Spare a thought for the farmers in Australia whose agricultural industries are being threatened by the the large scale extraction and depletion and contamination of the aquifers from coal seam gas extraction. And those many many "dryland" farmers who do not irrigate but still produce magnificent crops on the Liverpool Plains (NSW) and the Darling Downs (QLD) who will simply will be unable to operate due to the enormous amounts of infrastructure that are necessary for an industry which our NSW state government has granted a "royalty holiday" for five years from initial production. This industry will destroy the aquifers with it massive amounts of drilling and "fracking." Water is our most significant natural resource and should be protected against these destructive industries.

But.. but.. I thought Global Warming was going to INCREASE rainfall.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com.au/news/2007/05/070531-warming-rain.html

http://news.mongabay.com/2007/0827-nasa.html

So we're all right, then.

You see, once you start to claim that ANYTHING can be blamed on global warming, you can expect to see exactly the same tactic used against you. I confidently expect Global Warming to bring in a worldwide utopia of abundant food, biofuels, and world peace. And cure cancer.

If it's happening, of course.

Jon J is correct of course, the increasing rainfall from all the additional water vapor in the atmosphere, will replenish those aquifers .. so all will be well!

Isn't global warming great?

Maybe we should do something to speed it up, you know, make it go faster, so there's even MORE rainfall .. and additional crops.

If only we knew for sure, if anything we're doing is or might contribute, get away from the maybes, the fudging the tweaking of data and really know for sure how to do it.

I look forward to the Sahara being a great green jungle yet again, (I hear by as early as 2200!)

(thank you JonJ .. I go off to increase my carbon footprint today a happy man, knowing I am possibly assisting in creating rain somewhere .. not too much of course, just enough)

Not to worry. Whenever any species increases beyond the capacity of the earth to support it natural means will cut the numbers down. Humans can expect conflict, famine and pestilence to do the job. It will as we are apparently incapable of reducing our numbers in a rational and humane manner. If we are not completely wiped out our numbers will increase until the next crunch.

totally agree david f, these things go in cycles, climate, madness of crowds, wealth and poverty, feast and famine.

all we can do is adapt to whatever is happening, to think we could actually control all this is just fantasy

we may be one harvest from famine, but with all the hysteria that goes on and all the failed predictions, who is going to put any faith at all in such doom saying

you'd be mad to subscribe to all the forecasts of doom getting around, and have been around for so long

weren't we all meant to starve to death by 2000 according to some forecast from an eminent person from the 1970s?

Forecasts of mass starvation have a long and venerable history of being believed when they were made and then the reverse happening.

In this case the author points out that food prices are rising, apparently without fully realising it is because more Inidians and Chinese have moved out of poverty and can afford to buy more food. so his dire predictions of people being unable to buy food don't take into account the fact they have more money (relatively speaking) it with.

As for aquifers beding depleted this may well be true, but then the scare story of a decade or so ago was that topsoil was being depleted, and the farmland still seems to be there. We really need an independent body to sort through these stories. The UN's job is to play them up, and even the world bank can come out with the most extraordinary nonsense.

We need a skeptics institute to examine claims. Until we do I'm not taking this stuff seriously.

Good old Lester, he's indefatigable, you've got to hand that to him. A 40-odd year career of being constistently proven wrong, but still he keeps at it, prophesying imminent doom. The end of the world is always just under a decade away for Lester.

He reminds me of the classic Peter Cook sketch: http://tinyurl.com/4r4xuw3

'Well, it's not quite the conflagration I'd been banking on. Never mind, lads, same time tomorrow … we must get a winner one day.'

Just a couple of examples of how consistently wrong Lester has been, lest I be accused of making it up:

'By my count, Lester Brown has now predicted a turning point in the rise of agricultural yields six times since 1974, and been wrong each time' - Matt Ridley

'Given the fact that Brown's dismal record as a prognosticator of doom is so well-known, it is just plain sad to see a respectable publication like Scientific American lending its credibility to this old charlatan' - Ronald Bailey, 'Never Right, But Never in Doubt - Famine-monger Lester Brown still gets it wrong after all these years' http://tinyurl.com/49mvk95

'Lester Brown: Still Wrong After All These Years' http://tinyurl.com/4hq4tg4

Some of the comments miss the main points of the article . Human numbers are growing by a million every five days partly due to poverty and partly due to religious idiots. The levels in water tables fed by slow flowing aquifers are falling, nearly a third of the USA grain crop is going to ethanol production and good farming or grazing land is being degraded by mining and gas extraction companies.

