Checking Worldwatch’s Vital Signs

In each of the past two years the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute has issued new publications titled Viral Signs, books that purport to document “the trends that are shaping our future.”1 Following in the footsteps of the famous Worldwatch State of the World series,2 now in its 10th edition, the Vital Signs series is intended for annual release.

Although the 1993 edition of Vital Signs discusses 42 allegedly important trends affecting mankind — including such innocuous ones as worldwide advertising expenditures and cigarette tax increases — the book somehow manages to miss one trend of indisputable importance: worldwide grain production reached a new all-time high in 1992.3

This omission is all the more remarkable since the compiler of the book’s agriculture data was Worldwatch president and founder Lester R. Brown, an acknowledged expert on world-wide agricultural trends.4 Moreover, the U.S. Department of Agriculture publication which first disclosed the fact of a new record harvest is cited by Mr. Brown as the source for another statistic. It is difficult to avoid the inference that Brown deliberately ignored the grain production statistic reported therein.5

Unfortunately, the Vital Signs books contain so many similar errors of omission, incorrect citations, outright mistakes, and ecological and overpopulation propaganda, that one is forced to conclude that accuracy and precision were often sacrificed to advance the population control agenda of Lester Brown and his Worldwatch Institute. Again and again statistics indicating meaningful progress for mankind are omitted or denigrated, while considerable effort seems to have been made to present a gloomier picture than is warranted.

What confidence can anyone have in any of Worldwatch’s statistics when the Institute cannot correctly report the figure for the “global average temperature,” about which there is little or no controversy? Thus Vital Signs 1992 (59) gives a table of 42 individual temperature readings between 1950 and 1991, and a graph of the same data, all of which are flatly wrong. According to Vital Signs the world’s average temperature has been oscillating about “12 degrees Celsius [centigrade],” whereas everyone with any familiarity with the subject knows the correct figure to be 15 degrees.6

What makes the error all the more remarkable is that Lester Brown and his cohorts have long been posing as experts on the subject of global warming, loudly proclaiming the disasters which will soon occur due to the warming allegedly underway. And yet they cannot correctly state the magnitude of the effect about which they are supposedly so knowledgeable! The 1993 edition of Vital Signs, in a small note, admitted the previous year’s data was in error.7

Besides somehow missing the good news of 1992’s record grain production, Lester Brown often errs in his citations to various U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) publications, which makes verification of his statistics difficult if not impossible. Thus Brown cites the USDA’s February 1993 World Grain Situation and Outlook (WGSO) for his statement that 1992/93 “World wheat stocks were up slightly from 131 million to 136 million [metric] tons (MMT)…,” which actually turns out to be figures lifted from the December 1992 WGSO (32). If Brown had correctly cited the February 1993 issue (34), the figures would have shown an increase from 129.5 MMT in 1991/92 to 137.8 MMT in 1992/93.

Again, the February 1993 WGSO (34) is cited for Brown’s statement that “World carryover stocks of grain at the start of the 1993 harvest totaled an estimated 341 MMT, up 19 MMT from 1992.” Once again, the figures cited by Brown are taken from the December 1992 WGSO (34); if Brown had correctly cited the February report (36) the actual figures would have been 346.5 MMT, a near 30 MMT increase from the previous, year’s 316.7.

This “error” of citing the wrong month from a series of grain reports, almost invariably the month that yields the smallest production data, occurs so often in the Vital Signs books that one suspects that something more than slipshod research may be at work.

Thus, the U.S. 1992 com harvest yield, which Brown gave as an “all-time high of 121 bushels per acre,” was actually 131 bushels per acre, as clearly stated in Brown’s own source, the USDA February 1993 WGSO report (31). Likewise, the 1992 U.S. soybean harvest, said by Brown to be “57 million [metric] tons,” was actually 59.8 MMT, the second largest in U.S. history, not the “third largest on record” as Brown claimed. Moreover, the 1992 bean harvest of 59.8 MMT was not “well below the 68 million tons [record] of 1979,” as Brown claimed, but only marginally below the 1979 record of 61.5 MMT.8

Incredibly enough, Brown apparently converted the record harvest of 61.5 MMT to the U.S. equivalent of 68 million tons (1 metric ton — approximately 1.1 US tons), and then compared the 1992 unconverted metric tonnage with the adjusted tonnage of the old harvest! No other explanation rationally tits the facts as given by Brown.

