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“The “Population Bomb” Echoes
Pack your portfolios with agricultural plays like Potash (POT), Mosaic (MOS), and Agrium (AGU) if Dr. Paul Ehrlich is just partially right about the impending collapse in the world’s food supply. You might even throw in long positions in wheat, corn, soybeans, and rice.
The never dull, and often controversial Stanford biology professor told me he expects that global warming is leading to significant changes in world weather patterns that will cause droughts in some of the largest food producing areas, causing massive famines. Food prices will skyrocket, and billions could die.
At greatest risk are the big rice producing areas in South Asia, which depend on glacial run off from the Himalayas. If the glaciers melt, this crucial supply of fresh water will disappear. California faces a similar problem if the Sierra snowpack fails to show up in sufficient quantities, as it has in recent years.
Rising sea levels displacing 500 million people in low lying coastal areas is another big problem. One of the 79 year old professor’s early books The Population Bomb was required reading for me in college in 1970, and I used to drive up from Los Angeles to hear his lectures (followed by the obligatory side trip to the Haight-Ashbury).
Other big risks to the economy are the threat of a third world nuclear war caused by population pressures, and global plagues facilitated by a widespread growth of intercontinental transportation and globalization. And I won’t get into the threat of a giant solar flare frying our electrical grid.
“Super consumption” in the US needs to be reined in where the population is growing the fastest. If the world adopts an American standard of living, we need four more Earths to supply the needed natural resources. We must to raise the price of all forms of carbon, preferably through taxes, but cap and trade will work too. Population control is the answer to all of these problems, which is best achieved by giving women an education, jobs, and rights, and has already worked well in Europe and Japan.
All sobering food for thought.
To see the data, charts, and graphs that support this research piece, as well as more iconoclastic and out-of-consensus analysis, please visit me at www.madhedgefundtrader.com . There, you will find the conventional wisdom mercilessly flailed and tortured daily, and my last two years of research reports available for free. You can also listen to me on Hedge Fund Radio by clicking on “This Week on Hedge Fund Radio” in the upper right corner of my home page.
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Your keen analytical skills let you deduce that my reply was indeed to you. 9 letters wow you must be some kind of genius. Nonetheless, no compelling evidence exists for AGW or GW. Go peddle your dubious science on HuffPo or somewhere where they share your agenda.
Many decades of receding glaciers, both maritime and alpine, in every region of the world refute your thesis.
In the Little Ice Age around 1700 for many decades alpine glaciers expanded.
Who caused that?
What have you contributed to this discussion beside some dubious rhetoric? Bring something to the table or STFU...
Please refute the OHC data.... I'll give you time to put something together.
BTW, I enrolled in my freshman year at University when I was 15, doesn't mean much now, but it is true.
How about you STFU.
Just the standard way to supress reasoning and use of scientific method.
How about we talk once about things that have already happened and are not just advanced guessing.
Please explain to me what, according to the GW proponents, has caused the Little Ice Age around 1700. If they have such sophisticated climate models, they should be able to come up with a solid, verifiable explanation.
Do you understand how a climate model works? You need all kinds of data to establish a grid over a large part of the earth, data like air and ocean temperatures, ocean currents, ice pack coverage etc.... It is impossible to measure the conditions at sufficient granularity 300 years ago. So estimates are made and they are limitations, do you know what a systematic error is, I mean the scientific definition?
Here is a thought: The earth self-sequestered billions of tons of carbon over a period of ~100 million years. We have dumped that back into the atmosphere over a period of 100 years. That statement does not prove anything, but do you not find it a bit odd that it would have *no* effect whatsoever?
BTW, proof in science is not easy. Special Relativity and Quantum Mechanics have not been "proved", they are able to describe all physical phenomena so we take them to be true. If one thing comes along to invalidate them, there will be a paradigm shift.
If the average global temperature rose 2.6 C and the Arctic Icepack vanished over the next 15 years, you would still have people denying any AGW and/or GW.
You are giving an excellent explanation why that same climate model is not able to predict temperatures 100 years into the future, thank you.
The difference is now we can grid the data... there are still systematics though. It is clear that you are grasping at rhetorical straws....
That the problem with you guys, any attempt to have a rational discussion reveals that all you know is how to parrot the talking points and that you have no real interest in learning how things are actually done.
So without ability to grid the data building a model is impossible? You really have to work on your excuses.