If all the grain and sugar now produced was converted to ethanol only about ten percent of our liquid fuel needs would be met and we would all starve.
I wrote to the Bulletin years ago that,
"The longest lasting real capital is agricultural land whether it is growing crops meat or timber and all it demands is careful and adequate maintenance. A second class of real capital are depletable resources such as coal, oil and other minerals. If any country wastes or exports these items to support current consumption it is robbing it’s future generations. This leads to the pseudo capital. America is consuming, for example, Arabian oil (a real asset), paying for it by creating bank balances in American banks for Arab princes and claiming that these balances can be on lent as if they were real capital." Hence the GFC!

At current oil prices ($100 per barrel of 159 litres) Saudi Arabian reserves have about the same value as all USA farms at about $US80,000 per hectare. When their oil is gone will the oil exporters own and occupy all USA farming land or will they own pseudo capital (paper or computer balances) which can be wiped out at the stroke of a pen backed by a few nuclear powered aircraft carriers? Australia needs to exchange its iron ore and coal for overseas assets of real value but I am not sure that in the long term there are many.

Foyle - on the contrary, you have missed the main points of the posts. You can't serve my doom 'n gloom forecasts on OLO and expect to come away unscathed, particularly if you have a history of prophesying doom 'n gloom without anything happening.

What the other posters point out is that the author has a long record of being consistantly wrong. If he's right this time, then perhaps you could share with us the reasons you think he is right this time, as opposed to being wrong all the other times.

Why should we pay any attention now?

ah foyle .. no, you assume the commenters miss the main points because they did not directly address them .. the comments, at least mine, makes light of ever popular doom saying hytericists, in that humans have always adapted and famine is just a popular curse and prophecy.

You eventually go on then to say we should exchange iron ore for better return .. but to get back on track

The slow flowing acquifers can be dealt with by landforming and dams to trap all the rainfall we're going to get, predicted by the AGW cultists, who evidently have it on scientific authority that's what is going to happen .. I'm not sure how to deal with their parallel predictions of drought, but like them, I'll just pick the prediction I like.

the energy crisis you seem to be concerned about will be solved by all the new and innovative technologies that are to be funded by massive taxes to stop us producing CO2. (or go nuclear)

When that happens, we won't need to mine or drill for fossil fuels and we can turn all available arable land to food production. (any day now, yep, any day about .. now, yep .. let's hope we do come up with something eh)

I really don't see what the worry is all about .. the environmental activists and the alarmist climate science (astrology?) crowd seem to have all the answers. It will be interesting to see if the alarmists and eco types will agree to nuclear power when it's their friends and families who face starvation .. but of course, like the denialists they are, they don't believe it will come to that .. secretly, they all believe we'll adapt .. because we always have.

You don't have to be Lester Brown to see that food prices are rising, water tables are falling and that poor people are being stretched to the limit. The psychology of commentators like Curmudgeon is interesting - they think that attacking the man is equivalent to undermining the evidence he presents (that can easily be found elsewhere) and I just don't understand how some better fed Chinese in one place can negate the existence of hungry Arabs in another.

I am fascinated by the arguments that the world produces enough food and all we have to do is improve distribution. Since when has a free market ensured distribution of critical resources to all? Instead, we know that it distributes resources to the highest bidder. And it is not as if we could convert the world economy to a command economy overnight. So "fair" distribution of food is never going to happen and some people will starve while others become obese.

Lester Brown is just one voice among many warning that the human population has exceeded the world's long term capacity to support it. Like a stopped clock, his prediction will inevitably be proved right at some time and, from the way our water and oil resources are going that time would appear to be soon.

Here's hoping that OLO is still around in ten years time so we can make a collection of Curmudgeon's comments and discuss them in the light of events as they played out (peak oil, widespread famine, collapse of USA etc.).

Hooray for Michael in Adelaide!

Good post, michael-in-adelaide

Here is a link to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) Food Price Index (not compiled by Lester Brown)

http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/FoodPricesIndex/en/

If you scroll down to the graph showing the index since 1990, you can see how it has risen steadily since about 2003, before spiking in 2008 and again this year. Makes pooh-poohing the problem a bit difficult, doesn't it?

The Chinese and the Indian middle class are eating better, but that doesn't help poor people in the rest of the world. It is no coincidence that revolt in the Arab world took off when food prices increased by 50% for people who were spending half or more than half of their income on food.

I love prophets and here's another one, with a cheersquad as well

"Here's hoping that OLO is still around in ten years time so we can make a collection of Curmudgeon's comments and discuss them in the light of events as they played out (peak oil, widespread famine, collapse of USA etc.)"

So you reckon all these things will come to pass within 10 years?

BTW .. where was curmudgeaon commenting on collapse of the USA, I missed that one .. or is it just some of that hopey wishful thinking stuff?

