Global warming alarmist types are in a dither, according to a study in The Scientific American entitled “Will Birth Control Solve Climate Change?”
The Chicken Littles are desperate to stop babies from being born but aren’t sure of the best way to do it. They’re wary of seeing people raised out of poverty because the spread of wealth usually means more carbon emissions – which they don’t like. But increased wealth also typically leads to highly educated women which usually leads to a lower birth rate -which they like very much. So carbon crazies don’t know whether to root for poverty stricken dumb people or wealthy ones who don’t reproduce and retire early. One thing they all agree on however is that the less people the better. It’s just how to get there that’s being debated.
The piece assumes that people are the problem and references via link a piece by population huckster Paul Ehrlich that says: “Education and employment—for women especially—along with access to contraception and safe abortions are the most important components.”
October 12, 2010 at 7:59 am
Did you read any of the comments yet? Scary! Many of them express not only the usual egotism but also a fanaticism that reminds one of religious fervor. If these ultra-scientific people think man is the problem and if they don't believe in God anyways, why don't they just kill themselves? That would be a twofer: Good for the environment and good for our nerves.
October 12, 2010 at 8:20 am
Just out of curiosity, and putting the issues of what we can or should do about it aside: what sort of evidence do you need that global warming is a real and present danger?
October 12, 2010 at 11:42 am
Dutchman:
First of all, some actual science would be in order instead of politicized hype. This would involve repeatable experiments with controls on all variables.
Second of all, some actual warming instead of the twenty years of cooling privately confessed by the East Anglia climate hucksters might help.
Third of all, some examination of climate trends over centuries rather than over decades. We're citing climate change for killing the dinosaurs millions of years ago, but ignoring historically recorded information including the 'little ice age' and the early medieval warm spell.
Fourth, climate models that amount to more than the equivalent of "May 4th was two degrees warmer than May 3rd – if this continues, we will all be boiling in September!"
Fifth, people who get with the program. "Global warming" is out because, well, it's been outed. The crisis for this decade is "climate change." It's so much easier to say "the weather is more erratic and DANGEROUS!" than to propose obvious falsehoods like global warming.
October 12, 2010 at 4:47 pm
—We humans don't want to realize that we are SO SMALL in comparison to this world. We have the hubris to think that we control the weather!!!!
On the other hand- I LOVE clean water, air and meat from animals that weren't grown in a factory- Not because I worship trees- I think we are smart enough to use technology to make human life more healthful and enjoyable. Can we be stewards of this earth as God wanted from the beginning?
October 12, 2010 at 10:41 pm
Andrew, and overwhelming majority of scientists (97% of the actively publishing climate scientists) agree that human activity, such as flue gas emissions from fossil fuel combustion and deforestation, is a significant contributing factor to global climate change, is that just hype?
What kind of repeatable experiments do you have in mind? The whole climate isn't really something we can isolate and experiment on.
And what's so awful about the changes that accepting responsibility for the climate would entail? Use less, waste less, live a less extravagant lifestyle, quit using fossil fuels profligately — these are pretty much things we ought to be doing anyway. Since when is the suburban lifestyle integral to Christian faith?
Y'know, whole economies have been ruined before (the Incas, the Chacoans, Norse Greenland all collapsed, China and Mesopotamia have both experienced several colapses of their irrigation based agriculture), don't think it couldn't happen again, and perhaps on a global scale. If we screw this up and make the planet uninhabitable, it's not like Joseph will be waiting for us in Egypt to bail us out
October 13, 2010 at 3:04 am
Well, ecofreak environmentalists hate people, period. In their perfect utopian world there are no people to disturb or pollute the surroundings never mind that other creatures do the very same thing.
October 13, 2010 at 4:03 am
The Dutchman,
Yes, it is hype, when climate activists have cooked the review process for publication. Also, since you're discussing science, could you cite the 97% figure for me? Once provided, I will reciprocate and provide the evidence of publication tampering.
