The Problem of the Human Population

This is a guest post by Javier

Javier holds a PhD in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and has been a scientist for 30 years in molecular genetics and neurobiology. He wrote a blog on macroeconomy and investments from a cyclic point of view for over two years and currently writes a blog in Spanish about the economic crisis, energy crisis and climate change at http://www.rankia.com/blog/game-over/ . Javier goes by the name of Knownuthing on his blog.

Opinions expressed in this post are those of Javier and not necessarily those of the blog owner Ron Patterson. This post was translated from the Spanish by computer and may therefore contain some grammatical errors.

The Problem of the Human Population

 The question of whether or not overpopulation in the world is clearly debatable. For starters there is no agreement on what should be the world’s population and is also clear that currently the world is able to withstand the seven billion people who live and there is little doubt that it can support more, as the number increases constantly.

However, there is concern for decades that in a finite world at some point should be the limits of the world’s population, and that may not be very smart to reach those limits. Although efforts to limit population growth in some countries like India or China, today these efforts have been abandoned or are abandoning were made in the second half of the twentieth century, mainly due to the pace of population growth is declining alone globally.

As in all matters based on the laws of nature, we can use science to analyze the problem of the human population. The science that helps us in this case is ecology, which has a specific branch of human ecology . Anyone who thinks that we do not apply the laws of biology, is that it has lost touch with the reality of human nature. For very rational to presume to be, we are still animals and not very rational forget.

1. How many and how fast we grow?

The world’s population at the time of this writing is 7,301,880,780 people on the face of the Earth. You can see the current figure on pagehttp://www.worldometers.info/world-population/

Seven 1300 million and growing at a rate of 1.1% per year, ie 80 million people each year , the equivalent of two Spains completely filled each year.

Jav 1Fig 1 Growth of world population and growth rate estimates up to 2050. Source: World Population Data

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JODI, Iraqi Reserves and Ghawar

The JODI data just came in with production numbers for January 2015. I really don’t like JODI all that much but they are about two and one half months ahead of the EIA with their world data. And their data is incomplete so I have to substitute the EIA data for the countries that do not report to JODI. So the data I use is about 95% JODI and about 5% EIA. The last data point is January 2015 and is in thousand barrels per day.

JODI World

We peaked in December at 75,342,000 bpd but dropped 356,000 bpd in January to 74,986 bpd.

JODI USA

JODI has the US at 9,226,000 in December but dropping 34,000 bpd in January to 9,192,000 bpd. The US did not start its grand ascent until the summer of  2011 when the shale oil boom exploded.

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Texas RRC Report and Other Peak Oil News

The Texas Rail Road Commission has released its latest stats with production numbers through January. There is always a delay in these numbers and that is why you see the production graph lines seem to droop toward the recent months. Because of this I post six months data so the data can be compared in order to gain a better insight into which way production is heading.

All Texas oil and gas data is through January. The Oil data is in barrels per day and the gas data is in MCF.

Texas Condensate

Texas condensate will likely show a small gain when the data is finally in. Either way it will not be enough to make much difference in the final C+C January production.

Texas Crude Only

I believe Texas crude only will be down in January. This shows a huge decline from the December incomplete data. The EIA data is through December only.

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Bakken Data plus The EIA versus The EIA

The NDIC has just published the latest oil production data from the Bakken.
Monthly Oil Production Bakken Only
Monthly Oil Production All North Dakota

Bakken & ND Prod

Bakken production dropped by 34,619 barrels per day while all North Dakota oil production fell by 36,927 barrels per day.

Bakken & ND BPD per Well

Bakken barrels per day per well fell by 5 to 125 while all North Dakota barrels per day per well fell by 3 to 101.

Bakken Wells Producing increased by 107 to 9,052 while all North Dakota Wells Producing increased by only 49 to 11,796.

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