Accept human-caused warming? "No choice."
We must accept the role our habits of consumption play in global warming. (Sketches921)
The vast majority of scientists agree: humans are causing Earth to get warmer.
But are people ready to accept this troubling reality?
Elisabeth Holland: I don’t think they have a choice.
That’s Elisabeth Holland, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. She told Earth & Sky that whether we’re ready to believe it or not, global warming caused by our human contribution to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is already affecting our world.
Elisabeth Holland: What I see is that the patterns of climate have changed, that our seasons are no longer as, the way that they used to be, they tend to be shifted in time, winter is shifted in time, the ice caps are melting.
Global warming is a problem that affects everyone, Holland said, with consequences ranging from droughts to unusually heavy rains. But, she added, there are things that the average person can do to slow global warming.
Elisabeth Holland: Use less fossil fuel. That’s the bottom line . But we don’t have to make monumental, revolutionary changes. We need to collectively make small steps and changes in our life to put us on a different trajectory.
Dear Dr. Elizabeth Holland,
What do our children say, “That reality bites?”
Every generation faces challenges, it seems. How is it my generation of elders can abrogate its responsibilities to confront looming global challenges that could adversely impact life as we know it as well as the integrity of the planetary home God has blessed us to inhabit?
In our time I hear too many politicians suggest that addressing the requirements of biophysical reality is political suicide. Too many economists appear to believe they would lose their jobs if they commented on the prospect of a gigantic, ever-expanding global economy soon becoming patently unsustainable at its current scale and growth rate. And most demographers seem to fear their careers would end if apparently unforeseen, good scientific evidence is acknowledged indicating that human population dynamics is common to the population dynamics of other species.
I do not know if these concerns are real or not. But our brothers and sisters in politics, economics and demography are in what appear to me as an unfavorable situation. It seems their determination to consensually ‘validate’ outdated ideas and data that deny reality in favor of whatsoever is politically convenient and economically expedient could be deleterious to the wellbeing of life as we know it and to the world in which we live. To me, such circumstances could sincerely be described as tragic.
On the other hand, we do have great scientists like you, Mickey Glantz, Richard Dawkins, Albert Bartlett, David Pimentel, Helena Norberg-Hodge, Hazel Henderson, Ernst von Weizsaecker, Alan Thornhill, Russell Hopfenberg, Joseph Baker, Tony McMichael, Geoffrey Bowker, Jeffrey McNeely, Partha Dasgupta, David Wasdell, Carl Pope, Chris Flavin, Lester Brown, Amy Coen, Anne Ehrlich, Vivien Ponniah, Charles Fowler, Humam Ghassib, Jan Janssens, Jean-Francois Rischard, Rajendra Pachauri, Don Kennedy, Paul Stern, Caroline Ash, E. O. Wilson, James Zachos, Jeffrey McKee, Jack Alpert, Richard C. Duncan, Peter Salonius, Peter Vitousek, Riane Eisler, Gilbert Fayl, David Blockstein, William Rees, Martin Rees, Paul Ehrlich, Stephen W. Hawking, Chris Rapley, Jerry Glenn, James Lovelock, Seti Shastrapraja, Stuart Pimm, Eric Chivian, Jan Juffermans, Ellen Carnevale, Rosamund McDougald, Ahmed Djoghlaf, John Guillebaud, Robert Correll, Jay Hansen, Bruce Alberts, Val Stevens, Jane Goodall and so many other sons and daughters of Galileo, who will help us widely share an adequate understanding of the world in which we live and plainly recognize the necessity for appropriate behavior change.
With thanks,
Steve
As I understand it there is not a consensus of scientists who accept the fact that humans affect global warming appreciably.
I am a bit confused by the fact that when I was in school a great deal was taught about the “Ice Age”. It is a fact that the earth went through this period. What has caused the earth to warm from that period? Obviously it was not due to humans.
“As I understand it there is not a consensus of scientist who accept the fact that humans affect global warming appreciably.” Gerald Lutterman
Gerald, that’s because you don’t understand the climate system at all — or the nature of the debate. The experts are in overwhelming agreement about the state of our planet’s atmosphere – humans are pumping ever increasing amounts of CO2 into it and the planet is warming; it’s pretty simple, really.
Unfortuntately that is the problem with Dumbocracy – experts don’t make decisions – citizens do. And we can all agree that the average American citizen is painfully ignorant of the world, science, culture, and just about everything else. What we need now is not a movement that challenges citizens to start changing lightbulbs. We need ecofascism. That’s the only way we’re going to see the swift changes that must occur if we are to save ourselves and at least 50% of the other species on the planet. Screw liberalism, screw democracy – we need results!
Given that warming has been positively observed on Pluto, Titan, Jupiter, and Mars, the claim that we are the cause is overstated to say the least…as is the claim that most scientists agree that we are the cause of global warming. It’s simply not true. Carbon dioxide is only a very small portion of the greenhouse effect, and water vapor dwarfs it as a potential cause. The political science of global warming has completely overwhelmed the (lack of) actual science on this subject. I’m not only unconvinced, I’m firmly convinced we are at best only a minute and marginal contributor to global warming…and I’ve lived long enough, and studied physics and statistics enough to know that the models Al Gore and friends are using are inadequate, incomplete, and in some cases deliberately biased.
J.D. Huggins
Chemical Engineer, retired.
Ah yes, and it’s very easy to say “we need ecofacism”...“you must give up freedom and prosperity to save the planet from manmade global warming.” and “Let the experts rule us…”
I’ve lived long enough to remember when the consensus was that we were headed into another Ice Age.
Anybody look at the history books? From the tenth through the thirteenth centuries, it was warm enough in England and Scotland to grow grapes and make wine a major export…much warmer than now, for roughly three hundred years, and the ecosystem adapted and survived. There are still p;olar bears. Please spare us the false prophets who always preach, “You must do as I say or you are doomed.” Eco-fascism is simply fascism (see, Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Stalin, Mao, and PolPot and the tens of millions slaughtered) hiding behind a false green robe.
