[Soul Surfer]

This discussion has got rather heated and polarised and its worth taking a step back in scientific detatchment.

Firstly the earth's climate has changed greatly over the last 500 million years or so of complex life Normal complex life has managed to adapt to it successfully with occasional major extinction evenrts.  For human life not to expect to have to adapt (in time)to changes as big as this is stupid.

The big question is can intelligent life survive for a long time? On the whole I think it can but we have to remember the example of Easter island as what happens to a large isolated developed population as the resources run out.

It seems very likely that sea level rises will force the evacuatiion of many low lying areas in the next hundred years or so.  OK doing our bit will help stave off the evil day but as Malthus said many years ago the REAL ptroblem is overpopulation and until we get that stabilised we are doomed.

But there is one more real and terrible risk that most people are forgetting and that is the time when the earth suffers the runaway greengouse effect and we will have to evacuate to mars!

As part of its life cycle the sun is gradually getting hotter and the earth's climate compensation processes  (see lovelock's work) are getting near the end stops.  At some point (hopfully in the far distant future) this will run away as the oceans evaporate and disperse into space  (the earth's gravity can only just hold on to water nd loses it quite quickly in a multi billion year time scale) and the earth will become like venus.

Learn, create, test and tell
evolution rules in all things
God says so!

[Andrew K Fletcher]

Another Someone.

Take a long hard look at the picture of fires in Thailand, then go look at some more pictures of the same mindless destruction going on in other countries, (there are lots to view on the NASA site). Pay special attention to the location of clouds forming over vegetated areas and the absence of moisture in the desertified areas.

Another example is the small islands dotted around the oceans. Where there are trees on the islands, there is almost always some cloud cover and adequate rainfall supplying the islands needs. However, on baron islands, there is no cloud cover!

In fuengirola in Spain, the expats got fed up with the baron lifeless coastlines, and turned to inhabiting the baron hillsides. Here they planted trees and shrubs, and used hosepipes to establish them. Gradually they turned the hills green, and now report cloud cover when all around this area there is none, they also get more rain!

Living on the coast, I have observed the pathways that sea born moisture takes when it meets the coast on many occasions. Even filming it as it crosses onto the land only where trees meet the coast. In the more built up areas, the moisture hugs the coast all day but does not cross over the hot dry beaches and hot black tarmac roads. When the mist vanishes from the coast, it remains in the wooded areas for many hours. On blazing hot days, these mist covered wooded areas are very cool with moisture dripping from the trees to the floor.

In India, a mangrove forested island off India received ample moisture and rainfall from the ocean. The locals harvested the wooded areas until all the mangrove was removed. They then used the island for livestock, and it stopped raining, turning the island from once fertile land into desert, where it almost never rains now. The bones of their folly remain for all to see, yet the link between having a fertile land and rain falling has yet to be recognised by the so called "Experts" On the other hand, the real experts are witnessing at first hand the effects that centuries of environmental destruction has unleashed upon them. We have all seen the starving millions in Africa.



"The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct."
K.I.S. "Keep it simple!"

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by VAlibrarian

Okay, I will reply to your last posting in the same constructive mode that you use. How can we seek to address the threat of climate change, at the same time that we are working on understanding it more fully by means of scientific research? Answer: work at the same time to reduce the amounts of Carbon gases we release into the atmosphere yearly. Use financial incentives to encourage conservation, or use punishments to discourage waste. Truly, we can do nothing to condense the massive amounts of CO2 we pumped out over the past 50 years. But we are not yet even reducing our annual contribution of CO2. You have to start somewhere. I vote that the USA adopt a policy of reducing our use of fossil fuels, and demand that other nations including China follow our example. That would be far superior to our current polcy of refusing to sign any international agreements due to concerns that they might slow our economy, with the result that the Third World feels free to ignore the issue of climate change and tries to imitate our sad devotion to automobile culture, despite the fact that there is not enough oil left in the ground for all of them to have cars.  

I will admit that this may be inadequate as a means of avoiding climate change altogether. But isn't it better to do something to at least mitigate the process, rather than dedicating ourselves to making it worse?

chris wiegard

I have never argued against discouraging waste, although the problem here is determining what is waste and what is necessary use.

I think the example of the automobile is a good example.  Yes, the motor car does contribute to CO2 production, but exactly how much, and exactly how much of a difference to climate would it make if every motor car is banned?

