[dohboi]

The text is at the top of the right hand column on page 1245 (which is the tenth page of the article according to my page counter).

Sorry, I'll take a current peer reviewed article over a random curve drawn over a graph that is eight years out of date, but I guess that's just me.

Resource decline is like death--you will always be right if you predict it's going to happen some time in the future, but you are likely to be wrong if you are predicting a particular day or even year that it will happen.

The onus is on those making extreme claims (in this case, that world phosphorus production is crashing, leading to imminent global food shortages) to prove their case, not the reverse.

Right now food prices are lower than they've been for the last five years, and you have to go back ten years to find dramatically lower real prices for food. So no sign there that phosphorus shortages are threatening the global food supply yet: http://www.fao.org/worldfoodsituation/f ... sindex/en/

That, even though we should be well over half way down the bad side of that scary red bell curve by now, according to the graph posted.

Just drawing a red curve on a graph doesn't make it so. But yes, we will eventually run short of phosphorus, just as we will of pretty much everything else. I'm just not putting this near the top of my 'to worry most about' list, yet, if you don't mind.

Excellent points on the high costs and great difficulty of building tilth, though.

[Lore]

You could draw the same analogy right now with oil.

I never make exact date predictions myself. I just point out, as in this case, within a time frame that finite resources will be expensive and hard to obtain and exploit.

What that means is on the downward slope there will be some still able to access the unobtainium while there will be an ever growing population who will not. Only few countries have significant reserves of of phosphorous.

Phosphorous is also one of the nine Earth system processes known to have planetary boundaries. In the case of phosphate production we are already well into the danger zone.

[Tanada]

I will make you a bet right now Pete, go to the hardware store and get a bag of pure silica sand with no organic material in it. Dump it in a tight pile on any corner of your property you want so that it is thick in the middle at least several inches.

How much will that cost per square mile?

Nothing, because the pattern I described is very simple. Fence off the land and let it sit fallow for 24 months. The bag of sand was to provide a dead matrix for the test, but the farm fields are already essentially dead.

Will the mega farm agribusiness types rotate their fields to be fallow for two years after each year of intensive use? Of course not, to do that would break the business model not to mention reduce world food supplies significantly in the short term.

[Tanada]

Tanada, you said "
Bull Pucky. I can make an inch of topsoil out of raw silica sand by dropping it on the ground and leaving it alone for a few years, it in no way shape or form has ever taken the often claimed 'thousands of years'."

The ground is raw silica sand. You have just dropped more ground on the ground. But it is not topsoil. It is the addition of carbon material that turns dirt or ground into soil. Not silica. Dirt is silica. It would have been more accurate to have replaced peat in the above equation. It was nonsense exercise. It made no sense really.

Empty lots in cities remain empty lots for years, decades with little more than weed tufts. That's because there is no carbon to create humus. Soil does makes itself, but it takes hundreds or thousands of years.

Pete you are still full of bull pucky. Go dig in an abandoned lot that isn't contaminated with industrial chemicals and you will find rich topsoil a few inches deep. If you are so certain you are right prove it, it only costs you a few dollars. Put up or shut up. Weeds are alive and their roots build the soil just like they always have. What are you so afraid of? You compared your 'intensive effort adding compost' to my 'let it lay fallow for two years' as if they were the same thing. Try and get this through your brain, fallow ground builds topsoil and all you did stirring it up with compost was to SLOW the process, not speed it along. Hands off works far better.

[Lore]

I would contend that agriculture, specially modern agriculture, is not a natural state of food security in which a balance can be maintained for very long. Humans living in equilibrium with their environment should be mimicking the larger forms of wild carnivores.

We started this folly when we moved from being hunter gatherers.

[onlooker]

I would contend that agriculture, specially modern agriculture, is not a natural state of food security in which a balance can be maintained for very long. Humans living in equilibrium with their environment should be mimicking the larger forms of wild carnivores.
We started this folly when we moved from being hunter gatherers.

I would not say agriculture is bad, it is the modern methods of doing agriculture which are bad which started around the 1930's.

[Lore]

I would contend that agriculture, specially modern agriculture, is not a natural state of food security in which a balance can be maintained for very long. Humans living in equilibrium with their environment should be mimicking the larger forms of wild carnivores.
We started this folly when we moved from being hunter gatherers.

I would not say agriculture is bad, it is the modern methods of doing agriculture which are bad which started around the 1930's.

In reference to the discussion here it most likely started with the advent of the deep bottom plow. In fact if you follow the population time line you can see where the numbers really took off as forged plows and the harness made opening up the nutrients trapped in the deep topsoil possible and led to increased yields that in turn led to more people.