There is no consensus on global warming. The popular held theory that global warming is caused mostly by humans is inconclusive at best. PBS and the popular media in general have taken up this banner that humans are the big problem and that control is the solution. Unfortunately it does seem to be true that if you say something long enough and loud enough eventually the people will believe. Earth & Sky does a great disservice to PBS listeners and those interested in science when they play the popular political view instead of focusing on real science fact.
Hello and thank you to all who are commenting here.
There is a scientific consensus on global warming, if we take the word “consensus” to mean “general agreement.” The IPCC is exactly that consensus. Thousands of scientists from across the globe have contributed to the IPCC reports. While a few scientists are still quibbling the facts (and how could it be otherwise?), the majority of climate scientists have, for some years now, agreed. Earth is getting warmer and humans are playing a role.
All we at Earth & Sky can do now is repeat this truth, over and over, in the face of a disinformation campaign that is asserting its non-truth, over and over.
I have – truly – been astounded at the division of thought on this subject in the media and in the public mind. I can only say that I’ve been writing about science for 30 years … and following the global warming story for that long. There is no mystery. It’s simple physics. We are adding carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, and that fact is causing Earth to warm.
What’s unknown is how much it will warm, or what effects this warming will have.
Equally unknown is what should be done. We are a science website, not a political website, so we won’t speak to that political issue.
But I can speak of the science. And it is as powerful as any scientific truth can ever be. Please open your minds. If there were even a possibility that human-caused global warming were the truth, wouldn’t you want to pay attention to that possibility?
Thank you for commenting here.
All the best,
Deborah
Hi to all,
Please, let’s think carefully before we proceed to action.
“Ecofacism” and every other kind of “ism” with which I am familiar appear to be unhelpful strategies for securing a good enough future for our children and their children, so I deeply believe. “Just say no” to the unregulated spread of “isms.”
On the other hand, under no circumstances should we ever lose faith in God’s gift of democracy and the beneficent freedoms it affords to human beings. At least for me, humanity’s formidable problems are NOT to be found in democracy but in the “isms” and in ourselves. Inasmuch as we are responsible for the “isms” we artificially design, construct and grow as well as for our behavior, both individually and in groups, I propose that we take some time to rigorously scrutinize the “isms” upon which so many leaders, past and present, have chosen to place complete confidence and to sensibly examine the distinctly human actions we are taking in the world we inhabit.
Could it be that the powerbrokers of the global political economy have no intention of acknowledging, let alone addressing, the looming global challenges before humanity and, therefore, do not want people to engage in objective discussion about these virtually undenial challenges? Hence, the need for cascading disinformation and hundreds of ‘talking heads’ saying the same things repetitiously in the mass media. There is an old saying among masters of the universe that goes like this: “If you tell people the same wrong thing over and over again, many people will believe that a falsehood is real.”
One question before humanity, a question that calls out for the attention of many people, could be, “How does a small planet the size of Earth much longer support the scale and growth rate of unbridled capital“ism”, the unrestrained increase in per capita consumption of limited resources, and the skyrocketing rise of absolute global human population numbers?”
With many thanks to Earth & Sky and to all in the E & S community at large for bringing to life this wondrous, rare and vital forum,
Steve
Look closely at the people who are on the IPCC and you’ll see that more of them are political than scientific, and that many of the scientists names listed have actually withdrawn support after the political hacks ignored the science in favor of attempting to hamstring the developed world. The IPCC has refused to take their names off the list since they “contributed” to the initial discussions and were part of the panel before it went awry. The IPCC is not a consensus by any definition of the term, Deborah…unless you think, for example, that under someone like Stalin, the Communist party represented a consensus of Russian thought in the 1930’s.
http://www.globalwarminglatest.com/category/ipcc/
Please go view this site, watch the movie, “The Great Global Warming Swindle”, and check the list of over 17,000 prominent climate scientists and physicists, statisticians and other experts who disagree vehemently with the IPCC before you say there is consensus…and by the way they are not on Big Oil’s payroll.
See here: http://www.oism.org/oism/s32p31.htm
If you can’t acknowledge that there is still room for debate, then you have possibly become a cult member…“manmade global warming” has become a matter of religious faith rather than a matter of scientific debate for a large number of adherents.
From the website: “Discuss Global Warming”
www.discussglobalwarming.com
Quote:
Note: “Figures just released by the U.S. National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) show that mean global temperature for 2006 was 0.24 deg C cooler than it was in 1998. The seven years 1999 to 2005 were also cooler than 1998.”
Interesting, and strange how it coincides with the Kyoto Protocol! Please tell me more!
“This data suggests global warming might have stopped eight years ago, in line with what might be expected from the natural cycles of warming and cooling that are common features of climate” said Professor Augie Auer, chairman of the scientific panel of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.”
The hell you say! I can accept that he is saying might, as any rational individual would say this when dealing with a subject that still contains vast amounts of conjecture and basis on models.
And the kicker:
“We know that emissions of carbon dioxide are still occurring, which prompts a further question: for how much longer can NIWA support claims by the present government that CO2 causes catastrophic warming, and needs to be curbed by the imposition of special taxes or emission charges. Surely it’s now time to put a stop to these sensationalist claims, which are not supported by verifiable scientific data” said Professor Auer.
From what I have read in various sources, Professor Augie Auer is neither a hack in his field (he was chief meteorologist for the New Zealand Meteorological Service from 1990-1998 and a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Wyoming for 22 years) or working for Exxon Mobil, so I guess he is committing what global warming pundits would consider career suicide for the sheer joy of it.
No, he is yet another scientist who doesn’t agree. Add him to the list. What about YOU?
Unquote.
