In the grand tradition of Malthus, Limits to Growth, Chicken Little and the Boy who cried wolf we have another spreadsheet and book that says we and the Earth are doomed.
Oxford Computer Science Professor Steven Emmott published a book Ten Billion and an article about it in The Guardian.
First are Steven's claims of doom. It end where he basically suggests we give our kids guns to prepare for the chaos of collapse. I then rebutt the doomer garbage in and only garbage out model.
Steven Emmott says we are Doomed from not enough food, not enough water, temperature rise
We currently have no known means of being able to feed 10 billion of us at our current rate of consumption and with our current agricultural system. Indeed, simply to feed ourselves in the next 40 years, we will need to produce more food than the entire agricultural output of the past 10,000 years combined. [NBF - a silly metric of 10,000 years - there was almost no agriculture and a tiny population for 9000 years. It would be good to increase food by 60% so 25% more people can eat 25% more. We can do it.] Yet food productivity is set to decline, possibly very sharply, over the coming decades due to: climate change; soil degradation and desertification
We are going to have to triple – at least – energy production by the end of this century to meet expected demand. To meet that demand, we will need to build, roughly speaking, something like: 1,800 of the world's largest dams, or 23,000 nuclear power stations, 14m wind turbines, 36bn solar panels, or just keep going with predominantly oil, coal and gas – and build the 36,000 new power stations that means we will need.
It is now very likely that we are looking at a future global average rise of 4C – and we can't rule out a rise of 6C. This will be absolutely catastrophic. It will lead to runaway climate change, capable of tipping the planet into an entirely different state, rapidly. Earth will become a hellhole
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Oxford Computer Science Professor Steven Emmott published a book Ten Billion and an article about it in The Guardian.
First are Steven's claims of doom. It end where he basically suggests we give our kids guns to prepare for the chaos of collapse. I then rebutt the doomer garbage in and only garbage out model.
Steven Emmott says we are Doomed from not enough food, not enough water, temperature rise
We currently have no known means of being able to feed 10 billion of us at our current rate of consumption and with our current agricultural system. Indeed, simply to feed ourselves in the next 40 years, we will need to produce more food than the entire agricultural output of the past 10,000 years combined. [NBF - a silly metric of 10,000 years - there was almost no agriculture and a tiny population for 9000 years. It would be good to increase food by 60% so 25% more people can eat 25% more. We can do it.] Yet food productivity is set to decline, possibly very sharply, over the coming decades due to: climate change; soil degradation and desertification
We are going to have to triple – at least – energy production by the end of this century to meet expected demand. To meet that demand, we will need to build, roughly speaking, something like: 1,800 of the world's largest dams, or 23,000 nuclear power stations, 14m wind turbines, 36bn solar panels, or just keep going with predominantly oil, coal and gas – and build the 36,000 new power stations that means we will need.
It is now very likely that we are looking at a future global average rise of 4C – and we can't rule out a rise of 6C. This will be absolutely catastrophic. It will lead to runaway climate change, capable of tipping the planet into an entirely different state, rapidly. Earth will become a hellhole
Read more »