I will state it one last time: If someone claims they can build model to predict average temperatures 100 years into the future, by allegedly taking into account all important influences and their interconnections, the minimum you can expect is that the same model should be able to model and explain temperatures 300 years back!
Because even if the historical temperature readings are more sparse than today's (no grid), they are still a lot more numerous than the ones we have from today until 2100 !!!
Ok...here we go, I will not make this long unless I get a reply...
One problems is that climate in a non-linear phenomena; take two effects, or forcing functions, A and B. Non linearity means that that the effect of adding A and B is not necessarily A+B. Two examples of this are the effect of C02 and Sulfate concentrations at different atmospheric levels.
One of the problems in running things backwards is in any comparison you are still limited by the quality of the data you have at the point you choose to compare. Say you predict 10 +/- 4 and the data is 12 +/- 3, what can you conclude? You are consistent, but if you are looking for effects that are 2 or 3, you cannot say much.
There are well know oscillations in the climate, El Nino and the NAO are two well known ones. These really effect the weather, i.e. the NAO this past year was very strong. With the data we currently have, we can make a reasonable prediction of the intensity and duration.
Also, for running backwards, another thing is that we have no reliable (i.e. precise) estimates of the amount of volcanic activity in the past, knowing something blew is not enough, an estimate of the ash, sulfates etc.. that is good to only 50% accuracy is all but useless.
Now running the models forward. Typically what is done is to pin the model at a point in time, say 1950, where good data exists. Run the model forward with the driving functions, constrain the output of the model to reproduce the observed data up to 2010. With this model and the driving functions in place, you can now run it forward to 2050 and make predictions.
What sounds simple takes years of analysing the raw data, refinement of the error estimates etc... To give you an example, look at the effect of compound interest, say the average return is 7+/- 0.5%, where the error is at the 67% confidence level. Tell me what your total will be in 50 years and the range of values at the 95% CL?
I will close with two observations:
I have been a subscriber the Economist since 1991, if you are not familiar, the Economist is centre-right, fiscal conservative and social libertarian in its editorial content. They used to have articles rebutting, Ehrlich, peak oil and Global Warming and the like. Recently, ~2007, they did a complete about face on all these topics. While they do not endorse AGW they most certainly support the thesis of GW. In the Feb 19th issue, they had an excellant article discussing Climate Change. I suggest you look it up.
The other observations is that Insurance companies, e.g. Munich Re, are no longer underwriting weather related policies based on their internal study of the climate risks. This should be a very large tell, as it is an oppurtunity to for the competition to raise "riskless" premium. No one is stepping in.
It absolutely amazing how you pick your facts as they suit you.
Unfortunately you own arguing here is non-linear: you describe how you believe certain issues make backward model running impossible, but (without explanation) magically the same issues don't impact forward modeling.
Let me close with an observation of my own:
When some IPCC speaker declared years ago that no serious scientist was still questioning GW, I knew the time of reason and scientific method had ended, and we had moved into the phase of beliefs and dogmas. Nobody even bothered to try to explain how they had convinced the remaining scientists... and that's because they had coerced them with peer pressure and worse.
I am not impressed how big is a herd moving in the same direction, I only want to know where they are going and why!
If you run it forward, then yes, a huge volcanic eruption could change things, but that is hypothetical. You could assume an eruption and make predictions. In essence this is what is done when people discuss high-level release of sulfate aerosols... What you cannot do is account for the real effect of something like Krakatoa, you can make estimates. Believe it or not, the way science works is that if you had "perfect" data, you could estimate what the effect of Krakatoa was by requiring the model to agree before and after.
As I suggested, check out the recent Economist, they have a very good discussion on the interplay of sulphates, C02 and "Dark Carbon" aka soot. I am not telling you to believe it, only read it and try to understand it.
BTW, what facts have I picked? I am speaking in very broad strokes and clearly a detailed discussion of climate modelling is well beyond the scope of a blog.
I don't even know where to start.
Cold phases in oscillations like El Nino are not long enough to have caused the Little Ice Age.
We have some direct and a lot of indirect temperature measurements over the past few centuries, enough for modelling.
Non-linearities are quite common in nature, but they were in effect also at the Little Ice Age or the Medieval Warm Period. (And pulling a rabbit out of the hat by declaring some additional, so far unobserved NL will tilt your model to some extreme, has nothing to do with science.)