I seem to see a contradiction here. Your opening paragraph states
“The vast majority of scientists agree: humans are causing Earth to get warmer.”And “Steve” chimes in, thanking you
“... and so many other sons and daughters of Galileo”But as I recall, in Galileo’s time it was the majority of scientists — the scientific establishment of the day — and what they proclaimed to be patently obvious from their observations (which ultimately turned out to be incomplete) who ultimately turned out to be wrong. It was the few (even the one, Galileo himself) who defied them and their entrenched expertise who turned out to be correct.
The majority of scientists today may turn out to be correct, but let’s not use the example of Galileo, which is the exact opposite case of the point.
I find this debate as interesting as the projected effects of the consequences. I want to leave my beliefs and biases out for a while and note that there is an interesting psychology when points are made on either side. “Experts” are quoted on which people try to make points, and very few bloggers would ever show the other side of an argument they are trying to make.
Blog posts are being used to write blog posts. Key words of evidence are slyly being passed over. Mr Huggins’ last post quoted a previous post for his thesis that started with “Figures just released”. It reminded me of a Pro-creation web site that stated “New findings about the Ark”... Those new finding were 50 years old. My point being here that emphatic posts site names and figures but very rarely do they have any teeth. The meat of the data is usually stripped away and what we want to see is left behind.
BTW,
http://climate.uah.edu/jan2007.htm
I will leave that one for you to read. I wont say anything about the report other than I really didn’t see any global temperatures for last year being down, and that to use figures that quote a global temperature being up or down skims over other very important facts. Some areas do go up, and some do go down.
I see the global temp map trends being more important than the mean.
This really has become political. Attacks on both sides. This morning I heard that NSSTC was told that if they continued to release reports in this fashion, i.e. uptrends, then NASA would lose funding under this administration.
Also, Ken Cohen who you may know is from Exxon himself has said that his company also believes that there is a global uptick in the temp especially at the poles. Very few actually argue that this isn’t happening, but when they do, I believe it exposes their lack of research.
The “man isn’t to blame” argument imho is really where the stage is set. The evidence that I continue to see is that the globe started warming 50 years before the industrial revolution. Do we really believe that we had the technology to study the mean global temperature 200 years ago when we couldn’t even get within 80 miles of the center of North America? (Research Fort Middle if you want to know more.) And to what accuracy did these pioneers work with?
Dear James D. Huggins,
Why would you think that our brothers and sisters in science are “in favor of attempting to hamstring the developed world,” as you put it? Where does that come from? Even the scientists with whom I am in total disagreement are not reporting such a thing. Please help us out here by providing an explanation.
I am familiar with the work of the political hacks you mention. Most of them do not think deeply about the problems you, I and others are discussing now and, additionally, they appear uniformly untrained in scientific methods and insufficiently grounded in a capacity for intellectual honesty.
At the risk of repeating myself, please note that a Stalin style communism and Russian thought reform are pernicious, intolerable options. I do not hear scientist calling for such regime changes. But your idea here, however out of touch, does bring something to mind. A great Russian and a splendid humanitarian, Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev, is calling now for “A New Glasnost for Global Sustainability.” We could benefit from at least considering Mikhail Gorbachev’s calls for glasnost and, I might add, for perestroika.
In the 20th century, communism was shown to all to be an enemy of human beings everywhere. If I may, let me plainly say that I believe communism is a cancer in our world. But that is not the only cancer. In the 21st century, I believe we will find that the current scale and growth rate of unbridled capitalism is a cancerous growth on Earth’s body….....as much an enemy of God’s good Earth as communism is an enemy of humanity.
Always, with thanks,
Steve
Bill McKibben wrote:
The finding of the new [IPCC] report that attracted the most attention in the press was that scientists were now more confident than ever that the warming we’ve seen so far (about one degree Fahrenheit in the average global temperature) was caused by human beings. Instead of being merely “likely,” the conclusion was now “very likely,” which in the IPCC’s lexicon means better than a 90 percent chance. But it’s been years since any reputable scientist specializing in climate research doubted that conclusion. More important findings were ignored in accounts of the report and in some cases were obscured by the document’s very poor prose, which is much more opaque than its predecessors. Those findings include:
? The amount of carbon in the atmosphere is now increasing at a faster rate even than before.
? Temperature increases would be considerably higher than they have been so far were it not for the blanket of soot and other pollution that is temporarily helping to cool the planet.
? Alternative explanations for some of the warming (for example, sunspot activity and the “urban heat island effect,” the raising of temperatures in cities caused by high building densities and the use of heat-retaining materials such as concrete and asphalt) are now known to be relatively negligible.
? Almost everything frozen on earth is melting. Heavy rainfalls are becoming more common since the air is warmer and therefore holds more water than cold air, and “cold days, cold nights and frost have become less frequent, while hot days, hot nights, and heat waves have become more frequent.”
He also recommends reading the website realclimate.org for good analysis of the IPCC report.
Always be cynical. People do not generally do anything out of the goodness of their hearts. THere are exceptions of course, but they are relatively few.
The United Nations and other socialist groups have stated that they are using climate fear to push a global agenda. That is from their own pens. The push behind the climate scare is to get you to give up your capitalist lifestyle and join the world in serfdom. If this is allowed to happen, life as we know it is over. The human race will fall into another dark age.
Dear Benjamin Napier,
Perhaps you will help me and James D. Huggins and others out here.
You say, “The push behind the climate scare is to get you to give up your capitalist lifestyle and join the world in serfdom.”
Where does THAT come from?
I am not eager to give up my lifestyle. It pleases me quite a lot. And I like to think that my children will have a good enough lifestyle, within the context of a life worth living.
What concerns me is that the human species could be living unsustainably now, that is to say , living dangerously because, as a species, we are in denial of requirements of practical reality as they relate to the way the world in which we live works and to the placement of human beings within the natural order of living things. Evidence is emerging everywhere around us, thanks to good science, that current scale and rate of growth of increasing per human consumption of limited resources, unrestrained economic globalization and skyrocketing rise of absolute global human population numbers cannot much longer be maintained on a small planet the size of Earth.
