Does the controversy surrounding climate change bother you?

Question: Are we humans contributing with the increase of GHC and our carbon footprint?

DBCassidy

 

Assuming global weather patterns are conducive for positive crop growth, and there is no political upheavals on the planet then, yes your statement is true.

However, what has been happening with the weather patterns and political strife, global hunger is still ever present, even as we speak.

DBCassidy

 

See your political and raise you distribution problems but not so much weather/climate. Point is, ironically, people are the problem people are going hungry... even in our own stinking country.

 

Most are, some are not. Clearly, the previous question is being avoided. Sustainability does not require castration. It requires passing on knowledge, discipline and the desire to make things better......and someone to pass it on to. (e.g. See bisco post)

 

My concern is that as population grows, the whole system is more sensitive to problems. We have less resilience to handle problems when things turn to doo-doo.

To those of us that believe that this is the only life we get, that is a lot more important than it is to those that believe death will bring them a better existence.

 

If one wants to feel depressed, I recommend running the numbers on how many people the planet will support WITHOUT the cheap stored energy available through oil.

 

But it has been this way since malthus first published the doom of over population starving more than 200 years ago.

Since then we no longer have a starving population because of climate, people are starving because of politics. The system in 2012 is much more resilient today to problems than in was even 50 years ago.

I'm not sure why religion or metaphysics would come into this.

I'm sure there would be more support for reduction of ghg if the government proposed solutions were not so corrupt. Let us look at our own house passed cap and tax plan, that wasn't voted on in the senate. It seemed to lock in higher levels of ghg than we are likely today to produce. Electricity and gas prices would go up - tax - but the money would have flowed mainly to certain heavy coal producing utilities as profits. To get these higher profits the proponents - Enron before it collapsed, Duke Energy, GE, etc helped support the catastrophist point of view. The big lie was the same chance of catastrophe with or without the bill. The oponents, aka the potential losers and their political allies then tried to claim nothing was happening. What we got was the choice between a really bad bill and no bill. Chicken littles claim a bad bill was worth lieing about as a good bill because the ends justify the means. Many environmentalists were against the bill since it really would not significantly do anything but redistribute weath.

 

I understand your POV and appreciate your candor.

I would submit that if people had a warm, safe place to sleep and a full tummy that in fact world population would fall. If they are not in survival mode they are more likely to become educated and that generally leads to a better life. Days of the huge farm families are all but gone here in the US. We had a family friend that was one of nineteen! They lived on a Midwest farm and that was just the way of life back then. We are now down to an average of what 2.something today.

 

I am not. The people denying that Global Climate Change is even happening aren't even looking at the proposals to ameliorate it.

 

Why would you think there is a fallacy in denying malthus. For the last 200 years, there have been preachers preaching armageddon, and those pretending its science. There is no way you will ever be able to feed 1 Billion people, then no way to feed 2 Billion, etc. At what point will preachers stop blaming the devil? When will this madness end.

Malthus's problem is partially racism/classism, we only have scarce resources and the poor/other races don't deserve them as much as us educated white people with money. Couch it in science and it sells. The logical fallacy is that agricultural production can only go up in a linear fashion with land use. This denies the green revolution and other items where yield per acre is increased, and assumes that more food can not be harvested/farmed in the sea. Simply change the diet and the same acres can feed more people not counting the ferilizer, genetic selection (hybrids, gmo, etc), irrigation techniques to increase yield.

The answer is never. The profits of doom, will never look at the sky and realize they have been wrong every time. They will claim always - next time we really will be doomed. And they will start the crying again when the world doesn't end.

 

The fallacy is as follows: if a weatherman predicts snowfall for tomorrow and it doesn't occur, and again the next day, and again, and again, at what point do you conclude that it will never ever snow again?

The point is that NO amount of predictions (true or false) change the basic probabilities (or practicalities) involved. Would starvation due to overpopulation be LESS likely if Malthus had made his predictions 1000 years ago rather than 200? Would it be MORE likely if he made them only 20 years ago? No, of course not.

The simple truth is that NO exponential growth curve is sustainable in a finite universe. The only question is when (or alternatively, when would we be OFF an exponential growth curve).

