So we shouldn’T look at current consumption figures, but only at necessary requirement of calories per person per year from milk and eggs and meat. For example, the average american meat consumption is too high both for the planet and for the health of the person.
I have another problem: kknott, you only mention grain, eggs, milk and meat (despite meat and milk mean cattle, which is waste of energy that could be put to better use growing crops directly; unless it’s grassland that’s only suited for grazing - but that means extensive, not intensive, use and can’t be scaled up), but no veggies! Where do you get the veggies and fruits so important for a healthy diet?
Playing devils advocate for a minute, kknott said
Parts of grain are used to feed cattle, which is a waste, other parts are used to make ethanol, some grain is used for making beer instead of eating it directly … so if you want to feed the US from Iowa by meeting only the necessary needs and not feasting excessivly, that would change.
Even if I assume for your benefit that you meant to say CO2 instead of CFC in the above sentence, it’s still completly wrong. Volcanoes have erupted all the time. St. Helens was smaller than Krakatoa, and certainly smaller than the eruption/explosion of Mount Tambora, yet none of the measurements match the exponential, never seen before sudden rise in global temp., the total amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, the sudden change of CO2 in the atmosphere. We can go back with ice core samples tens of thousands of years, and measure the distribution of gases in the atmosphere, and though the CO2 levels did fluctuate in the past - partly because of ice ages and warm periods - they never were as high as now, nor did they rise as sudden as now. No matter how many volcanoes erupted - and there were active periods before. Many scientists think that the amount of sulfur and other particles in the air after an active period of many volcano eruptions at the same time, and the subsequent cooling, might have been one of several factors in what started an ice age.
But I’ve never heard a respectable scientist (as opposed to a simple AGW-denier) connect volcanoes to CO2 levels.
The total amount of CO[sub]2[/sub] released by volcanoes is less than 1% of that released by humans in an average year.
Site: Hawaiian Volcano Observatory
Not only is the average annual release of volcanic CO[sub]2[/sub] much smaller than the human release of CO[sub]2[/sub], but even major eruptions tend to coincide with a net decrease in atmospheric CO[sub]2[/sub].
A couple important things to note are that the Pinatubo eruption in 1991 was about 10 times as large as Mt. Saint Helens ’ 1980 eruption in terms of ejecta volume. CO[sub]2[/sub] concentrations drop noticeably shortly after the 1991 eruptions, and it’s possible the soot, ash, and particulate release from Pinatubo encouraged lower temperatures that, in general, were good for removal of CO[sub]2[/sub] from the atmosphere by natural means. Fig. 2 in the linked paper shows CO[sub]2[/sub] concentration anomalies dropping from about 1.0 in 1991 when Pinatubo erupted to -0.6 or -0.7 by 1994.
A little searching did not reveal any estimates for the amount of CO[sub]2[/sub] released by the Mt. Saint Helens eruption, but the above figures put its significance in doubt.
I’m also assuming kknott means CO[sub]2[/sub] rather than CFCs. Volcanoes do emit CFCs, apparently, but CFCs are short-lived in the atmosphere and mostly volcanoes emit the extremely short-lived HCl and HF rather than CFCs:
In the OP’s favor, “to death” is clearly hyperbole, and not serious. The problem is that it becomes more difficult to live on an Earth with a substantially different climate, not that it would drive humans or the planet to extinction. Individuals would die as a result, not the species.
True, but I was directly addressing the fact that when kknott was asked for a cite that Iowa could produce enough food for the entire world(or country), he/she provided a link of Iowa’s current output, and said
bolding mine
Well, I did (the math), and it doesn’t (currently produce enough).
It would be an interesting discussion to see how much food could be produced if we only farmed and ate in the most efficient way possible, but I don’t think that was the point kknott was making. If it was, the cite provided does not make that point.
Actually, although the site in question is indeed religious in nature, the page itself is not religious, and does not deny AGW; it merely attributes it to CFC destruction of the ozone layer, rather than to CO[sub]2[/sub] and other greenhouse effects. I haven’t the data to argue with it, but I am very inclined to doubt any amateur who declares that the professionals are obviously wrong.
The “data” included in the link kknott provided is pretty obviously doctored. If you look at Figure 1 in the link it shows the “2007 actual temperature” as no warmer than the 1980s or 1970s.
In fact, using data from the NCDC, 2007 is warmer than any year from 1970 until 1998:
Really, who writes a “paper” in the scientific format, but doesn’t realize that anyone who sees it will know that it’s not an actual peer-reviewed paper?
I should also correct a mistake I made in an earlier post:
This should read:
Volcanoes do emit halogenated compounds, apparently, but they are short-lived in the atmosphere and mostly volcanoes emit the extremely short-lived HCl and HF rather than CFCs:
I don’t actually know that volcanoes emit any measureable CFCs.
I didn’t read the site the page is attached to. But when the essay starts out with one guy proposing a theory against the IPCC, which consists of many many scientists, experts in many different fields, using data from different areas to come to their conclusions, and using x times more peer-review than normal (precisly because their data and conclusions are used by policy makers and govt., and will be subject to x times more scrutiny and discussion and dissection then the normal peer-reviewed paper) - then I get very very very very sceptical.
However, after the first few paragraphs, the author states that the temp. between 2000 and 2007 didn’t rise as predicted by the models of the IPCC, but dropped, and includes an altered graph.
So yes, this site denies AGW.
To me, AGW deniers fall into two general categories: people who have a minimal understanding of the many science fields involved, but who decide they know better than the experts (let’s call it arrogant ignorance), and those who simply deny AGW because they don’t want to change their lifestyle (let’s call it lazy willful stupidity).
Added are of course the sites and “experts” (PR people and similar) paid for by industry afraid of the short-term cost of adapting to a better energy and different life-style, who provide the false data the deniers feed on and regurgitate, without listenting to real evidence.
By the way, wevets, thanks for providing correct data, and your information on volcanoes is interesting.
About the earlier discussion on how many people the earth could support, maybe we should ask: How many people SHOULD the earth support?
Let’s say we have a world government dedicated to maximizing the human population. First we’d move everyone off the arable land, but close by to minimize transportation costs. Forests are not very productive so we’d remove them for farmland. Meat is not efficient food so we would only graze animals on land unsuitable for farming. We’d grow only the most productive food crops and the bare minimum of fiber crops needed for clothing etc. Industry would mostly be geared toward food production - producing fertilizer, irrigation, storage and transportation systems, etc. We’d shelter people in the most efficient way possible - maybe huge dorms, maybe underground.
If we did everything right the earth could support many times the current population. It would be two or three more centuries before we finally did hit the limit. Bringing in Venus and Mars would give us another couple of generations of growth.
Barring a totalitarian world government, there will never be as many people as there could be. Humanity is an ecology; people are indepentant agents working for their own benefit and comfort, cooperating sometimes, competing other times. We are not going to spontaniously organize for maximum food production. There will always be waste, under production, pockets of wealth and over consumption, and lots of starvation.