My wish is for the finite planet we inhabit to be a cornucopia. Much scientific evidence indicates that this wish is as much of a fantasy as the belief the Earth is flat or the wish for the Earth to operate like a mother’s teat at which humankind can eternally suckle. Making a careful distinction between what is fantasy and what is real about the world in which we live and about the placement of human beings within the natural order of living things appears vital.
Please forgive me, but it simply is not sensible for human beings to organize public policy as if the Earth is a cornucopia, for example. If that kind of policymaking was accepted as a basis for legislative action between now and 2050, then our children will not have to worry about giving up a “capitalistic lifestyle” or a “world in serfdom,” as you put it. The challenges our children could confront will likely be different and much greater than anything you are mentioning, I believe.
In the future, their choices will likely not be between a capitalistic lifestyle and serfdom. If we lead our children to believe that our wishful thinking concerning “living without limits” is REAL and that they can magically pursue our conspicuous consumption lifestyle in reckless denial of the requirements of biophysical reality; if we lead our children down a “primrose path” that fancifully ignores and hubristically defies the limits to global growth of certain human overgrowth activities overspreading Earth in our time, as we are doing, then it appears to me that every imaginable future for them will be put at risk.
A desire to extend unbridled capitalism throughout the world is a wonderful fantasy. I wish our current economic scheme could endlessly produce what you and I and many others wish for, and do so for all of the 6.6+ billion people in our planetary home. Good science from many sources tells us that unbridled capitalism is occurring in a patently unsustainable way and, therefore, in its current form must come to an end in this finite world. Is there any doubt whatever in your mind about that?
I do agree that “human beings will fall into another dark age,” as you put it, or suffer a worse fate…....and there are worse fates…....if we choose not to respond ably to the requirements of reality as they are made known to us through God’s gift of good science.
As ever, thankfully,
Steve
Ben N,
I find it hard to beleive the UN would write in “their own pen” that they “use climate fear to push a global agenda” to “get you to give up your capitalist lifestyle and join the world in serfdom”.
I’ll take one part of your advice and be cynical: Won’t you please give us a reference for the UN writing bout their method for encouraging a new “dark age”. I would love to be able to share that with others out of the irony of hipocracy, if it’s true.
From the perspective of people who have to go on living after you die, something you may be too old to learn, and may have to let your successors deal with, is that life as you know it is already over.
Life as we know it is dependent on human slavery and the wanton permanent destruction of God’s incredible machine that enables human life on this planet. Even if you don’t beleive in global warming (and why should you – it’s only just a theory like gravity is, and we all know how gravity doesn’t affect us), then you must also not believe in such fairy-tales as strip mining, slash and burn agriculture, desertification from water nitrification and salinization, overfishing, or that eating pesticides toxifies your liver, or else you would realize that it is precisely our “life as we know it” that is creating the next dark ages.
I hope that your grandchildren can survive on plastic wrappers, aluminum, and heavy metal-rich saltwater, because that is precisely what your “life as we know it” will leave them as natural resources.
You did get one thing right: The UN does have an ulterior motive. Their nefarious goals are “enduring peace”, “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war”, “to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person, in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small, and to establish conditions under which justice and respect for the obligations arising from treaties and other sources of international law can be maintained” Here’s a reference for you: http://www.un.org/aboutun/charter/
Steve, (#13 above)
Where to begin? I suspect your glass is half empty, while mine is half full. I’ve been fortunate to have traveled and lived in Asia, Europe, North and Central America, and visited places (like Indonesia) that I haven’t actually lived (like Iceland and the Philippines)....This response may ramble a bit, bear with me as I respond to your comments and those of others after you.
I haven’t seen it all, but I’ve seen enough to judge for myself that we are not destroying the world for our children and grandchildren. While legitimate scientists may not have as their objective “hamstringing the developed world”, you can’t deny that those who hold that hamstringing as a prime item on their agenda include large populations of former communists and anarchists, anti-global-trade folks and others like the fellow above who wanted an eco-fascist takeover. Nor can you deny that these folks would be happy to use an ecological excuse to aggrandize themselves at the expense of the rest of us. When Earth day rolls around, see how many red banners there are among the green at the major demonstrations. One of the founders of Greenpeace has said the reason he left that organization was because the movement was wrapping the green mantle around the leftovers of marxist totalitarian intentions to (my words, not his) hamstring the capitalist democracies. It may not be the scientists calling for regime changes as you put it, but these scientists are enabling political leaders like Al Gore (read Earth in the Balance) to, on one hand call for regime change and the forswearing of the benefits of modern technology and our free market economy, while on the other hand enjoying those benefits themselves and buying indulgences for their Carbon sins from the Church of Mother Gaia (and paying for carbon offsets to a company that Gore has a financial interest in.) At the same time Gore preaches that the science is settled and the press should tow his line, when it clearly is not, and I hear that echoed by a number of scientists or people who portray scientists on TV and radio (See the article that started this discussion). The most unfortunate side effect of cutting back on trade and development (and energy consumption) is that the world’s poor would be largely condemned to stay as they are, or worse.
As for the perils you see in unbridled capitalism, I cannot share your pessimism or fear. It reminds me of the attempt to close the US Patent Office in the late 1800’s because, obviously, everyone could see that everything that could be invented, had already been invented…
The “pie” of technological and economic progress is not of a fixed size, to be divided fairly or unfairly by capitalism. Capitalism is the economic engine that causes the pie to grow larger. A rising tide lifts all boats, to use an old platitude. As for dividing the pie, look at the Mayflower Compact the pilgrims used for their organization of an economic society in the new colony. It was fundamentally Marxist…all property held in common, all labor shared, the fruits of that labor divided to each according to need. They starved. When they threw out the Compact, each person got his own farm plot, and could labor as much as he cared to build his own prosperity, there shortly was abundant food and trade. Personal property, capitalism and the free market are fundamental to providing incentive to humans to produce what they and their neighbors need. Those who contribute more to society in terms of economic goods and services receive greater rewards. It’s really that simple.
