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The thing is Ehrlich wasn't wrong about the basic concept, just the time frame. Despite all the talk about countries like Japan facing population decrease, the

The thing is Ehrlich wasn't wrong about the basic concept, just the time frame. Despite all the talk about countries like Japan facing population decrease, the world is not losing population overall but is still increasing, even if the rate of increase is slowing. Simply saying "It's not a problem; science will figure out how to feed all these additional people somehow; it has in the past when people like Malthus and Ehrlich wrongly predicted famines" is irresponsible, even if we should try. Someday science just won't be able to make agriculture more efficient; it isn't magic.

jfengel 4y ago
They picked metals to bet on, and I'd be curious to know if the bet would already be in the black for Ehrlich. Charts I could find show long-term increases in nickel, copper, and tin. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/nickel https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/nickel https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/copper https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/copper https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/tin https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/tin They don't have data for chromium or tungsten. I don't know how that compares to inflation, but the absolute price has certainly not fallen. To quote Wikipedia: Asset manager Jeremy Grantham wrote that if the Simon–Ehrlich wager had been for a longer period (from 1980 to 2011), then Simon would have lost on four of the five metals. He also noted that if the wager had been expanded to "all of the most important commodities," instead of just five metals, over that longer period of 1980 to 2011, then Simon would have lost "by a lot." Ehrlich seems to have been silly to pick a ten-year timeframe (that's not long enough to document a centuries-long consumption curve), and on top of that he appears to have gotten unlucky. A 50-year time frame for such a bet is more reasonable, and even if you correct for inflation, he seems to have had the rough idea. We probably can feed the world if population levels off in the ways it's predicted to. At least, we can produce enough calories. Right now, the world has more obesity than malnutrition. Agriculture is a renewable resource, but metals and fossil fuels are not -- and neither are places to dump the waste. So Ehrlich may have been right to pick metals rather than agriculture -- though we're rapidly running out of fish.
- vkou 4y ago
  Agriculture is only a renewable resource when it is done sustainably. What we do in large parts of the world is, essentially, strip-mining our topsoil (And, in the United States, aquifers) to grow food. We consume it faster than we can replenish it. This works great for juicing the numbers in the short-term, but is going to be a bit of a pickle later on. Whale oil was also a renewable resource...
Analemma_ 4y ago
“He wasn’t wrong, he just wasn’t right yet” is an unfalsifiable claim and therefore unworthy of serious discussion. Ehrlich understood this and actually did make a bunch of concrete predictions and Every. Single. One. was wrong, often wildly so. Why hasn’t this updated your confidence in his claims way downward?
- jhbadger 4y ago
  Because expanding populations using up all their resources and dying is simply a fact regardless of the time scale predicted. So he has to be right sooner or later unless the population stops growing at some point. As a biologist I've seen it play out in miniature many times with cell cultures killing themselves off. Yes, we are smarter than just cells and can stretch our resources through new technologies so far delaying this fate. But assuming that we can always do that is a dangerous gamble.
  - kmlx 4y ago
    > Because expanding populations using up all their resources and dying is simply a fact regardless the universe is infinite, the resources are infinite. before long we will mine that asteroid. and continue genetically modifying those crops.
    - credit_guy 4y ago
      Not only is the universe infinite, but for all practical purposes what we have here on Earth is infinite. We may be running out of oil and fossil fuels (in some quite distant future), but they are compound molecules. We will never be running out of carbon (of which we have too much in the atmosphere), or hydrogen and oxygen, and of any element that has stable isotopes. Oh, and I'm aware Helium is not gravitationally bound by Earth. We will not be running out of that either (it's being continuously produced as alpha particles in the decay of Radon deep inside the Earth).
  - _hypx 4y ago
    But population growth is plateauing.
mlyle 4y ago
> even if the rate of increase is slowing And sure looks like it's going to reach 0 before too, too long. He made a bunch of testable predictions; they don't seem to have come true; and it looks unlikely that they will ever be true given population trends that imply population is going to peak after roughly 80 years of slower and slower growth.

jfengel 4y ago

They picked metals to bet on, and I'd be curious to know if the bet would already be in the black for Ehrlich. Charts I could find show long-term increases in nickel, copper, and tin. https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/nickel https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/nickel https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/copper https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/copper https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/tin https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/tin They don't have data for chromium or tungsten. I don't know how that compares to inflation, but the absolute price has certainly not fallen. To quote Wikipedia: Asset manager Jeremy Grantham wrote that if the Simon–Ehrlich wager had been for a longer period (from 1980 to 2011), then Simon would have lost on four of the five metals. He also noted that if the wager had been expanded to "all of the most important commodities," instead of just five metals, over that longer period of 1980 to 2011, then Simon would have lost "by a lot." Ehrlich seems to have been silly to pick a ten-year timeframe (that's not long enough to document a centuries-long consumption curve), and on top of that he appears to have gotten unlucky. A 50-year time frame for such a bet is more reasonable, and even if you correct for inflation, he seems to have had the rough idea. We probably can feed the world if population levels off in the ways it's predicted to. At least, we can produce enough calories. Right now, the world has more obesity than malnutrition. Agriculture is a renewable resource, but metals and fossil fuels are not -- and neither are places to dump the waste. So Ehrlich may have been right to pick metals rather than agriculture -- though we're rapidly running out of fish.

vkou 4y ago
Agriculture is only a renewable resource when it is done sustainably. What we do in large parts of the world is, essentially, strip-mining our topsoil (And, in the United States, aquifers) to grow food. We consume it faster than we can replenish it. This works great for juicing the numbers in the short-term, but is going to be a bit of a pickle later on. Whale oil was also a renewable resource...

Analemma_ 4y ago

“He wasn’t wrong, he just wasn’t right yet” is an unfalsifiable claim and therefore unworthy of serious discussion. Ehrlich understood this and actually did make a bunch of concrete predictions and Every. Single. One. was wrong, often wildly so. Why hasn’t this updated your confidence in his claims way downward?

jhbadger 4y ago
Because expanding populations using up all their resources and dying is simply a fact regardless of the time scale predicted. So he has to be right sooner or later unless the population stops growing at some point. As a biologist I've seen it play out in miniature many times with cell cultures killing themselves off. Yes, we are smarter than just cells and can stretch our resources through new technologies so far delaying this fate. But assuming that we can always do that is a dangerous gamble.
- kmlx 4y ago
  > Because expanding populations using up all their resources and dying is simply a fact regardless the universe is infinite, the resources are infinite. before long we will mine that asteroid. and continue genetically modifying those crops.
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    Not only is the universe infinite, but for all practical purposes what we have here on Earth is infinite. We may be running out of oil and fossil fuels (in some quite distant future), but they are compound molecules. We will never be running out of carbon (of which we have too much in the atmosphere), or hydrogen and oxygen, and of any element that has stable isotopes. Oh, and I'm aware Helium is not gravitationally bound by Earth. We will not be running out of that either (it's being continuously produced as alpha particles in the decay of Radon deep inside the Earth).
- _hypx 4y ago
  But population growth is plateauing.

mlyle 4y ago

> even if the rate of increase is slowing And sure looks like it's going to reach 0 before too, too long. He made a bunch of testable predictions; they don't seem to have come true; and it looks unlikely that they will ever be true given population trends that imply population is going to peak after roughly 80 years of slower and slower growth.