[onlooker]

I think this story fits in with the narrative that environmental problems can lead to conflict and that conflict will only exacerbate said environmental problems. http://opinion.inquirer.net/94215/blood ... -of-famine
Bloodshed in Kidapawan: Climate change, conflict, politics of famine

[AdamB]

"The battle to feed all of humanity is over," Paul Ehrlich declared in the prologue to his 1968 book The Population Bomb. "In the 1970's the world will undergo famines—hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate." Still, he said, "We must have population control at home, hopefully through a system of incentives and penalties, but by compulsion if voluntary methods fail." Half a century later, Ehrlich is still at it, notwithstanding the spectacular failure of his prior prophecies. "Collapse of civilization is a near certainty within decades," says the headline over a new Guardian article featuring Ehrlich's latest predictions. Ehrlich tells the paper "population growth, along with over-consumption per capita, is driving civilisation

Civilization Doomed, Says Stanford Biologist Paul Ehrlich. Again

[onlooker]

Failure only in terms of timeframe not the facts and trends by which an objective conclusion can be drawn that the human natural and manmade support systems are doomed to catastrophic failure in the not too distant future and thus that Ehrlich will ultimately be right

[Newfie]

I find one of biggest problems we have communicating here is keeping a consistent time frame.

We have not yet exhausted our food - true fact

We will sometime in the future - true fact

Yet we fight over such statements. A pity.

[onlooker]

I find one of biggest problems we have communicating here is keeping a consistent time frame.

We have not yet exhausted our food - true fact

We will sometime in the future - true fact

Yet we fight over such statements. A pity.

Correct but some here say simply that Ehlich was wrong which is misleading

[Newfie]

Well he was wrong in his time frame, not in overall theory. Nor was Malthus.

If someone were to say we will never have a food shortage problem, we’ll that is wrong.

The simple facts are
1) the green revolution has increased population without reducing the fraction in hunger
2) Earth’s ability to produce food is being greatly disimished.

[onlooker]

Well he was wrong in his time frame, not in overall theory. Nor was Malthus.

If someone were to say we will never have a food shortage problem, we’ll that is wrong.

The simple facts are
1) the green revolution has increased population without reducing the fraction in hunger
2) Earth’s ability to produce food is being greatly disimished.

+1 Hope the sea faring goes well this summer Newf

[Newfie]

Ah yes. In fact I’m posting because we got up at 4:30 this am to make the short crossing from Guadeloupe to the Saints but the weather forecast was atrociously wrong yet again, so we turned back. We plan to try again Sunday but will now skip the Saints and go straight to Dominica.

In the meantime, booooored

[onlooker]

Ah yes. In fact I’m posting because we got up at 4:39 this am to make the short crossing from Guadeloupe to the Saints but the weather forecast was atrociously wrong yet again, so we turned back. We plan to try again Sunday but will now skip the Saints and go straight to Dominica.

In the meantime, booooored

Yes, I am kind of noticing the forecasts are not very reliable anymore. I guess you may need to agree with other Mariners as to most reliable source for forecast . The erratic acting Jet stream may be contributing to this. Stay safe

[KaiserJeep]

Guys, famine exists in the world already. Collapse started generations ago. The Third World has never been a good place to live without wealth. Refugees come from somewhere, and not without reasons. Just because the Western First World is relatively immune to widespread die-offs does not mean they do not already exist in other places such as sub-Saharan Africa. The Chinese are an example of a large group where the memory of Mao ZeDong deliberately starving whole provinces into submission exists within the experiences of people who still live.

It is actually a sad statement that far too many of us can go through life without really believing in Doom, because Doom exists in the World this day, and kills millions of people each year. Yet because in our Western World we don't see bodies in the streets (well, outside of the nightly newscasts, anyway) all too few of us spend all too little time thinking about it.

I'll admit, both of my parents knew hunger as children. They keep a basement with large amounts of food stored in it, because they understood how close to the edge we run our economy. Ask yourself just how many weeks you could go without a visit to the grocery store, before feeling hunger.

Somebody once said that the USA is always four days away from armed revolution, if food deliveris cease. In that we already have the "armed" part down pat, the government including the Donald had best do their best to make the grocery trucks run on time.

Trump Tower exists for his safety, not ours.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I find one of biggest problems we have communicating here is keeping a consistent time frame.

True, but when you have agendas and perspectives as disparate as fast crash doomers vs pure cornies, and everything in between -- where the difference among many of the outlooks IS the fundamental timeframe (sometimes by several orders of magnitude), I'm not sure how we effectively fix that -- even if most folks wanted to cooperate.

Would the oft-cited zerohedge, preaching rapid doom frequently be willing to change what they're selling in the spirit of truth, objectivity, etc? I don't think so.

Would KJ change his opinion that collapse has started but will take centuries, which, IMO, isn't an unreasonable middle ground sort of position to take, until proven otherwise?

And how about various corny's who are looking decades out, and use data, even if they tend to ignore many problems. Should they change?

IMO, the biggest problem is the willingness to willfully and frequently substitute objectivity and intellectual honesty via sources and "facts" for scoring points, or to write posts that "support our side", whether at all credible or not.

[Newfie]

Undoubtly true on all boards is that there is a contingen who is there to simply argue or press some point. Such faults while painfully obvious in others are often unseen in ourselves. Most of us do this at some time, except me of course.