And capitalism is hardly unbridled…ask any corporate tax/regulatory attorney. The most incorrigible capitalist does not want to drink polluted water or breathe dirty air, or force others to do so. Capitalism is about making a profit, yes, but the means of doing that is providing the wants and needs of the population, and capitalism does that more abundantly and more efficiently than any directed economy could ever do or has ever done. How many non-profits or socialist governments have developed new curative drugs or therapies, compared to profit based pharmaceutical companies? How many non-profits or socialist entities have really invented something new for the benefit of mankind? It simply doesn’t happen (or clearly doesn’t happen as often) unless some kind of profit incentive is allowed. I used to live in LA…and remember when the smog was very real and very sharp in your eyes and throat. We now have regulation and technology to minimize the effect of having several million people living in a locale that has always had a thermal inversion problem. Capitalism has been bridled and will continue to be.
The thing is, when you decide to “bridle” capitalism, who decides when and how far to pull on the reins, and on what basis do they decide? Planned economies have almost always proved disastrous whether the task is feeding the population or producing any kind of good or service…Cuba’s vaunted battalions of “free medical care” doctors are less well trained than a fire department paramedic in the US, and when sent to Venezuela to help Hugo Chavez consolidate his popularity, have been defecting in significant numbers because they are paid less in real terms than a waiter in a Havana tourist hotel.
Capitalism is not perfect, is arguably not perfectible…Humankind for that matter is neither perfect nor perfectible…but capitalism has proven to be the most effective and efficient means of providing for peoples’ wants and needs that human kind has ever found. Nothing else even comes close.
And Sustainability…define that for me, please. We are living on the surface of a rather large sphere. For mineral resources, we can, in theory and eventually, tap the contents of that sphere to a much greater depth than we now do. For water, 2/3 of the planet is covered with water to a significant depth…Salt water to be sure, but is it inconceivable that we can develop means to render as much of it drinkable or “irrigatable” as we need? Farmland?...ever hear of hydroponics? Or putting a moisture barrier into the ground and farming the upper soil? We are nowhere near the sustainability limits of this planet, not even in India or China. Fly over the spaces between cities…There are barren wastelands that in future can and will be farmed. There are technologies that have not yet been imagined…just as the folks in the late 1800’s Patent office could not conceive of nuclear power generation.
Overpopulation? Developed countries are declining or at best maintaining minimal population growth, and some are in danger of vanishing…and people are a resource, not a burden. Human minds and human hands are a resource.
To summarize the arguments in this and my earlier postings, (and tell me where you disagree):
Fact: There are well meaning individuals on both sides of this issue, some are scientific, and some are not. There are also those with ill intentions seeking to use the threat of a global warming catastrophe to their own benefit and our detriment.
Opinion: There is insufficient evidence at this time IMHO to forgo the freedom, prosperity, and economic growth the world presently enjoys, or the possibility of future improvement for those most in need, fueled by carbon-based energy sources.
Fact: Climates change,... and there is evidence of warming on Earth, Mars, Titan, Jupiter and Pluto…
Opinion: Based on that, I have not seen evidence that mankind and our current Carbon-fetish is a significant cause.
Fact: If the earth is actually warming at present (and it’s not entirely clear, statistically or by any current means of precision measurement), earth has been both much warmer and much colder for long periods in the geologically recent past (10th through 13th centuries Little Climatic Optimum and Little Ice Age) and life (even polar bears) did not perish.
Fact: Politicians and anarchists have been quick to seize on the environmental debate as a means to gain power which they do not deserve, under threat of predicted catastrophe, and actively are seeking to make significant changes in the political and economic life of the world (e.g. Kyoto accords). Foolish and selfish people have even tried to say “there is no scientific debate, it’s a settled fact.”
Opinion: The science and modeling of “manmade global warming” is by no means settled or complete.
In my humble opinion.
James D. Huggins
Dear Doug,
Thank you for the comments above.
First of all, let me say that my cup is neither half full nor half empty. I am one of those people who can rightly say that my cup runneth over.
Your first question is, “Where to begin?” What a wonderful question. I am asking it myself just now. While I respect your historical perspective and your understanding of physical reality, and recognize that your point of view is widely shared and consensually validated by many people in the US, as I read what you have say, I find myself recoiling from virtually every paragraph. What you are reporting are ideas I have heard during my lifetime; however, seldom have I seen these thoughts formulated so well.
Perhaps it is advanced age or waning faculties or poor communication skills that make it necessary for me to reflect upon what you have reported before responding to your formulations. Please bear with me.
Please take note, in closing for the moment, that you and I probably know many too many people in our conspicuous consumption culture, the “foolish and selfish people,” as you name the group; but I am one who does not count the practitioners of good science among them.
Sincerely,
Steve
Of course…It’s refreshing to have civil discussion on this or any topic these days. But while you’re working on the earlier comments, try this:
Someone above commented to the effect that “life without limits” was an obsolete concept.
That begs the question, if you are seeking good and striving for progress, why should there be limits, and who is authorized to set them, and on what basis?
And if we delegate to someone the terrible authority to set those limits, how will we know what might have been?
We still can’t model the weather for a region accurately, how can we model the planetary climate and make decisions on that basis?
And it also begs the darker side of that question, if you believe in the overpopulation/sustainability issue,...
Who gets to decide the correct population size, and who gets to decide which of us survive, and which of us can have one or more children?
No human being should have that kind of authority, and science will never have a correct answer to those questions…IMHO
J.D. Huggins
Dear Doug,
Let me try something here. Consider this as an experiment in thinking and sharing. I regard this an opportunity, one not to be missed.
If I may begin in an unlikely manner by simply making a few statements about our situation.
1) We are looking at the same data, but seeing these data in completely different ways.
2) We do what we are doing because we maintain two different (and only artificially separate) conceptual world views. Or to put this idea in a similar way, we are living in the same space-time but experiencing the world from different gestalts.
