Carol Vorderman · @carolvorders
14th Jan 2020 from TwitLonger
C4 got their numbers badly wrong about replacing farming with 'hydrogen food'
@1garethwynjones is right.
Go to the back of the maths class George Monbiot ...The man who made sensational claims on @channel4 last week about how farming should be replaced. He claimed that factories making 'food' using hydrogen (yum!!) would take up an area 20,000 times less than that needed by current farming based on photosynthesis, and thus would help to save the environment.
Monbiot: “The land efficiency, the company (Solar Foods) estimates, is roughly 20,000 times greater (than farming).Everyone on Earth could be handsomely fed, and using a tiny fraction of its surface.”
Monbiot's twitter feed: "“the team claims they could supply enough protein to feed all the world’s people in an area the size of Ohio. Daily protein requirement: 50g. x 7.5 billion = 140mt pa. 50,000t per ha pa means 2800 hectares. Including solar panels, that makes 5.6 million hectares of desert.”
WRONG
How can I be so sure? Well, the man who runs Solar Foods, Pasi Vainikka, has said George is wrong.
In New Scientist Vainikka says "the efficiency figure Monbiot cites applies only to the area of land taken up by the factories." and NOT as Monbiot claims in his tweets (above), the area of land also needed for the solar panels.
The Solar Foods boss Vainikka goes on
"If the energy (to split into oxygen and hydrogen) were derived from solar, says Vainikka, "then it would be only 10 times more land efficient than farmed soya."
To explain....This 'food' production requires hydrogen to help bacteria to turn carbon dioxide and nitrogen in air into protein-rich organic matter... the 'food'.
Where does the hydrogen come from? A huge amount of electricity needs to be generated to split water into oxygen and hydrogen, to provide it. That electricity is generated by solar power.
So here we have two claims
George says 20,000 times more land efficient than current photosynthesis.
Solar Foods says NO, it's only approximately 10 times more because contrary to what he claims, George's estimate did NOT include the land needed for solar panels.
So if we are to believe the man who runs the company George, You're out by a monumental factor of somewhere near 2,000.
To put that in context, George claimed that to feed the entire world this form of food generation could be completed in an area slightly less than the size of Ohio (total is approx 116,000 km2, so let's say he estimated 100,000km2)
CRUCIALLY, a factor of 2,000 means that he would need 2,000 times that, which is approx 200 Million km2.
The world only has a land mass of approx 150 Million km2.
So on George's numbers (these are NOT my numbers, they are his claims) he would need more than all the land in the world to generate the power needed to make the 'food'... hmmmmmm?? I smell a statistical rat here.
Sort it out Channel 4, I'm genuinely interested, but get your numbers right. Then come back with something more credible.