Will Anything Reduce Global Birth Rates and Carbon Emissions Except Fossil Fuel Shortages?

Today the news proclaimed that agreements were made at the G-8 summit in Italy to hold global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Centrigrade.  It was a very positive step to see that the United States has finally joined most of the rest the world in making a commitment to fighting climate change.  Will people really be able to do this, though?  And aren’t population and energy use just as important if not moreso?

Is Denying Global Warming Worth the Risk?

While many accept the proclamations by scientists that global warming is a very real risk, there are many, including some scientists, who deny the possibility for an assortment of reasons.  Some of their arguments are quite persuasive, while others are just reactionary conspiracy theories, wacky talk radio lies and spin.  As I read new studies coming out every year, I have to wonder if denying global warming based on some irrational hatred of Al Gore or NASA climate scientist Jim Hansen makes sense.  Associated press ran a pair of articles today that I found particularly interesting (link) (link).   When I think of the consequences of being wrong about global warming, I have to think we should plan accordingly.  While I may be being taken in, I am hedging my bets in the long run.  I will certainly keep my senses alert to further research and continue to learn as much as I can.  I encourage anyone reading this to do the same.

As always, your comments are welcome.  It is only through our thoughtful collaboration that we can mitigate the enormous risks we are facing from overpopulation, resulting climate change and pollution, and the efforts of the greedy, ignorant, and misled.  May we all enjoy an increasingly sustainable, tolerant, healthy, and happy world in the future.  We will have to work for it.

Why Do So Many Deny Global Warming Could Be Occurring?

Why are so many people determined to deny that we are facing some daunting problems? I can understand that scientists interpret data differently, and don’t expect that scientific opinions will all agree.  The denial I see, however, is mostly not coming from scientists.  

Why and How Do We Avoid Addressing Global Warming and Similar Problems?

A brilliant article opened my eyes as to how and why we keep ducking our biggest problems. I recently came across an article by Dr. Albert Bandura that is simply a brilliant analysis of human behavior as relates to the need for sustainability, and I put it in my sidebar of favorite links.  Since then what I read has kept coming back to me, as I think his paper explains a great deal about why we are where we are today.  I have long been perplexed about the fact that the main stream media almost never brings up overpopulation as a problem, and only global warming has gotten anywhere near the attention such problems deserve (though energy shortages are an up-and-coming second, and water shortages not far behind).  Dr. Bandura’s article is deep and scientific, and not the easiest to read for a variety reasons, perhaps more than anything because it describes us, but also because it is written in the language of the science of psychology.  For that reason I have written this entry to try to break down into simpler language what is going on.  Why do people keep doing things we know are bad for our future, and why do they ignore or dispute the facts?

Civilizations Rise and Fall Due to “Global Warming”-like Problems

If We Must Fall, Can We Manage to Do It Gradually? Every civilization in history has fallen except the current one. That is simple truth, and we have no reason to think that we can carry on indefinitely as we have been. In fact, there are many indications that we are headed into a decline of our own: population exceeding the global capacity in more and more aspects, significant signs of negative impact on the ecology, the accelerating extinction of many species in our highly interdependent environment, overuse of important resources leading to exhaustion. All this brings up the important questions: Are we any smarter than our predecessors, and can we understand what is happening and work together effectively to control the decline and mitigate the suffering involved?

Will We Ever Know For Sure If Humans Are Causing Climate Change (and Does It Matter)?

I am overwhelmed with the data and analyses of global warming and climate change. A quick search on Google reveals over 74 million articles on global warming. While that is certainly overstated due to multiple “finds”, even if I could find the most authoritative 1000 of them, and spend as little as 5 minutes skimming each one, it would take me 83 hours, and I am lucky to have a few hours in the week for any activity like this. At this rate, in the 6 months or more it would take me to do that, there would be … how many more articles? I hate to guess, but I expect I would never catch up. I have learned what I think I know now from a diverse mix of news, scientific articles, the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, and blogs like Anthony Watts’ “Watts Up With That?“. I am recognizing my limitations, however. Will we ever have a definitive answer as to whether and how much human activity is affecting the climate? And isn’t it more important that we retain the ability to respond to climate change, since nature will inevitably change the climate anyway, sooner or later?

Global Warming and Our Responsibility to the Future – A Call to Action

Global warming and climate change are only pieces of the puzzle. The storm of media coverage and conflicting scientific data around global warming is overwhelming, but it is concealing very real problems we need to face if we are to ensure ourselves and our descendants can continue anything like the kind of lifestyles we have today. Climate change will happen, whether we cause it or not, and when it does, how prepared will we be? Energy supplies are a key factor, not only for our current relative comfort but as an enabler to our ability to deal with issues we will face in the short and long term. Where does this all lead, and what are our responsibilities as individuals? What can we do to ensure a better future?