If one were, for instance, to suggest (totally arbitrarily) that banning all motor cars would reduce by 20% the probability of another hurricane in the southern USA.  This will not mean that another Katrina will not happen, merely that it will happen slightly less frequently.  If one looks at the casualties of Katrina, the group that suffered most was the group that lacked access to private transport (i.e. a motor car).  Ofcourse, one could argue that the Government should have laid on the means of evacuation using mass transport.  Indeed, it should have, but the problem was, as is always the problem with central planning (just look at the history of the USSR) it can get it massively wrong.  Providing further financial disincentives to car ownership would simply have meant that even more of the poorest members of the New Orleans community would have perished.  Is that a price worth paying simply for a 20% reduction in the probability of a repeat of the same or similar scenario?

If one looks elsewhere where transport systems are inadequate (and there is no-where, other than a few affluent urban conurbations where mass transit systems are class to being adequate), these are areas that are likely to suffer deprivation through lack of trade, greater likelihood of small scale wars (OK, I suppose one can offset that with a reduced likelihood of global wars), and greater difficulty in help reaching those areas when disaster does strike them.  If Afghanistan had a good road network that allowed effective central Government, and good international trade, would it have been a suitable location for Bin-Laden to place his headquarters?

This is what I meant by the analogy with trying to fight a fire with a bucket of water.  If you do not have the tools to finish the job, then concentrate on making sure you retain the tools to get out of the way, and don't waste your time doing half a job – that time wasted could yet cost you your life.

Ofcourse, while the motor car (or some alternative personal transportation system) is useful, we should still strive to make it more efficient – I have no problem with that.

Actually, you say we can do nothing to condense the massive amounts of CO2 we have pumped out.  I would suggest that if we put our minds to it, it is not beyond the realms of possibility to build some nuclear power plants that extract CO2 from the atmosphere and convert it back to hydrocarbons (which could then be used as fuel, thus completing the cycle; or used in plastics, and thus prevented from re-entering the atmosphere).  It would be expensive in monetary terms, but it would seem be me to be less technically challenging than the efforts we have made, and are still making, to get nuclear fusion tamed for power generation.

Ofcourse, even if we did convert all the CO2, it would not alter the fact that solar output has been increasing since the middle of the 17th century.  The other problem is the converting CO2 (with water) back to hydrocarbons and O2 would increase the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, which would itself increase (however marginally) the likelihood of forest fires, and other natural combustion.

The first thing you have to realise is that any concerted effort to alter human behaviour on the scale you suggest requires concerted central planning of society on a scale that even dwarfs that which the Soviet Union was attempting – not least because it would need to be done on a global scale.  You may try and do it using criminal law, or simply using financial incentives (bearing in mind that the latter simply means that it becomes a tax that is more affordable for some than for others), but it still retains all of the risks associated with central planning – the risks of getting it massively wrong, and the risks of unforeseen effects that can have perverse consequences, and the inevitable problems of inertia and inflexibility once the system has been put into place.

There is an enormous cost, not only a financial cost but a social cost, in the kind of sweeping changes in global lifestyle you are suggesting, and if the benefits are only going to be marginal, then one has to ask whether such a cost is justified.

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by Soul Surfer

This discussion has got rather heated and polarised and its worth taking a step back in scientific detatchment.

Firstly, while I may at times be forceful in my views, I do hope no-one mistakes that for being unduly heated, let alone disrespectful of anyone with a different perspective on things.

quote:

Firstly the earth's climate has changed greatly over the last 500 million years or so of complex life Normal complex life has managed to adapt to it successfully with occasional major extinction evenrts.  For human life not to expect to have to adapt (in time)to changes as big as this is stupid.

Agreed, totally – in fact, human life has already had to adapt to quite wide variations in both global and local climates.

quote:

The big question is can intelligent life survive for a long time? On the whole I think it can but we have to remember the example of Easter island as what happens to a large isolated developed population as the resources run out.

One has to be careful in interpreting the situation in Easter Island.

Firstly, the local population still existed even at the time of the first European settlers, some of them being kidnapped into slavery in the 19th century.

What is true is that the islanders had run out of wood to build canoes, and this substantially inhibited their mobility, and certainly made it impossible for them to leave the islands (which in any case were so remote as to make this a difficult option to exercise).

There were shortages of available resources, which did cause civil wars, but it did not cause the total extinction of the native population – Europeans did that.

quote:

It seems very likely that sea level rises will force the evacuatiion of many low lying areas in the next hundred years or so.  OK doing our bit will help stave off the evil day but as Malthus said many years ago the REAL ptroblem is overpopulation and until we get that stabilised we are doomed.