AS A CONSEQUENCE, it appears to me that what you report from your “gestalt” are views that are well-established and shared by most of the educated, ruling elite members of the human community worldwide.
On the other hand, what I am reporting comes from a different “gestalt,” one that is not yet well-known, but emergent.
For a moment, just imagine that you and I are in the midst of epistemological change. This is a time of cultural shifting, or as the great scientist Thomas Kuhn might put it, paradigm shifting.
OK?
Now let’s look at the idea of “epistemological change,” at what it is that is shifting.
Each human culture is organized around an unwritten, mostly unconsciously held, plausible narration for living that makes it possible for the members of a culture to form and maintain relationships, to understand the world in which they live, and to determine the relationship of human beings to other creatures within the natural evolutionary order of living things, among other things. Many people have reported that a culture’s narration is like a mythology. Reality and illusion are embedded in the mythology. It can be difficult as well as vital for members of a culture to “draw a line in the sand” between matters of scientific fact and those which are found to be preternatural misperceptions, lacking evolutionary efficacy, illusory, et cetera.
Perhaps the best available, good science becomes vital to the survival of a culture and its membership. Without science, the people of a culture can find value in once benign but now malignant traditional behaviors (based upon illusions) that have the potential for threatening life as we know it and the integrity of Earth. Unexpected scientific research indicates the presence of such a distinctly human predicament for the people of the predominant culture, and for humanity and other life, in these early years of Century XXI, ready or not.
Take the new and apparently unforeseen scientific research of human population dynamics from Hopfenberg and Pimentel. Simply, plainly, elegantly they provide unchallenged evidence that human population dynamics are common to the population dynamics of other species. After years of denial, it now appears that their evidence could be both unbelievable and unacceptable, all at the same time. Hence, we find that the guardians of the established paradigm appear to have become willfully blind, hysterically deaf and electively mute in the face of unwelcome data.
Well, now, what could all this mean? At least to me, because the implications of these data are profound, they call out to humanity for attention and careful examination, whether we like it or not. Because wasting time appears not to be in the interests of humanity, there is no time to waste. Good science cannot continue to be ignored. Intentional ignorance of clear and present dangers to the human community is an unforgivable disservice to our children. These data from Hopfenberg and Pimentel need to be EITHER refuted OR acknowledged, I suppose, with the hope of effectively addressing and overcoming humanity’s looming global challenges, ones already visible on the far horizon.
Godspeed,
Steve
Dear Doug,
If it is all right to do so, I want to begin with the comments in message #20 above and then work backward.
You say, “Someone above commented to the effect that “life without limits” was an obsolete concept.”
Just because something is not in vogue and not valued by certain people does not mean a thing is without value. Our culture has many priceless ideas and possessions that are considered obsolete today. Take the idea of “living without limits.” I believe you would agree that it is clearly possible to be “seeking good and striving for progress’” as you put it, and still recognize the limitations imposed upon living things by biophysical reality.
Afterall, one of our culture now thought to be obsolete by the name of Icarus was good and strived for progress; but he crashed.
Many are the examples of people defining as obsolete good ideas, the ones that are based upon adequate scientific evidence rather than much more attractive illusions.
To your questions, “.....who is to set them{limits}, and on what basis?” I have not answers to either question.
To your questions, “Who gets to decide the correct population size, and who gets to decide which of us survive, and which of us can have one or more children?” I do not have answers.
Permit me to say, regarding the questions above, that I believe the human species, individually and in mass, is responsible for its behavior in this world. The “answers” to the questions above appear to me as if they must somehow come from within the human community, based upon the best available, good science. Both as individuals and as a community, I suppose we are called upon to do no less…..and not reasonably expected to do more. It is our task in life, it would appear, to do the best we can with what God has given us, always respectful of the “rules of the house” we are blessed to inhabit.
When I was a boy, there were rules of the house in which I lived. They were not written down or displayed anywhere, but everyone in the house knew them and, for the sake of peace in the family, followed them. I am confident that you know precisely what I mean.
When the rules of the house were not followed, not simply the absence of peace, but something worse descended upon the household.
I can recall examples from a lifetime of work with individuals and families in crisis in which the rules of the house were not followed or else not even promulgated in a sensible way. These families were often rent with psychosocial pathology, to use a term of art from psychology. Too many individuals in such circumstances lived as if they were followers of Icarus or some other exemplar of “living without regard to limits.” They came to no good end. Not even God could save them from themselves.
Doug, we come to what really worries me in this moment. As I see things, the human community lives in God’s House with other creatures that have evolved here alongside us. There are rules of this house that we appear to have mistakenly determined that we can selectively ignore, indefinitely sidestep and ultimately defy. Consequently, even though unchecked resources consumption, untethered production of goods and services and unregulated propagation by our species are patently unsustainable activities at their current scale and rate of growth, we relentlessly advocate more and more growth, growth without end. We exercise at least a modicum of control over these overgrowth activities but choose repetitiously and ubiquitously not to respond ably by taking control of them.
Even though these unbridled, distinctly human global activities appear to be approaching a point in human history when they do not have evolutionary efficacy, we adamantly pursue these overgrowth activities as if the human species is somehow exempt from the “rules of the house” in which we live.
Furthermore, we seem to have determined that we will “have our cake and eat it, too.” That is to say, by eschewing good science in favor of attractive illusions regarding the way the world in which we live works, we have decided that we will consume Earth’s limited resources without regard to limits; that we will propagate our species without considering physical limits to its size; and that we will endlessly expand the global economy, come what may. Our unwillingness take responsibility for these unrestricted activities now overspreading Earth by “living within limits” and by respecting the established rules of God’s house, as made known to us thanks to good science, has the potential for tragedy, I suppose.
May God help us,
Steve
Dear Doug,
Among your questions in message # 18 is a request, “And Sustainability…define that for me, please.”
I decided to take this question first because it appears to present challenges for some of the most respected Earth scientists I know.
