Packed like sardines, Texas-style

Lefty writer and co-editor of the appropriately named The Crisis Papers, Ernest Partridge, has written an essay in which he gives the solar-biofuel-hydrogen economy the big pitch. If we don't make the switch from fossil fuels we're doomed. In making his case he attacks the notion that the world's population could fit comfortably in an area the size of Texas:

Economic optimists such as the late Julian Simon, like to tell us that the world population of six billion is not all that much, when we take into account the vast land area of the planet. Perhaps you have heard, as I have, that the entire world population could fit comfortably into the state of Texas. So let’s consider that example, as we take out our handy pocket calculator. The area of Texas is 268,581 square miles, or 171,891,840 acres. Divide that by six billion, and you have 0.03 acres per person, or about the area of an ordinary apartment: 1307 square feet. This is, of course, allowing no space for roads, schools, manufacturing plants, agricultural land, forests, watershed, etc. As for parks, forests, lakes, and other recreational areas, fagetaboutit.

It seemed odd that Partridge went to the trouble to convert the figures to acres per person so I decided to investigate.

If the world's population of 6 billion lived in an area the size of Texas (area 696,241 square kilometers) the population density would be 8,618 persons per square kilometer. While this figure is high it's nowhere near the population density of Monaco, where 32,409 people live in 1.95 square kilometers, a density of 16,620 per square kilometer.

Partridge deliberately tried to mislead through manipulation of the figures. Imagine that.

Anyway, read the whole thing; doom and gloom is seldom so funny.