But there is an opposing problem (and this is why the overpopulation problem is so intractable) that evolution does not reward negative population growth (i.e. population implosion).  There is also the problem that the way we are going about stabilising population is creating a skewed age demographic.

quote:

But there is one more real and terrible risk that most people are forgetting and that is the time when the earth suffers the runaway greengouse effect and we will have to evacuate to mars!

As part of its life cycle the sun is gradually getting hotter and the earth's climate compensation processes  (see lovelock's work) are getting near the end stops.  At some point (hopfully in the far distant future) this will run away as the oceans evaporate and disperse into space  (the earth's gravity can only just hold on to water nd loses it quite quickly in a multi billion year time scale) and the earth will become like venus.

I think the factor you have not included in your assessment is the effect of volcanoes.  Volcanoes will pump many gases, including oxides of carbon, sulphur, and hydrogen, into the atmosphere.  This will in part help to replenish gases that are lost into space.  The question that we don't know is how much more reserves do the volcanoes have to call on before they fail to replenish those losses (which ofcourse will also depend upon the rate of loss).

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by Andrew K Fletcher

Another Someone.

Take a long hard look at the picture of fires in Thailand, then go look at some more pictures of the same mindless destruction going on in other countries, (there are lots to view on the NASA site). Pay special attention to the location of clouds forming over vegetated areas and the absence of moisture in the desertified areas.

I don't think we need satellite images to tell us that it doesn't rain in the desert.

Of itself, it does not tell us much about cause and effect.

quote:

In fuengirola in Spain, the expats got fed up with the baron lifeless coastlines, and turned to inhabiting the baron hillsides. Here they planted trees and shrubs, and used hosepipes to establish them. Gradually they turned the hills green, and now report cloud cover when all around this area there is none, they also get more rain!

Well, so I see:

http://www.andalucia.com/news/cdsn/2003-02-19.htm

quote:
A MASSIVE DOWNPOUR OF RAIN HIT FUENGIROLA LAST FRIDAY AT 18.00 WHEN 103 LITRES OF RAIN FELL ON THE TOWN WITHIN LITTLE MORE THAN TWO HOURS.
By comparison, Málaga only recorded 20 litres throughout the day with Estepona receiving 13 litres and Ronda three. Within minutes of the huge deluge commencing, all the streets in Fuengirola and Las Lagunas were either partially or totally inundated with water. Numerous businesses were forced to close because of the enormous amount of water that poured through their doors. As the streets of Fuengirola were transformed into canals residents declared, 'this is like Venice'. Pedestrians who attempted to cross streets found themselves up to their waists in water. Water also poured into underground car parks completely covering the cars. A wall at the municipal sports pavilion in Las Lagunas gave way under the force of the waters. Rivers and streams overflowed. Access to Fuengirola from the motorway was cut and not reopened until 21.00. The occupants of seven cars inundated with water at the Las Lagunas roundabout were rescued by emergency services. The train service to Málaga was halted after a landslide at Carvajal.
The Fuengirola and Mijas fire service rescued 90 people trapped in various zones of the two municipalities. Forty people who had sought refuge in an industrial unit on the Vega estate were brought to safety as too were 50 people rescued from their homes in Fuengirola. Fortunately none suffered injury.

But in general, it does not seem that the average annual rainfall is that great, although clearly not arid, but then it is a coastal resort:

http://fuengirola.costasur.com/en/eltiempo.html

quote:
The weather in Fuengirola is very mild in winter and warm in summer. It doesn’t rain very much with a yearly average of 469.2 mm. The rain season is between November and March. The summer is very dry.

But the underlying fact is that trees will not do much to create water.  Trees may in some cases help local evaporation, but if they do that they would have to do it by depleting groundwater.

The major means of creating fresh water is either by volcanism, or evaporation of sea water, or by combustion of carbohydrates or hydrocarbons.  Both the combustion and the volcanism will be accompanied by the production of CO2, which many consider to be environmentally unsound.

Photosynthesis is ofcourse the the reverse reaction to combustion, so while it may absorb CO2, it must also absorb H2O.

quote:

Living on the coast, I have observed the pathways that sea born moisture takes when it meets the coast on many occasions. Even filming it as it crosses onto the land only where trees meet the coast. In the more built up areas, the moisture hugs the coast all day but does not cross over the hot dry beaches and hot black tarmac roads. When the mist vanishes from the coast, it remains in the wooded areas for many hours. On blazing hot days, these mist covered wooded areas are very cool with moisture dripping from the trees to the floor.

In India, a mangrove forested island off India received ample moisture and rainfall from the ocean. The locals harvested the wooded areas until all the mangrove was removed. They then used the island for livestock, and it stopped raining, turning the island from once fertile land into desert, where it almost never rains now.

