Lomborg in the Economist
Tim Worstall
rebuttals, and even, now,a counter counter rebuttal.....thought I'd
post this again. It's from last year, before Lomborg's book was
published, from the Economist. It's very simple, and I find very
little in it to disagree with.
Please note he doesn't crticise anyone other than Lester Brown and
Paul Ehrlich....both of whom need it, in my view.
He also doesn't deny man made GW, nor any of the many other things
he's been accused of over the months.
It's a good introduction to what the man is trying to say :
You can also see it with charts and all at :
http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=718860&CFID=3988204&CFTOKEN=3020d04-4e29f631-c444-42d1-9683-80e3f2d139f5
"Environmentalists tend to believe that, ecologically speaking, things
are getting worse and worse. Bjorn Lomborg, once deep green himself,
argues that they are wrong in almost every particular
ECOLOGY and economics should push in the same direction. After all,
the "eco" part of each word derives from the Greek word for "home",
and the protagonists of both claim to have humanity's welfare as their
goal. Yet environmentalists and economists are often at loggerheads.
For economists, the world seems to be getting better. For many
environmentalists, it seems to be getting worse.
These environmentalists, led by such veterans as Paul Ehrlich of
Stanford University, and Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute,
have developed a sort of "litany" of four big environmental fears:
⢠Natural resources are running out.
⢠The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat.
⢠Species are becoming extinct in vast numbers: forests are
disappearing and fish stocks are collapsing.
⢠The planet's air and water are becoming ever more polluted.
Human activity is thus defiling the earth, and humanity may end up
killing itself in the process.
The "litany" of environmental fears is not backed up by evidence
The trouble is, the evidence does not back up this litany. First,
energy and other natural resources have become more abundant, not less
so since the Club of Rome published "The Limits to Growth" in 1972.
Second, more food is now produced per head of the world's population
than at any time in history. Fewer people are starving. Third,
although species are indeed becoming extinct, only about 0.7% of them
are expected to disappear in the next 50 years, not 25-50%, as has so
often been predicted. And finally, most forms of environmental
pollution either appear to have been exaggerated, or are
transientâassociated with the early phases of industrialisation and
therefore best cured not by restricting economic growth, but by
accelerating it. One form of pollutionâthe release of greenhouse gases
that causes global warmingâdoes appear to be a long-term phenomenon,
but its total impact is unlikely to pose a devastating problem for the
future of humanity. A bigger problem may well turn out to be an
inappropriate response to it.
Can things only get better?
Take these four points one by one. First, the exhaustion of natural
resources. The early environmental movement worried that the mineral
resources on which modern industry depends would run out. Clearly,
there must be some limit to the amount of fossil fuels and metal ores
that can be extracted from the earth: the planet, after all, has a
finite mass. But that limit is far greater than many environmentalists
would have people believe.
Reserves of natural resources have to be located, a process that costs
money. That, not natural scarcity, is the main limit on their
availability. However, known reserves of all fossil fuels, and of most
commercially important metals, are now larger than they were when "The
Limits to Growth" was published. In the case of oil, for example,
reserves that could be extracted at reasonably competitive prices
would keep the world economy running for about 150 years at present
consumption rates. Add to that the fact that the price of solar energy
has fallen by half in every decade for the past 30 years, and appears
likely to continue to do so into the future, and energy shortages do
not look like a serious threat either to the economy or to the
environment.
The development for non-fuel resources has been similar. Cement,
aluminium, iron, copper, gold, nitrogen and zinc account for more than
75% of global expenditure on raw materials. Despite an increase in
consumption of these materials of between two- and ten-fold over the
past 50 years, the number of years of available reserves has actually
grown. Moreover, the increasing abundance is reflected in an
ever-decreasing price: The Economist's index of prices of industrial
raw materials has dropped some 80% in inflation-adjusted terms since
1845.
Next, the population explosion is also turning out to be a bugaboo. In
1968, Dr Ehrlich predicted in his best selling book, "The Population
Bomb", that "the battle to feed humanity is over. In the course of the
1970s the world will experience starvation of tragic
proportionsâhundreds of millions of people will starve to death."
That did not happen. Instead, according to the United Nations,
agricultural production in the developing world has increased by 52%
per person since 1961. The daily food intake in poor countries has
increased from 1,932 calories, barely enough for survival, in 1961 to
2,650 calories in 1998, and is expected to rise to 3,020 by 2030.
Likewise, the proportion of people in developing countries who are
starving has dropped from 45% in 1949 to 18% today, and is expected to
decline even further to 12% in 2010 and just 6% in 2030. Food, in
other words, is becoming not scarcer but ever more abundant. This is
reflected in its price. Since 1800 food prices have decreased by more
than 90%, and in 2000, according to the World Bank, prices were lower
than ever before.
Modern Malthus
Malthus was wrong: population growth has not been exponential
Dr Ehrlich's prediction echoed that made 170 years earlier by Thomas
Malthus. Malthus claimed that, if unchecked, human population would
expand exponentially, while food production could increase only
linearly, by bringing new land into cultivation. He was wrong.
Population growth has turned out to have an internal check: as people
grow richer and healthier, they have smaller families. Indeed, the
growth rate of the human population reached its peak, of more than 2%
a year, in the early 1960s. The rate of increase has been declining
ever since. It is now 1.26%, and is expected to fall to 0.46% in 2050.
The United Nations estimates that most of the world's population
growth will be over by 2100, with the population stabilising at just
below 11 billion (see chart 1).
Malthus also failed to take account of developments in agricultural
technology. These have squeezed more and more food out of each hectare
of land. It is this application of human ingenuity that has boosted
food production, not merely in line with, but ahead of, population
growth. It has also, incidentally, reduced the need to take new land
into cultivation, thus reducing the pressure on biodiversity.
Third, that threat of biodiversity loss is real, but exaggerated. Most
early estimates used simple island models that linked a loss in
habitat with a loss of biodiversity. A rule-of-thumb indicated that
loss of 90% of forest meant a 50% loss of species. As rainforests
seemed to be cut at alarming rates, estimates of annual species loss
of 20,000-100,000 abounded. Many people expected the number of species
to fall by half globally within a generation or two.
However, the data simply does not bear out these predictions. In the
eastern United States, forests were reduced over two centuries to
fragments totalling just 1-2% of their original area, yet this
resulted in the extinction of only one forest bird. In Puerto Rico,
the primary forest area has been reduced over the past 400 years by
99%, yet "only" seven of 60 species of bird has become extinct. All
but 12% of the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest was cleared in the 19th
century, leaving only scattered fragments. According to the
rule-of-thumb, half of all its species should have become extinct.
Yet, when the World Conservation Union and the Brazilian Society of
Zoology analysed all 291 known Atlantic forest animals, none could be
declared extinct. Species, therefore, seem more resilient than
expected. And tropical forests are not lost at annual rates of 2-4%,
as many environmentalists have claimed: the latest UN figures indicate
a loss of less than 0.5%.
In London, air pollution peaked around 1890
Fourth, pollution is also exaggerated. Many analyses show that air
pollution diminishes when a society becomes rich enough to be able to
afford to be concerned about the environment. For London, the city for
which the best data are available, air pollution peaked around 1890
(see chart 2). Today, the air is cleaner than it has been since 1585.
There is good reason to believe that this general picture holds true
for all developed countries. And, although air pollution is increasing
in many developing countries, they are merely replicating the
development of the industrialised countries. When they grow
sufficiently rich they, too, will start to reduce their air pollution.
All this contradicts the litany. Yet opinion polls suggest that many
people, in the rich world, at least, nurture the belief that
environmental standards are declining. Four factors cause this
disjunction between perception and reality.
Always look on the dark side of life
One is the lopsidedness built into scientific research. Scientific
funding goes mainly to areas with many problems. That may be wise
policy, but it will also create an impression that many more potential
problems exist than is the case.
Secondly, environmental groups need to be noticed by the mass media.
They also need to keep the money rolling in. Understandably, perhaps,
they sometimes exaggerate. In 1997, for example, the Worldwide Fund
for Nature issued a press release entitled, "Two-thirds of the world's
forests lost forever". The truth turns out to be nearer 20%.
Environmental groups are much like other lobby groups, but are treated
less sceptically
Though these groups are run overwhelmingly by selfless folk, they
nevertheless share many of the characteristics of other lobby groups.
That would matter less if people applied the same degree of scepticism
to environmental lobbying as they do to lobby groups in other fields.
A trade organisation arguing for, say, weaker pollution controls is
instantly seen as self-interested. Yet a green organisation opposing
such a weakening is seen as altruistic, even if a dispassionate view
of the controls in question might suggest they are doing more harm
than good.
A third source of confusion is the attitude of the media. People are
clearly more curious about bad news than good. Newspapers and
broadcasters are there to provide what the public wants. That,
however, can lead to significant distortions of perception. An example
was America's encounter with El Niño in 1997 and 1998. This climatic
phenomenon was accused of wrecking tourism, causing allergies, melting
the ski-slopes and causing 22 deaths by dumping snow in Ohio.
A more balanced view comes from a recent article in the Bulletin of
the American Meteorological Society. This tries to count up both the
problems and the benefits of the 1997-98 Niño. The damage it did was
estimated at $4 billion. However, the benefits amounted to some $19
billion. These came from higher winter temperatures (which saved an
estimated 850 lives, reduced heating costs and diminished spring
floods caused by meltwaters), and from the well-documented connection
between past Niños and fewer Atlantic hurricanes. In 1998, America
experienced no big Atlantic hurricanes and thus avoided huge losses.
These benefits were not reported as widely as the losses.
The fourth factor is poor individual perception. People worry that the
endless rise in the amount of stuff everyone throws away will cause
the world to run out of places to dispose of waste. Yet, even if
America's trash output continues to rise as it has done in the past,
and even if the American population doubles by 2100, all the rubbish
America produces through the entire 21st century will still take up
only the area of a square, each of whose sides measures 28km (18
miles). That is just one-12,000th of the area of the entire United
States.
Ignorance matters only when it leads to faulty judgments. But fear of
largely imaginary environmental problems can divert political energy
from dealing with real ones. The table above, showing the cost in the
United States of various measures to save a year of a person's life,
illustrates the danger. Some environmental policies, such as reducing
lead in petrol and sulphur-dioxide emissions from fuel oil, are very
cost-effective. But many of these are already in place. Most
environmental measures are less cost-effective than interventions
aimed at improving safety (such as installing air-bags in cars) and
those involving medical screening and vaccination. Some are absurdly
expensive.
Radically cutting carbon-dioxide emissions will be far more expensive
than adapting to higher temperatures
Yet a false perception of risk may be about to lead to errors more
expensive even than controlling the emission of benzene at tyre
plants. Carbon-dioxide emissions are causing the planet to warm. The
best estimates are that the temperature will rise by some 2°-3°C in
this century, causing considerable problems, almost exclusively in the
developing world, at a total cost of $5,000 billion. Getting rid of
global warming would thus seem to be a good idea. The question is
whether the cure will actually be more costly than the ailment.
Despite the intuition that something drastic needs to be done about
such a costly problem, economic analyses clearly show that it will be
far more expensive to cut carbon-dioxide emissions radically than to
pay the costs of adaptation to the increased temperatures. The effect
of the Kyoto Protocol on the climate would be minuscule, even if it
were implemented in full. A model by Tom Wigley, one of the main
authors of the reports of the UN Climate Change Panel, shows how an
expected temperature increase of 2.1°C in 2100 would be diminished by
the treaty to an increase of 1.9°C instead. Or, to put it another way,
the temperature increase that the planet would have experienced in
2094 would be postponed to 2100.
