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The Forum > Article Comments > World one poor harvest away from chaos > Comments

World one poor harvest away from chaos : Comments

By Lester Brown, published 23/2/2011

We're exhausting ground water in countries like Saudi Arabia, India, China and the USA, with potentially disastrous consequences.

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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.'
Posted by Clownfish, Wednesday, 23 February 2011 11:52:32 AM
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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
Posted by Clownfish, Wednesday, 23 February 2011 12:20:58 PM
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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.
Posted by Foyle, Wednesday, 23 February 2011 12:32:55 PM
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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?
Posted by Curmudgeon, Wednesday, 23 February 2011 12:57:04 PM
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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.
Posted by Amicus, Wednesday, 23 February 2011 12:58:39 PM
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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.).
Posted by michael_in_adelaide, Wednesday, 23 February 2011 12:59:32 PM
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