# Global Warming and SF



## Anthony G Williams (Apr 4, 2009)

Global warming is an issue which is not going to go away, and that has implications for anyone writing fiction set in the foreseeable future. Any SF novel set within the next century or few which ignores this issue and its probable consequences will be likely to have a very short shelf-life before being seen as increasingly irrelevant. That doesn't mean that every such story should be _about_ global warming, but that it should be set against a background which includes it – or the measures which were used to overcome it.

I don't, in this brief blog, want to rehearse the well-known basic arguments around global warming. Anyone who isn't yet convinced that this is happening as a result of human activities can read a wide variety of authoritative material on the web, such as the report of the US National Academies: *Understanding and Responding to Climate Change (*http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/climate_change_2008_final.pdf); the Royal Society's *Facts & Fictions about Climate Change (*http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=4761); or, if you want the official 2007 report of the International Panel on Climate Change (the largest and most authoritative body studying this subject) go to the *IPCC* website (http://www.ipcc.ch). A more user-friendly summary can be found on *Wikipedia (*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_global_warming), while I particularly recommend the _New Scientist_ magazine's *Climate Change: a guide for the Perplexed (*http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11462), since that also discusses the usual objections raised.

Instead, I want to focus on what might happen, and (in a later post) what might be done about it – subjects which provide very wide scope for science-fictional speculation. A recent conference of climate scientists in Copenhagen attracted some 2,500 delegates and heard 600 presentations over the three days. In the words of the _New Scientist_, "the majority [of these] showed the impacts of climate change would happen faster and be worse than previously thought". In other words, the predictions of the 2007 IPCC report are already being overtaken by events. This has been dramatically illustrated by the rapid shrinkage in summer Arctic ice cover.

This should be no great surprise. The rapid industrialisation of China (with a new coal-fired power station reportedly being built every week over the past few years) combined with the fact that very few countries have slowed down the increase in their CO2 output, was until recently boosting the rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 levels over that predicted by the IPCC. For all of its other unhappy consequences, the current economic recession should at least slow down the rate of change and provide a bit of a breathing space to get our environmental act together.

Despite this general view that conditions are changing quickly and that this will result in serious consequences for the global environment and for humanity, there is still much uncertainty over what precisely is going to happen. This is partly because no-one is certain of the exact link between the rate of increase in CO2 production and the rate and ultimate level of the global temperature increase; and similarly no-one knows the exact implications, for climate patterns across the world, of any specific increase in average temperature. This leaves scope for some imagination on the part of SF writers.

Perhaps the greatest uncertainty – and cause for worry – is over the issues of feedback and tipping points. Feedback concerns the threat that some consequences of increased temperature will themselves increase the rate of increase. One obvious example concerns the accelerating shrinkage in polar sea ice. The ice reflects 90 percent of the sun's rays and thus keeps temperatures down. As this disappears, more of the sea is exposed and this absorbs over 90 percent of the solar heat, which helps to explain why the Arctic is warming up faster than the rest of the world. Another example is the existence of large quantities of frozen methane in the ground within arctic regions. As the ground warms up large quantities are already being released into the atmosphere – and methane is itself a greenhouse gas. This could all result in a tipping point, when the self-reinforcing changes gather such momentum that they rapidly accelerate beyond recovery. Nothing like as rapidly as shown in the ludicrous film *The Day After Tomorrow*, in which temperatures plummet drastically in a matter of minutes, but significant change could happen over a period of decades rather than centuries.

The expected consequences of climate change can be grouped under several broad headings: weather fluctuations; temperature and rainfall patterns; sea level changes; and ocean acidification.

The weather fluctuations we can already see happening are the result of increased atmospheric instability as the temperature rises. That means we are likely to see more, and more violent, storms. It also means that we are likely to see annual temperature and rainfall records continuing to be broken (in both directions). This is, however, by far the least serious of the likely consequences.

Changes in regional temperature and rainfall patterns, and their consequences for agriculture, will be far more significant. These are extremely complex and cannot be predicted with any great confidence, but some general trends are becoming evident. One is that some currently fertile areas, mainly in continental interiors, will become a lot drier. We are already seeing a pattern of increased droughts, in Africa, Australia, China and the USA, where water sources are being used up faster than they are being replenished. This is likely to have a significant effect on agricultural production, since this is one of the major users of fresh water. In part compensation, certain other regions of the world which are now too cold for agriculture will become available. However, it takes a very long time to develop fertile soils suitable for agriculture, and the total area of agricultural land is likely to diminish significantly. Meanwhile, it is virtually certain (for demographic structural reasons – lots of young people in many parts of the world) that barring devastating epidemics, warfare or famine, the world's population will continue to rise until the middle of this century, up from the current 6.4 billion to around 9 billion, with obvious implications for the demand for food and living space – and CO2 production.

It has been suggested that some areas may paradoxically become cooler, at least for a while before the general increase in temperatures pulls them back up again. The best-known possible cause is the stopping of the Gulf Stream (also known as the North Atlantic Drift or the North Atlantic Current, which is part of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation - AMOC) as a result of a surge of fresh water from melting polar ice. This currently keeps North-West Europe (including the UK) several degrees warmer than it would otherwise be, so the short-term impact of stopping it could be considerable. This was the trigger used for the sudden cooling so exaggerated in *The Day after Tomorrow*. Some studies have shown that the volume of flow of the Gulf Stream has already reduced by about 30% between 1957 and 2004, but the current view appears to be that a complete stoppage of the Gulf Stream is a less serious risk than previously thought.