The Kyoto agreement merely buys the world six years
So the Kyoto agreement does not prevent global warming, but merely
buys the world six years. Yet, the cost of Kyoto, for the United
States alone, will be higher than the cost of solving the world's
single most pressing health problem: providing universal access to
clean drinking water and sanitation. Such measures would avoid 2m
deaths every year, and prevent half a billion people from becoming
seriously ill.
And that is the best case. If the treaty were implemented
inefficiently, the cost of Kyoto could approach $1 trillion, or more
than five times the cost of worldwide water and sanitation coverage.
For comparison, the total global-aid budget today is about $50 billion
a year.
To replace the litany with facts is crucial if people want to make the
best possible decisions for the future. Of course, rational
environmental management and environmental investment are good
ideasâbut the costs and benefits of such investments should be
compared to those of similar investments in all the other important
areas of human endeavour. It may be costly to be overly optimisticâbut
more costly still to be too pessimistic."
Tim Worstall
w...@bas.ac.uk
>In 1968, Dr Ehrlich predicted in his best selling book, "The Population
>Bomb", that "the battle to feed humanity is over. In the course of the
>1970s the world will experience starvation of tragic
I'm curious. How many millions do you think starved to death in the 1970's?
>Malthus claimed that, if unchecked, human population would
>expand exponentially, while food production could increase only
>linearly, by bringing new land into cultivation.
If this is indeed what Malthus claimed, then he is clearly wrong.
Any allotment holder will tell you that more people working that same
piece of land will produce more food from it. Could Malthus possibly
be unaware of this?
-W.
William M Connolley | w...@bas.ac.uk | http://www.nerc-bas.ac.uk/icd/wmc/
Climate Modeller, British Antarctic Survey | Disclaimer: I speak for myself
I'm a .signature virus! copy me into your .signature file & help me spread!
Harold
>Tim Worstall <t...@2xtreme.net> wrote:
>>In 1968, Dr Ehrlich predicted in his best selling book, "The Population
>>Bomb", that "the battle to feed humanity is over. In the course of the
>>1970s the world will experience starvation of tragic
>>proportionsæºundreds of millions of people will starve to death."
>
>I'm curious. How many millions do you think starved to death in the 1970's?
That's a cute, and cheap copout. One person death by starvation is
tragic. Erhlich was talking about people dying from too little food
on the earth. But those who died from starvation did not do so
because there was no food for them, they died because their tyrannical
governments, or their neighbors governments, cared more about their
own power than their people.
A lot more people died from their own governments violence than from
starvation.
>>Malthus claimed that, if unchecked, human population would
>>expand exponentially, while food production could increase only
>>linearly, by bringing new land into cultivation.
>
>If this is indeed what Malthus claimed, then he is clearly wrong.
>Any allotment holder will tell you that more people working that same
>piece of land will produce more food from it. Could Malthus possibly
>be unaware of this?
His, like the economic models used by almost every "environmentalist"
since, were too simple to be useful. Erlich has the most spectacular
record of failure in science.
Here are some more predictions from Erlich:
"Hundreds of millions of people will soon perish in smog disasters
in New York and Los Angeles...the oceans will die of DDT poisoning
by 1979...the U.S. life expectancy will drop to 42 years by 1980
due to cancer epidemics."
---- Paul Ehrlich, 1969, Ramparts.
"Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm
in the history of man have already been born."
----- Paul Ehrlich, "Eco-Catastrophe!" 1970, Ramparts.
"Agricultural experts state that a tripling of the food supply
of the world will be necessary in the next 30 years or so, if
the 6 or 7 billion people who may be alive in the year 2000
are to be adequately fed. Theoretically such an increase might
be possible, but it is becoming increasingly clear that it is
totally impossible in practice."
----Paul Erlich, "The Population Bomb", 1968
Regards, Harold (Certified Meanie)
-----
"A lot of environmental messages are simply not accurate. But
that's the way we sell messages in this society. We use hype.
And we use those pieces of information that sustain our
position."
-----Dr. Jerry Franklin, Ecologist, Univ.of Washington
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Ian St. John
> What with all teh stuff in Sciene and Nature, rebuttals, counter
> rebuttals, and even, now,a counter counter rebuttal.....thought I'd
> post this again. It's from last year, before Lomborg's book was
> published, from the Economist. It's very simple, and I find very
> little in it to disagree with.
Of course not. It says what you want to believe so why bother with
facts? Your posting of this op-ed piece does nothing but show that you
belong among the other 'permanently uninformed critics'.
> Please note he doesn't crticise anyone other than Lester Brown and
> Paul Ehrlich....both of whom need it, in my view.
And in my view, you are the one needing criticism. Of course, neither
this op-ed nor my rebuttal really establish anything. You are a lot
like James and hanson. You have nothing to contribute so you
contribute as much nothing as you can find trying to compensate.
> He also doesn't deny man made GW, nor any of the many other things
> he's been accused of over the months.
> It's a good introduction to what the man is trying to say :
One can read the original, or view a variety of pundits. The main
point that comes out is that he misuses the science and the data,
which is born out by the published quotes. It is not so much his
intended message as the fact that it is not supported by his
'evidence' and much of the rest is 'prophecy' which is noted for being
based on what is known, while knowledge always increases.
>
> You can also see it with charts and all at :
> http://www.economist.com/opinion/displayStory.cfm?story_id=718860&CFID=3988204&CFTOKEN=3020d04-4e29f631-c444-42d1-9683-80e3f2d139f5
So why are you reposting it in the entirety? Just trying to make so
much bafflegab that nobody will bother to respond, not having enough
time for a detailed critique??
Ian St. John
> "Environmentalists tend to believe that, ecologically speaking, things
> are getting worse and worse. Bjorn Lomborg, once deep green himself,
> argues that they are wrong in almost every particular
And who do you know that is 'wrong in almost every particular'? That
is not the point of view of an objective observer, but of a political
plank that has nothing to do with the issue. It has more to do with
trying to dominate the message and promote your 'point of view' by
using ad-hominem arguments about the opposition.
>
> ECOLOGY and economics should push in the same direction. After all,
> the "eco" part of each word derives from the Greek word for "home",
Very true, but distorted a bit. The fact is that environmentalism grew
out of the fact that capitalist economists did not take 'externalized
costs' into account and usually the ones who profited by the economics
were not those who paid the price. Both have their roots in the
improvement of 'home' but environmentalism is specifically 'don't foul
the nest' affecting all society, while economics tends to primarily
benefit a select few.
> and the protagonists of both claim to have humanity's welfare as their
> goal. Yet environmentalists and economists are often at loggerheads.
Of course. Economist are interested in promoting economic activity for
which they benefit, and ignoring the externalized costs. It was
because of this failure of the system that environmental groups
evolved to defend society from their greed and ignorance, no matter
what they claim.
> For economists, the world seems to be getting better. For many
> environmentalists, it seems to be getting worse.
Exactly. Economists work for the current economic elite and have a lot
of political and public influence. Against that the environmentalist
can only ask that externalized costs be reduced to a point where they
do not impact general health.
The profits of the wealthy have grown enormously. This is called the
'wage gap' and illustrates why the economists cry that we are
improving.
At the same time, incidences of many diseases, chronic conditions and
general health is decreasing as the externalized costs make it almost
impossible for the average person to escape the toxins and increase in
costs.
The environmentalist did make some strides and improve the general
health, for example in the EPA and Clean Air Act.
But at the same time, the economic elite has won in terms of
developing the SUV and similar gas guzzlers. It used to be that a big
car was needed, getting 10 mpg, but now we can buy a monster SUV
holding ten times the volume ( that we still mostly drive alone )
while getting the same 10 mpg. I guess this is an improvement..
At least when energy prices go back up again, we can buy a smaller,
more fuel efficient SUV.
>
> These environmentalists, led by such veterans as Paul Ehrlich of
> Stanford University, and Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute,
> have developed a sort of "litany" of four big environmental fears:
Ah... I wondered when the ad-hominems would start, "litany' being a
suggestion of 'religious' motives, which are not based on facts.
>
> ⢠Natural resources are running out.
And they are. No question. As you use up the deposits of high grade
ore, you have fewer deposites of high grade ore. As you use up fossil
fuels, you have fewer sources of fossil fuels. One can pay more (
reducing the standard of living ) to utilize lower grade ores, of
course, and improvements in technology can reduce the costs so as to
compensate for the reduced grade, but often this is accompanied with
increased exteranlized costs. In the end though, there will be no
resources left beyond rock and old refuse dumps.
Even rock can be a source of elements, but only at a huge cost in
effort and in energy, and energy is one of the things running out, so
unless we get a more dependable and long term supply of energy, the
system will eventually have to shut down. The only real possibility
for this 'long term energy supply' is the sun, and possibly solar
power satellites as all other alternative energy schemes require too
much in infrastructure, and maintenance to recover a diffuse energy
source.
It is irrational to claim that there is more oil in the ground now
that in prior years. This is a distortion using the increase in 'known
reserves' to mask the message. We WILL eventually run out of resources
as we exhaust all known reserves and no new ones are there to BE
discovered.
>
> ⢠The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat.
Local and global food supply will eventually become a problem in terms
of a reduced standard of living. Is the population still increasing?
Yes. Are there limits to growth? Yes.
The agricultural revolution gave us a breathing space, but it does
nothing to solve the long term problem. Nor does it feed the entire
planet. Local food supply issues are a major problem even if total
food supply is adequate. Will you give up your steak and potatoes so
that an african can eat a subsistence meal? No. And it would do no
good anyway as shipping is prohibitive for such things.
Nor can famine be averted by biotech. Most famines actually are the
faliure of subsistence farmers who then can find food in the markets,
but cannot *afford* to buy it because his only income was the farm. In
the wake of drought, not even biotech can salvage the situation.
Biotech needs at least marginal conditionals on which to improve.
We can probably support 25 billion on the planet if we intensively
harvest single celled organisms such as spirulina with a mineral and
vitamin supplement. However, do you want to live that way? And
eventually there will be more than 25 billion. What then?
>
> ⢠Species are becoming extinct in vast numbers: forests are
> disappearing and fish stocks are collapsing.
Have you priced cod in the supermarket? Then you are paying the price
for the collapse of fish stocks. There is little rational argument
that fish stocks, natural ecosystem complexity and old growth forest
are disappearing at an alarming rate. The capitalist system is very
good at maximizing exploitation, but has no concern for long term
sustainability. This is one reason that environmentalist and
economists are on different sides.
>
> ⢠The planet's air and water are becoming ever more polluted.
The air is a bit better with EPA and clean air regulations. Certainly
we are winning some respite from acid rain and smog. This may be
reversed if the economists keep gaining more power.
Long term contamination of soil and groundwater though is a battle
that is hardly being fought. The companies may clean up their act in
the future, but they still tend to 'externalize' the costs of the
pollution.
>
> Human activity is thus defiling the earth, and humanity may end up
> killing itself in the process.
I don't think mankind can go to the point of killing itself off, but
certainly the standard of living and the 'richness' of the environment
will decline while populations will decline from the current peak.
Jim Norton
some problems are getting better (often because of years of hard work), others
are lived with, but new ones keep arising.
"Optimists, Pesimists and Science", BioScience March 2002
"Are problems getting better or worse?. . . I find the question difficult to
answer. How can I compare past problems with new ones?"
=============================
Anti-environmental myths
http://members.aol.com/jimn469897/myths.htm
Practical skepticism
http://members.aol.com/jimn469897/skeptic.htm
David Friedman
> >Malthus claimed that, if unchecked, human population would
> >expand exponentially, while food production could increase only
> >linearly, by bringing new land into cultivation.
>
> If this is indeed what Malthus claimed, then he is clearly wrong.
> Any allotment holder will tell you that more people working that same
> piece of land will produce more food from it. Could Malthus possibly
> be unaware of this?
No.