Strong volcanic activity, which has an impact on climate, can usually be detected by geology in ash layers or similiar. (And BTW that's not so rare, so within a 100 year period into the future you can expect something like that to happen with a pretty high probability.)
Good advice...but it just buys us more time while populations continue to explode. It doesnt solve the problem at its source.
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Yes it does, populations level out or fall in developed counties because of education, birth control, high standards of living, pensions ect. If eugenicists like Ehrlich and his buddies at the Club of Rome stopped with their genocidal policies in the third world then the global population would begin to level out. To speed this up we could offer an economic development plan to these poor nations, like the Marshal Plan. This would help them and us by stimulating global demand for goods.
Unfortunatly the sick fucks in the green movement and elsewhere are against this because they hate humans and technology.
SarCASM on, right?
Global warming is a concern of mine... #62 on the list right after the local 7-Eleven running out of corn nuts.
Since some warming would be good for the planet a big +1000
Northwest passage...... for the last 500 years, how many explorers have looked for that passage through the arctic only to find ice and die?
"On November 28, 2008, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported that the Canadian Coast Guard confirmed the first commercial ship sailed through the Northwest Passage. In September 2008, the MV Camilla Desgagnés, owned by Desgagnés Transarctik Inc. and, along with the Arctic Cooperative, is part of Nunavut Sealift and Supply Incorporated (NSSI),[67] transported cargo from Montreal to the hamlets of Cambridge Bay, Kugluktuk, Gjoa Haven and Taloyoak. A member of the crew is reported to have claimed that "there was no ice whatsoever". Shipping from the east is to resume in the fall of 2009.[68]"
The summer of 2010, there was NO ice and no need for an ice breaker..... call it what you will, but something is up.......
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
Today, Paul Scarelick, the famous Hysterian from Stanford university, had this to say:
Oh Gosh, Paul Ehrlich again.
Another biologist that (wrongly) predicted that there was going to be starvation in the 80's in America due to unsustainable population growth. Julian Simon is still laughing at this jerk who speaks nonsense and cannot understand that human creativity and the markets can solve food problems... unless governments intervene and crush the process.
I am super long agris, but not for the reasons that this jerk exposed. No capex in 30 years and the population is growing. Just that.
So many comments and it took so long for someone to bring up the most salient point. Ehrlich keeps getting it wrong. "The population bomb" is a good study in linear thinking - in which Ehrlich excels - which IS NOT the way the world works. He predicted famine by the early 1980s. He predicted the population of the U.S. would be less than 25 million and most of those left would be starving (among many other absolutely ridiculous predictions that never came true). I can't believe people are still quoting him and believing his predictions. The dude is lucky he is a professor and has tenure (and an insanely huge tax payer funded pension). No one in the private sector could make such wrong predictions year after year after year after year and still get paid.
So many comments and it took so long for someone to bring up the most salient point. Ehrlich keeps getting it wrong. "The population bomb" is a good study in linear thinking - in which Ehrlich excels - which IS NOT the way the world works. He predicted famine by the early 1980s. He predicted the population of the U.S. would be less than 25 million and most of those left would be starving (among many other absolutely ridiculous predictions that never came true). I can't believe people are still quoting him and believing his predictions. The dude is lucky he is a professor and has tenure (and an insanely huge tax payer funded pension). No one in the private sector could make such wrong predictions year after year after year after year and still get paid.
Exactly.
But the sheeple still suck in his every word: "There will be mass starvation in 1980;... sorry no, 1990;... ah... ...ahem... ...but now in 2020 for real!!!"
Every broken clock has a higher confidence ratio.
"he expects that global warming"
I stopped right there.
Nice!
The products used to grow food are up. Fertilizer and modified seed are up sharply over the last 3 to 4 years. Fuel costs also drive the cost of food. I am getting 30% more for cattle than 2 years ago, but costs have killed the profit. I am in process of changing from cattle ranching to wildlife management. I will stay n the same tax code without the loss from cattle.
Weather does change. Sun cycles and other factors are involved. One of the reasons California lost manufacturing was they decided they could go green with the computer industry and get rid of all dirty manufacturing. Carbon tax could be the final blow to what US manufacturing is left, just like California killed industry there.
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Whassamattawichyou? Too lazy to type something?
This is a good article if you enjoy reading an idiot summarize the main points of a moron. Agree that AGU is a buy(benefits from low NG prices and high food prices). Food price increases are not a result of global warming and do not demonstate a need to increase CO2 taxes. Hilarious..this is pure propaganda. The quality of this propaganda is so bad that it actually makes me happy to see it. Please more.