The melting of ice brings me on to the third major concern, which is the changes in sea level. These are already happening, partly because the oceanic water expands as it warms up, but that effect is relatively small. It is also worth pointing out that the melting of ice already floating on the ocean (such as the Arctic Ocean ice cap centred on the North Pole, or floating ice sheets around Antarctica) has no direct effect on sea levels because the ice is already displacing water. The threat comes from the melting of ice which is currently on land. Some 90% of such ice covers Antarctica, another 9% is on Greenland, and the remaining 1% is in the form of glaciers and smaller ice caps scattered around the world. 

To give an idea of the potential scale of the problem: if the West Antarctic Ice Shelf – WAIS – were to melt or slide into the ocean, global sea levels would rise by an average of about 5 metres. The disappearance of the Greenland ice would add 7 metres. If all ice went, the total rise in sea level would be around 70 metres (220-240 feet) but we don't need to worry about that – according to our current understanding, it would take many millennia, and in such extreme circumstances it is unlikely that humanity would be around to see it. For a more realistic threat, it is worth bearing in mind that sea levels were 3-6 metres higher during the last interglacial period although the global mean temperature was then only 1-2 degrees warmer than now. Current expectations are for an increase in temperature of at least 2 degrees by the end of this century, and it could be a couple of degrees more. 

The conventional models of ice melting show that even the WAIS and Greenland ice would take millennia to melt. However, that assumes the ice would melt while still on land; a very slow process. It is now recognised that this isn't necessary, all it has to do is transfer to the ocean to provide the rise in sea level. There are signs that this is already happening, with the rate of movement of many glaciers showing a marked increase as they are lubricated by meltwater flowing underneath them. This could result in a much faster rate of increase of sea level, with an average rise of more than one metre by 2100 now being projected (about double that forecast in the IPCC report). Such a rise would have all sorts of unwelcome consequences for port cities and low-lying areas in which large numbers of people live and farm. There is, of course, a considerable lag between an increase in atmospheric temperatures and the melting of massively thick ice caps. What that means is that even if the average rise in temperature is held to just 2 degrees, the ice will continue to melt, and the sea level to rise, for centuries.

The most recent concern is ocean acidification, which is already happening. As temperatures increase, and the percentage of CO2 in the atmosphere continues to rise, more CO2 is absorbed by the ocean. This causes an increase in the acidity of the water, which potentially will have a serious effect on oceanic ecology as some creatures at the bottom of the food chain may find it impossible to cope. Coupled with world-wide over-fishing, this could result in fish disappearing from the human diet.

In conclusion: as the science firms up, the news concerning climate change keeps on getting worse in almost every respect. However, all is not (necessarily) lost. I will consider what might be done about this, which includes lots of SFnal ideas, in a future post.

(An extract from my SFF blog)


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## Ursa major (Apr 4, 2009)

I think the problem with tackling any chaotic process (climate, climate change, technological advances, politics, geopolitics) is that you're going to end up with egg on your face, even if you set it in a future beyond your expected lifespan. (I suspect this may be one reason why many apocalyptic stories are post-historic, where the knowledge of what went on in the past are, at most, alluded to.)

Some authors have got round this by making the setting a parallel world - I've recently read a book where this became clear, almost as an aside, a third of the way through the book - so that when you realise that, say, Australia "was" always a Dutch colony, you worry less about continuing Soviet Unions and Japanese Economic Miracles (which have been quite common in SF books).

Another approach may be to stick to the local and personal, and let one's characters be somewhat vague about what is happening in the outside world. (Let's face it, not everyone is besotted with world news.)


But if the story is good enough, and the science believable, you should be able to get away with quite a lot.


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## Nik (Apr 4, 2009)

*Global Warming in my 'Curious Case'*

...
"What do you need, and where is it ?"
"Crates got to Fort William by train, then the line flooded."
I eyed the unrelenting rain, "That figures..."
I'd found a place to stop when the caller-ID pegged Sue, "I'm an hour from The Fort, then four -maybe five- on to you.  It will cost..."
Sue would expect that. I'd been her straight-man too often for big freebies.
"Okay, okay... Look, Joe, this is a serious crowd. Movers & Shakers. Wear your Clan kilt and pitch your Eco-stuff."
"Deal."

After sea levels surged, most coastal ecology became 'damage limitation'. Pro-active work was horribly difficult. Yet, I'd found a niche: A weir here, a flood-gate there could collect enough sediment to out-pace the rise, return beach to salt-marsh, sweeten brackish to fresh. Add my patented plastic shutters that sank in fresh water, but floated up to stop saline incursions...
I sighed. I checked the fuel gauges. Yes, I'd need to re-fill at The Fort. I checked my hanging-bag. Yes, my kilt was clean enough...

Okay, I did my degree at a 'Bluidy Sassenach' campus, but my Masters was for work on Uncle Dougal's coastal farm. The wrong side of their 'Fifty Year' line, he'd lost yards to each storm. I turned that around. And I learned to wear The Kilt. Both opened doors...

The station staff led me to Sue's crates, found me a trolley to move them. I drove an ex-Army 'Front Control' Land-Rover. 'Ould Greenie' was not pretty, but had a fording Schnorkel, a vast load-bed and ample cable on both winches. A couple of tie-downs secured the crates. In theory, their size and weight would increase roll, but OG's usual handling was so 'agricultural' only I'd notice...

