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Crossing the 7 billion Mark
I thought that I would refer you to one of my favorite unconventional research sources, National Geographic Magazine. In their century long coverage of exotic places, cultures, and practices, they inadvertently shed light on broad global trends that deeply affect the rest of us. Plus, the pictures are great. The January, 2011 issue celebrates the approach of the world’s population to 7 billion, and the implications therein.
Long time readers of this letter know that demographic issues will be one of the most important drivers of all asset prices for the rest of our lives (click here for http://www.madhedgefundtrader.com/december-17-2010.html ). The magazine expects that population will reach 9 billion by 2045, the earliest date that I have seen so far. Can the planet take the strain? Early religious leaders often cast Armageddon and Revelations in terms of an exploding population exhausting all resources, leaving the living to envy the dead. They may not be far wrong.
A number of developments have postponed the final day of reckoning, including the development of antibiotics, the green revolution, DDT, and birth control pills. Since 1952, life expectancy in India has expanded from 38 years to 64. In China, it has ratcheted up from 41 years to 73. These miracles of modern science explain how our population has soared from 3 billion in a mere 40 years.
The education of the masses may be our only salvation. Leave a married woman at home, and she has eight kids, as our great grandparents did, half of which lived. Educate her, and she goes out and gets a job to raise her family’s standard of living, limiting her child bearing to one or two. This is known as the “demographic transition.” While it occurred over four generations in the developed world, it is happening today in a single generation in much of Asia and Latin America. As a result, fertility around the world is crashing. The US is hovering at just below the replacement rate of 2.1 children per family, thanks to immigration. But China has plummeted to 1.5, Europe is at 1.4, and South Korea has plunged as low as 1.15.
Population pressures are expected to lead to increasing civil strife and resource wars. Some attribute the genocide in Rwanda in 1999, which killed 800,000, as the bloody result of overpopulation. If you want to get a first class foundation in the demographic issue along with a lot of cool graphics and charts, read the story in full by clicking here at http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/video/player#/?titleID=7-billion-animation&catID=1 . I’ll be the one to tell you which stocks to buy to capitalize on these trends.
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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More isn't necessarily better. People, shoes, ipods...all end up as waste sooner or later.
That is absurd. Show us your calculations.
No; 20T is infeasible given current oil production.
One need look at ONE chart alone to see where this is going, that of world population against time. It climbs a vertical wall at the onset of the oil age after being basically a flatline for all of history.
As far as Texas, where does the water come from and the sewage and trash go? The land footprint of people is a lot larger than their domicile.
trav7777
More of your ignorant shrill 'Peak Oil' crap? Don't you global central planners of the loony left fringe ever shut up and get tired of butting into everything with your tedious broken record? ..."We're All Doooooomed" zzzzzzZ
The Earth is swimming in oil, coal and gas (you'd know all about gas), there's no panic mate except you, your sign and the urgent necessity to fill the empty space between your ears
Moreover, these countries (E.U. and U.S.) are BURNING FOSSIL FUEL in order to PRODUCE this food. NO FUEL, NO FOOD. Not a sustainable situation. Look around the globe, anyone starving?
Only HB does that, not permaculture.
Trav,
Are you blind also?, did anyone slamming me, see the +/-,for those of you that know your tables means MINUS.
It was a wild guess, I didn't flat out say it could,but there's plenty of land to get it done, if we had to.
I'm waiting to see the stats for this period right now. I suspect global life expectancy, child deaths, fertility rates, etc have already turned the corner.
All this information available to the people, yet there's only a handful that are able to see the macro trends. Actually my favorite peak oil bloggers just wrote a post on the general ignorance of systems:
http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2011/02/overcoming-systems-stupid...
Thanks for putting it in text that is more fun to read Trav. Why don't you ask him about all those cycles that support life (at least in their current form). You know, in addition to the nitrogen cycle, you need the sulfur cycle, the phosphorus cycle, and the carbon cycle. All these cycles have their own very real "footprint" on earth. Push them out and life changes drastically.
