That's an odd sort of post Shocker. I can only presume you're on Xanax.

Any chance of staying focused and making a sensible comment as per either my or Pericles' last two posts?

Just found this, published in March 2010, but covering an analysis of 1997 to 2002... still reading through the 39 pages.

http://dusp.mit.edu/sites/all/files/attachments/project/Energy_in_Food_System.pdf

This from the abstract should provide people a warm-up exercise in readying their calculators:

"A projection of food-related energy use based on 2007 total U.S. energy consumption and food expenditure data and the benchmark 2002 input-output accounts suggests that food-related energy use as a share of the national energy budget grew from 14.4 percent in 2002 to an estimated 15.7 percent in 2007."

Just up to the first paragraph on page 9...
Does this help?

"Still, on a per capita basis and on a per dollar of real (inflation-adjusted) Gross Domestic Product basis, annual energy use in the U.S. declined between 1997 and 2007."

Just lashing out, Bazz?

>>You cannot be that dopey, so I just presume you are trolling.<<

It is not "trolling" to explain to you that you are mis-reading the information that you offer. The mathematics involved are quite simple, and it is sad that you have made a Federal case out of some very simple numbers. I can only assume that you are doing this because you don't want to believe what they are - very specifically and clearly - telling you.

There are plenty of other numbers out there - go and look for some that support your views, an activity seems to be the accepted practice these days. Just don't publish stuff that is completely contradictory to the narrative you provide. It isn't a good look.

Have a great day.

Pericles,

It seems pretty obvious that consumption of anything can be expressed in terms of the population times the average consumption per person. Do you dispute this? Oil consumption in the US went down despite population growth due to the economic hit from the global financial crisis. What is interesting is that crude oil prices have stayed very high in historical terms for the past 10 years, giving the market plenty of time to adjust.

http://inflationdata.com/Inflation/Inflation_Rate/Historical_Oil_Prices_Table.asp

How could this be so if the world abounds in cheap oil or cheap oil substitutes?

The high oil prices have fed into record high food prices. See

http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/wfs-home/foodpricesindex/en/

Although there have been a number of factors involved, including population growth, speculation, and persistent drought in Australia, Don Mitchell of the World Bank assigns the most blame to biofuels (partly a response to rising oil prices and worries about energy security) and then the cost of oil feeding into agricultural inputs.

http://www-wds.worldbank.org/servlet/WDSContentServer/WDSP/IB/2008/07/28/000020439_20080728103002/Rendered/PDF/WP4682.pdf

This article by Michael Lardelli shows the true status of our food production in Australia, based on ABARE statistics.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2010-05-06/can-we-feed-%E2%80%9Cbig-australia%E2%80%9D

In the conclusion, he finds that we could supply about 3X our current population with wheat in a good year, less than 2X in a drought year, and 2X our current population with red meat in a normal, not a drought year. This doesn't even consider climate change, peak phosphate, etc. Doubling pig and poultry production would require us to consume all our coarse grains domestically and cut back on wheat exports. It seems that the Cornucopians like you and Cheryl don't understand the concept of a safety margin. Also, more people are going to require more imports. If we are going to consume most of our agricultural production ourselves, how are we going to pay for them once the minerals are mostly gone?

Cheryl,

In your article, you set great store on rising incomes, but you don't consider how much of that income is being eaten up by rising housing costs, or rather, the rising cost of residential land. The idea that population growth makes no difference when development is being concentrated in a few big cities with only so much land within commuting distance is just loony. See

http://economics.hia.com.au/media/House%20price%20to%20income%20ratio%20-%20FINAL.pdf

You also ignore effects on the environment, not just the direct effects, but also the damage that is done in producing the exports needed to pay for the imports for the larger population. Not all environmental problems are related to population - it only took one fool to introduce the rabbit, but I = PAT applies to most of them. (Impact on the environment equals the population times the average affluence of that population times a factor representing the dirtiness of the technology used to produce that level of affluence.) You want to just reduce T, without changing A (very unpopular), while P increases without limit. Forgive us for being sceptical. The Australian Conservation Foundation has nominated human population growth in Australia as a Key Threatening Process under the Environmental Protection Act.

http://www.acfonline.org.au/sites/default/files/resources/EPBC_nomination_22-3-10.pdf