What we don't do is collect all the prophets of doom predictions since there are so many and they are always wrong .. but as you say, like a stopped clock, they eventually happen .. but never in the timeframe you predict .. up till now, so now we get a 10 year window.

That's the point, wanting failure doesn't make it happen .. we'll adapt, we always will, while so many prophets go to their graves wishing they had been right and mankind had failed, starved, been eaten by crocodiles and all those happy go lucky, she'll be right types never get their cumuppance ..what a dreary existence.

Thank you Michael. An excellent post.

I despair at the number of times I've read articles like Lester's and then witnessed the tirade of thinly veiled abuse from some of the usual suspects, to the point whereby I rarely post here any more because eternal optimists, just like the religious fundamentalist, will see only what they want to see. They do not do the long hours of research that I have undertaken to understand the "human problem" which is that for just a handful of years on a geographical time scale (in fact only a couple of hundred years), mankind has relied on the power provided by cheap and abundant fossil fuel energy and that time is about to end.

The optimist can rant about sources of energy yet to be developed, but the laws of thermodynamics will nearly always thwart them every time . And should nuclear power be introduced into the Australian equation, then it might delay the outcome for a few more decades, but nuclear cannot be brought into play quickly enough. It would take upward of 20 years to get it up and running and we haven't got that long. Even Britain is talking about introducing fuel rationing within the next 9 years.

With humans breeding out of control, helped along by religion's "go forth and multiply" attitude, this situation was bound to develop eventually, but the only way these great human numbers have been made possible is through the availability of cheap and abundant energy. Those days are rapidly drawing to a close and humanity suddenly finds itself facing the greatest catastrophe ever imagined.

aime "The optimist can rant about sources of energy yet to be developed",

If you were referring to my post "the energy crisis you seem to be concerned about will be solved by all the new and innovative technologies that are to be funded by massive taxes to stop us producing CO2."

.. that was sarcasm .. sorry, I should have put a sign up .. I forget how subtle I can be (sarc)

There's a beautiful syncronicity of idiocy in some of these arguments such as food shortage - up go the anti-pop hands in horror.

Cyclone in Queensland, up go the climate changers hands in horror, heatwaves - we're all doomed.

I've been reading the same Guardian articles which Lester has but they are talking about trade barriers going up, hyper-inflation and crops failing in Russia.

There's a commonsense shortage too and it has nothing to do with population and everything to do with how markets work. I'm not denying there's a food shortage. There was one a couple of years ago. We also have gluts too, especially in grain harvests.

The problem here is that some nations hae decided to run a protectionist line and won't sell their food. Why? There are two reasons: one is profit and the other is profit.

I could probably put forward a fairly good case that the root source of the problem is climate change destroying our crops. But I'd be laughed offline.

‘And in an increasingly hungry world, converting grain into fuel for cars is not the way to go. It is time to remove subsidies for converting grain and other crops into automotive fuel.’

For me this is issue we must address urgently as I cannot accept wealthy countries subsidising the conversion of grain to ethanol, using subsidies and mandates to outbid the poor for food. I cannot understand why the comments chose to ignore it.
I would like to emphasise the subsidisation as it is this that distinguishes the conversion of grain to fuel from other discretionary uses of grain.
Peter Hartcher in the SMH this week suggests that “ Some 40 per cent of the US corn crop, enough to feed 350 million people, goes to make fuel for cars.” To this we can add the grain biofuels produced by other countries and arrive at a round figure of say 500 million poor people. This should give some perspective to Lester Brown’s comment above and my concerns that people choose to ignore it.

I would like to put some figures on our own Australian grain ethanol. The Federal Government subsidises grain ethanol at the rate of $140 per tonne of grain processed, grain that is usually worth about $200 per tonne. The NSW Government mandates its use. There is no real benefit to offset the $150 million subsidy that finds its way into the grain ethanol producer pockets.

I really would like to know why the learned posters have not commented on the above issue, the subsidisation of food to fuel. Wealthy countries can afford to take even greater quantities of grain for fuel. When does it become Government sponsored genocide

Population management.

That phrase explains both the problem and the solution.

In the wealthy world we are dying rapidly... an "aging population' is a population that is failing to have enough children to replace the old people.

But across the poor world and Muslim Worlds they are producing vast numbers of children.. yet even Allah isn't able to give3 them more farmland or rain to feed these growing masses.

Countries like Iran and Thailand can provide free long-lasting contraception with education and advertising, they have reduced population gorwth to zero... creating a future of wealth for their sustainable populations.

But in the rest of the poor World, increasing populationa nd increasing hardship for the poor humans and the suffering environment.

Meanwhile in the wealthy world (inc. Japan and Singapore), where children are expensive and feminism is powerful, we are dying rapidly, with only one child for every two adults. An unprecedented genocide.