Do you actually have rainfall statistics for the relevant periods of time in that region?

I can well imagine that the soil conditions within the swamp were marginal, and would not have sustained long term agriculture, no matter what happened to the rainfall.

But in any case, these are all about local climate changes.  The question is not what the local influence of trees, or other vegetation, is; but what the global impact is.  If the effect of vegetation is simply to move climate from one place to another, then it will have no global impact – although this does not mean that local management of vegetation is futile, only that it should not be seen as a panacea for the wider perceived global ills.  Furthermore, if the effect of vegetation is to shift moisture around, then it important to look at the proper management of vegetation, and not the mere indiscriminate planting of trees hither and dither.

[Andrew K Fletcher]

Thank you for the article on rainfall and for the link: A MASSIVE DOWNPOUR OF RAIN HIT FUENGIROLA LAST FRIDAY AT 18.00 WHEN 103 LITRES OF RAIN FELL ON THE TOWN WITHIN LITTLE MORE THAN TWO HOURS.
There are many other examples of tree planting inducing increased localised rainfall. Some in desert areas including Morocco. And many more examples of diminishing rainfall from the removal of forested areas. Have you ever seen a tropical raindesert or even a tropical rainfield?

You may not need a satellite to see that it don't rain in a desert, but they do provide us with the pathways of moisture crossing on to land where coastlines still remain forested.

And I do like the idea of environmental graphitti covering scorched lands with vegetation is the only way to go in order to address the global warming issues we now face.

Imagine grabbing a percentage of rainfall that would normally fall at sea and inducing it to fall on lands devoid of moisture. Surely this would go a long way to reducing temperatures. Act locally, think globally.

We could always carry on regardless I suppose and hope it don't really matter about how many trees are removed. Maybe you could re-home one of those orangutans with singed fur from Borneo while we are debating whether the removal of trees has any long reaching consequences for our own survival also?

"The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct."
K.I.S. "Keep it simple!"

[VAlibrarian]

Well the discussion may be polarized, but I submit that we have stayed civil so far. And that is not always easy. I have participated in message boards made up of North Americans, and on the topic of climate change there were times that people resorted to obscene language.
I feel that in time the politics of this issue will work themselves out. Did you notice that George Bush, Mr. Petroleum himself, is talking this evening about the virtues of trying alternative fuels in place of gasoline for transportation? True, he misses the point that these fuels still create atmospheric CO2, but he seems to be responding to a popular realization that present trends cannot continue indefinitely. Perhaps in another 30 years, while Florida is still above sea level, we may be able to harness nuclear power to create a transportation system based on hydrogen fuel cells. Then again, we may fail, or lose interest until the petroleum supply goes dry and we get desperate.
My basic point in all this is that free markets do not necesarily solve every human problem in a timely way. It is possible for a resource that is held in common, like oil, to be used in a wasteful way because if you do not use your share, somebody else will. I think that is the reason that they ran out of trees on Easter Island and killed each other over the remaining scraps of food until the Europeans arrived to enslave the survivors- because in a situation of competition between factions, it made no sense to conserve resources.
It is also possible to say why should I worry, it will not be a serious problem in my lifetime- forgetting that we would all like our grandchildren to have pleasant and lengthy lives.
Why use all the remaining petroleum of our planet in the next 100 years, for that matter. Space travel has never been viable for large numbers of humans. We are so far stuck with this planet, and it seems foolish to misuse resources and multiply our numbers beyond sustainable levels. Climate change is but one example of the consequences.

chris wiegard

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by VAlibrarian

Well the discussion may be polarized, but I submit that we have stayed civil so far.
 And that is not always easy.

I find it exceedingly easy, given my displeasure to the alternative.

quote:
popular realization that present trends cannot continue indefinitely.

Trends, like weather, cannot continue indefinitely, and like weather, cannot be accurately predicted.

quote:

My basic point in all this is that free markets do not necesarily solve every human problem in a timely way.

There is no way to solve every human problem.  Stick to solving the ones we know how to solve.

I am by nature a free marketeer, but I am also a realist, and realise that the notion of a free market is in reality a fiction.  All markets are artificial constructs, and they have rules, and the nature of those rules will determine the nature of the market.