Global Warming Article Leaves the Population/Energy Crisis as Our First Priority

Evidence mounts that carbon dioxide emissions are not our biggest problem. An article titled “Climate Change – The Real Causes” on the New Zealand Climate Science website by professor Geoffrey G. Duffy (link) strongly makes the point that carbon dioxide is not going to produce the kind of global climate change scenarios being trumpeted by many, including many celebrities and government climatologists. I was scared to death by the movie “An Inconvenient Truth”, but I have seen and read many articles and studies throwing it into question or directly debunking it since then. As a result I have come to wonder why so many continue to raise alarms about global warming when the more obvious problems before us are our dependence on massive amounts of fossil fuels and their inevitable exhaustion, and the huge population growth we have achieved as a result of cheap energy. Why global warming persists as a news item I will leave to others, as it is a political issue that must be addressed in the short term, though it is nonetheless worrisome. Has the global warming flap helped us? What should we really be working on?

Lop-sided Focus on Climate Change Ignores Other Problems; Obscures the Root Problem: Overpopulation

Many feel the climate change risk is overstated and unsupported by evidence. Among websites that question whether global warming is supported by evidence, Anthony Watt’s Watt’s Up With That website is, in my opinion, probably the most credible, and its popularity continues to grow. His more than half million hits per month include enough commenters expressing significant weather knowledge and reasonable positions (among the Gore haters and anti-government types) to make it worth reading, in my opinion. It is clear that the movie “An Inconvenient Truth” and a lot of press, some of the highest profile releases coming from James Hansen, head of the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at NASA, has stirred a lot of concern worldwide. Personally, I am more concerned with the many problems, climate change possibly included, caused by the huge increase in the global human population over the last century.

It’s Not Carbon Footprint That Matters Most, but Energy Footprint

The global climate never stops changing. Everything changes, even the global climate. Is it getting warmer? Or colder? That’s for the scientists to answer, and it appears that they will take a very long time to come to anything remotely approaching a consensus, which means that all the polarized rhetoric, Gore-bashing, etc. is just so much hot air (not enough to warm the globe, fortunately, though sometimes I wonder).

Is humanity affecting the climate? We’ve affected many other things as our numbers have increased by a factor of 6 in less than two centuries – a blink of an eye in natural time. If our numbers keep increasing as they have, and our energy use keeps increasing as it is, we will affect the global climate at some point, if we aren’t already. That is another point for scientists to study, and about which there will also probably never be complete agreement. Generally, though, if we are affecting the climate, it is as much tied to our energy use as anything.

Will Climate Change Worries Encourage Positive Changes?

Whatever is behind climate change, concern over it may do a lot of good.  The furor over climate change has been interesting to follow.  The two sides, proponents and deniers, have battled hard and dug deep for science to support their cases.  In terms of popular support, it seems the proponents have been coming out ahead, and the deniers have been dragged down by unsupported assertions, bad science, emotional rhetoric, and the revelation that some of the most prominent have been paid by the oil industry.  That’s not to say that the proponents haven’t had their own problems with questionable science and extremist speech and action, too.  Whether we really have a serious problem with global warming or not, however, may be less important than the actions the issue is motivating in policy change, cultural understanding, and individual choices.

In Matters Such as Global Climate Change, Politics and Arguments are Inevitable

Who can you trust?  Reading some of the global warming-related sites, it is easy to see that a majority of articles and arguments are from people with “an ax to grind”.  Some are “warmers” or even “members of the eco-Reich”, while others are “deniers”, and sometimes the political rhetoric and blind conservative hatred for global climate change proponent Al Gore and others are palpable.  Is all this flap and fury necessary?  Where is it coming from?  Must it continue to cloud or color the science involved?

Extreme Publicity is Part of the Way Societies Change

High profile publicity may shock, offend, and dismay people, but it is part of the process of change.  While pundits and climate change deniers may freak out when frightening publicity like “An Inconvenient Truth” appears, it is a key factor in getting a lot of people thinking, learning, and moving.  Later, when things didn’t turn out so badly, people can point to the publicity and say “See? It was all BS.  Nothing happened.”  Was the extreme publicity part of the process that mitigated the problems and made them not as bad as initially predicted?  Where would we have wound up without it?

Achieving Sustainability Will Involve Birthrate Reduction, But How Can That Be Achieved?

Let’s face it: the earth has too many humans, using natural resources up too quickly, and the population will be forced to decline to a sustainable level sooner or later.  Achieving a sustainable situation will require that there be a lot less humans, especially when fossil fuels become scarce.  That means the human birthrate must decline.  For population to be reduced without a birthrate reduction would mean that average lifespans would have to decline to near the minimum childbearing age, which I think is highly unlikely.  Before sustainability is reached, however, there will be a long period of change, of probably 70 to 200 or more years.  How will population most likely be reduced during that period?

Everyone’s Help is Needed in the Pursuit of Sustainability

Moving towards sustainability requires everyone’s involvement. The biggest barrier to accomplishing the things we need to in order to move towards sustainability is in our own heads.  Too often, the people I talk with about sustainability and the global situation express either an indifferent attitude, downright rejection, or disbelief of what most of us consider to be facts.  I see a couple of common threads in their thinking.