Denmark as Non-Industrialized after model by Guy R. McPherson PDF Print E-mail
Written by Karl J. Hansen, klimabedrag.dk   
Friday, 20 August 2010 19:57

1600's farmMcPherson's view is not uncommon among "greens" and academics, so let's be serious about his doomsday theory for once and see if the suggested lifestyle is the salvation of human kind.  In the following I will use Denmark, because this country has a moderate dense population, is relative industrialized and is already taking many counterproductive "green" steps.

In Denmark it is impossible to sustain a lifestyle, where we all live of and off the land, without forest for building houses and barns, and to produce firewood.  You also need land for growing crops and grassing area for your farm animals.  A rough estimate is 50,000 sq meter per family.

Let's do a calculation for Denmark and it's population of 5,515,575 (July 2010 est.).  Less than 13% live in the countryside.  Farming is very effective and forestry does not play a significant role for firewood or house building, we still have coal, oil and gas (oh, I forgot the decorative wind turbines).

Guy R. McPherson argue that we can only survive if we all live simple lives, almost cave like, grow our own crops and keep our own small farm animals in order to supply eggs, milk, meat, etc.  Fine, but is this physically possible?

In a climate like that in Denmark, you need a lot of heating energy, both for cooking and for keeping your house, build of stone and/or wood, nice and warm.  You need to heat the water for washing and bathing and so on.

We need about 50,000 sq meter per family (roughly estimated).  There is about 3,000,000 families averaging to two persons per family.  This put us in need of 200,000 sq Km livable and farm-able land.  However, Available land does not exceed 42,434 sq Km and in reality we would have far less land without proper energy, because we would have to give up the land winning, which in the past was secured with enormous protection projects along the huge coastline.

Conclusion: At least 3/4 of the population must be exported or killed.

Is this is the real intention?  That only a privileged elite would deserve the right to survive.  After you have killed or exported most of the population and no longer have hospitals and a social service to take care of sick, elderly and newly born, the population would most certainly diminish further.

This hypotheses needs testing against past history, where similar conditions existed in Denmark.  We need to go pretty far back in the history to find conditions similar to those described by McPherson, where there was no industry and where people lived solely in the country and in the woods.  The preindustrial era is a laugh, because even if we go back to 1600's at the time of King Christian IV, huge parts of the Danish population lived in big cities, had a big army and a lot of the GDP came from foreign trading and service home and abroad.  The shipping industry has been vital for Denmark in more than a thousand years.

But let us just stay with the year 1600 anyway.  Estimate for the Danish population in 1600 is 500-600,000 and is roughly the same about 1650.  The flat line suggests that the countries development at that time, could not sustain a much denser population.  Towards the end of the 17th century, the population began to increase rather rapidly towards the over 5,000,000 we are today.  Similarly, it was from the mid 17th century we had a very effective government (king) lifting Denmark from the simple life into a highly advanced society with shipping, industry, more rational farming and more city life, culture, service and trading.

The simple conclusion must be that it is due to industry, coal, oil and international business, that we can provide for dense societies and live a very enjoyable life.  It is a shame we have so many salon-communists, who does not care about their neighbor, who does not care to test their theories against history and who think that "The Lost World" TV series resembles anything realistic.  What is even worse, is that we hear these slightly immature theories from people with higher education and Guy R. McPherson is one example of a man who might very well have diagnosed a problem, but totally forgets to do very simple tests of his own suggestions.

I will finish by correcting McPherson, when he postulates that mankind is doomed also due to "global warming" within the next 100 years.  Even if the temperature, the next 100 years, would increase several degrees, very unlikely with current trend, mankind and polar bears have survived several decadal-scale intervals during the Roman Warm Period that were more than 2.5°C warmer than the 1968-98 period.  The reason why the Romans never came beyond northern Germany, was not because it was too cold or warm, it was because the forest was too dense for building motorways, sorry roman roads.


References:

Time To Terminate Western Civilization Before It Terminates Us - By Guy R. McPherson
http://www.countercurrents.org/mcpherson180810.htm

Hans Chr. Johansen. Danish Population History, 1600-1939.
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=8582

Roman Warm Period (Europe -- Mediterranean) -- Summary
http://www.co2science.org/subject/r/summaries/rwpeuropemed.php

CIA World Fact Book
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html
Last Updated on Friday, 20 August 2010 21:01
 

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