Brown has thoroughly muddled the whole subject of the 1992 world grain production, which he places at “1,745 million tons,” a figure variously given as taken from the USDA’s February 1993 WGSO,9 or the March 1993 report,10 but actually obtained from the December 1992 WGSO. Altogether, Brown had at least five consecutive issues of the WGSO to choose data from, yet he somehow managed to pick the issue with the smallest grain production number.

Brown continually puts the world’s previous record grain harvest of 1990 at “1,780 million tons,” without specifying whether he’s using metric tons or US tons.11 For the past three years the USDA has put the figure at some 1,758 MMT.12 Did Brown once again convert metric tons to American tons? If so, one is faced with the same problem as in the soybean harvest comparisons (above), for Brown did not make any corresponding adjustment with the 1992/93 grain tonnage data. Whatever Brown did, the 1992 world record grain harvest manages to look somewhat ordinary after going through his hands.

Readers should note that we are not merely quibbling about mistaken or “shaved” numbers. Central to the thesis of Lester Brown and his Worldwatch crew is the claim that the alleged deterioration of the Earth’s vital ecosystems, due to burgeoning human populations, is beginning to show up in reduced grain production and yields. It appears that the blind pursuit of anything that might substantiate that thesis has led Mr. Brown and company to make numerous errors in assembling the data, and to omit facts to the contrary wherever possible.

Brown cites “several longer term trends [which allegedly] are slowing the growth in world food output: growth in the world grain area came to a halt in 1981; the irrigated area per person has been declining since 1979, and world fertilizer use has actually dropped in recent years .…”13 Brown seems unable to grasp the simple fact that the world is actually harvesting several hundred million metric tons more grain on tens of millions of acres less land. Of what significance is the formerly harvested grain acreage cited by Brown, when it has now become superfluous to the world’s current needs? Incidentally, all the crop acreage reductions have taken place in Europe, Canada, and the United States, lands which have enjoyed bountiful food supplies.

Similarly, the irrigation and fertilizer reductions which disturb Brown have occurred in the developed world only, again principally in the United States. Interestingly, Brown had previously called for reductions in irrigation and fertilizer use based on alleged ecological considerations. Now that such reductions have taken place, Brown reverses himself and cites the reductions as factors allegedly slowing food output. With some guys, you just can’t win. And what kind of silly statistic is “irrigated area per person?” Since the global crop area under irrigation continues to expand, this looks like another one of Brown’s “per capita” ploys designed simply to denigrate the good agricultural news.

The alleged water scarcity facing mankind, featured in the Worldwatch book The Last Oasis, is also treated in Vital Signs 1993.14 Although the tricks used in The Last Oasis to concoct a table of 26 allegedly “water scarce countries” were used again, this time around six “small water-scarce countries with a combined population of 2.5 million” were omitted from the table, perhaps in belated recognition that population had little, if anything, to do with the water problems of those nations.

Apparently exhausting his usual stable of calamities facing mankind, Mr. Brown has ventured into the downright silly, with his concern that “growth in the world’s automobile fleet means cropland is paved over for streets, highways, and parking lots.” According to Brown, “Some 200 square feet is needed to park an automobile…[and] assuming a minimum of two parking spaces per car, the land required to park 100 cars could easily produce one ton of grain per year.”15 Relax, Lester. Perhaps the answer is to simply use the 100 million acres of surplus cropland,16 now unneeded, for parking all the world’s cars. Each acre, using Brown’s figure of 200 square feet needed per car, could park 200 cars, and thus 100 million acres could handle 20 billion cars. Since the world’s total auto and truck fleet is about one-half billion, there’s plenty of parking room for all the world’s cars and trucks on just 2.5% of the idled formerly cropped acreage. And there will still be 97 million acres in reserve for additional parking or even future farming!

And so it goes throughout the book, from the sublime to the ridiculous. Perhaps the “vital signs” that most require immediate checking are those belonging to Lester Brown and his band of would-be Worldwatchers. They appear rather feverish.