. The second sentence contradicts the first, but in any case it highlights a good point: people who think overpopulation is an issue tend to overlook the technological and economic factors that enable the population to grow.

Water right now in the US is a completely valueless throw-away commodity. That's partly because of the reality that it is (eventually) completely self-recycle-able, but as it becomes more scarce, its value will eventually go up to the point where it becomes economically feasible to recycle it.

Last month, I spent roughly $200 on heat and electricity for my house and iirc, about $15 on water. All of that water bill is in the delivery and billing. If the cost of water itself becomes a few cents a gallon that would double my bill, but for an extra $15 a month, I'm not even batting an eyelash - but that amount of money opens up whole new economic frontiers for water management.

Energy is more difficult since the cost is already significant, but nuclear power is not fundamentally more expensive than other forms of power - most of the cost is in the politics of building a plant, not in its operation. When the prices start to go up, the politics will go away proportionally and the overall cost of the energy will not change significantly.

That takes care of coal, but cars will be more difficult. Gas is still far too cheap in the US for other technologies to have a chance, but other technologies (and other alternatives) exist that could fill the void without too much trouble if gas prices suddenly quadruple (to bring them in line with what they are in Europe).

Not a chance. First off, its difficult to simultaneously argue for nuclear power and non-plolif/war on terror. The more the world used fissionable materials, the greater the likelihood of something really nasty happening. Look at Iran--they want to produce nuclear energy, and maybe bombs as well. Historically speaking, they have been pretty mellow, been something like 400 years since they agressed. But we all know they's love to have some parity--look at how nervous we got when Cuba had missiles.

But there are so many better ways of generating Kv, and if we take the effort to educate and build in enuf incentives--like making gas cost what is should. What bothers me at time is that you have this supreme optimism in capitalism, but seem afraid to let the big dog loose. You raise the price of petrol to the equiv of 5/gal, you would see instant greening in this country.

Consider the incentives to building a better mousetrap or solar cell. Battery technoogy is almost there. I know several folks living off the grid and very proud to have done so. That's capitalism:yankee ingenuity and the flexibility to make needed sacrifices.