Malthus claimed that you couldn't keep increasing output proportional to
the increase in workers on the land, amount of land kept constant--i.e.
the law of diminishing returns. He was in fact one of the originators of
what is (mis)called the "Ricardian Theory of Rent," which ultimately
comes from that fact and out of which the modern form of economics in
part developed.
Also, "if unchecked" above is a bit misleading. His claim was that if
having children did not inflict substantial costs on the parents, then,
since people like sex, you have exponential population growth at a
fairly high rate, and that would eventually drive down incomes. His
basic point was that things couldn't get a lot better for the mass of
the population because if they did population would expand exponentially
and that would eventually drive standards of living back down. The
theoretical argument was elegant and persuasive, but the prediction
turned out to be false.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
Phil Hays
<Intro Snipped>
> Carbon-dioxide emissions are causing the planet to warm. The
> best estimates are that the temperature will rise by some 2°-3°C in
> this century,
Best estimates have a range more like 2C-5C, even with known atmospheric
concentrations of CO2.
> causing considerable problems, almost exclusively in the
> developing world, at a total cost of $5,000 billion.
Notice the far too precise cost. Regardless of where Lomborg found
this, this is wrong. The cost can't be known to any single number. Any
reasonable estimate of cost will be expressed as a range.
There are several reasons for the cost estimate needed to be a broad
range. I'm going to mention climate sensitivity, regional differences,
and the non-linear relationship between climate change and cost. I'd
suggest reading the IPCC TAR Chapter 13:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/tar/wg1/491.htm
When we make a known change to the atmosphere, the climate change
resulting isn't known exactly. The response of a model to doubled CO2
is often used as a way of comparing models. The IPCC TAR gives this
summary of modeled climate sensitivities:
http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/tar/wg1/fig9-18.htm
Note that the estimated temperature change from current models range
from 2C to 5C. If we assume that 2C costs $5,000 billion, then 5C
would cost at least $12,500 billion.
Next, climate change isn't going to be uniform over the Earth. An
decrease in rainfall over the North Pacific will have a rather different
impact than a decrease in rainfall over the Eastern USA or India. I'm
not going to attempt to assign a range to this, but it will increase the
range.
Lastly, a small and slow climate change will have a lower cost per
degree of change than a larger or faster climate change. A slower
change allows for better adaptation to the changing climate. A slow
enough and small enough change may even have a net benefit. Again, I'm
not going to attempt to assign numbers to this, but again, this will
increase the cost range.
<Rest of OpEd Snipped>
--
Phil Hays
Tim Worstall
> On 19 Apr 2002 19:52:41 GMT, w...@bas.ac.uk wrote:
>
> >Tim Worstall <t...@2xtreme.net> wrote:
> >>In 1968, Dr Ehrlich predicted in his best selling book, "The Population
> >>Bomb", that "the battle to feed humanity is over. In the course of the
> >>1970s the world will experience starvation of tragic
> >>proportionsæºundreds of millions of people will starve to death."
> >
> >I'm curious. How many millions do you think starved to death in the 1970's?
>
> That's a cute, and cheap copout. One person death by starvation is
> tragic. Erhlich was talking about people dying from too little food
> on the earth. But those who died from starvation did not do so
> because there was no food for them, they died because their tyrannical
> governments, or their neighbors governments, cared more about their
> own power than their people.
>
> A lot more people died from their own governments violence than from
> starvation.
You might want to note Amyarta Sen on this point : One of the theories
that led to his Nobel in Economics was his point that there have been
no major famines in the past century where there are:
1) Democracy
2) A free market
3) A free press.
This leads to the idea that all of the major famines that there have
been, Bengal 1943, Ethiopia 1981 / 2 , Ukraine 1931/2 , Various in
China, etc etc, have been as a result of Govt incompetence or evil,
not a shortage of actual food.
Tim Worstall
Tim Worstall
Glad I did post this again. Thought it might flush out some nonsense
such as this :
>
> > "Environmentalists tend to believe that, ecologically speaking, things
> > are getting worse and worse. Bjorn Lomborg, once deep green himself,
> > argues that they are wrong in almost every particular
>
> And who do you know that is 'wrong in almost every particular'? That
> is not the point of view of an objective observer, but of a political
> plank that has nothing to do with the issue. It has more to do with
> trying to dominate the message and promote your 'point of view' by
> using ad-hominem arguments about the opposition.
Which is in itself a nice avoidance of the facts, and an ad hominem.
>
> >
> > ECOLOGY and economics should push in the same direction. After all,
> > the "eco" part of each word derives from the Greek word for "home",
>
> Very true, but distorted a bit. The fact is that environmentalism grew
> out of the fact that capitalist economists did not take 'externalized
> costs' into account and usually the ones who profited by the economics
> were not those who paid the price.
Economists do indeed take ' externalities' into account. Huge swathes
of the literature are devoted to this very point. How to make economic
actors ( whether individuals or corporations ) responsible for the
external effects of their actions. You might be right if you say that
capitalist accountants, or capitalist firms, or capitalist economic
actors, do not take account of externalites.....indeed they don't
because they are external to their accounting and payment systems,
which is why they are called ' externalities '. But economists ? The
profession has been spending the better part of a century pondering
about how to make people bear the costs of their externalities.
There's no easy solution just because, unfortunately, there is no easy
solution.......we all agree that economic actors should bear the
costs, but how to actually enforce that ?
Both have their roots in the
> improvement of 'home' but environmentalism is specifically 'don't foul
> the nest' affecting all society, while economics tends to primarily
> benefit a select few.
??????
Aren't you confusing economics with something else here ? Economics is
the study of what people do under certain stimuli. Your comment seems
to be stating that economics causes the current wealth distribution (
for example ) rather than merely describing it. Your comment is akin
to stating that virology causes smallpox.....rather than merely
describing it.
>
>
> > and the protagonists of both claim to have humanity's welfare as their
> > goal. Yet environmentalists and economists are often at loggerheads.
>
> Of course. Economist are interested in promoting economic activity for
> which they benefit, and ignoring the externalized costs. It was
> because of this failure of the system that environmental groups
> evolved to defend society from their greed and ignorance, no matter
> what they claim.
As above, economists do not ignore externalities. Others might, but
not economists.
>
>
> > For economists, the world seems to be getting better. For many
> > environmentalists, it seems to be getting worse.
>
> Exactly. Economists work for the current economic elite and have a lot
> of political and public influence. Against that the environmentalist
> can only ask that externalized costs be reduced to a point where they
> do not impact general health.
Exactly what an economist would argue for. That all economic actors
should bear the cost of their externalities . The question is not
whether this should be so, but exactly how do we organise society so
that this is acheived ?
>
> The profits of the wealthy have grown enormously. This is called the
> 'wage gap' and illustrates why the economists cry that we are
> improving.
No, I think you'll find that an increased wage gap is not why
economists think things are improving. Taken by the most basic
measures, food intake per capita, life spans, decreases in child
mortality......the really basic things that measure ' better ' or '
worse ' human lives. The past century has seen unprecedented changes
for the ' better' in these things. Even in a war torn shithole like
Angola average life spans are in the mid 40 's.....not great when set
against late 70's in the industrial world, but a hell of a lot better
than a century ago.
WHO reported last week that there were 537 cases of polio reported
in 2001.....and think that the true figure was perhaps double that. As
compared with the 350,000 in 1988....I think that is getting
better,WHO thinks that is getting better, economists think that is
getting better .....what do you think ?
>
> At the same time, incidences of many diseases, chronic conditions and
> general health is decreasing as the externalized costs make it almost
> impossible for the average person to escape the toxins and increase in
> costs.
You'll have to be more specific. Globally life spans are
increasing.....age adjusted rates for such things as cancer are
falling. Just which diseases are getting worse ? ( other than AIDS of
course....and I don't see anyone arguing that this is pollution based
in cause ).
In fact, I don't think you'll be able to point to any disease at all
that is getting worse as a result of ' toxins ' or 'externalities'.
And if you can, I 'd love to know about it. Seriously, I really would.
>
> The environmentalist did make some strides and improve the general
> health, for example in the EPA and Clean Air Act.
No ones arguing that evironmentalists are ' bad ' nor that all of
their actions are.An economist might want to add ' opportunity costs '
to the debate, and perhaps insist on a cost benefit analysis, but
that's all. The goal is the same....a better life for all humans.
>
> But at the same time, the economic elite has won in terms of
> developing the SUV and similar gas guzzlers. It used to be that a big
> car was needed, getting 10 mpg, but now we can buy a monster SUV
> holding ten times the volume ( that we still mostly drive alone )
> while getting the same 10 mpg. I guess this is an improvement..
If you are saying that the 50 million SUV drivers are all part of the
' economic elite ' .....well that's a pretty inclusive use of the word
' elite '.
>
> At least when energy prices go back up again, we can buy a smaller,
> more fuel efficient SUV.
>
>
> >
> > These environmentalists, led by such veterans as Paul Ehrlich of
> > Stanford University, and Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute,
> > have developed a sort of "litany" of four big environmental fears:
>
> Ah... I wondered when the ad-hominems would start, "litany' being a
> suggestion of 'religious' motives, which are not based on facts.
And precisely why the word is so used. Reading even a little of
Ehrlich or Brown immediately reminds one of Chicken Little, or the boy
who cried 'Wolf ! '.
Whatever the subject, whatever the decade, we're all going to die
tomorrow....and they persist in this in the face of every observable
fact. It is a religious belief, as it is certainly unsupported by any
science.
>
> >
> > ⢠Natural resources are running out.
>
> And they are. No question. As you use up the deposits of high grade
> ore, you have fewer deposites of high grade ore. As you use up fossil
> fuels, you have fewer sources of fossil fuels. One can pay more (
> reducing the standard of living ) to utilize lower grade ores, of
> course, and improvements in technology can reduce the costs so as to
> compensate for the reduced grade, but often this is accompanied with
> increased exteranlized costs. In the end though, there will be no
> resources left beyond rock and old refuse dumps.
Just think this through for a moment, please. Let's take oil as an
example. Using the technology of the 1860's we would already have run
out of oil ( Pennsylvania being one of the few places you could get it
with that level of tech ). Now we get it from Siberia, the North Sea,
all sorts of places. Because tech has moved on. We are even reopening
N Sea fields that 15 years ago we though were exhausted. So has the
advance to tech meant that we have more oil ? Or less ?
>
> Even rock can be a source of elements, but only at a huge cost in
> effort and in energy, and energy is one of the things running out, so
> unless we get a more dependable and long term supply of energy, the
> system will eventually have to shut down. The only real possibility
> for this 'long term energy supply' is the sun, and possibly solar
> power satellites as all other alternative energy schemes require too
> much in infrastructure, and maintenance to recover a diffuse energy
> source.
I do agree that solar power satellites are the long term answer. I've
seen a few designs. Once we get the cost of getting into space down by
two more orders of magnitude ( 50 years perhaps ? ) then they will
work.
And as for rock ? What do you think mining is ? Gold is already mined
at 1 gramme per tonne concentrations. Cheap energy would mean sea
water mining....or perhaps we could start mining fly ash and bauxite
wastes. The only thing stopping these two now is energy costs.
>
> It is irrational to claim that there is more oil in the ground now
> that in prior years. This is a distortion using the increase in 'known
> reserves' to mask the message. We WILL eventually run out of resources
> as we exhaust all known reserves and no new ones are there to BE
> discovered.
But that isn't what any of us is trying to say. What we are trying to
say is that continuing advances in technology will mean that for
practical purposes, we won't run out of anything for centuries yet.
And in those centuries further new technology will mean that we can
substitute for them.
>
> >
> > ⢠The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat.
The population is not ever growing. Not even those radical hotheads at
the UN believe that any more. Current best estimate is that human
population will top out in the next 50 years. And then shrink. Just as
it is in Europe, Japan and ( net of immigration ) the US. In fact
anywhere rich. And food per capita is still going up.