Perhaps you can explain why there is not enough gold to have a free market in currencies and therefore we need the central bankers to supply fiat. yes sarcasm
"This is a good article if you enjoy reading an idiot summarize the main points of a moron." "The quality of this propaganda is so bad that it actually makes me happy to see it."
Shades of Iowahawk, bravo....
Agreed, this is hilarious. My favorite quote:
"Population control is the answer to all of these problems, which is best achieved by giving women an education"
Maybe it was all those obligatory side trips to the Haight-Ashbury.
Why don't you look at the 40 years of data on education and fertility rates...
I ain't saying what the answer is, but if you are going to fire from the hip, at least have a clue about what you talking about.
"We must to raise the price of all forms of carbon".
OK - increase the price of diesel in the farm tractors of the world's most productive and efficient agricultural areas (hmmm...was that 2nd application of fungicide worth the hours of running the engine?). And in the railroad delivery of commodities ports. And in the ships to get them to the net food importers (ie the peasant population with the thinnest financial margins located in oil, metals, and labor exporting countries.) This will incentivise producing more food in developed nations (or Brazil for that matter?)
If I were farming in the U.S. I'd rather take the soil conservation subsidy and let the land lay fallow and save the gas $.
On the one hand the people who advocate massive military expenditures(and the high taxes that go along with it) around the world say we have to protect our "interest"/oil supplies around the world...otherwise oil prices would rise!!! Then they turn around and say we need to tax CO2/carbon based energy!
Insane. How about we withdraw the military that supposedly safeguards our oil supplies and see what happens in a free market for oil...either Exxon/BP and Shell fund the security for oil shipments or prices rise or the security wasn't neccesary in the first place. win/win/win
I want the option to rate this article with Zero stars because granting it one star is FAR too generous.
Everything old is new again.
I'm quite certain bankers will cause more death and destruction than the 'global warming' thing. They have for all time except during the black plague
I'm not so sure some of the Powers at be would mind a culling of the herd.
But if we think about it, the world is a human being's petri dish. Look at the life/death phases of bacteria on agar in a petri dish, and tell me human population growth has no relation. Either we take steps to curb population growth and sustainability or we will face a lot of suffering and loss of life in the future.
Humans don't just sit back and quietly watch their children die of starvation, so I believe a lot of the loss of life will due to armed conflict.
Equality can be a stern father.
While popular in the US, the petri box analogy does not account for the disparity of consumption among the human species.
Bacteria have standard needs. Human beings do not.
The US citizen is not equal to the Amazonian Jungle dweller.
and why no mention of american tax dollars subsidizing the corn ethonal, burn food for fuel trend sweeping through?
Ah....
The American corn to ethanol industry is our very own version of the Easter Island logging industry.
Ethanol Subsidy: An Engineered Food Monopoly, Part III
Charles E. Carlson Jan 16, 2011
Part III: Escalating Grain Prices, Corn Burning, and News Blackout.
http://whtt.org/newwhtt/main.php?nid=3667&ncateid=1
Dr. Erlich, the "Stanford biology professor" thinks that "global warming is leading to ... droughts in some of the largest food producing areas."
Why is it always drought? The currently propagated meme is that the recent large winter snowfalls are caused by higher temperatures resulting in more moisture being held by the atmosphere. Is it not likely that they would experience greater rainfall?
That's a fair question. Think of what happens when moist clouds hit the Rocky mountains, they dump rain on west side of mountain. The East side becomes a very dry, desert... You will see some places get more precipitation and others become dryer.
Pakistan got the rain Russia should have gotten last summer. I believe simple explanation was that the jet stream dipped further south than normal.
The increased snowfalls in the US is thought to be caused by something called a "strong negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation", (google if you want to understand more).
Greater rainfall? Why peculiarly on these zones? Could not they be droughts on these zones and rainfall elsewhere?
Read up on "continental climates" and check where the worlds best farmlands are. Also Pakistan got bitchslapped by too much rain.
I am not going to argue that Erlich is correct on this point, but just because greater rainfall is expected does not mean that the average everywhere will increase. Less in some more in others...
I'm surprised anyone would still waste their time listening to the Ehrlichs. They started out wrong and just get worse. They really setting the stage for the eugenics that they believe in.