From my admittedly inexpert vantage point, it does appear that at least one of the difficult problems about the term “sustainability” has to do with giving meaning to the dimension of time. What length of time passes in order for a resource to be considered sustainable?
This problem appears to have been most adequately addressed by the eminent physicist from Colorado, Dr. Albert A. Bartlett. More than 20 years ago, this great scientist developed what looks like a reasonable way of approaching this problem in a paper on sustained availability of finite, non-newable resources.
Also, concerns about the rate at which the world’s oil supply is being depleted has lead to the development of some potentially usefu data, I suppose, by a geologist, Colin J. Campbell. He provides a conceptualization very similar to Dr. Bartlett’s, one that “advocates the simple and achievable expedient of demand management at the same rate as global depletion….. called the Rimini Protocol.”
Hopefully, this brief response is somehow helpful.
Sincerely,
Steve
Coming from the top of the line…other than collectively, one does make a difference, being positive is contagious
Dear Doug,
Referring once again to your comments in message # 18 above, you ask a question about “Overpopulation?”
Let us look at overpopulation from a humble, inexpert perspective. Any thoughts on this point of view are welcome.
IMAGINE for a moment that we are looking at an ocean wave, watching it move toward the shore where it crashes finally at our feet. The wave is moving toward us; however, at the same time, there are many molecules in the wave that are moving in the opposite direction, against the tide. If we observe that the propagation of the human species worldwide is like the wave and the reproduction numbers of individuals or certain countries are like the molecules, it may be inaccurate for the latter to be looked at as if it tells us something meaningful about the former.
Abundant research indicates that most countries in Western Europe, among many other countries globally, have recently shown a decline in their rates of human population growth. These geographically localized data need not blind us to the fact that the absolute global human population numbers are skyrocketing. The world’s human population is like the wave; the individual or localized reproduction numbers are like the molecules.
Perhaps a “scope of observation” problem is presented to everyone who wants to adequately understand the dynamics of human population numbers.
Choosing a scope of observation is a forced choice, like choosing to look at either the forest or the trees, at either the human species (the wave) data or reproduction (molecular) data. Data regarding propagation of absolute global human population numbers is the former while individual or localized reproduction data are the latter.
From this vantage point, the global challenge before humanity could be a species propagation problem. Take not that global propagation numbers do not vary with the reproduction data. That is to say, global human propagation data and the evidence of reproduction numbers of individuals in many places, may be pointing in different directions. The propagation data are represented by the wave; the reproduction data are represented by the molecules moving against the tide.
In the year 1900 world’s human population was approximately 1.2 to 1.6 billion people. With the explosive growth of the global human population over the 20th century in mind (despite two world wars, ubiquitous local conflicts, famine, pestilence, disease, poverty, and other events resulting in great loss of life), what might the world look like in so short a period of time as 43 years from now? How many people will be on the planet at that time? The UN Population has recently re-determined that the world’s human population will reach 9.2 billion people around 2050, and then somehow level off. No explanation is given for how this leveling-off process is to occur.
Whatever the number of human beings on Earth at the end of the 21st century, the number of human beings on Earth could have potentially adverse impacts on the number of the world’s surviving species, on the rate of dissipation of Earth’s resources, and on the basic characteristics of global ecosystems.
For too long a time human population growth has been comfortably viewed by politicians, economists and demographers as somehow outside the course of nature. The potential causes of global human population growth have seemed to them so complex, obscure, or numerous that a strategy to address the problems posed by the unbridled growth of the human species has been assumed to be unknowable. Their preternatural, insufficiently scientific grasp of human population dynamics has lead to widely varied forecasts of global population growth. Some forecasting data indicate the end to human population growth soon. Other data suggest the rapid and continuous increase of human numbers through Century XXI and beyond.
Recent scientific evidence from Russell Hopfenberg and David Pimentel appear to indicate that the governing dynamics of absolute global human population numbers are indeed knowable, as a natural phenomenon. According to their research, the population dynamics of human organisms is essentially common to, not different from, the population dynamics of other organisms.
To suggest, as many politicians, economists and demographers have been doing, that understanding the dynamics of human population numbers does not matter, that the human population problem is not about numbers, or that human population dynamics have so dizzying an array of variables as not to be suitable for scientific investigation, seems not quite right.
Please feel free to comment as you like.
Always, with thanks,
Steve
Dear Doug,
There is something more that has to do said in the firmest and clearest possible terms.
Please forgive me, but I think you may have not yet grasped the potentially profound implications of the research by Hopfenberg and Pimentel. If you had, most of your statements above would be altered.
You would likely comment on what probability is there for the decline in population trends in rich countries, in which millions of overconsuming human beings in the developed world live, to spread to billions of people in poor countries in the under- and un-developed world between now and 2050.
We hear a great deal in our time about a “demographic transition.” You would also comment on where are we to find economic structures to “transition” substantial resources to billions of impoverished people, which presumably would result in these now needy people having more necessary resources for living well and fewer children.
You would then comment on who among the millions of overconsumers will share their overly abundant resources with those billions of people who are now destitute. {We are not even considering 2.5 billion people who will likely be added to the human community between now and 2050, according to the UN Population Division estimates.}
It looks to me like daunting global challenges that are soon to be posed to humanity by “influences” of the human population, challenges that are already visible on the far horizon, are giving rise to some tough questions of our brothers and sisters in the field of human demography.
Of course, no can foretell the future. On the other hand, I believe it is sensible and permissible to report the great preponderance of population data indicate that there will be more human beings living on Earth next year than lived on Earth last year, barring expected or unexpected, intervening variables.
For example, without doubt, if the bird flu sweeps over the Earth this year and kills, let us say, 3 billion people, then there would be fewer human beings on Earth next year. Indeed, such an occurrence or other such occurrences are possible.