>
> Local and global food supply will eventually become a problem in terms
> of a reduced standard of living. Is the population still increasing?
> Yes.
Yes, but as a result of demographic shift, not anything else. As
above, it is not an endless process.
Are there limits to growth? Yes.
No. As technology continues to grow so will the economy. At or near
to the long term growth rate of 2 - 3 % a year. Changes in technology
mean that this will simply continue. And if you don't believe me then
I suggest you get a basic econ book out of the library. It's not a
controversial opinion at all.
>
> The agricultural revolution gave us a breathing space, but it does
> nothing to solve the long term problem.
What long term problem ? The earth already produces enough calories
for the population, using 11 - 12 % of the land area. And productivity
on that is going up at 1 % a year, while as noted the population is
topping out.
Nor does it feed the entire
> planet. Local food supply issues are a major problem even if total
> food supply is adequate.
Sure. So apply best agricultural policies in all local areas.An
example. Hunger in Zimbabwe ? Is this a failure of economics ? Or the
idiocy of Mugabe ?
Will you give up your steak and potatoes so
> that an african can eat a subsistence meal? No. And it would do no
> good anyway as shipping is prohibitive for such things.
>
> Nor can famine be averted by biotech. Most famines actually are the
> faliure of subsistence farmers who then can find food in the markets,
> but cannot *afford* to buy it because his only income was the farm. In
> the wake of drought, not even biotech can salvage the situation.
> Biotech needs at least marginal conditionals on which to improve.
You need to read more economics. Amyarta Sen got his Nobel for talking
about famine. It doesn't happen when you have :
1) Free markets
2) Democracy
3) A free press.
It is not lack of money that causes them, nor , except in the most
local sense, lack of food. And why ? Because we humans will not stand
by and watch people starve to death on TV.....we do something about
it. Like send food and money.
>
> We can probably support 25 billion on the planet if we intensively
> harvest single celled organisms such as spirulina with a mineral and
> vitamin supplement. However, do you want to live that way? And
> eventually there will be more than 25 billion. What then?
No, population is topping out. 8 - 9 billion is current best guess (
the UN, not me ) . And no one, outside of the Brown / Ehrlich eco
nutter asylum thinks that we will not be able to feed that number on
the land and resources that we already have. And yes this is without
cutting down the rain forests, or strip mining Florida for phosphates.
>
> >
> > ⢠Species are becoming extinct in vast numbers: forests are
> > disappearing and fish stocks are collapsing.
>
> Have you priced cod in the supermarket? Then you are paying the price
> for the collapse of fish stocks.
As a resident of Canada you should know more about this. The collapse
of the Grand Banks cod fishery is indeed one of the great
environmental disasters of recent times. And economists even know what
caused it, and how to stop it happening again elsewhere. It's just
that no one listens to us. It's called' The Tragedy of the Commons ' (
not Gilbert Hardin's reading of it, but the earlier, 1830's
formulation from which he took his title ) and we know all about it.
Much of what is heppening to old growth forests can also be traced to
the same set of economic factors ( please note that it is not
economists who create these factors. We just describe them. ). And the
cure ? Ownership. Direct private ownership by an individual or
corporation. Inheritable rights. No, I know you won't agree with me,
but really, honestly, we've known the answer to this particular
problem for 180 years. It's just no one actually believes us.
There is little rational argument
> that fish stocks, natural ecosystem complexity and old growth forest
> are disappearing at an alarming rate. The capitalist system is very
> good at maximizing exploitation, but has no concern for long term
> sustainability. This is one reason that environmentalist and
> economists are on different sides.
I do wish you could get over this idea that we are on different sides.
We both want the same thing. A long term sustainable economy, in which
human societies can flourish in the maximum of freedom and wealth
consistent with that long term. It's just that economists have
actually studied how to bring that about, rather than wishing for a
magic wand to make it all better. You know, being an adult and
thinking it all through, rather than wanting Mother Earth to give us a
kiss and make it all better.
>
> >
> > ⢠The planet's air and water are becoming ever more polluted.
>
> The air is a bit better with EPA and clean air regulations. Certainly
> we are winning some respite from acid rain and smog. This may be
> reversed if the economists keep gaining more power.
Economists don't have enough power. Most of the things ecologists and
environmentalists cry out about we already know how to solve. It's
just you won't listen.
Now if you were to quote Shakespeare ( Henry V part II I think ) ..'
The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers '......then I might
agree.
>
> Long term contamination of soil and groundwater though is a battle
> that is hardly being fought. The companies may clean up their act in
> the future, but they still tend to 'externalize' the costs of the
> pollution.
I agree that companies do so.....and also that they shouldn't.And
economists keep trying to tell people this, and providing schemes that
will stop them doing so. As I keep saying, we know this problem, and
know the solution. Now if we can just get the airheads in Govt to
listen.....
>
> >
> > Human activity is thus defiling the earth, and humanity may end up
> > killing itself in the process.
>
> I don't think mankind can go to the point of killing itself off, but
> certainly the standard of living and the 'richness' of the environment
> will decline while populations will decline from the current peak.
Population is not currently at its peak. 8 - 9 billion is what the UN
thinks it will be. And then a century or so decline down to the 4 - 5
billion level. This is already happening in the rich countries, and
the current boom is mostly to do with demographic shift, not high
birth rates. And everyone who actually studies the subject thinks
there will be enough food to go round, that we will not use
appreciably more farmland than we already do, and that humanity will
continue to get richer and richer while doing less damage to the
enviropnment. I mean, for God's sake, even the IPCC thinks that in a
century the Third World will be where we are now. And it's not as if
they are a bunch of radical right wingers now is it ?
Tim Worstall
w...@bas.ac.uk
>Harold
>> On 19 Apr 2002 19:52:41 GMT, w...@bas.ac.uk wrote:
>> >Tim Worstall <t...@2xtreme.net> wrote:
>> >>In 1968, Dr Ehrlich predicted in his best selling book, "The Population
>> >>Bomb", that "the battle to feed humanity is over. In the course of the
>> >>1970s the world will experience starvation of tragic
>> >>proportionsæºundreds of millions of people will starve to death."
>> >
>> >I'm curious. How many millions do you think starved to death in the 1970's?
>>
>>
>You might want to note Amyarta Sen on this point...
I'm not trying to support Erlich here. I just want to know if this
particular point, which Ive seen quoted against him before, is true or
not.
What you are saying is that neither of you know whether the statement
is true or false? Wouldn't you even care to offer a guess? Was the total
number less than 1M? 10M? 100M?
-W.
--
w...@bas.ac.uk
>> >Malthus claimed that, if unchecked, human population would
>> >expand exponentially, while food production could increase only
>> >linearly, by bringing new land into cultivation.
>>
>> If this is indeed what Malthus claimed, then he is clearly wrong.
>> Any allotment holder will tell you that more people working that same
>> piece of land will produce more food from it. Could Malthus possibly
>> be unaware of this?
>No.
>Malthus claimed that you couldn't keep increasing output proportional to
>the increase in workers on the land, amount of land kept constant--i.e.
>the law of diminishing returns.
Fair enough. No one can argue with that. But did he have any figures
for when that point would be reached. Have we reached it yet? If not,
his arguements remain valid...
>His
>basic point was that things couldn't get a lot better for the mass of
>the population because if they did population would expand exponentially
>and that would eventually drive standards of living back down.
OK, that has turned out wrong.
-W.
--
Donald L Ferrt
> ist...@spamcop.net (Ian St. John) wrote in message news:<211be79f.02041...@posting.google.com>...
> > t...@2xtreme.net (Tim Worstall) wrote in message news:<825e2890.02041...@posting.google.com>...
>
> >
> > >
> > > ECOLOGY and economics should push in the same direction. After all,
> > > the "eco" part of each word derives from the Greek word for "home",
> >
> > Very true, but distorted a bit. The fact is that environmentalism grew
> > out of the fact that capitalist economists did not take 'externalized
> > costs' into account and usually the ones who profited by the economics
> > were not those who paid the price.
>
> Economists do indeed take ' externalities' into account. Huge swathes
> of the literature are devoted to this very point. How to make economic
> actors ( whether individuals or corporations ) responsible for the
> external effects of their actions. You might be right if you say that
> capitalist accountants, or capitalist firms, or capitalist economic
> actors, do not take account of externalites.....indeed they don't
> because they are external to their accounting and payment systems,
> which is why they are called ' externalities '. But economists ? The
> profession has been spending the better part of a century pondering
> about how to make people bear the costs of their externalities.
> There's no easy solution just because, unfortunately, there is no easy
> solution.......we all agree that economic actors should bear the
> costs, but how to actually enforce that ?
Well, had they not been called to the carpet on a degree as to
'externalities' by such as the environmental movement, they would not
be worrying about it at all!
>
>
> Both have their roots in the
> > improvement of 'home' but environmentalism is specifically 'don't foul
> > the nest' affecting all society, while economics tends to primarily
> > benefit a select few.
> ??????
> Aren't you confusing economics with something else here ? Economics is
> the study of what people do under certain stimuli. Your comment seems
> to be stating that economics causes the current wealth distribution (
> for example ) rather than merely describing it. Your comment is akin
> to stating that virology causes smallpox.....rather than merely
> describing it.
Well since such as 'Economists' at say the Compeitive Enterprise
Institute make sweeping generalizations as to the effects of
environmentalism on the economy and the effecte of free market
economics on the environment, it is just not describing the behavior
of people but proscribing how the behavior should be to effect the
desired results!
> >
> >
> > > and the protagonists of both claim to have humanity's welfare as their
> > > goal. Yet environmentalists and economists are often at loggerheads.
> >
> > Of course. Economist are interested in promoting economic activity for
> > which they benefit, and ignoring the externalized costs. It was
> > because of this failure of the system that environmental groups
> > evolved to defend society from their greed and ignorance, no matter
> > what they claim.
>
> As above, economists do not ignore externalities. Others might, but
> not economists.
They always have! Until the environmental movement in the 70's
pollution of air and water was a given, under which the persumed right
to sue under common law was a total joke! The effects on the health
care system was to render more benefits to the medical profession
without any detrmental effects to the economic sector. Not until the
hosptial system was more socialized was it a factor to the economists
= surely the banckruptcy of families when the system was not
socialized was hardly a concern to them! And indeed socializing the
costs removes the corporate enity from the problem to a large extent!
> >
> >
> > > For economists, the world seems to be getting better. For many
> > > environmentalists, it seems to be getting worse.
> >
> > Exactly. Economists work for the current economic elite and have a lot
> > of political and public influence. Against that the environmentalist
> > can only ask that externalized costs be reduced to a point where they
> > do not impact general health.
>
> Exactly what an economist would argue for. That all economic actors
> should bear the cost of their externalities . The question is not
> whether this should be so, but exactly how do we organise society so
> that this is acheived ?
Exactly for the corporations = socialized costs for privitized
profits! Especially if they can go to off shore banks like Enron to
aviod all costs!
> >
> > The profits of the wealthy have grown enormously. This is called the
> > 'wage gap' and illustrates why the economists cry that we are
> > improving.
>
> No, I think you'll find that an increased wage gap is not why
> economists think things are improving. Taken by the most basic
> measures, food intake per capita,
And much less to the farmer = why farms are being made into large
corporations!
life spans, decreases in child
> mortality......the really basic things that measure ' better ' or '
> worse ' human lives. The past century has seen unprecedented changes
> for the ' better' in these things. Even in a war torn shithole like
> Angola average life spans are in the mid 40 's.....not great when set
> against late 70's in the industrial world, but a hell of a lot better
> than a century ago.
> WHO reported last week that there were 537 cases of polio reported
> in 2001.....and think that the true figure was perhaps double that. As
> compared with the 350,000 in 1988....I think that is getting
> better,WHO thinks that is getting better, economists think that is
> getting better .....what do you think ?