I topped off both LPG and petrol tanks, got a tax-receipt. This was going on Sue's tab. Then, back into the rain and the gathering dusk. Global warming had turned much of Europe sub-Tropical. The rising heat pulled air inwards. Coriolis effects turned that flow into super-cells. Here, on the edge of the continent, we were spared the mega-lightning, golf-ball hail and now-frequent twisters. We just got ocean storms, thunder storms and rain. Lots of rain. Lots and lots of rain...

I found my first victim of the weather after twenty miles. A city-car had aquaplaned on a gulley's overflow. No damage, just ditched. Tow-rope eased them clear.

An hour on, a tree was down. I turned on OG's roof-bar lights, hefted my modest pruning saw and joined the locals' demolition. Later, I had to make a deep ford -four-drive and Schnorkel- but it took longer to convince the Flood-guard to let me through.

Patience and care, sheeting rain, lightning and squalls filled the miles. At last, my map showed I was nearly there. The road was open enough for me to see cloud/cloud and cloud/ground strikes among the upland crags. I even thought I saw one fell a road-side tree. Traffic was sparse. In half an hour, only a biker had passed me and two cars come the other way. I shook my head. To be out in this, a biker was barking mad, or very, very good...
---
/quote

Hopefully, not laid on tooo thick ??


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## Anthony G Williams (May 1, 2009)

A few weeks ago I summarised the current state of the developing understanding among climate scientists concerning the increasing rate of change in our climate. Even the 'most-likely' scenarios are now looking grim – the worst-case ones don't bear thinking about. So, what (if anything) can we do about it? What kind of measures might a realistic near-future SF story include?

There are basically four different approaches, most if not all of which may be needed in order to have a significant moderating effect on climate change. These are: to cut back CO2 production; to remove CO2 already in the atmosphere; to reduce insolation (heat received from the sun); and finally to adapt to the changes which are now inevitable, it being already too late to prevent some of the consequences of warming. I'll take each of these in turn.

*Cut back CO2 production *

This is the best known approach, or rather a whole cluster of different approaches under the same general heading. The techniques available range from the simple and obvious to the complex and difficult. The former are being applied already, to a greater or lesser extent in different places, but the latter will need strong political will on an international basis; i.e. they're not likely to happen until the consequences of climate change have become so obvious – and obviously bad – that not even short-termist politicians can ignore them.

*Save energy - buildings:* The relatively easy measures include changing building designs to minimise the need for heating in cold countries and for air-conditioning in hot ones. The former is well understood and already widely practiced; it requires good insulation standards, preferably including heat-recovery ventilation systems. The beauty of this is that most such measures can be retrofitted to most existing buildings, an important point given that complete replacement of our building stock will take a very long time. Measures to reduce air conditioning (likely to become increasingly important as the globe warms up) are less common and may be more difficult to apply to existing buildings. Some techniques are similar to the cold-climate ones – better insulation, smaller windows – but could also include installing an oversized 'floating' roof canopy, detached from the main structure, to provide shade without transmitting heat to the building. Some buildings are cleverly designed to have a ventilation system driven by natural convection, while 'green' roofs and walls – covered with plants – have been found to have a significant effect, not only in providing shade but in evaporative cooling. You do need a good water supply for these, though, which will be an increasing problem in many hot areas. Cooling systems using water circulating through underground pipes (a kind of reversal of the usual heat-pump heating system) may be more efficient than electrical air-conditioning.

*Save energy – equipment and processes:* Another well-known and much-practiced technique is the use of low-energy lights and appliances. Industrial processes are major users of power, an area which has probably received less attention so far than the domestic side. 

*Save energy – power generation:* This is the major source of human-caused CO2 production, so non-polluting power generation has received a lot of attention in recent years, as demonstrated by the huge wind turbine farms sprouting up on land and in coastal areas. However, as is often pointed out, these aren't much good unless the wind blows. In fact, except for geothermal power, other sustainable power sources – hydro-electricity, tidal, wave and solar power – suffer from related problems in that the sources of power (even if reliable) are not constant, and may be a long way away from where they are needed. There is a potential solution to this, however; while AC current (in almost universal use) loses a lot of power when transmitted long distances, DC current does not. Until recently, converting DC to AC for domestic use was difficult, but solutions have been found. Some high voltage DC lines are already in use, and an international DC 'supergrid' has been proposed to link up Europe and North Africa. This will not only even out the supply from erratic sources such as wind power, but also provide access to solar power. Its proponents claim that a Europe-wide supergrid in conjunction with the full development of sources of sustainable power (mostly in the form of offshore wind farms) could reliably replace all of Western Europe's coal and gas power stations within thirty years.

Other alternatives being much discussed are the use of 'carbon capture' systems with fossil fuel power stations, by which the CO2 produced is trapped and pumped underground, and a revival in the use of nuclear power. The problems are that the carbon capture system is unproven (and some experts are dubious that it will work as advertised) and the supply of nuclear fuel is finite. Of course, if an economical source of fusion power could be developed that would solve most problems, but it's been 'coming soon' for about half a century and still seems a long way off, so it would be unwise to rely on that. 

