HoldsUp

Rich Roll

Rich Roll is an author, podcaster, and endurance athlete who hosts the "Rich Roll Podcast." He is the founder and first finisher of the EPIC5 Challenge, an event consisting of five iron-distance triathlons across five Hawaiian islands, and has competed in the Ultraman World Championships. He has no academic research publications listed in the provided context.

17 claims checked on air: 2 context 1 contradicted 3 overstated 7 supported 4 unverified 4 flagged

What they said on air - context

0:44:46needs contextmoderateRhonda Patrick interviews Rich Roll on the Environmental Imp

Tropical rainforest is being destroyed at a rate of approximately one to two acres per second.

"We're destroying the rainforest at the rate of like one to two acres a second, it's crazy." (said at 0:44:46)

Satellite-based measurements of pan-tropical deforestation place the rate of gross forest loss at approximately 0.5 to 0.63 acres per second (5.8 to 8.0 million hectares per year). Specifically, a comprehensive remote sensing assessment across the tropics (Achard et al., 2014) estimated gross tropical forest loss at 8.0 million ha/year in the 1990s and 7.6 million ha/year in the 2000s, which translates to roughly 0.60 acres per second. An earlier global satellite assessment (Achard et al., 2002) estimated humid tropical forest clearance at 5.8 million ha/year (0.45 acres/second), with an additional 2.3 million ha/year visibly degraded (0.18 acres/second, totaling ~0.63 acres/second). The speaker's figure of 'one to two acres a second' is a common rule-of-thumb estimate in the approximate order of magnitude, though peer-reviewed satellite observations indicate the true rate of humid tropical deforestation is closer to 0.5 to 0.6 acres per second.

0:46:12needs contextmoderateRhonda Patrick interviews Rich Roll on the Environmental Imp

Global human population is projected to reach 11 billion people by the year 2100.

"And when you look at swelling global population, you know, the idea that we're going to hit 11 billion people by 2100, we just can't continue to feed the planet the way that we're doing it." (said at 0:46:12)

A global population reaching approximately 11 billion by the year 2100 is a prominent demographic projection, notably produced by the United Nations Population Division in its medium-variant projections (which estimated ~10.9 to 11.2 billion by 2100 in several revisions). However, demographic forecasts vary substantially across modeling groups. For example, a major global analysis by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) published in The Lancet projected that the world population would peak at approximately 9.73 billion in 2064 and decline to 8.79 billion (95% UI 6.83–11.8 billion) by 2100 due to faster declines in fertility rates.

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