Predictions: Driven By Fear or Wishful Thinking?

How many times have we heard this story?

From a June 29, 1989, Associated Press dispatch:
UNITED NATIONS (AP)—A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000.

Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of "eco-refugees," threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP.

He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control.

* * * 

When I was in college a book called The Limits to Growth (1972) was published by an international think tank called The Club of Rome. The group used computer models to predict that continued economic growth would lead to a catastrophic depletion of key natural resources. It claimed that the world would run out of gold, silver, copper, zinc, natural gas, and petroleum within decades. These predictions proved to be spectacularly wrong.

The Club of Rome's central error was a failure to understand the nature of resources. It treated resources as fixed, static piles of materials that humanity was simply draining. This ignores the most important factor: human ingenuity, which is the ultimate resource that turns useless raw materials into valuable assets.

Here’s what actually happened, and why their predictions failed so completely:

Resources are created, not just found. A resource is a substance we have the knowledge and technology to use for our benefit. Oil was just black goo until humans developed the technology to refine and use it. Human innovation constantly finds new ways to locate, extract, and utilize raw materials more efficiently.

Consumption drives innovation. As we use more of a resource, its price may rise, which incentivizes smart people to find more of it, develop better extraction technologies, or create substitutes. This is why, contrary to the Club of Rome’s models, our "proved reserves"—the amount of a resource considered viable to produce with current technology and market conditions—have consistently increased for oil, gas, and most minerals, even as we consume more. This is why we have heard the mantra "in ten years we will run out of oil" for the past 60 years.

A classic case of catastrophizing. The Club of Rome's predictions are a prime example of catastrophizing, a word I learned from my brother the psychologist. With regard to the future, our unchecked imaginations wildly overstate negative side-effects while completely ignoring the benefits of industrial progress and the human capacity for problem-solving. This same flawed thinking pattern is used today to predict climate catastrophe, ignoring our proven ability to master climate dangers through technology powered by cost-effective energy.

So why does the media persist in its fear-mongering? Is it genuine fear, wishful thinking or ratings?

Related:

Are You Protopian, Utopian or Dystopian?

Two Things I've Heard All My Life That Don't Make Sense

Even though we're closer to Armageddon than we were 50 years ago, somehow it seemed like the real "Armageddon Fever" took place a half century ago. Maybe it was Hal Lindsey's 1970 bestseller The Late Great Planet Earth that stimulated the subsequent firestorm of pop-Apocalyptic lit. Or maybe it was simply the turbulence of the times--assassinations, Viet Nam, cities burning--that spawned the belief that humanity was doomed.

While Christians were reading about the end of the world and looking for their Lord's return, secular readers were engaged with books like Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb and doomsaying by groups like the Club of Rome. And let's not forget the angst generated by the somewhat intangible, though ever present, threat of nuclear holocaust as presented in books like On the Beach and Pat Frank's Alas, Babylon.

From those times to the present I've observed a few statements by pundits that never seem to go away. They may lay dormant for a season or two, but pretty soon they are being recycled again.

The first: In 10 years we will be out of oil.
This declaration was always accompanied by hand wringing about oil running out and the need to cut our dependence on oil. The latter is noble, though when I was young the statement emphasized cutting our dependence on foreign oil. There is so much oil under U.S. soil that you can't even imagine it. For some reason this off limits and that is off limit and those folks should be permitted to use their oil rigs and that pipeline has to be shut.... Bottom Line: It's empty rhetoric.

The real moral of this story is: Repeating silly pronouncements with specific dates or numbers will diminish your credibility

The second: There are too many people to feed. The world can't sustain any more.
In 1960, the population of the world was 3 billion. By 1974 it had grown to 4 billion. As of this moment, August 2023, there are 8 billion people populating our planet. 

Paul Ehrlich's book predicted mass starvation of the global population by the end of the 70s. 

What I remember most is that despite the troubling rise in population, technology was also advancing to make production of food more efficient and human life sustainable.

Now here's what I don't understand. After decades of handwringing about not being able to feed the world population as it grows, these very same people are diverting food crops for ethanol. And they are eliminating cattle in the Netherlands because of flatulence. (Ireland and Canada are pushing 30% cuts as well.) And I just heard that even more cropland is being eliminated for solar panel farms.

What happened to the concern about hunger?

Photo by Jesse Gardner on Unsplash

Sometime around 20 to 25 years ago Popular Science magazine had a detailed breakdown of the costs and benefits of turning corn into ethanol for car fuel. By the time you grow the corn, harvest it, transport it, convert it, distribute it.... There has been absolutely no gain. It uses up as much energy to create ethanol as the net gain from using it. In short, it is a waste.

Here's something else they don't tell you. E-10 gasoline (E-10 means 10% ethanol) can cause damage to small engines if not handled properly. It's too technical for this blog post, but you can look into it. The problem is called "phase separation." 

So what does our Minnesota leadership do? They are now pushing the use of E-15 instead of E-10. Moving forward with ethanol is ridiculous. Lawmakers close their ears to the experts who point out the silliness here. First, ethanol can damage older engines because it is a solvent which can dissolve some of the plastics, metals and rubber components used in older engines. Second, it has a lower energy content than gasoline. The result is lower fuel economy, the exact opposite of the increasingly stringent fuel economy objectives pressed by the EPA through CAFE regs. Third, because ethanol evaporates more easily than gasoline, it can contribute to smog formation. So why is Governor Walz celebrating the increased use of E15?

Why are we decreasing food production to increase production of a form of fuel that is less efficient and creates more smog? Whatever happened to all that concern about not being able to feed the masses?

*

A couple stats about corn in Minnesota. According to the USDA, Minnesota farmers planted 8.5 million acres of corn in 2021. 31% of this corn crop was used for ethanol. That's slightly more than all the acres used for cities, towns and roads in Minnesota. 

*

It's time to take a walk.