Interestingly, sustainable power is causing major divisions in the environmental lobby (a potentially fruitful source of SF plots). While all environmentalists are in favour of reducing CO2 production, some are also appalled by the alternatives, especially nuclear power, the visual blight of massive wind farms, and the potential effect on wildlife of huge engineering schemes such as the proposed tidal-power Severn Barrage in the UK. No doubt plans to cover vast areas of desert with solar collectors will result in similar protests.

These environmental protectionists argue that power generation systems do not need to be grand schemes. They believe that we should be thinking small-scale, with local generation of heat and power. Solar panels for water heating are commonplace now, and photo-voltaic solar cells are predicted to get a lot cheaper. These don't just work in hot and sunny climes; astonishingly, the world's major user of domestic PV cells is Germany, as a result of a scheme which provides significant financial rewards to people who sell their surplus power to the grid. However, while such schemes are well worthwhile and can reduce the demands on the power grid, the problem of the erratic supply of power from such sources can only be met by massive, interlinked, engineering projects.

*Save energy – transport: *This brings us onto another big polluter – transport. Much attention is being paid to road vehicles, with electric and hybrid (petrol/electric) vehicles in use and fuel cells being tested experimentally. Each of these systems, as presently conceived, has problems. Pure electric vehicles are limited to short-range use because of battery limitations. Furthermore, recharging batteries by plugging them into the grid isn't going to help much unless the electricity is generated from sustainable sources, so that would need to be in place to gain the full benefit from electric cars. Assuming that eventually happens, a battery swap system is proposed to allow drivers to change battery packs at service stations in the same way that they now fuel up, although there are indications that very fast-charging batteries may be on the way somewhat later. 

Hydrogen cells, which develop electricity by combining hydrogen and oxygen in a kind of reverse electrolysis (the only by-product being water) are at a much earlier stage of development. Hydrogen has to be manufactured (not currently a very clean activity) and special transporting, storing and dispensing arrangements would need to be put in place. This seems unlikely to be adopted on a large scale without major government start-up funding, because manufacturers won't develop and make fuel-cell cars unless they are confident that people will buy them in large quantities, people won't buy fuel-cell cars unless there is a comprehensive network of hydrogen filling stations, and companies won't manufacture and distribute hydrogen, or equip the filling stations to dispense it, unless there is a proven demand (or someone else provides the start-up funding).

Taking all of this into account, the best approach for the near future is to have an electric car with plug-in recharging and an internal-combustion on-board generator to top up the batteries on a long run. This generator could be very small, as it would only need to supply cruising rather than full power. It could also run at a fixed speed, further improving efficiency. The next stage will probably be all-electric, using high-capacity fast-charging batteries, with fuel cells possibly coming along later.

Of course, mass transport tends to be the most efficient way of moving people, at least in areas of high population density. Tram and other light-rail systems are proliferating and will probably continue to do so. Unfortunately, there is a major problem with aviation. The growth in this is very bad news for the environment, not only because of the large quantities of CO2 and other pollutants produced, but also because they get ejected high in the atmosphere where they are far more damaging than at ground level. It is very difficult to see what can be done to ameliorate this, apart from taxing air travel so highly that it once again becomes the privilege of the rich few, but this would be politically virtually impossible. Hydrogen fuel would help, but planes designed to use this are so far off that they don't even seem to be being considered at the moment. 

A different approach to reducing vehicle pollution is to make fewer journeys. Modern communications technology makes it feasible for increasing numbers of employees to spend at least part of their time working from home instead of commuting into cities. There is also growing criticism of our exploitation of cheap fuel in amassing "food miles" (the distance food travels before it reaches local shops), one example being fish originating in Scotland being sent to Poland for preparation and packaging before being sent back to the UK for sale. This has led to a growth in the UK in "farmers' markets", which are limited to selling local produce, bypassing the big commercial distribution networks. This is another aspect of the "think small, think local" movement already identified in the section on power generation.  This issue, combined with a likely increase in international instability caused by climate change, may well see traditional food importing countries like the UK reverting to more domestic local production. Our gardens of the future may well consist of vegetable plots, as in the Second World War.

*Making it happen – incentives:* Clearly, the speed at which all of the above measures can be implemented (at least in free-market economies) depends on financial incentives, as demonstrated by the German PV cell experience.  It has been suggested that the simplest and most fool-proof method of encouraging the most efficient and sustainable use of energy for all purposes would be to tax all fossil fuels at source, when they are removed from the ground. This would not only discourage the use of fossil fuels, it would make sustainable energy sources more competitive on price. The major problem is that this would require global agreement, and that is inconceivable in present circumstances (when countries can't even agree to tax all aviation fuel). Maybe much later, if the environment is sliding into chaos, by which time it would probably be far too late.

*The population problem:* As mentioned in Part 1, an underlying problem which is going to undermine all of the attempts to minimise CO2 production is the projected huge rise in the world's population, from about 6.4 billion now to around 9 billion by the middle of this century.  Although population forecasting is notoriously unreliable, anything remotely like this will cause enormous problems even without climate change. Unless, of course, there were to be devastating famines, epidemics or wars, with death rates orders of magnitude greater than anything seen to date, which is hardly an attractive option. Add in the predicted effects of climate change in drying out continental interiors, and such appalling outcomes become more likely as starving, desperate populations try to move to more fertile lands. It is hard to see a way to avoid this without drastic limits on childbirth, which even a dictatorship like China has struggled to enforce.