Especially since the corporatized Drug interest would rather follow
more profit orientated drug research and production rather than those
of the diseases and ailments of the third world! And that is a result
of NGO's noty the corporations!
> >
> > The agricultural revolution gave us a breathing space, but it does
> > nothing to solve the long term problem.
>
> What long term problem ? The earth already produces enough calories
> for the population, using 11 - 12 % of the land area. And productivity
> on that is going up at 1 % a year, while as noted the population is
> topping out.
Hard to say, there is an economic and enviornmental cost to such high
food production. As the world moves to more high protein such as
beef, those costs will go up!
> Will you give up your steak and potatoes so
> > that an african can eat a subsistence meal? No. And it would do no
> > good anyway as shipping is prohibitive for such things.
> >
> > Nor can famine be averted by biotech. Most famines actually are the
> > faliure of subsistence farmers who then can find food in the markets,
> > but cannot *afford* to buy it because his only income was the farm. In
> > the wake of drought, not even biotech can salvage the situation.
> > Biotech needs at least marginal conditionals on which to improve.
>
> You need to read more economics. Amyarta Sen got his Nobel for talking
> about famine. It doesn't happen when you have :
> 1) Free markets
> 2) Democracy
> 3) A free press.
Chile under Pinochet had neither = did it starve = no! And China with
its limited Agricultural lands produces as much food as the US!
>
> It is not lack of money that causes them, nor , except in the most
> local sense, lack of food. And why ? Because we humans will not stand
> by and watch people starve to death on TV.....we do something about
> it. Like send food and money.
I see no evidence of that. Many people do staqrve! And hey there,
sending over massive food aid often topples the rest of food
production in a country. The local food producer, can get sell his
food for profit and folds!
> >
> > We can probably support 25 billion on the planet if we intensively
> > harvest single celled organisms such as spirulina with a mineral and
> > vitamin supplement. However, do you want to live that way? And
> > eventually there will be more than 25 billion. What then?
>
> No, population is topping out. 8 - 9 billion is current best guess (
> the UN, not me ) . And no one, outside of the Brown / Ehrlich eco
> nutter asylum thinks that we will not be able to feed that number on
> the land and resources that we already have. And yes this is without
> cutting down the rain forests, or strip mining Florida for phosphates.
Well if the people increasingly eat beef. more amd more forests will
be cut down for grazing or growing feed stuff for livestock, you
therefore can't say that we will not have to not cut down the rain
forests = since that will be the local concern. Brazil with a vastly
improoving economy would need vast areas for grazing livestock or
livestock food stuffs! The would mean removing the rain forests!
8-9 billion people = on current model. I have heard there is a boom
in the US birth rate! Such places as Europe would be irrelevant to
the model since they have long since despoiled their wild areas!
> >
> > >
> > > ⢠Species are becoming extinct in vast numbers: forests are
> > > disappearing and fish stocks are collapsing.
> >
> > Have you priced cod in the supermarket? Then you are paying the price
> > for the collapse of fish stocks.
>
> As a resident of Canada you should know more about this. The collapse
> of the Grand Banks cod fishery is indeed one of the great
> environmental disasters of recent times. And economists even know what
> caused it, and how to stop it happening again elsewhere. It's just
> that no one listens to us. It's called' The Tragedy of the Commons '
That is interesting! I see no private interest raising any animal for
food that would allow any predator or competitor interfer in their
interests. In the West, the cattle grazer wants the wolf killed and
the elk and deer numbers controllede. Your privately owned ocean
would be a desert of one or two species in a million square mile area!
(
> not Gilbert Hardin's reading of it, but the earlier, 1830's
> formulation from which he took his title ) and we know all about it.
> Much of what is heppening to old growth forests can also be traced to
> the same set of economic factors
Really???? All the old=growth on privately owned land have long since
been removed = That is why they want to increase cutting in the
National Forests!
( please note that it is not
> economists who create these factors. We just describe them. ). And the
> cure ? Ownership. Direct private ownership by an individual or
> corporation. Inheritable rights. No, I know you won't agree with me,
> but really, honestly, we've known the answer to this particular
> problem for 180 years. It's just no one actually believes us.
Yep entire oceans with 1 or 2 species = surely a definite improovement
over today's overfshing! = NOT
>
> There is little rational argument
> > that fish stocks, natural ecosystem complexity and old growth forest
> > are disappearing at an alarming rate. The capitalist system is very
> > good at maximizing exploitation, but has no concern for long term
> > sustainability. This is one reason that environmentalist and
> > economists are on different sides.
>
> I do wish you could get over this idea that we are on different sides.
> We both want the same thing. A long term sustainable economy, in which
> human societies can flourish in the maximum of freedom and wealth
> consistent with that long term.
AKA = Happy Daleks in which those species that don't add to economic
benefit of the system have been exterminated!
It's just that economists have
> actually studied how to bring that about, rather than wishing for a
> magic wand to make it all better. You know, being an adult and
> thinking it all through, rather than wanting Mother Earth to give us a
> kiss and make it all better.
The God syndrome. = I am built in the image of God, I know best = I
can do not wrong!
> >
> > >
> > > ⢠The planet's air and water are becoming ever more polluted.
> >
> > The air is a bit better with EPA and clean air regulations. Certainly
> > we are winning some respite from acid rain and smog. This may be
> > reversed if the economists keep gaining more power.
>
> Economists don't have enough power. Most of the things ecologists and
> environmentalists cry out about we already know how to solve. It's
> just you won't listen.
Yep, = Ole Bush = closer for the Free Market idea than any before =
let the private citizen eat the pollution and pay for it!
> Now if you were to quote Shakespeare ( Henry V part II I think ) ..'
> The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers '......then I might
> agree.
Well Ole Henry killed everyone else oppoesed to him = why not the
Lawyers
> >
> > Long term contamination of soil and groundwater though is a battle
> > that is hardly being fought. The companies may clean up their act in
> > the future, but they still tend to 'externalize' the costs of the
> > pollution.
>
> I agree that companies do so.....and also that they shouldn't.And
> economists keep trying to tell people this,
No the don't = you can't find one such reference of sych at the
Competitive Enterprise Institute!
and providing schemes that
> will stop them doing so.
Yep HMO's = make the public pay and soak they while they are doing it!
As I keep saying, we know this problem, and
> know the solution. Now if we can just get the airheads in Govt to
> listen.....
> >
> > >
> > > Human activity is thus defiling the earth, and humanity may end up
> > > killing itself in the process.
> >
> > I don't think mankind can go to the point of killing itself off, but
> > certainly the standard of living and the 'richness' of the environment
> > will decline while populations will decline from the current peak.
>
> Population is not currently at its peak. 8 - 9 billion is what the UN
> thinks it will be.
I hear there is a boom in the US!
And then a century or so decline down to the 4 - 5
> billion level.
That is ajoke right????
This is already happening in the rich countries,
The US is booming
and
> the current boom is mostly to do with demographic shift, not high
> birth rates. And everyone who actually studies the subject thinks
> there will be enough food to go round, that we will not use
> appreciably more farmland than we already do, and that humanity will
> continue to get richer and richer while doing less damage to the
> enviropnment. I mean, for God's sake, even the IPCC thinks that in a
> century the Third World will be where we are now. And it's not as if
> they are a bunch of radical right wingers now is it ?
>
> Tim Worstall
Well, if the Third World has our living standards, the wold will be a
very stripped place except for producing food and energy and Luxery
goods! = Goodbye species!
Don Libby
> >> >I'm curious. How many millions do you think starved to death in the 1970's?
>
> is true or false? Wouldn't you even care to offer a guess? Was the total
> number less than 1M? 10M? 100M?
>
> -W.
Good question. I poked around the FAO web site for about an hour
and was only able to come up with an estimated approx 950 million
undernourished in 1970, and approx 850 million undernourished in
1990.
Then I turned to Lomborg, who gives this url:
http://www.cred.be/emdat/intro.html
Which gives:
1972 600,000 famine deaths in Ethiopia
1975-1985 15 famine deaths world-wide
1986-1995 62,640 famine deaths world-wide
1996-2001 219,644 famine deaths world-wide
Then as a check I went to WHO and downloaded the year 2000 Global
Burden of Disease spreadsheet, which estimates 440,000 deaths
world-wide due to all nutritional deficiencies out of a
population of 6,045,170,000 for an annualized crude death rate of
approx 7.3 per 100,000.
Now, assuming nutrition deficiency death rate is a constant
proportion of undernourishment, I estimate approx 54.6 deaths per
100,000 undernourished. Interpolating the undernourishment
estimates from 1970 to 1979, and applying the death rate, I get
an estimated world total deaths due to nutritional deficiency
during the 1970s of 5,061,129 or a nice round five million.
The good news? By the same method, I estimate around 4.5 million
deaths during the 1990s. Population increased 50% from 1970 to
2000, but the annual number of deaths due to nutritional
deficiencies decreased by 15%. Remarkable.
The current UN goal is to reduce nutritional deficiencies by 50%
over the next 20 years.
-dl
Ian St. John
> ist...@spamcop.net (Ian St. John) wrote in message news:<211be79f.02041...@posting.google.com>...
> > t...@2xtreme.net (Tim Worstall) wrote in message news:<825e2890.02041...@posting.google.com>...
>
> Glad I did post this again. Thought it might flush out some nonsense
> such as this :
Guess you must be one of those "wrong in every particular". I hadn't
seen that he was talking about the "permanently uninformed" such as
you.
> >
> > > "Environmentalists tend to believe that, ecologically speaking, things
> > > are getting worse and worse. Bjorn Lomborg, once deep green himself,
> > > argues that they are wrong in almost every particular
> >
> > And who do you know that is 'wrong in almost every particular'? That
> > is not the point of view of an objective observer, but of a political
> > plank that has nothing to do with the issue. It has more to do with
> > trying to dominate the message and promote your 'point of view' by
> > using ad-hominem arguments about the opposition.
>
> Which is in itself a nice avoidance of the facts, and an ad hominem.
Your logic escapes me. I am making a very rational point here. I
gather that you're just blowing smoke.
> >
> > >
> > > ECOLOGY and economics should push in the same direction. After all,
> > > the "eco" part of each word derives from the Greek word for "home",
> >
> > Very true, but distorted a bit. The fact is that environmentalism grew
> > out of the fact that capitalist economists did not take 'externalized
> > costs' into account and usually the ones who profited by the economics
> > were not those who paid the price.
>
> Economists do indeed take ' externalities' into account. Huge swathes
> of the literature are devoted to this very point. How to make economic
> actors ( whether individuals or corporations ) responsible for the
> external effects of their actions.
I didn't say they were unaware of the concept. Only that they had no
interest and were remarkably ineffective in including it in the
business model. Ergo, environmental groups were formed to take over
that task.
> You might be right if you say that
> capitalist accountants, or capitalist firms, or capitalist economic
> actors, do not take account of externalites.....indeed they don't
> because they are external to their accounting and payment systems,
> which is why they are called ' externalities '.
Look out beyond your nose and you see what? Economimists attacking any
attempt to reign in externalities such as GW/CO2 or oil spills/Exxon
Valdez, etc. They are aware of externalities but campaign against any
action on them.
> But economists ? The
> profession has been spending the better part of a century pondering
> about how to make people bear the costs of their externalities.
Yah. I can see that they really mean to help but are just totally
incompetent so we can't blame them. Hmmm... A brilliant light just
went off. Why don't they start public groups to pressure government to
regulate and bring the externalities back to the origins? That is,
since society at large pays the price for 'exteralities' society is
the natural party to fight for inclusion or avoidance of those costs.