Now things get interesting.
It's amazing how many people get upset over that kind of info:
The myth of overpopulation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZVOU5bfHrM
More junk propaganda. Video is based on the writings of a priest in 1890 (prior to the invention of the Habor Bosch process for nitrogen fixation (making fertilizer in mass while burning huge amounts of fossil fuels).
The Laws of thermodynamics are what they are. We have plenty of coal and Natural gas to fix nitrogen and make fertilizer for many more years in order to continue to feed the earth's population, but then what idiot?
"organic" farming, crop rotation with legumes (that live symbiotically with nitrogen fixing bacteria) will not grow food fast enough.
The laws of physics and thermodynamics are what they are, but keep passing around the propaganda moron. This seems to be one thing that the internet has been good at.
Myself, I will hedge accordingly.
The thermodynamics of nitrogen fixation do not support anything you say. It takes over a volt per mole of energy to reduce 1 mole of gaseous nitrogen to ammonia (fertilizer). You need to do some reading on how much fertilizer is required to grow food to feed 20 billion people. That energy has to come from somewhere. Yes, there are natural nitrogen fixers (ONLY bacteria) that live symbiotically with some plants, but they too are subject to the laws of thermodynamics and must also spend the energy to fix nitrogen, hence the "natural" process is too slow (crop rotation won't work-sorry) to support that many people globally. Oil and coal are the best for driving the Harbor Bosch process for fast nitrogen fixation.
Wake up moron, we have been quite literally "eating" fossil fuels for some time now. All you GOPers out in the Texas country side might be fine until the 50+ million people leave the cities of Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio looking for food.
Posts like this continue to underscore how the media and certain "Christian" entities continue to push "junk science" to keep the masses ignorant.
Hedge accordingly.
Looks like permaculture may have a lot that covered. http://www.permacultureusa.org/2008/09/29/nitrogen-fixing-trees-the-mult...
LoP, you are a smart guy. It would interesting to sit down over a cold one some day, and shoot-the-shit. Good posts.
Law,or Darwin Jr.
Hey MORON, read the damn post.....it was a hypothetical number,I didn't carve it in stone.
You dipwads that take once word, phrase and interpolate it as the entire post slay me.
Nitrogen fixing = Clover and Black Locust Bitchez!
Plenty of oil left to grow and transport all that food to Texas, too. Idiot.
Horny Xi
Re-read the post appears your in need of remedial reading also.
The entire point was to point out the stupidity of the euthanists, that we could not support(feed) thats population, nor did we have room for them.
Appears there's lots of room, and not all societies are going to develop into 3rd world status,many do not want to.
So, just the USA if it developed all its farmland, could feed the entire planet, just one continent.
Just stop bashing Dos. It never would have occurred to me the first big stumbling block for us in the west transitioning to alternative and sustainable energy and farming practices would be common folks inability to make the leap mentally. It's changing so fast I be posting links while they are one upped somewhere else on the web. Here's a link if you want to take a few hrs to try to catch up w/ where we were long ago (last week) in alternative energy http://www.alternative-energy-news.info/
Sustainable high yield farming is real, it's already here and gets better all the time just like it's energy counterpart above: (again) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV9CCxdkOng&feature=related
or you could read about permaculture.
You can help with the transition anytime or not....
Always think globally and act locally with a well-hedged position for survival (financial or otherwise)
I should disclose that I have my own sustainable farm with a water source and compost my own fertilizer. But, the 10 acres I actually farm with my own well barely feeds us. I have worked in agriculture biotech and nitrogen fixation for 20+ years. The county of L.A. in California alone has 20 million people who are dependent upon snow packs in California and the Rockies for water. The technologies you reference have extremely high water demand and nutrient demand. They can be set up in cities in/on building but don't think for a second that they are sustainable by themselves. They are not detached from many global cycles (that life depends on) and the availability of fresh water. Your are a fool to believe otherwise. Cold fusion is the only technology I see making any real difference at this point.
Please, hedge accordingly.