*A different style of living:* Can anything be done about coping with the population increase? The major problem is of course producing enough food, but the extra living space required will also be an issue, particularly since conventional housing developments use up a lot of land which might otherwise be growing crops. This suggests that different forms of living may be developed, possibly in the form of arcologies; huge buildings in which city-sized populations can live, work and play while occupying only a small fraction of the ground area of a conventional city – and also using up only a small fraction of the energy per person. By a not-so-strange coincidence, the novel on which I am (very intermittently) working, set a century into the future, takes place in such an arcology.

This subject is taking more space to cover than I expected, so the other possible measures to tackle global warming will have to wait until Part 3…

(An extract from my SFF blog)


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## mosaix (May 1, 2009)

Anthony, I missed your thread the first time around, but thanks for this. Food for thought both from global warming and SF viewpoints.


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## K. Riehl (May 4, 2009)

You could take a drastic approach, Bio-lab has an accident, worldwide death rate of 70%. This would solve the population, pollution, loss of natural resources and many other problems. Thus the remaining few hundred million people could still be a viable base for humanity. This is a Science Fiction story? Right?

I'm sorry but the long term historical record, 300 years, does not support the climate models that various groups are using to make their doomsday predictions. 
You can interpret anything from such a small sample size as 10 years. When it comes to climate change you can make a much better prediction using a much larger sample. 
I can't see us bankrupting ourselves over this.

The link I am posting shows data from multiple sources most of which are Satellite temp readings which do not show the increase that IPCC has predicted. The exception is the NASA data which is under the control of J. Hansen. The hack who has manually adjusted the data on several occasions to fit his predictions. 

Is the earth getting warmer, or cooler? â€¢ The Register

Hansen is universally hated at NASA for stifling/leaning on/firing anyone who speaks up about how the Science has been changed or reported. Hansen has made statements like, " the president of every major power company should be thrown in jail for the rest of their lives".

So, when I look at 4 data sets where 3 agree that temperatures are leveling off or down slightly and 1 which matches the directors predictions exactly. I look at how they interpret the data. You can't trust any data the Hansen has such a vested interest in. In the following article Hansen's activism leads to him supporting eco-vandalism. The Greenpeace affiliated  blog site is embarrassed and calls for his firing. 

Note to NASA: Fire Dr. James Hansen, now. « Watts Up With That?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/...e-world-has-never-seen-such-freezing-heat.htm


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## Anthony G Williams (May 4, 2009)

I am not a climate scientist, I merely try to keep up with their published discoveries.

What is very clear to me is that the overwhelming majority of scientists no longer doubt that the world is warming up, and that mankind's activities are a major factor in this. See the references in my first post to such prestigious bodies as the US National Academies and the Royal Academy, as well as the IPCC. 

The only serious climate change issues being debated in authoritative academic publications are over such matters as how quickly it will happen and how bad it will get. There will, of course, always be some dissenters (you'll never get 100% agreement within any large group of scientists) but the doubters now represent a minor fringe viewpoint.


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## Nik (May 4, 2009)

Aside from global warming, there's growing evidence from Africa that large regions there have *really bad* droughts lasting centuries. I suppose you could consider them 'climate zone shifts', as they're driven by 'North Atlantic Oscillation' changes --Our ElNino/la_nina equivalent. Snag is that any additional aridity sub-Sahara undoes a decade of work against desertification, displaces more people and risks a 'DustBowl'...

Ultimately, without switching to a farming style that tolerates drought, has dew-catchers etc, most of that land must be abandoned. Much of central Asia faces shortages but --so far-- watershed resources are being agreed by negotiation. I fear Africa will see water wars...


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## Anthony G Williams (May 4, 2009)

Over the aeons the Earth's climate has varied, due to natural causes, from being warm in Antarctica to being a completely frozen at the equator. Seen in that context, the warming effect caused by human activities is a relatively minor blip, notable mainly because it is projected to happen far more rapidly than normal.

The problem for us is that our current patterns of settlement, agriculture and trading infrastructure are all built up around the established climate patterns and sea level. Any significant change in these (whatever the explanation) means serious trouble. So if our activities are a major driver to the current changes, as the great majority of scientists believe, then it's sensible to try to do something about it. Even if they *aren't*, it's sensible to try to do something about it!


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## ktabic (May 4, 2009)

K. Riehl said:


> the remaining few hundred million people



70% loss of life leaves about 1.8 billion people. Human population may have hit as low as 2000 at one point in time, so a few hundred million shouldn't have a problem.



K. Riehl said:


> Hansen is universally hated at NASA for stifling/leaning on/firing anyone who speaks up about how the Science has been changed or reported.



Hansen's old boss no longer agrees with Hansen. Or AGW.



Anthony G Williams said:


> The only serious climate change issues being debated in authoritative academic publications are over such matters as how quickly it will happen and how bad it will get.



Which is a problem. It means that debate has been stifled. The scientists involved are now ignoring reality is favour of their models. Their models which are inevitably flawed, since the reality of the Earth systems is far more complex and any honest scientist will admit that they still don't know enough about how the various systems interact.

There was a wonderful piece in the Herald Sun just a few days ago. It's Australia orientated, but a good read.


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## Anthony G Williams (May 4, 2009)

ktabic said:


> Which is a problem. It means that debate has been stifled. The scientists involved are now ignoring reality is favour of their models. Their models which are inevitably flawed, since the reality of the Earth systems is far more complex and any honest scientist will admit that they still don't know enough about how the various systems interact.