Instead of repeatable experiments, how about opening the raw data and modeling programs to public review? That gives at least a scientific check on the process. What was leaked from East Anglia sure didn't inspire confidence. For repeatability, set up an entirely independent set of thermometers (sorry…"temperature sensors", wouldn't want to sound non-scientific) under very strict siting requirements and see how they compare over the next five years. This could have been done 10 years ago, when people were claiming we couldn't wait 10 years to start reducing carbon emissions so it didn't make sense to do something like that. Well, it's 10 years later, and had we put out a second set of instrumentation we would have a second data set of current trends to work with, instead of just the questionable data collected from sites (and trends that are forced onto sites that have been relocated). There are a lot of other things that I could suggest that would allow for independent testing and experimentation.
I probably use less, waste less, and live a less extravagant lifestyle than those 97% of publishing climate scientists. Including my wife and 6 kids…
We humans won't make the planet uninhabitable. Don't overestimate our abilities. Or do you think God made the world so poorly that we mere men can accidentally destroy it in a few short years?
October 13, 2010 at 8:04 am
"could you cite the 97% figure for me?"
It's from Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_consensus
"For repeatability, set up an entirely independent set of thermometers …"
Are you saying that we don't have reliable data on the G-D temperature? Oh, that is lame. There are huge amounts of published data out there and we find that anti-climate-change "scientists" routinely use special pleading to jimmy things their way. Does it bother you that the ONLY scientific group to disavow global warming is the American Petroleum Institute?
"I probably use less, waste less, and live a less extravagant lifestyle than those 97% of publishing climate scientists. Including my wife and 6 kids…"
So you seen your duty and you done it? Are you saying that it doesn't matter how much other people use? Are you saying that since you're so virtuous I shouldn't second guess you? What is your point here?
"We humans won't make the planet uninhabitable. Don't overestimate our abilities. Or do you think God made the world so poorly that we mere men can accidentally destroy it in a few short years? "
We humans could make the planet uninhabitable in about two hours if we used all of our thermonuclear arsenal all at once. Don't underestimate our abilities. God made men with free choice and with original sin and time will only tell which will win out in the end.
October 13, 2010 at 6:09 pm
So much to cover.
According to the Wikipedia article, the 97% is 75 of 77 actively publishing climatologists who took the online survey. Call me a skeptic if you must, but I'm not overly impressed by an online survey. On top of that, I *always* want to see the internals of the survey.
For example, the article states they agree that human activity has "significant" impact…but were they asked if it was the primary factor?
WRT temperature, have you looked into this at all? The published data that I've seen time and again has been normalized to the HadCru data set, which is where my main problem is. I'm sorry, but when you have a guy documenting his struggles to compile the data complaining about how messed up the data is, and the assumptions made with regard to which data went with which stations, yes, I question the reliability of the data.
Oh, and more and more individual scientists are coming out and questioning the science behind AGW. (Democracies never impressed me, especially when one takes into account the number of Democratic societies that tolerated slavery. Scientific groups are just another Democracy, and as such can be just as wrong as the US was to allow slavery.)
I've never been good at just accepting the statement of others as fact, not without evidence. If they won't share their evidence (raw data, model programming and assumptions), then their claims are nothing more than "We're the Scientists (High Priests), trust us."
Yes, I'm doing my duty. I can't control other people, and neither can you, so stop trying. On top of that, by controlling others, you'll also control me, even though I've done nothing.
Are you saying that you (or I) know better how people should live, what they need to do in order to minimize their carbon footprint (if that even matters), etc? You're so much smarter than me that you have the right to tell me what to do? Who or what gives you the right to even think about second-guessing how I live my life? Such arrogance.
See, I can play the sanctimonious questioning game too.
Oh, I remember nukes, in fact I brought it up at NCRegister when I made a similar point there, about 4 hours before your response. If we made it through the Cold War without launching them, I'm pretty sure we'll remain smart enough to not blow up the world.
Call me crazy, but since CO2 levels have been much higher (and much lower) in the past, and the earth is still habitable, I really don't think the amount we've added to the atmosphere will cause run-away warming. And since we somehow manage to live in places like the Sahara and Antarctica, I'm pretty sure we'll manage.
Now, one final set of questions for you. Even if we followed everything recommended by the IPCC and other climate fearmongers, what would be the net impact on the climate by 2050? What would be the economic impact? Do the models used to calculate the impact on climate take into account the likely changes in economic conditions throughout the world?
October 14, 2010 at 1:26 am
Gee, if only Littlefoot hadn't driven that Suburban and had opted for a hybrid…