Tax incentives to recognise that children cost money would help... so professional parents can afford the children they want.

The other problem is that professional men don't want to become fathers anymore... they see that marriage is long years of long hours followed by seeing their kids fed to the divorce lawyers. So, sadly, professional women can't get husbands. And neither will have children.

We need to fixing divorce and gender bias (against men) so that men stop the 'marriage strike' that causes the 'man drought'. Men aren't 'commitment phobic', they are simply rational

michael_in_adelaide and others - no, Foyle was not being attacked so much as being reproved for attacking others. Nor was there any response, and still has not been, to the substance of my post. These scare stories have been ciculating since at least the 1930s (over population was a serious concern back then), and conditions of late have been improving. The reason for the rising food prices is because ther are far fewer people in poverty. Even various UN organisations have had trouble making things seem worse.

So let me repeat. Why should we pay attention to this scare story as opposed to all the other scare stories that have come to nothing?

Curmudgeon,

Take a look at this policy research working paper from that scaremongering organisation the World Bank

http://econ.tu.ac.th/class/archan/RANGSUN/EC%20460/EC%20460%20Readings/Global%20Issues/Food%20Crisis/Food%20Price/A%20Note%20on%20Rising%20Food%20Price.pdf

Obviously, human population growth and grain being fed to animals in Asia, as well as bad weather, are factors in the very high food prices, but Donald Mitchell, the author concludes that about 25-30% of the price increases are due to higher energy prices, which feed through to increases in fertiliser and transport costs, i.e. peak oil. Most of the rest is due to biofuels, especially maize converted to ethanol in the US (about 25% of US maize production) and oil crops around the world for biodiesel. This includes land diverted from other crops to grow biofuel crops. Other important factors are low grain stocks, speculation, and export bans. Of course the move to biofuels is also largely provoked by peak oil.

Geoff,

We haven't talked about the subsidies because everyone who looks at it agrees that it is stupid to use grain to make ethanol. The energy returned over energy invested is terrible. Blame the farm lobby in the US. Cellulosic ethanol (if it can be perfected) and ethanol from sugar cane would be more efficient, but the problem of land diverted from food production would remain. It is inherent in the free market that a German or American who wants to keep his car on the road, or a Chinese family that wants to eat more pork, can outbid a Yemeni slum dweller who can't afford enough bread.

Thank you Divergence.I am glad you all know it is stupid to use grain for biofuels. My question is now are you all trying to stop the Governments subsidising it with our money.
The pig in China was not fed subsidised grain, the grain for the car was. there is a big difference.
If grain biofuels had to compete in a free market as the Chinese pig does the industry would not exist.
You can make your vote count, don't buy the E10

geoff .. funny, that's the way I feel about taxes for CO2 .. My question is now are you all trying to stop the Governments subsidizing it with our money?

We need biofuels for those who can afford it, because the eco activists insist on taxing and stopping anyone using fossil fuels, and also not using nuclear, while rambling about new technologies which are all pie in the sky .. so the ones with money and sense, who are not distracted by the socialist attitudes of folks like yourself .. will develop fuels for those prepared to pay

I'm prepared to pay and I can afford it .. so, bring on biofuels, and I'll be reducing my carbon footprint .. a win win .. oh except for the doom saying about people who might (or might not) starve

you can't always have everything your own way .. take away my high octane lead based fuel, and if someone comes up with a substitute which works, hooray!

All very interesting.
It is true, over many years people said we were one bad harvest from
disaster.
It was true then but it did not take into account the effect of cheap oil had on food production.

There is a very telling graph I have not been able to find again.
It displays two traces, world population from about 10,000 BC and
the production of oil. The world population varied only slowly from
the invention of agriculture to the start of the industrial revolution
and the use of coal and oil.

From that time on oil production and population track exactly.
The energy content of oil is so great and it was/is so cheap that it
enabled cheap food.

As oil depletes at say 4% per year then world population will fall
at 4% per year. This rate will be lessened to some extent by
alternative energy sources. However the energy content of oil is so
high and so cheap on the upslope that nothing will compare on the
downslope to make more than a small difference in the decline rate.

Now if you want to worry about how that decline in population will
occur I suggest you look at the Tunisian vegetable seller and all that
has happened since.
If no more babies were born, the world population would decrease at
just 1% per year.
The difference will be made up of starvation, malnutrition and wars
for food and resources. If anyone thinks we can negotiate a way out
of this dilemma I would like to hear it.

Global warming will not be a factor anyway as the transition that will
occur is much more powerful than any campaign to reduce CO2.

Just in case you are foolish enough to think this is away in the dim
distant future peak crude oil was in either 2005 or 2006.
Depletion now looks to start sometime in the next five years if you
are an optimist.