Debate is intense, but not about the general principle that the Earth is warming up and that human activities are a major element in that. It isn't that such debate is being stifled, any more than scientific debate about the theory of evolution is being stifled - it's just that the debate has moved on.

The climate scientists are not "ignoring reality in favour of their models". They are constantly monitoring the reality of climate change and using the results to fine-tune their models. Certainly they will admit that their models can only approximately reflect what is most likely to happen, and will almost certainly turn out to be wrong - but they are just as likely to be wrong on the optimistic as on the pessimistic side. In fact, the actual reality of climate change is progressing more rapidly than was projected when the IPCC report was written a few years ago.


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## ktabic (May 4, 2009)

Anthony G Williams said:


> Debate is intense, but not about the general principle that the Earth is warming up and that human activities are a major element in that.



And ignoring the fact that half of the global warming that has occured over the last hundred years has been wiped out in just the last seven. Thats not a very good debate.



Anthony G Williams said:


> They are constantly monitoring the reality of climate change and using the results to fine-tune their models.



Models aren't really science when they're programmed to produce the expected results, and when you think about it, that is what the fine tuning is doing.


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## AE35Unit (May 4, 2009)

I'm so fed up with that over used and inaccurate term,Global Warming. It gives one a false impression and lay people say that nothing is happening because things aren't getting warmer where they are(-20 frosts in Florida recently!) They should drop the term in favour of climate change!


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## mosaix (May 4, 2009)

AE35Unit said:


> I'm so fed up with that over used and inaccurate term,Global Warming. It gives one a false impression and lay people say that nothing is happening because things aren't getting warmer where they are(-20 frosts in Florida recently!) They should drop the term in favour of climate change!


 

Good point AE. You have a convert.


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## Anthony G Williams (May 4, 2009)

ktabic said:


> And ignoring the fact that half of the global warming that has occured over the last hundred years has been wiped out in just the last seven.


Nope. See: Climate myths: Global warming stopped in 1998 - environment - 15 August 2008 - New Scientist



> Models aren't really science when they're programmed to produce the expected results, and when you think about it, that is what the fine tuning is doing.


No it isn't. The whole process of developing a model of a complex system is one of iteration - of testing its conclusions against reality to check how well it's working and to modify it if it isn't.


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## Anthony G Williams (May 4, 2009)

AE35Unit said:


> I'm so fed up with that over used and inaccurate term,Global Warming. It gives one a false impression and lay people say that nothing is happening because things aren't getting warmer where they are(-20 frosts in Florida recently!) They should drop the term in favour of climate change!


I sympathise wiith your view, but "Global Warming" refers to what is happening on average across the entire planet. Within that overall effect, some regions will get warmer faster than others, and others may even cool down for a while. So "Climate Change" is really describing the varied regional consequences of "Global Warming".

It's allso necessary to bear in mind the difference between "weather" and "climate". "Weather" changes over a variety of time cycles, from hours to months, but "climate" is the average of the weather conditions measured over a long period. So, for instance, average temperatures will fluctuate up and down year by year (2005 was the warmest on record) but what matters is the running average - and that trend is going steadily upwards.


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## ktabic (May 4, 2009)

But 'climate change' lets them off the hook.

For one. climate is always changing. With or without us. It's been happily doing that for billions of years. Just because it's current state is one that we like, doesn't mean that it will or should stay in that state. 
Secondly, they predict the Earth will warm up. Lots. Hence Global Warming. Now if the planet goes straight into another ice age, we can point at them and say "WTF? Warming? Dude! What where you on?" 

Strictly speaking, the term is AGW, Anthropogenic Global Warming. As in warming caused by us.


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## Anthony G Williams (May 4, 2009)

ktabic said:


> But 'climate change' lets them off the hook.


No, it's just a matter of understanding what the terms mean. 



> For one. climate is always changing. With or without us. It's been happily doing that for billions of years. Just because it's current state is one that we like, doesn't mean that it will or should stay in that state.


Sure. As I've already posted this morning:



> Over the aeons the Earth's climate has varied, due to natural causes, from being warm in Antarctica to being a completely frozen at the equator. Seen in that context, the warming effect caused by human activities is a relatively minor blip, notable mainly because it is projected to happen far more rapidly than normal.
> 
> The problem for us is that our current patterns of settlement, agriculture and trading infrastructure are all built up around the established climate patterns and sea level. Any significant change in these (whatever the explanation) means serious trouble. So if our activities are a major driver to the current changes, as the great majority of scientists believe, then it's sensible to try to do something about it. Even if they *aren't*, it's sensible to try to do something about it!


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## K. Riehl (May 4, 2009)

[/QUOTE]No it isn't. The whole process of developing a model of a complex system is one of iteration - of testing its conclusions against reality to check how well it's working and to modify it if it isn't.[/QUOTE]

That is exactly the problem with Hansen's model. He is programming in his personal bias and then changing the data to fit his expectations rather than changing his model to better predict what the data shows. He is letting his activism trump the actual results.

I agree with your points about our agricultural structure. Is it not the answer to move to crops that have been engineered to be drought resistant? To start encouraging people to move from areas that will soon become problematic ?  I still say investing in desalinization plants to make them more cost effective would be the greatest benefit in the short term.


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## Nik (May 4, 2009)

Hi, IMHO, you have several problems with agriculture and populations...

First and biggest problem in most parts of the world is that people are too poor to move willingly, and unwelcome where they arrive if they flee drought, war etc. Add in oft-arbitrary borders drawn by polititicians back in the 18th or 19th century. Add in tribal conflicts. Add machetes and AKs....