So, if I have accepted that a free market is an arbitrary construct, what does it mean to be a free marketeer?  From my perspective, it means that the artificial construct should be kept as simple, as transparent, and as universal as possible.  The exact rules matter less than an acceptance that micromanaging a market, or the resources therein, will cause the system to fail.

quote:

 It is possible for a resource that is held in common, like oil, to be used in a wasteful way because if you do not use your share, somebody else will. I think that is the reason that they ran out of trees on Easter Island and killed each other over the remaining scraps of food until the Europeans arrived to enslave the survivors- because in a situation of competition between factions, it made no sense to conserve resources.

Indeed, but oil increasingly is not held in common.

When OPEC was formed, it sought to create a monopoly upon most of the world's oil resources, and in doing so to manage the production and reserves of oil.  It also had other political objectives, but there is no doubt that it also had the effect of being able to manage the then known reserves of oil.  OPEC was accused of profiteering.

There is now a large pool of reserves outside of OPEC, which makes it more difficult to manage the world's reserves of oil in its totality (combined with a lack of discipline amongst the OPEC member states themselves).  Nonetheless, OPEC does at least seek to manage its own reserves to some extent.

The problem is if you do not have a free market, then you must have a monopoly (or at least a cartel).  Historically, cartels were actually seen as a positive thing (at least, in Europe, up until the second World War – I believe the USA was moving against cartels since the problems it had with Standard Oil at the beginning of the 20th century), but have become an anathema to modern economic philosophy.

The advantage with cartels is they provide long term stability, and allow for long term planning.  This is the particular advantage that you seem to be keen upon.

The disadvantage with cartels is that their very conservatism makes them unresponsive to the environment they operate in – once they have determined what their long term policy should be, there is no reason for them to change that policy, even if that policy proves inappropriate for the conditions.

Ofcourse, there is no inherent need for oil to be held in common, and in fact, it is not.  Even in the absence of cartels, individual oil reserves are owned by individual enterprises (increasingly, they are owned by the State in which they are in, with licenses issued to corporate enterprises to exploit the reserve).

But, Kyoto is not about oil, it is about the air – and that is more difficult to assign a given owner to, and so is inevitably held in common.  I rather suspect that there might be many who would not appreciate there being a market in air, where you must pay someone for the right to breath their air.

quote:
 
It is also possible to say why should I worry, it will not be a serious problem in my lifetime- forgetting that we would all like our grandchildren to have pleasant and lengthy lives.

I suspect that the greater threat to our grandchildren will not be environmental, but financial.  The dominance of the Western economies is coming to an end, and the bigger problem will be not whether their will be enough oil to put in their cars to drive to work, but whether there will be any work to drive to.

I suppose that if we were being totally cynical, we could say that what we are trying to do with Kyoto, if applied globally, would in the medium term do more harm to China than to the USA, since China's industry is expanding while that in the USA and Europe is shrinking.

quote:
 
Why use all the remaining petroleum of our planet in the next 100 years, for that matter.

Arguably, because it is more efficient to do so.

Extracting small amount of anything is relatively inefficient, so in terms of pure efficiency, it makes sense to extract as much as possible in as short a time as possible, and then move on to extracting something else.

On the other hand, I have also suggested elsewhere that excessive efficiency can have its own problems, and a system that is less efficient can sometimes be more resilient.  Thus the question you have to ask is how important is efficiency and a lack of waste to you, and how much are you willing to tolerate a bit of inefficiency in order to retain a greater degree of resilience.

quote:
Space travel has never been viable for large numbers of humans. We are so far stuck with this planet, and it seems foolish to misuse resources and multiply our numbers beyond sustainable levels. Climate change is but one example of the consequences.

The term 'misuse' is rather subjective.

As I have said above, I am all in favour of efficient uses of resources, within the constraint that one does not become to inflexible by becoming over-specialised in utilising one resource (which is what usually happens when one learns to be too highly efficient – a generalist is always less efficient than a specialist).  But using a resource efficiently is different from refraining from using a resource.

As for multiplying our numbers – this is certainly coming to an end, as most Western nations are actually not reproducing themselves fast enough to sustain present population levels (hence the discussion over our grandchildren may not be so relevant – I myself have no children, and so will not be having grandchildren, and hence you may be happy in the knowledge that I will not be contributing to the multiplication of our population).

My own suspicion (from what you have said) is that your own actions have contributed to the continued multiplication of our population.  In general, I have observed that those who complain loudest about population growth are the one's with children (at least within that age group where they are likely to have made the choice).

That I may accuse you of implicit hypocrisy is that I would accuse myself likewise, since my own feeling is that the greater problem the next generation will face is too few youngsters to look after too many geriatrics, a problem that my own actions would have contributed to.