I'm stoked you're a farmer and you like LENR too. I hope you really look into permaculture and dry farming. I want us all to succeed. You might like algae based fuels grown in wastewater too.
Or, we could just all grow hemp and be in an incredibly more sustainable position than we are currently. But that makes too much sense.
Another U-tube video with no real science to back it up. All those farms need fresh water moron. At best a family of four needs TWO ACRES of farmland with over 1500 gallons of water.
Do some math retard. Multiply 7,000,000,000 by that 2 acre requirement and see if that fits inside the available farmland on earth, (can't use the oceans, can't use the deserts).
Where is the fresh water coming from as well!?!?! Are you going to burn more fossil fuels to desalinize? The laws of physics and thermo are what they are. there is only so much fresh water, phosphate, and reduced nitrogen cycling in the earth's atmosphere, period. Moreover the carrying potential for any given hector of land is also subject the weather.
Your "black box" or perpetual green house has been tried and does not work. Where and how are you going to build (and supply nutrients too) when all the cities of people empty? Look at water usage in the western United states alone. Not sustainable, and now you want to add an even bigger demand. Again, spout your propaganda retard. People have eyes, but for most it will be too late and the laws of physics and thermodynamics will have their say, as they have throughout history. The current population is but a "blip" in the big picture. Some call it the delta function.
I feel like my biggest mistake was letting all my bartered coffee and these silly arguments get to me before I had to rush out the door instead of staying and chatting with you.
Where do we start? The water, it's a closed loop, less evap' indoors initial requirements are high but it looks worth the yield (15,000 fish for that much water). This kind of farming is done vertically too btw... Can't grow food in the desert, I disagree, for one you are growing in a greenhouse (which could be in a desert or on the roof of an apartment building) and there are other proven methods for growing food in a desert:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gPvsl9ni-4
All of that water could be captured as it is in the video above.
It also looks like the fertilizers come from the fish (not just the ammonia).
Judging by your other comments it seems to be far more productive than any HB process yield I've seen. You'd better tell the University of Wisconsin they are way off the mark - if you still believe it. One of the many differences between HB and permaculture is HB makes soil not ruins it and almost always provides it's own water naturally. The food is way better too btw. I'm not saying we should breed to the trillions and judging by the path of the economies of the world we have (avoidable) set backs on the horizon. I like how passionate you're getting - it shows you care but mainstream ag' is as shortsighted and out of balance as our economic and political policy. There are better ways to do everything, the next thing you know we will be walking upright.
I have friends with small DRY permaculture farms all over nor-Cal and they provide way more food than they need. My one farmer friend has 27 acres and just bought a victorian with half cash... it really works and if the food's good enough for Chez Panisse I'm not the only one that thinks it's better quality.
Laws: we could steal it from the Canadians, they don't need all the fresh water they have. Although they may complain some, and might even sabotage the water lines.
Hey Darwin, another award winner......did I say it was feasible?.
No, did I say it could work, would work, no, I was just stating the populations current land mass needed to live on.
Did you get that are are on still on your red pony riding time?.
What part of a picture do you need drawn?.
So you are admitting it won't work? What is your point? The current land masses won't feed the current population? It takes more than land. I think we agree, just not connecting.
The carrying capacity of Earth does not scale linearly, you have to dispose of the trash build roads, parking lots, watter mains etc.
Soil erosion will do us in if the watter shortage won't get there 1st
"Around the world, soil is being swept and washed away 10 to 40 times faster than it is being replenished, destroying cropland the size of Indiana every year, reports a new Cornell University study."
Humans as geologic force means humans drive soil erosion globally.
www.nature.com/news/specials/planetaryboundaries/index.html
Howdy, neighbors! Welcome to Coruscant. The weather is nice, but the traffic is a mother-fucker.
Imagine that, 6 billion Spanish speakers!
Just imagine
5 billion people in the same traffic line :)
Just imagine.
5 billion cars exhaust in the same traffic line. Rolling down the window for a cigarette would be deadly.
5 billion people in the same bread line....