Um, large-scale desalination is a very complicated, very expensive business. Sure, you can distill a cup or two with low tech, create dew-traps with little more than the right type of stones, lid optional. They don't scale well.

On-Tap 'running water' is problematic. You need a lot of power, a lot of capital for the installation. You also must find a way to abstract water without riots and dispose of hyper-saline effluent without pickling the local ecology...

I've seen discussion of prototypes that use wave or wind power to directly compress water against semi-permeable membranes or provide vacuum for direct distillation. Obviously, those depend on the weather. Beyond that, you have Neptune's Rules: Surfaces foul, salt spatters and abrades, everything corrodes, joints leak, and maintenance becomes a nightmare unless the skills and spares are on-site...

Oh, yes, and your installation is a Big Juicy Target...

I would like to see GM-modified reeds etc that would suck the salt out of salt-damaged land, provide bio-fuel for local power raising, then the salt-rich ash forms feed-stock for local industry.


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## chrispenycate (May 4, 2009)

It would be reasonably simple and cheap (by national standards, not individual) to build a large scale solar distillery in the Sahara. Assuming that there were no political problems and minimum corruption, neither of which situations being very likely. In fact it could be done on a high manpower, low tech basis, wave power to pump seawater up a small mountain, then run it through a sort of polytunnel system, going hundreds of kilometres to a salt lake in the interior. Probably have to blast out the lake (nuclear?) and build the mountain, but most of the path is straight loops and transparent sheeting. Can be enlarged, not indefinitely but up to hundreds of thousands of litres a day with no difficulty, probably millions. (I did research for a Sahara reafforestation project, but I was mainly concerned with increasing rainfall, slowing runoff and getting rid of goats; this was a sideline).


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## Anthony G Williams (May 5, 2009)

> That is exactly the problem with Hansen's model. He is programming in his personal bias and then changing the data to fit his expectations rather than changing his model to better predict what the data shows. He is letting his activism trump the actual results.


Hansen is only one man, and there are many climate scientists working on predictive models. The results are broadly similar, and clear enough to convince the vast majority of climate scientists. 



> I agree with your points about our agricultural structure. Is it not the answer to move to crops that have been engineered to be drought resistant? To start encouraging people to move from areas that will soon become problematic ? I still say investing in desalinization plants to make them more cost effective would be the greatest benefit in the short term.


Yes, genetic engineering of crops to make them drought resistant comes into Part 3, to be posted in due course!

Desalinisation has two problems: at present it's very expensive in terms of fuel use (not what's wanted), and the salt that's removed has to go _somewhere_. At the moment it tends to be pumped back into the sea, but that's not a long-term solution if done on a large scale because the sea's ecosystem will get damaged. [edit to add - just noticed that Nik made the same point]


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## SpaceShip (May 5, 2009)

Funny thing is - I spoke to the head gardner of Sheffield Park (one of those parks set down by Capability Brown) and he told me that the world is actually going through a cold period and this would go on for a goodly length of time.  Apparently they can tell this from the reaction of different plants/trees.


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## Anthony G Williams (May 5, 2009)

SpaceShip said:


> Funny thing is - I spoke to the head gardner of Sheffield Park (one of those parks set down by Capability Brown) and he told me that the world is actually going through a cold period and this would go on for a goodly length of time. Apparently they can tell this from the reaction of different plants/trees.


Hmm. So one head gardener's opinion must be taken seriously against the massed ranks of the world's climate scientists


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## Urlik (May 5, 2009)

SpaceShip said:


> Funny thing is - I spoke to the head gardner of Sheffield Park (one of those parks set down by Capability Brown) and he told me that the world is actually going through a cold period and this would go on for a goodly length of time. Apparently they can tell this from the reaction of different plants/trees.


 
but that's a garden in Britain, which is one of the places predicted to get colder in the early stages of global warming


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## Urien (May 5, 2009)

Ah but ten years and more ago it wasn't predicted to get colder... do you remember the models predicting a Mediterranean climate for the UK? 

I believe that recent model revisions show the planet getting colder for ten years or so and then the warming trend continuing again. I don'y know if that's generally accepted; it's just what I remember from recent reading.


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## Anthony G Williams (May 5, 2009)

Urien said:


> Ah but ten years and more ago it wasn't predicted to get colder... do you remember the models predicting a Mediterranean climate for the UK?


Still might happen. The big uncertainty is over the fate of the North Atlantic Drift, as I discussed in the first post on this thread:
It has been suggested that some areas may paradoxically become cooler, at least for a while before the general increase in temperatures pulls them back up again. The best-known possible cause is the stopping of the Gulf Stream (also known as the North Atlantic Drift or the North Atlantic Current, which is part of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation - AMOC) as a result of a surge of fresh water from melting polar ice. This currently keeps North-West Europe (including the UK) several degrees warmer than it would otherwise be, so the short-term impact of stopping it could be considerable. This was the trigger used for the sudden cooling so exaggerated in *The Day after Tomorrow*. Some studies have shown that the volume of flow of the Gulf Stream has already reduced by about 30% between 1957 and 2004, but *the current view appears to be that a complete stoppage of the Gulf Stream is a less serious risk than previously thought*.
​


> I believe that recent model revisions show the planet getting colder for ten years or so and then the warming trend continuing again. I don'y know if that's generally accepted; it's just what I remember from recent reading.