[VAlibrarian]

I will admit that the demographic shift that will result in a smaller number of young people supporting a larger number of aging people is a potential economic problem. But I would argue that it is a "challenge" rather than a hole in the ground dug by ourselves. Why so? Because in a finite system such as planet Earth, a deceleration of population growth has always been inevitable. The only other choice was to continue to grow the human population until most of us starved, and that option is not appetizing to me.

I am the father of two girls, both of whom I have tried to raise to hopefully take their productive place in society as adults (they are currently teens). My wife would have been happy to have two more, but I argued against it insofar as we barely have the money to get two through college, and I feel that future will belong to the educated. Personal issues are rarely totally separable from political issues in my experience: doubtless this is true of my personal attitude towards global warming. Would I care about the possible impact of climate change on future generations if those generations included none of my descendants? Probably less than I do. Silly perhaps, but there it is. What I find odd is that many people with half a dozen grandkids apparently have no concern at all that climate change may have a negative impact on those grandkids, or the grandkids of the grandkids.

chris wiegard

[Andrew K Fletcher]

This planet is productive enough to support a massive population many times the size we are at present. Mis-management of land and resources is where we are screwing up. Address the problems of environmental decay and solve the other problems by doing so.

"The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct."
K.I.S. "Keep it simple!"

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by Andrew K Fletcher

This planet is productive enough to support a massive population many times the size we are at present.

I would agree with this, with a few caveats.

Apart from fossil resources, which are fairly remote, and not easily available to most other life on this planet; most of the resources on this planet are being utilised by one form of life or another.  We are still only a small fraction of the biomass on this planet, thus we certainly have a lot of resource that we can utilise that is otherwise being utilised by other living organisms, but there are no non-fossil resources that are not in one way or another being used by another living organism, and thus that we would have to displace as we expand our utilisation of non-fossil resources.

Ofcourse, while some of the biomass we will be displacing will be aesthetically pleasing, and will evoke a lot of political resistance as we seek to displace it in order to expand our utilisation of its resources, most of the biomass of the planet is not even on our radar (things like bacteria), and so we can go about displacing it without any adverse political consequences.

Nonetheless, nature is very efficient, and we we are not utilising the resource, it seems a fairly good bet that something else is (excepting where that resource is too remote to be utilised by any living organism).

But, yes, there is a lot of resource we are still not utilising, and that gives us scope for expansion.

quote:

 Mis-management of land and resources is where we are screwing up. Address the problems of environmental decay and solve the other problems by doing so.

In general, there is no problem with land mismanagement.  We are growing more than enough food to feed the worlds population, its just that we are unable to deliver much of that food to the people who need it.  In Britain, farmers are actually being paid to take farm land out of production – if we had a shortage of food, then this would be a nonsense thing to be doing.

True, the shortage of food is in the Third world, but that is largely caused by political problems (wars, etc.) and lack of infrastructure.  Food production in Africa is mostly on the decline, and this is mostly not because of poor soil conditions, but because farmers are not left in peace on their land to grow food.  Zimbabwe is a prime example of how to undermine the ability of a region to feed itself.

Clearly, there is a difference between growing enough food to eat, and bringing the peasant communities in some countries out of poverty, but this is a problem of wealth distribution rather than the capacity of the land to grow food.

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by VAlibrarian

I will admit that the demographic shift that will result in a smaller number of young people supporting a larger number of aging people is a potential economic problem. But I would argue that it is a "challenge" rather than a hole in the ground dug by ourselves. Why so? Because in a finite system such as planet Earth, a deceleration of population growth has always been inevitable. The only other choice was to continue to grow the human population until most of us starved, and that option is not appetizing to me.

That there is an upper limit that the human population can sustain on this planet, I would agree; but I also agree with Andrew, that we are a very, very, long way from reaching that limit.

As for their being a choice between starvation or distorted age demographics, I am not sure there is a choice at all.  If we have a lot of mouths to feed, but not enough people to produce the food to feed them with, then they will starve – even if the soil could grow the food.

OK, in simple terms, we can extensively mechanise food production, so in simple terms, we will not die of lack of food; but there will be a lack of money, because the economy as a whole would lack an adequate labour force.  We may not starve, but we will nonetheless die of many other preventable causes through lack of funds and labour to do anything about it.