If you choose to consider and carefully examine the emerging, unwelcome and apparently unforeseen scientific evidence of human population dynamics, it becomes more clear that nothing more or less than magical and wishful thinking can be found in reports regarding human population dynamics of many too many population experts. Unfortunately, they could be mistaking the illusory for what is somehow real and, consequently, consensually validating outdated, specious, preternatural views that appear to incorrectly indicate the skyrocketing global growth of absolute population numbers of the human species we can see in some parts of the world now will somehow suddenly stabilize worldwide in the middle of this century.
Thanks, Doug, for the remarkable opportunity you provide us to communicate in an open and meaningful way. I look forward to comments.
Sincerely,
Steve
To the skeptics:
What is your take on the scientific study of ice core samples? Apparently, human-induced CO2 emissions have elevated CO2 concentrations in our atmosphere to a higher level than at any other time in the last 650,000 years. Also, it seems that this spike in CO2 is happening at a much faster rate than any increases that are due to natural cycles.
A response to my query would be most appreciated.
Sincerely,
Bruce McClure
Dear Bruce and Deborah,
We are able to palpably sense the power of “dynamic silence,” I suppose. What may be more difficult to discern in the deafening silence is the unexpected vulnerability of the self-proclaimed masters of the universe, the leaders who have assured everyone that they know the single right way for everyone else to live. These leaders are the ones who urgently insist that their way of living and practicing business is so good as to above question, critique or change.
Despite the many bought-and-paid-for enjoiners of open discussion, if at least some of the vital ideas and strategies being discussed in these necessary Earth & Sky blogs do not get mainstreamed soon, it may be that already looming global challenges are going to senselessly be allowed to grow larger and more difficult for humanity to address and overcome.
Somehow the global gag rules, the willful blindness, the hysterical deafness, the elective muteness, the attention to whatsoever is politically convenient and economically expedient, the adamant pursuit of wealth, power and other fools’ errands, and other pernicious strategies that serve to ignore and marginalize communication about the real global challenges of our time are going to be surmounted.
When that time comes, hopefully there will time available for imaginative and courageous people to respond ably to challenges that the masters of the universe in my not-so-great generation of elders are, ironically, loathe to acknowledge much less sensibly examine…... because they know their one right way to live is inimical to life as we know it, to the integrity of Earth and, potentially, to the wellbeing of our children and coming generations.
Keep up this uncommon effort. Thanks for all you are doing.
As ever,
Steve
Ben N, here is a quote about Maurice Strong at the Earth Rio Summit in 1992: “Strong also directs the U.N.‘s Business Council on Sustainable Development. Under his leadership, the council tries to affect peoples’ lives through U.N. policies that attempt to reduce the availability of meat products; limit the use of home and workplace air conditioners; discourage private ownership of motor vehicles; encroach on private property rights; and work to reduce the number of single family homes.
Source: http://www.nationalcenter.org/DossierStrong.html
Google his name and you’ll soon find out it IS about destroying capitalism and returning us to serfdom! AGW is just the excuse to bring about their evil desires and buying into it is making you an enabler.
Dear Chris F,
Please consider that Maurice Strong is NOT trying to destroy capitalism. Neither he nor many other people inside and the outside the US, I suppose, are doing such a thing because all of them are direct beneficiaries of capitalism. As a beneficiary, I am grateful. My cup runneth over.
At least to me, it appears that capitalism does not have to be destroyed. On the other hand, capitalism, as we know it today, will likely have to be changed, both in its design and construction, because the current scale and growth rate of the global economy could be approaching a point in space-time when the seemingly endless expansion of economic globalization becomes patently unsustainable. That is to say, the Earth is finite and plainly cannot much longer, much less forever, sustain unbridled economic growth, ever increasing per capita consumption of its limited resources and skyrocketing absolute global human population numbers…....all of which occur synergistically on the surface of our relatively small planetary home.
Thanks for considering this humble point of view. Your thoughts in response are welcome.
As ever,
Steve
Dear Chris F,
Please bear with me. Let’s look at capitalism in another way.
Just for a moment, consider the possibility that the seemingly endless expansion of unbridled capitalism we see overspreading the Earth in our time is, unfortunately, patently unsustainable.
In such circumstances, would it not make sense to come up with innovative modifications and adequate changes to the current global economic scheme so that the predominant human economy could be better and more democratically organized as well as operated sustainably?
If, and I say if, unbridled capitalism is unsustainable, decisions to stay the same ol’ business-as-usual, maximal economic growth course, would lead to its destruction, would it not?
Perhaps it is correct to associate necessary changes to the global economy with a viable future for capitalism.
Again, with thanks,
Steve
I also wonder what people mean when they say this or that person is trying to “destroy capitalism.” Why would anyone want to destroy such a successful system? Chris F. ... Ben N. ... can one of you explain to me what you mean by that?
To pick up on a point made so well by Bruce McClure elsewhere, it may be that science now comes into direct conflict with a “political economy ideology” and preternatural thinking embedded in the predominant worldwide culture. Perhaps the challenge before humanity is to be found in the emerging contradictions between the ideological foundation of the artificially designed, manmade, global economy and the scientific knowledge of the way the natural world in which we live actually works.
The world economy is an imperfect human construction; whereas, the world we are blessed to inhabit is an expression of perfection, I suppose. Then, the former would not be a particularly appropriate object of scientific inquiry. On the other hand, the natural world we inhabit and the universe beyond would be a suitable object of scientific investigations and analysis.
Let’s look at human enterprise on Earth in our time. Mountains of scientific evidence indicate three things: 1) that the seemingly endless expansion of the world’s predominant unbridled human economy; 2) that the increasing and unrestrained per capita consumption of limit resources; and 3) that the skyrocketing increase of absolute global human population numbers, all occur synergistically and could soon become patently unsustainable on a small planet the size of Earth.
The preternatural thought and ideology that serve to justify the current global scale and unregulated growth rate of the world’s political economy, per human consumption and human overpopulation are outdated and illusory. That is to say, the body of ideas for these soon-to-be unsustainable activities, now rampantly overspreading Earth, are without foundation in, and are directly contradicted by, good science.