 

The prediction is predicated on fixed yield per acre, something that has proved to be false. If a weatherman predicted basketball sized hail every day for 70 years, would you say he just hasn't be right yet? OR would you ask why is he reading chicken bones to predict the weather?

OK, that would have 2 possible outcomes though. Everyone would starve. Not likely. Or as populations outgrew the resources growth would slow. The malthusian estimates would have seen the dinasours die of starvation instead of other means. The assumption of exponential growth of human population is also a bad assumption as well as fixed yield per acre. Two bad assumptions followed for hundreds of years seems a little silly to put faith in.

Question the assumptions if you are constantly wrong. Ignoring outcomes and saying next time it will be right is religion not science. This religion often is used in a racist/classist way.

Look at US birth rates. There is obesity instead of starvation, but if we stopped imigration it is likely that population would start decreasing in the future.

 

You know what always bothered me?

Ralph Machio in the original Karate Kid.

There was just no way I could believe that kid wasn't going to get his nice person kicked. I don't care how much Wax On, Wax Off training he got from Mr. Miyagi....he looked like he was about 98lbs of nothing.

Couldn't they of at least cast a kid that kinda looked like maybe he could win a fight? It was like casting Gilbert Gottfried as "Rocky".

Global Warming Controversy. Well whatever side your on? Eventually it solves itself.

 

Irrelevant with respect to what actual weather happened or will happen.
Since Malthus's predictions are irrelevant to what actually happens, it can NOT be used as an argument for what ISN'T actually going to happen. People usually bring Malthus up when they don't have any real evidence, and want to throw some FUD around. I presume present company will be an exception to that.

On what do you base your 'not likely'? I can point to populations either of animals or humans that did either of those things. But the current experiment is pretty much unprecedented. No population of animals or humans has previously been able to use accumulated, but limited, energy supplies to live beyond their solar energy budget.

Dinosaurs were NEVER in a situation of exponential population growth that I am aware of. Besides, I thought most of them DID die of starvation, has the consensus changed again?

There is no assumption about that. It is merely a fact. We are currently growing our population exponentially. Arguments that that won't continue are welcome.


If you assume that yield per acre will continue to increase indefinitely, you are making a worse assumption than Mathus's. Physics precludes that.

Which is why I don't put ANY faith in it. Instead I look at the laws of physics and mathematics (and I don't come to Malthus's conclusion either).

Obesity is not a great proxy for plentiful food. Rather it is likely caused by cheap bad food. Yes, US population growth is completely based on immigration. Arguments that this translates to the rest of the world in some way are also welcome. Simple correlations need not apply.

 

I like the discussion. On the above point I will be a bit a purist. All population curves are exponential by the nature of the beast and can include negative exponents. Fortunately, the actual exponent has been getting smaller and smaller, not bigger. It is on schedule to become negative if the present trend continues (but some decades away). This does not affect the discussion other than to question one thing. Will starvation become a major factor in the reduction of the exponential value before it transitions negative or the transition has had the time to avoid a resource collapse?

I don't know, but we (humankind) will be very, very lucky if we do achieve sustainability.

 

Soylent Green: "The scoops are coming, the scoops are coming"

DBCassidy

 

Overpopulation is destructive, especially when the population swells faster that the infrastructure can keep up with it. (IE: sanitary conditions, food production and distribution).
The biggest issue: lack of clean drinking water (one can not live without that).

If that kid is a punk, has a criminal record, or belongs to a gang in the drug business, then yeah, that kids destructive.

But, then again, kids don't come with an owners'manual.

DBCassidy

 

I agree with all of the above. We are far from being sustainable and the planet is stressed. I'm just not going to agree that a viable solution requires all concerned citizens to stop having any children. Everyone I know that is concerned and has children, definitely wants to limit their family size, not eliminate it (including me).

 

No one (at least no reasonable one) is suggesting that everyone stop having children. Ai personally am suggesting that on balance, we have significantly fewer children. As I mentioned above, if the net population of the world were 1/3 of what it is now, everyone could live higher on the hog, with less impact on the planet.

If everyone had only one child per couple for a generation or two, the population would drop pretty dramatically in that time.

Icarus