We'll call them 'environmental groups'. Ohhhh Just a minute. That is
exactly the solution that they are fighting because *It might work!*
> There's no easy solution just because, unfortunately, there is no easy
> solution.......we all agree that economic actors should bear the
> costs, but how to actually enforce that ?
Hmmm. I guess you are as dense as, or one of them stupid economists
yourself?
>
>
> Both have their roots in the
> > improvement of 'home' but environmentalism is specifically 'don't foul
> > the nest' affecting all society, while economics tends to primarily
> > benefit a select few.
> ??????
> Aren't you confusing economics with something else here ? Economics is
> the study of what people do under certain stimuli. Your comment seems
> to be stating that economics causes the current wealth distribution (
> for example ) rather than merely describing it. Your comment is akin
> to stating that virology causes smallpox.....rather than merely
> describing it.
Gee. And here I thought economists had influence in government and
were party to the decisons. Lets see..
http://www.nav.cc.tx.us/academic_programs/economics/chapter5comments.htm
http://www.friesian.com/sayslaw.htm
"Adam Smith" and "laisse fair" or rely on the invisible hand.
"John Maynard Keynes" and demand side economics.
"Jean Baptiste Say " and supply side economics.
So we have a series of radical shifts in tax policy, but of course,
economists are just idle theorists... If you say so.. I understand
it's better to humor the memtally deranged..
> >
> >
> > > and the protagonists of both claim to have humanity's welfare as their
> > > goal. Yet environmentalists and economists are often at loggerheads.
> >
> > Of course. Economist are interested in promoting economic activity for
> > which they benefit, and ignoring the externalized costs. It was
> > because of this failure of the system that environmental groups
> > evolved to defend society from their greed and ignorance, no matter
> > what they claim.
>
> As above, economists do not ignore externalities. Others might, but
> not economists.
Certainly they *ignore* externalities. Ignoring does not mean
ignorance of. Do you see any concern for externalities in the big
'laissez fair", supply side, or demand side economics? No. Of course
not. They are interested in their jobs. Those in university can talk
on externalities as a topic, but those who are actually effective in
the economy do so at the behest of big business and big government,
both of whom have little interest in externalized costs.
> >
> >
> > > For economists, the world seems to be getting better. For many
> > > environmentalists, it seems to be getting worse.
> >
> > Exactly. Economists work for the current economic elite and have a lot
> > of political and public influence. Against that the environmentalist
> > can only ask that externalized costs be reduced to a point where they
> > do not impact general health.
>
> Exactly what an economist would argue for. That all economic actors
> should bear the cost of their externalities . The question is not
> whether this should be so, but exactly how do we organise society so
> that this is acheived ?
Duhhhhh. I got an idea. Why not invent Environmental Groups? Hey Tim?
You there? Still stunned by this simple idea?? Funny how the
environmental groups and the economiusts seem to be at loggerheads all
the time if economists really want a solution to externalities? They
keep arguing that including the cost of externalities (as demanded by
environmentalists) would drag down the economies as the companies,
investors, ceo's etc would get a smaller paycheque. Hmm Almost as if
their interest were in the companies, investors, and ceo's.....
> >
> > The profits of the wealthy have grown enormously. This is called the
> > 'wage gap' and illustrates why the economists cry that we are
> > improving.
>
> No, I think you'll find that an increased wage gap is not why
> economists think things are improving. Taken by the most basic
> measures, food intake per capita, life spans, decreases in child
> mortality......the really basic things that measure ' better ' or '
> worse ' human lives. The past century has seen unprecedented changes
> for the ' better' in these things. Even in a war torn shithole like
> Angola average life spans are in the mid 40 's.....not great when set
> against late 70's in the industrial world, but a hell of a lot better
> than a century ago.
Hmmm. Capitalist economics are 'exploitive' and produce more goods and
services by basically spending tomorrows assets today. This produces a
surge in available products. A large part of the credit for the health
of Angolans, though must be in technology and science, especially
medical science, not economics.
The wage gap was small during the bulk of that improvement in
"lifestyle" while more recent events are that the richest 3 percent
have 35% of the income but pay 15% of the taxes, and have been given
multibillion handouts in tax reductions and business subsidies.
Since the 70's or so, the average or poor families have been losing
ground and economiusts acknowledge that today, the consumer is only
spending debt, not income, to keep consumption from collapse. This is
because of economics and the growing wage gap.
The major point here is not the exploitive economy or the increase in
science and technology, but the fact that such exploitive economics
increases the externalized costs. Can we not even save a frozen
wasteland in the Arctic such as the ANWR as a 'wildlife refuge' or
does it all have to be sacrificed for another days of greed?
> WHO reported last week that there were 537 cases of polio reported
> in 2001.....and think that the true figure was perhaps double that. As
> compared with the 350,000 in 1988....I think that is getting
> better,WHO thinks that is getting better, economists think that is
> getting better .....what do you think ?
I think you are crediting economists with improvements in science and
technology. I think you are ignoring the increase in exernalized costs
such as collapse of fish stocks, depletion of old growth timber, ... I
think you are ignoring the actual failure of the sayesian economics
model to generate sustainable growth, and I think you are ignoring the
collapse that is inevitable if the wages and prospects of the consumer
are not improved as he cannot maintain increasing levels of debt
forever.
In fact, I think your argument is flawed.
> >
> > At the same time, incidences of many diseases, chronic conditions and
> > general health is decreasing as the externalized costs make it almost
> > impossible for the average person to escape the toxins and increase in
> > costs.
>
> You'll have to be more specific. Globally life spans are
> increasing.....age adjusted rates for such things as cancer are
> falling. Just which diseases are getting worse ? ( other than AIDS of
> course....and I don't see anyone arguing that this is pollution based
> in cause ).
We are only now beginning to understand the links from chronic
diseases and pollution. The links are still somewhat shaky but enough
to cause alarm. Your equating this with AIDS ( an infectious disease )
is noted, but not effective.
Many of those you count as 'healthy' have huge bills for medical
presciptions for chronic problems. And age at death is not a criteria
for health. P.S. I did mention 'cost'..
Cancer:
Heart disease:
Asthma:
Bronchitis:
Respiratory disease:
Allergies:
Type 2 diabetes:
Parkinsons disease:
While death rates for many of these, such as cancer, have declined in
recent years, this is due to improvements in treatment, not so much
incidence. Secondly, I was talking about expenses for medication and
reduced quality of life, not rates of mortality. Nice "avoidance of
the facts".
> In fact, I don't think you'll be able to point to any disease at all
> that is getting worse as a result of ' toxins ' or 'externalities'.
> And if you can, I 'd love to know about it. Seriously, I really would.
Sure sure.
> >
> > The environmentalist did make some strides and improve the general
> > health, for example in the EPA and Clean Air Act.
>
> No ones arguing that evironmentalists are ' bad ' nor that all of
> their actions are.An economist might want to add ' opportunity costs '
> to the debate, and perhaps insist on a cost benefit analysis, but
> that's all. The goal is the same....a better life for all humans.
No. The goal is not the same. This is why environmental groups were
formed. Got a clue yet?
> >
> > But at the same time, the economic elite has won in terms of
> > developing the SUV and similar gas guzzlers. It used to be that a big
> > car was needed, getting 10 mpg, but now we can buy a monster SUV
> > holding ten times the volume ( that we still mostly drive alone )
> > while getting the same 10 mpg. I guess this is an improvement..
>
> If you are saying that the 50 million SUV drivers are all part of the
> ' economic elite ' .....well that's a pretty inclusive use of the word
> ' elite '.
Nah, but the CEO of GM sells those SUVs at a much higher profit than a
regular car. In this way, they have 'won' over the environmental
groups by promoting waste, and bypassing the CAFE standards.
> >
> > At least when energy prices go back up again, we can buy a smaller,
> > more fuel efficient SUV.
> >
> >
> > >
> > > These environmentalists, led by such veterans as Paul Ehrlich of
> > > Stanford University, and Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute,
> > > have developed a sort of "litany" of four big environmental fears:
> >
> > Ah... I wondered when the ad-hominems would start, "litany' being a
> > suggestion of 'religious' motives, which are not based on facts.
>
> And precisely why the word is so used. Reading even a little of
> Ehrlich or Brown immediately reminds one of Chicken Little, or the boy
> who cried 'Wolf ! '.
So you admit that the ad-hominem was deliberate. Refreshingly honest.
Of course, you gain nothing by it since people are too soophisticated
for such debating tricks.
> Whatever the subject, whatever the decade, we're all going to die
> tomorrow....and they persist in this in the face of every observable
> fact. It is a religious belief, as it is certainly unsupported by any
> science.
No. It is your position that is unsupported by science. For example
air pollution.. http://www.wri.org/wri/wr-98-99/urbanair.htm
> >
> > >
> > > ⢠Natural resources are running out.
> >
> > And they are. No question. As you use up the deposits of high grade
> > ore, you have fewer deposites of high grade ore. As you use up fossil
> > fuels, you have fewer sources of fossil fuels. One can pay more (
> > reducing the standard of living ) to utilize lower grade ores, of
> > course, and improvements in technology can reduce the costs so as to
> > compensate for the reduced grade, but often this is accompanied with
> > increased exteranlized costs. In the end though, there will be no
> > resources left beyond rock and old refuse dumps.
>
> Just think this through for a moment, please. Let's take oil as an
> example. Using the technology of the 1860's we would already have run
> out of oil ( Pennsylvania being one of the few places you could get it
> with that level of tech ). Now we get it from Siberia, the North Sea,
> all sorts of places. Because tech has moved on. We are even reopening
> N Sea fields that 15 years ago we though were exhausted. So has the
> advance to tech meant that we have more oil ? Or less ?
Oh,, please. You are stupid? We have less oil. Period. The point you
are trying to put is that we have more 'recoverable' or 'known
reserves', not that there is more oil in the ground that there was a
decade ago. Baffling with bullshit does not work. There is a finite
amount of oil in the earths crust and as we remove it there is less.
Period. End of statement. Obvious to a child, but apparently
impossible for you to understand.
> >
> > Even rock can be a source of elements, but only at a huge cost in
> > effort and in energy, and energy is one of the things running out, so
> > unless we get a more dependable and long term supply of energy, the
> > system will eventually have to shut down. The only real possibility
> > for this 'long term energy supply' is the sun, and possibly solar
> > power satellites as all other alternative energy schemes require too
> > much in infrastructure, and maintenance to recover a diffuse energy
> > source.
>
> I do agree that solar power satellites are the long term answer. I've
> seen a few designs. Once we get the cost of getting into space down by
> two more orders of magnitude ( 50 years perhaps ? ) then they will
> work.
I disagree with this in terms that a fairly ambitious program right
now could probably put the first system in space in twenty years, but
the current decline will only leave us without the resources to start
when we finally realize the need.
> And as for rock ? What do you think mining is ? Gold is already mined
> at 1 gramme per tonne concentrations. Cheap energy would mean sea
> water mining....or perhaps we could start mining fly ash and bauxite
> wastes. The only thing stopping these two now is energy costs.
Which was my point. Any piece of rock is 'ore' if you are willing to
take concentrations of ppm or ppb.
Currently technology can work with small percentages of copper, or
gold. Some operations are actually mining the 'spoils heaps' of prior
operations. But this can go only so far, since costs go up with the
reduced concentration. This reduces the number of people that can
afford it, and thus will lower the lifestyle of the average consumer,
once we have pushed the resources and the technology too far.
> >
> > It is irrational to claim that there is more oil in the ground now
> > that in prior years. This is a distortion using the increase in 'known
> > reserves' to mask the message. We WILL eventually run out of resources
> > as we exhaust all known reserves and no new ones are there to BE
> > discovered.
>
> But that isn't what any of us is trying to say. What we are trying to
> say is that continuing advances in technology will mean that for
> practical purposes, we won't run out of anything for centuries yet.
> And in those centuries further new technology will mean that we can
> substitute for them.