I suppose it might be argued that this will largely be a short term pain, and one the older generation has died off, although there will still be a labour shortage, there would at least be fewer mouths to feed, and if the birth rate then starts to pick up again to fill the demographic vacuum left by the loss of the older generation, things will ultimately stabilise (possibly after about two generations).  The question is: how well will those two generation weather the difficulties, and will they be able to pick up the birth rate quickly enough to prevent a total collapse of the infrastructure (bearing in mind that many of them will also probably be beyond their prime reproductive years, and even as they have children, those children will have to reach maturity before they can become an asset to society).

quote:

Would I care about the possible impact of climate change on future generations if those generations included none of my descendants? Probably less than I do. Silly perhaps, but there it is. What I find odd is that many people with half a dozen grandkids apparently have no concern at all that climate change may have a negative impact on those grandkids, or the grandkids of the grandkids.

I am not sure either of us are arguing from the perspective that we do not care about the world we leave behind us, it is just that we have a different perspective regarding the needs, risks, and achievables, regarding that world.

[Andrew K Fletcher]

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0778851.html Link to some useful stats on deserts.

One third of the World's land mass is desert. However, desertification in progress, scrubland and marginal lands are not included in this figure, nor are the airport runways, urbanised areas, tarmac and concrete roads, polluted areas, open cast mines, and the spoils from mining dumped on to the surface to create wastelands. I mention the latter to put things in prospective.

There are plants that can be grown in dry lands, which can produce bio fuels in abundance. arabidopsis being one, and oil bearing seed plants being another. Methanol production could solve some of the fossil fuel dependence. Fermenting human waste and farm waste to produce methane, leaving behind a valuable fertilizer free of pathogens another.

But reforesting massive desert areas with sewage and waste water from the main polluting nations solves many of our main ill-managed land problems and addresses many of the impending problems with global warming, feeding the starving, providing work, and providing vast areas to grow biomass and bio fuels.


"The explanation requiring the fewest assumptions is most likely to be correct."
K.I.S. "Keep it simple!"

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by Andrew K Fletcher

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0778851.html Link to some useful stats on deserts.

One third of the World's land mass is desert. However, desertification in progress, scrubland and marginal lands are not included in this figure, nor are the airport runways, urbanised areas, tarmac and concrete roads, polluted areas, open cast mines, and the spoils from mining dumped on to the surface to create wastelands. I mention the latter to put things in prospective.

There are plants that can be grown in dry lands, which can produce bio fuels in abundance. arabidopsis being one, and oil bearing seed plants being another. Methanol production could solve some of the fossil fuel dependence. Fermenting human waste and farm waste to produce methane, leaving behind a valuable fertilizer free of pathogens another.

But reforesting massive desert areas with sewage and waste water from the main polluting nations solves many of our main ill-managed land problems and addresses many of the impending problems with global warming, feeding the starving, providing work, and providing vast areas to grow biomass and bio fuels.

I am not arguing against trying to reclaim deserts, all I said is that at present there is no global shortage of food production.  In the developed world, the amount of food we are able to grow for each acre of land under cultivation continues to rise year on year.

The two largest deserts, each larger than the sahara, itself three times larger than the next largest desert, are the Arctic and Antarctica, which if the global warming predictions are proved correct, will not remain frozen wastes for too many decades longer.

[i_have_no_idea]

I dont believe in global warming.

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by i_have_no_idea

I dont believe in global warming.

This, I'm afraid, is an usustainable position.

There is very well documented evidence that the Eaurth goes through cyclical weather changes.  It went through a warm period, that peeked around the 11th century (when the Vikings found it warm enough to settle in Greenland and Newfoundland), and then reached a minimum during the 17th century (when the River Thames, in London, regularly froze over – something that it never has done in my lifetime, nor in any time in the 20th or 19th centuries).

Since the 17th century, to the modern day, the Earth has been warming.  At least part of this appears to be due to increases in solar output (one of the peculiarities during the coldest periods was the absence of sunspots on the Sun, and these have been on the increase since that time).

The issue that is contentious is, not whether the Earth is warming, but whether or to what degree human activity has contributed to it.

What this ofcourse means is that since humans, are at most, merely magnifying a natural phenomenon; thus even if such a magnification were stopped, it would not stop the underlying phenomenon.

[tonycsm]

Global warming is highly emotive not least because it is so little understood and is propagated by those who least understand. It does exist but is a natural phenomenon. It's cyclic and has been going on for millions of years but the problem is that most people including politicians and the public just don't understand this!

This has given rise to a worldwide industry of alarmist academics who get massive grants for supposedly studying the effects of this phenonomenon, so it is in their interests to promote the irrational fears in order to maintain their academic lifestyle!