Ah.. Yes. The 'believe in technology.. it will save us someday". And
you call Erhlich's message a 'litany' while your religion is exposed
here??
> >
> > >
> > > ⢠The population is ever growing, leaving less and less to eat.
>
> The population is not ever growing. Not even those radical hotheads at
> the UN believe that any more. Current best estimate is that human
> population will top out in the next 50 years. And then shrink. Just as
> it is in Europe, Japan and ( net of immigration ) the US. In fact
> anywhere rich. And food per capita is still going up.
You ignore the problems. They though 'sustainable forestry' would
preserve Germanies forests. Guess what? After a few 'crops' the soil
became impoverished and the growth of the new trees started a decline.
The same would be true of our current farming practices except for the
heavy application of minerals from various mines, such as potash from
Saskatchewan, Nitrogen from the Haber Bosch process ( requiring energy
) etc. All resources which can be depleted. Without the
'supercharging' the food production per acre will decline. This is
even ignoring changes to agriculture such as the drying of the
continental interiors by higher temperatures leading to 'dust bowl' or
at least poor harvests.
Nor is there a certainty of population levelling off. What is the
cause of this? War? Famine? Disease? It won't be the birthrate... and
the decline in birthrate among developed nations, relative to the
undeveloped ones, is predicated on being able to sustain the current
exploitive use of resources which is not a realistic expectation.
> >
> > Local and global food supply will eventually become a problem in terms
> > of a reduced standard of living. Is the population still increasing?
> > Yes.
>
> Yes, but as a result of demographic shift, not anything else. As
> above, it is not an endless process.
Not it is not. Eventually, war, famine, disease, etc have to reduce
populations.
>
> > Are there limits to growth? Yes.
>
> No. As technology continues to grow so will the economy. At or near
> to the long term growth rate of 2 - 3 % a year. Changes in technology
> mean that this will simply continue. And if you don't believe me then
> I suggest you get a basic econ book out of the library. It's not a
> controversial opinion at all.
It is still 'prophesy' of the 'technology will save us' ignoring the
basis of that technology which is cheap resources. When the cheap
resources run out, the technology will be challenged to keep us
afloat, much less at our current standard of living. Not that this is
certain. I am not going to prophesy doom just yet. But 'if this goes
on...'
> >
> > The agricultural revolution gave us a breathing space, but it does
> > nothing to solve the long term problem.
>
> What long term problem ? The earth already produces enough calories
> for the population, using 11 - 12 % of the land area. And productivity
> on that is going up at 1 % a year, while as noted the population is
> topping out.
And there are limits to that increase, while there are no limits to
the birthrate.
>
> Nor does it feed the entire
> > planet. Local food supply issues are a major problem even if total
> > food supply is adequate.
>
> Sure. So apply best agricultural policies in all local areas.An
> example. Hunger in Zimbabwe ? Is this a failure of economics ? Or the
> idiocy of Mugabe ?
Yes. And the point is? You think you can force people to an intensive
Western agriculture with huge inputs of fertilizer and energ? You have
a combine that will cut the wheat in the mountain terraces of China or
Peru? Do you have anything but 'faith'?
I agree that things will get better and politicians that block
progress will be eventually swept away, but the American standard of
living, or agricultural practices are unique to America, and not
applicable as a general rule.
>
> Will you give up your steak and potatoes so
> > that an african can eat a subsistence meal? No. And it would do no
> > good anyway as shipping is prohibitive for such things.
> >
> > Nor can famine be averted by biotech. Most famines actually are the
> > faliure of subsistence farmers who then can find food in the markets,
> > but cannot *afford* to buy it because his only income was the farm. In
> > the wake of drought, not even biotech can salvage the situation.
> > Biotech needs at least marginal conditionals on which to improve.
>
> You need to read more economics. Amyarta Sen got his Nobel for talking
> about famine. It doesn't happen when you have :
> 1) Free markets
> 2) Democracy
> 3) A free press.
Not true. Many famines happen in exactly those countries. You cannot
say that these three factors can hold off a drought, can you? If so,
how?
Your 'faith' is blinding you.
>
> It is not lack of money that causes them, nor , except in the most
> local sense, lack of food. And why ? Because we humans will not stand
> by and watch people starve to death on TV.....we do something about
> it. Like send food and money.
Which is then diverted to the rich and those who control the countries
roads, ports, etc. How much North Korean food aid was used by North
Koreans and how much by the Chinese who bought it from the government?
It is inefficient to ship grain from the US to these countries. If
they had to pay for it, they would not be able to, even in prosperous
years. While commendable, it is a distortion of the reality, not a
reality in itself.
> >
> > We can probably support 25 billion on the planet if we intensively
> > harvest single celled organisms such as spirulina with a mineral and
> > vitamin supplement. However, do you want to live that way? And
> > eventually there will be more than 25 billion. What then?
>
> No, population is topping out. 8 - 9 billion is current best guess (
> the UN, not me ) . And no one, outside of the Brown / Ehrlich eco
> nutter asylum thinks that we will not be able to feed that number on
> the land and resources that we already have. And yes this is without
> cutting down the rain forests, or strip mining Florida for phosphates.
We are already cutting down the old growth, rain forest, and strip
mining for potash. It is not a question that this will continue at an
ever increasing rate, and there is no logic to the idea that the
population is 'topping out'. You mean to provide a 'cause' for that
effect before I will even take it as a subject of research.
> >
> > >
> > > ⢠Species are becoming extinct in vast numbers: forests are
> > > disappearing and fish stocks are collapsing.
> >
> > Have you priced cod in the supermarket? Then you are paying the price
> > for the collapse of fish stocks.
>
> As a resident of Canada you should know more about this. The collapse
> of the Grand Banks cod fishery is indeed one of the great
> environmental disasters of recent times. And economists even know what
> caused it, and how to stop it happening again elsewhere. It's just
> that no one listens to us. It's called' The Tragedy of the Commons ' (
> not Gilbert Hardin's reading of it, but the earlier, 1830's
> formulation from which he took his title ) and we know all about it.
It is indeed a 'tragedy of the commons' but also a lack of knowledge
of the life cycle, sensitivity to fishing, interaction between
species, and the old political 'you can't prove that the stocks are
declining' ( similar to you can't prove that climate change will be
bad'). The same bad actors are at work now as then.
> Much of what is heppening to old growth forests can also be traced to
> the same set of economic factors ( please note that it is not
> economists who create these factors. We just describe them. ). And the
And encourage the businesses on whom you derive your money by
suggesting ways to avoid the regulation and making plans which do not
include 'externalized costs'.
> cure ? Ownership. Direct private ownership by an individual or
> corporation. Inheritable rights. No, I know you won't agree with me,
> but really, honestly, we've known the answer to this particular
> problem for 180 years. It's just no one actually believes us.
Yes. And Percy Schmeiser is a good example of why this is not a good
idea. He fought Monsanto for polluting his land, and the courts gave
the use of the land to Monsanto despite this under 'protecting the
gene patent'.
And I think inheritable ownership was tried before. They called it a
'monarchy' and it was rejected by America...
>
> There is little rational argument
> > that fish stocks, natural ecosystem complexity and old growth forest
> > are disappearing at an alarming rate. The capitalist system is very
> > good at maximizing exploitation, but has no concern for long term
> > sustainability. This is one reason that environmentalist and
> > economists are on different sides.
>
> I do wish you could get over this idea that we are on different sides.
> We both want the same thing. A long term sustainable economy, in which
> human societies can flourish in the maximum of freedom and wealth
> consistent with that long term.
Certainly I will allow for this. On the other hand..
> It's just that economists have
> actually studied how to bring that about, rather than wishing for a
> magic wand to make it all better. You know, being an adult and
> thinking it all through, rather than wanting Mother Earth to give us a
> kiss and make it all better.
Your attitude of 'we know everything and you are therefore ignorant'
is one clue as to why environmentalist and economists are at
loggerheads. Especially as the environmentalist see the economists
'solving' the problem by invoking prophecy of increased technology and
wealth.
> >
> > >
> > > ⢠The planet's air and water are becoming ever more polluted.
> >
> > The air is a bit better with EPA and clean air regulations. Certainly
> > we are winning some respite from acid rain and smog. This may be
> > reversed if the economists keep gaining more power.
>
> Economists don't have enough power. Most of the things ecologists and
> environmentalists cry out about we already know how to solve. It's
> just you won't listen.
Pot. Kettle. Black.
> Now if you were to quote Shakespeare ( Henry V part II I think ) ..'
> The first thing we do is kill all the lawyers '......then I might
> agree.
Or maybe getting rid of all the economists??? ;-)
> >
> > Long term contamination of soil and groundwater though is a battle
> > that is hardly being fought. The companies may clean up their act in
> > the future, but they still tend to 'externalize' the costs of the
> > pollution.
>
> I agree that companies do so.....and also that they shouldn't.And
> economists keep trying to tell people this, and providing schemes that
> will stop them doing so. As I keep saying, we know this problem, and
> know the solution. Now if we can just get the airheads in Govt to
> listen.....
There is no evidence that economists have really *tried*.
To be continued. Running out of time...
w...@bas.ac.uk
>w...@bas.ac.uk wrote:
>> >> >I'm curious. How many millions do you think starved to death in the 1970's?
>>
>> What you are saying is that neither of you know whether the statement
>> is true or false? Wouldn't you even care to offer a guess? Was the total
>> number less than 1M? 10M? 100M?
>Good question. I poked around the FAO web site for about an hour
>and was only able to come up with an estimated approx 950 million
>undernourished in 1970, and approx 850 million undernourished in
>1990.
>Then I turned to Lomborg, who gives this url:
>http://www.cred.be/emdat/intro.html
>Which gives:
>1972 600,000 famine deaths in Ethiopia
>1975-1985 15 famine deaths world-wide
>1986-1995 62,640 famine deaths world-wide
>1996-2001 219,644 famine deaths world-wide
This can't be right? 15 famine deaths 1975-85? It seems to small, and
too precise.
>...I get
>an estimated world total deaths due to nutritional deficiency
>during the 1970s of 5,061,129 or a nice round five million.
Well, you've done quite a bit of work on that: thanks.
I'll go with 5M, until something more definitive turns up.
Tim Worstall
> Tim Worstall <t...@2xtreme.net> wrote:
> >Harold
> >> On 19 Apr 2002 19:52:41 GMT, w...@bas.ac.uk wrote:
> >> >Tim Worstall <t...@2xtreme.net> wrote:
> >> >>In 1968, Dr Ehrlich predicted in his best selling book, "The Population
> >> >>Bomb", that "the battle to feed humanity is over. In the course of the
> >> >>1970s the world will experience starvation of tragic
> >> >>proportionsæºundreds of millions of people will starve to death."
> >> >
> >> >I'm curious. How many millions do you think starved to death in the 1970's?
> >>
> >> That's a cute, and cheap copout...
> >>
>
> >You might want to note Amyarta Sen on this point...
>
> I'm not trying to support Erlich here. I just want to know if this
> particular point, which Ive seen quoted against him before, is true or
> not.
>
> What you are saying is that neither of you know whether the statement
> is true or false? Wouldn't you even care to offer a guess? Was the total
> number less than 1M? 10M? 100M?
Deaths by starvation in the 1970's ? Don't know the accurate answer.
More than 1 million, certainly. Less than 100 million ? I think so.
The point though, as I see it, is that ( absent the obvious point that
a death by starvation is due to a lack of food to the particular
person ) these deaths were not caused by an absolute lack of food in
either a global or regional sense......which is what I think Ehrlich
meant.
Tim Worstall
>
> -W.
w...@bas.ac.uk
>The point though, as I see it, is that ( absent the obvious point that
>a death by starvation is due to a lack of food to the particular
>person ) these deaths were not caused by an absolute lack of food in
>either a global or regional sense......which is what I think Ehrlich
>meant.