If you switched off Britain now, there would be no measurable impact of world readings of supposed greenhouse gases. Over 98% of all accumulated GHGs are of natural output and the more moderate academics among us don't even know if the total world output of man's burning of FFs etc has any effect whatsoever on GW. But you won't read this in the newspapers because it doesn't make good headlines.
The greatest fear should be the fear of a return to another ice age! That would have far greater consequences than GW!! Most of Northern Europe could well disappear under several thousand feet of ice much as it did during our last ice age. There would be massive world food shortages and starvation. probably hundreds of millions of deaths, over-population of reduced land habbitable mass and complete destruction of society as we'd know it! So for those pedlars of GW, get your facts first and then concentrate of how we can come to terms with it rather that spend time resisting it!
Global warming is far better than global cooling.
I'd rather see a few atols in the Pacific  and a little low lying land disappear under water than have half a continent disappear under ice with the displacement of hundreds of millions of people.

A bigger fear should be what we are putting into our oceans rather than into the atmospere.

I've studied GW for 17 years since first graduating from university and have yet to find compelling evidence to suggest that it is other than a natural occurance.



 

[VAlibrarian]

Okay, Tonycsm. I accept your right to an opinion regarding global warming that differs from my own.

If however you criticize the academic community as having ulterior motives for their opinion that global warming is being accelerated by human activities, please have the grace to admit that Corporations and individuals who have a vested interest in the continuation of the petroleum based transportation economy are equally likely (if not more likely) to have their opinions formed by their naked self interest. George Bush's public position regarding global warming has clearly been part of a quid pro quo for the massive investment that the oil industry made in his two election campaigns.

So who to trust? I will trust the scientists before I trust the pseudo scientists who claim that they know more about science than the scientists do. You are entitled to trust who you prefer.

chris wiegard

[ukmicky (OP)]

Global warming is a natural phenomenon that has shaped the world which we see and live in today.
Yes we are speeding up this natural cyclical process but so does every volcanic eruption and every living thing on earth.
Are we doing enough to preserve the good times and the environment that we have been blessed with, no maybe not?
But should we hold ourselves back socially and technically which will be an inevitable effect of reducing levels of green house gases when even our best efforts will only produce a tiny change in the timescales of the process. I say no

The ice caps would still be melting, sea levels would still be rising and the polar bears would still be at risk even if we weren’t here.

I say yes do more to preserve our environment as long as it’s not detrimental to our technological advancement. Rather than spend billions on cutting greenhouse gases we should be spending billions on future tech like fusion power which would be far more beneficial for the future of our earth and environment and would radically cut the  levels of greenhouse gases produced by us.


Michael

[another_someone]

quote:Originally posted by VAlibrarian

If however you criticize the academic community as having ulterior motives for their opinion that global warming is being accelerated by human activities, please have the grace to admit that Corporations and individuals who have a vested interest in the continuation of the petroleum based transportation economy are equally likely (if not more likely) to have their opinions formed by their naked self interest. George Bush's public position regarding global warming has clearly been part of a quid pro quo for the massive investment that the oil industry made in his two election campaigns.

So who to trust? I will trust the scientists before I trust the pseudo scientists who claim that they know more about science than the scientists do. You are entitled to trust who you prefer.

chris wiegard

I think that, with a few exceptions, it is unfair to both sides to argue malice or deliberate deceit.

This is not to say that either side is telling the whole truth, but this is not because either side is trying to lie, but people tend to fit into the environment they are a part of, without even being concious that each environment inevitably has its own bias.

One cannot say that one trusts scientist A, but distrusts pseudo scientist B.  In general, each will have some part of the truth, and each will simply block from their minds those things that don't fit with their own preconceived notion of what the truth should look like.

I don't go around blindly believing scientists from the petrochemical industries.  I too look at what people from all sides have to say, and try and fit it together with all the other bits of information from other sources.  Like the scientists in the petrochemical industry, and those in academia, I too as an individual have my own prejudices and my own bias.  I am not a scientist, but an outsider looking in.  My prejudices are not inherently those of either one camp or the other, but I too am human, and will have prejudices.  I suppose that having also an interest in history, my perspective is also to look at how some of these scare stories look in the context both of the recorded environments of the past, but also to look at the repeated tendency of each era of human history to have its own bogey men, and to ask if the modern fears are in nature different to all the fears of the past that were shown to be fruitless.  What one sees is that the paranoia over Environmental damage (be it Global Warming, or Environmental damage in other forms) fits very neatly into a historic human need to create an interpretation of the world that blames human failure for all natural catastrophes, whether it be through the Environment seeking retribution upon humanity, or whether it be the wrath of God.  It is this similarity to the bogey men of the past that leads me to believe that the stories of human induced global warming is more a reflection upon the needs of the human psyche than it is a physical reality.