I agree.
hanson
me and he has come back, barking. As I predicted, Ian is
desperately hoping that I will play my crank game with him again.
OK then, Ian doggie. How nice of you to show such devotion to me.
I said in my last post, that you would miss me and that you
wouldn't have the character nor the backbone NOT to continue
to bark, meaning to get me out of your dog memory.
Is it that hard to forget me, you quaint little street mix?
I really must have impressed you.
"Ian St. John" <ist...@spamcop.net> wrote in message
news:211be79f.02041...@posting.google.com...
> t...@2xtreme.net (Tim Worstall) wrote in message
news:<825e2890.02041...@posting.google.com>...
> > What with all teh stuff in Sciene and Nature, rebuttals, counter
> > rebuttals, and even, now,a counter counter rebuttal.....thought I'd
> > post this again. It's from last year, before Lomborg's book was
> > published, from the Economist. It's very simple, and I find very
> > little in it to disagree with.
[Ian]
> And in my view, neither this op-ed nor my rebuttal
> really establish anything.
[hanson]
Listen, my sweet little mutt Ian, you are right with your bark here.
By your own admission, Ian, you do not and have not established
nor contributed anything here, because your posts are composts.
But, what can we expect from Ian St. John, the astrologer, which
pupated and then metamorphosed to reemerge as my cyber
street mutt, and who now is looking for me feverishly. He likes me.
Ian, the cyber mutt, needs me to play my crank game with him,
or he falls into deep canine depression.
Your honesty is commendable, Ian mutt.
It reflects the value of my superb dog training I did on you.
[Ian]
> You [Tim] are a lot like James and hanson.
[hanson]
Very, very good, my little mutt, Ian.
You rightly do recognize people who are intellectually far superior to
you and you must treat them accordingly: As your masters.
Listen up!, heel!, my little street mutt. You are a good doggie.
Don't be jealous, Ian. After all you're just a mixed up little street mutt.
Now, bark quickly once, roll over twice and then bark again.
Do this as a confirmation of your subservience to them and as
a acknowledgement of your deep appreciation to be allowed
to bark in the presence of Tim, James and hanson.
I know that you will be back to bark some more, my little street mutt.
You just can't help it.
Your Master,
hanson
PS: Daly is a very great, highly intellectual environmental analyst.
You just gotta admire him. Don't you, my little mutt?
Happy Earthday,
hahahahahahanson
Andrew Taylor
Tim Worstall <t...@2xtreme.net> wrote:
>However, the data simply does not bear out these predictions. In the
>eastern United States, forests were reduced over two centuries to
>fragments totalling just 1-2% of their original area, yet this
>resulted in the extinction of only one forest bird. In Puerto Rico,
>the primary forest area has been reduced over the past 400 years by
>99%, yet "only" seven of 60 species of bird has become extinct. All
>but 12% of the Brazilian Atlantic rainforest was cleared in the 19th
>century, leaving only scattered fragments. According to the
>rule-of-thumb, half of all its species should have become extinct.
>Yet, when the World Conservation Union and the Brazilian Society of
>Zoology analysed all 291 known Atlantic forest animals, none could be
>declared extinct. Species, therefore, seem more resilient than
>expected. And tropical forests are not lost at annual rates of 2-4%,
>as many environmentalists have claimed: the latest UN figures indicate
>a loss of less than 0.5%.
And let me point out again, that Lomborg's polemic contains
an embarassing number of errors regarding species extinctions.
- The minimum of eastern United States forests was ~50% not 1-2% [1]
- There were 4 extinctions not 1 [1]
- This is more extinctions than predicted by species-area considerations
(not less) [1]
- The minimum of Puerto Rican forest was 10+% not 1% [2]
- There are several plausible explanations why there were less Puerto
Rican bird extinctions than predicted by species-area based considerations
[2]
- There is evidence from population declines in Brazilian Atlantic forest
species, that the best explanation is not resilience but a long time-lag
[3].
- UN figures for tropical deforestation rate is ~0.9% (not 0.5%) [4]
Andrew Taylor
[1] Pimm & Askins, "Forest losses predict bird extinctions in eastern North
America", Proceeding of the National Academy of Science, 92(9343-9347),
September 1995.
[2] The History of Avian Extinction and Forest Conversion on Puerto
Rico, Alexander Brash, Biological Conservation, 39 (1987) 97-111.
[3] Thomas Brooks, Andrew Balmford, Atlantic forest extinctions.
Nature 380 (14 March 1996), 115
[4] FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment 2000
http://www.fao.org/forestry/fo/fra/main/index.jsp
Joshua Halpern
Tim Worstall wrote:
> w...@bas.ac.uk wrote in message news:
> > Tim Worstall <t...@2xtreme.net> wrote:
>
> Deaths by starvation in the 1970's ? Don't know the accurate answer.
> More than 1 million, certainly. Less than 100 million ? I think so.
> The point though, as I see it, is that ( absent the obvious point that
> a death by starvation is due to a lack of food to the particular
> person ) these deaths were not caused by an absolute lack of food in
> either a global or regional sense......which is what I think Ehrlich
> meant.
I think you need to edit out the regional sense. The largest
famine in the 70s was in the Sahel region, due to lack of
rain. The same thing happened in the 80s.
josh halpern
David Friedman
> What you are saying is that neither of you know whether the statement
> is true or false? Wouldn't you even care to offer a guess? Was the total
> number less than 1M? 10M? 100M?
Probably less than ten million, and none of it due to the sort of
population driven famine that Ehrlich was predicting. Modern famines are
typically associated with civil wars (or, in the Ukraine case, a
deliberate attack by a government on part of its population).
Of course, you can make the figure larger if you define "starve to
death" to include all increases in mortality due to less than ideal
nutrition--but that isn't what Ehrlich was talking about. He was
predicting a future catastrophe, not commenting on the normal state of
the world.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
David Friedman
wrote:
> Now, assuming nutrition deficiency death rate is a constant
> proportion of undernourishment, I estimate approx 54.6 deaths per
> 100,000 undernourished. Interpolating the undernourishment
> estimates from 1970 to 1979, and applying the death rate, I get
> an estimated world total deaths due to nutritional deficiency
> during the 1970s of 5,061,129 or a nice round five million.
While these are interesting numbers, I don't think they have much to do
with Ehrlich's claim. "Starving to death" isn't the same thing as excess
mortality due to being undernourished--as your figure above (mortality
rate from being undernourished of less than one in a thousand) makes
clear.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
David Friedman
> >...I get
> >an estimated world total deaths due to nutritional deficiency
> >during the 1970s of 5,061,129 or a nice round five million.
>
> Well, you've done quite a bit of work on that: thanks.
> I'll go with 5M, until something more definitive turns up.
But those aren't famine deaths. That's coming from an estimate of "deaths
world-wide due to all nutritional deficiencies." Poor nutrition results
in an increase in death rates long before anyone is starving to death.
Consider that Ehrlich was predicting a future catastrophe--not merely
saying "as has been true over past decades, some people will die who
would have lived if they had been better fed."
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
w...@bas.ac.uk
>In article <3cc1...@news.nwl.ac.uk>, w...@bas.ac.uk wrote:
>> >...I get
>> >an estimated world total deaths due to nutritional deficiency
>> >during the 1970s of 5,061,129 or a nice round five million.
>>
>> Well, you've done quite a bit of work on that: thanks.
>> I'll go with 5M, until something more definitive turns up.
>But those aren't famine deaths. That's coming from an estimate of "deaths
>world-wide due to all nutritional deficiencies." Poor nutrition results
>in an increase in death rates long before anyone is starving to death.
So what. Its an upper bound. If correct, famine deaths were less than 5M,
and Erlich was wildly wrong (on this point).
Harold
>David Friedman <dd...@best.com> wrote:
>>In article <3cc1...@news.nwl.ac.uk>, w...@bas.ac.uk wrote:
>>> >...I get
>>> >an estimated world total deaths due to nutritional deficiency
>>> >during the 1970s of 5,061,129 or a nice round five million.
>>>
>>> Well, you've done quite a bit of work on that: thanks.
>>> I'll go with 5M, until something more definitive turns up.
>
>>But those aren't famine deaths. That's coming from an estimate of "deaths
>>world-wide due to all nutritional deficiencies." Poor nutrition results
>>in an increase in death rates long before anyone is starving to death.
>
>So what. Its an upper bound. If correct, famine deaths were less than 5M,
>and Erlich was wildly wrong (on this point).
I agree, he was.
Now, what about this point, "Hundreds of millions of people will soon
perish in smog disasters in New York and Los Angeles...the oceans will
die of DDT poisoning by 1979...the U.S. life expectancy will drop to
42 years by 1980 due to cancer epidemics." Paul Ehrlich, 1969,
Ramparts.
Erlich has made a *lot* of predictions.
Regards, Harold
-----
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it up on the spot ... for the mass-media today ... the truth is
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Don Libby
It is correct to note the distinction between "undernourishment"
and "starving to death" as the former generally indicates a
chronic condition of poverty or metabolic disorders, and the
later a relatively acute lack of *any* food.
In the first data set of my prior post, the (unbelievably small
and wildly varying) numbers of world-wide deaths due to *famine*
during the 1970s treat famine as a disasterous disruption of food
production (as with drought) and distribution (as with war), to
be reported as an emergency to international aid organizations,
and to result in at least 10 deaths.
You might think of this as a lower bound on numbers of people who
*starved to death*. Contrast that with an upper bound given by
the Global Burden of Disease estimated mortality rate due to
undernourishment and you have a nice interval estimate for
numbers of people who *starved to death* (whatever that means)
during the 1970s.
Repeat: the good news is that the risk of undernourishment is
declining, and efforts are underway to accelerate the decline. I
cannot comment on trends in the risk of *famine*-related
mortality, as the necessary confluence of natural disaster
(drought, flood, etc) and social disaster (war) is utterly
unpredictable.
-dl
Andrew Taylor
>Then as a check I went to WHO and downloaded the year 2000 Global
>Burden of Disease spreadsheet, which estimates 440,000 deaths
>world-wide due to all nutritional deficiencies out of a
>population of 6,045,170,000 for an annualized crude death rate of
>approx 7.3 per 100,000.
I suspect this only estimates nutritional deficiency as the proximate
cause of death. The same report estimates 6 million deaths would have
been adverted in 1990 if no malnutrition occurred. See p28 of
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/organizations/bdu/gbdsum/gbdsum5.pdf
Andrew Taylor
Don Libby
No doubt "nutritional deficiencies" as a cause of death
underestimates the contribution of malnutrition as a risk factor
for related fatal syndromes, but then, malnutrition as a
comorbidity risk factor overestimates the number of people who
"starved to death", which is the question I was attempting to
address.
6 million annual deaths attributable to malnutrition would put
the upper limit at roughly 60 million "starved to death" during
the 1970s. So my point estimate is 5 million and my interval
estimate is between 1 million and 60 million. Tragic propotions
to be sure, but thankfully short of the "hundreds of millions"
mark set by Ehrlich.
The GBD report also noted that the leading cause of
disability-adjusted life years is psychological depression. Do
your part to reduce the global burden of disease: "accentuate the
positive", as the song sez.
-dl
David Friedman
wrote:
> I
> cannot comment on trends in the risk of *famine*-related
> mortality, as the necessary confluence of natural disaster
> (drought, flood, etc) and social disaster (war) is utterly
> unpredictable.
It doesn't require a natural disaster--social disaster will do just
fine. Consider the Ukraine famine. If you believe the Soviet figures,
the USSR was exporting more than enough food to have fed everyone who
died.
--
David Friedman
www.daviddfriedman.com/
Tim Worstall
Which I think neatly ties in with what Sen has been saying about famine.
Tim Worstall