The actual temperatures will fluctuate from year to year, but the general trend remains upwards.


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## Nik (May 5, 2009)

IIRC, it isn't just Greenland ice sloughing that's concerning the GulfStream's oceanographers. That ice-cap's decline is immensely arguable, but Russian & Asian rivers' outflow into Arctic Ocean has been increasing year on year, and is easily measured...

FWIW, there's a fix proposed to re-boot failed cold, salty down-welling: It involves thousands of spar-buoys with a heat-pipe apiece. Cousin to those 'finny' piles used for eg transAlaskan pipe-line, each would transfer cold from sub-arctic winter atmosphere to the water just below the surface...

Not being load-bearing, they'd be a big blob of sealed foam with a marine-stainless tube containing a splash of eg ether...

IIRC, they would be strung together like the floats on long-line fishing, a couple per strand would carry locator beacons to assist recovery in Spring...


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## Anthony G Williams (May 30, 2009)

*Global Warming and SF – Part 3*

This is the third and last part of my tour around the global warming issues and what might be done about them, with a view to how these might feature in SF. Last time I identified four possible courses of action: to cut back CO2 production; to remove CO2 already in the atmosphere; to reduce insolation (heat received from the sun); and finally to adapt to the changes which are now inevitable. I have already dealt with the first one, now for the other three.

*Remove CO2 already in the atmosphere*

One of the major problems with churning out CO2 is that, once in the atmosphere, it persists for a very long time. This contrasts with other greenhouse gases such as methane, which disappear relatively quickly. Even if it were possible to stop all burning of fossil fuels immediately, the quantity of CO2 already in the atmosphere would remain higher than pre-industrial levels for centuries to come; which means that the Earth will continue warming up for centuries. As a result, there is increasing interest in "geoengineering" – physically removing CO2 from the atmosphere, or finding other ways to increase CO2 absorption or to prevent the greenhouse effect. 

Geoengineering is highly controversial because of worries that it may have unwanted consequences; for instance, increasing oceanic absorption of CO2 will increase seawater's acidity (something which is already beginning to happen) with potentially dire consequences for the marine ecosystem. It is therefore only being considered as a last resort, because climate scientists now believe that there is no chance of cutting CO2 production by enough to make much difference; in fact, before the current recession hit, carbon emissions were still *increasing* by 3% a year.

Geoengineering techniques can be as simple as planting trees, but this only postpones the problem – at some point, the trees will die and their carbon will be released. More drastic measures are therefore being considered. These include seeding the oceans with iron filings to encourage the growth of organisms which would trap CO2. However, apart from the acidification problem, a recent experiment failed to achieve the desired effect. 

A more high-tech approach is to manufacture huge quantities of "scrubbers" which will physically remove CO2 from the atmosphere. Three different techniques have been proposed. 

One is a "spray hangar" in which air is sucked in one end and blown out of the other after being sprayed with sodium hydroxide solution; this reacts with CO2 to form droplets of sodium carbonate. This is known to work, but in its present form requires a huge amount of energy. 

An alternative is the "solar scrubber", using sun-focusing mirrors to heat a transparent tube filled with pellets of calcium oxide. As the temperature rises to 400 degrees C, air is blown through the tube and its CO2 combines with the chemical to form calcium carbonate; virtually all of the CO2 is extracted. The process can be reversed by doubling the temperature in order to drive off pure CO2 which can easily be captured; but of course, a safe way of disposing of it then has to be found. One possibility is to pump it into adjacent greenhouses in order to promote crop growth (a technique which is already being used). 

The third option is the "air collector", which pumps air over an ion exchange resin, a polymer impregnated with sodium hydroxide, to which the CO2 adheres. It can later be washed out for disposal using humid air at only 40 degree C. 

The benefit of these technologies is that there appears to be minimal risk of unintended consequences since all they do is extract CO2, a process which can instantly be switched off when no longer needed. The main drawback of the CO2 scrubbers is that millions of the things would be needed, at huge cost. 

*Reduce insolation*

A different approach is to reduce the degree by which the sun heats up the Earth, by reflecting more of its rays back into space. As we have seen, ice fields reflect around 90% of the insolation (compared with 94% absorption in open water) and their melting is contributing to Arctic warming. One study calculated that reflecting an extra 1.8% of insolation would cancel out the effects of doubling the CO2 levels. 

Various fanciful ideas have been proposed, such as dumping vast quantities of white polystyrene to float in the oceans (which could of course reduce their capacity to absorb CO2) or pumping sulphate particles high into the atmosphere to reflect the sun's rays (but this could cause catastrophic droughts in some regions, and would need constant renewal). A variation on the last one is to pump atomised seawater into stratocumulus clouds in order to increase their density and make them more reflective. This should work, but the processes of atomisation and of getting the water up to the clouds in such enormous quantities are obviously not trivial issues.

A more high-tech approach is to launch "sunshades" into space, in the form of discs of silicon about 60 cm across., just a few micrometers thick and weighting 1 gram. Each would be covered with holes calculated to act like a lens, causing dispersion and dimming of the sunlight. They would be "steerable" using solar energy to keep them in the correct position and orientation. The proposal involves launching containers, each carrying a million discs, from huge electromagnetic rail guns, towards the L1 Lagrange point where the Earth's and the sun's gravities cancel out. It has been estimated that twenty rail guns, each 3 km high and working around the clock to launch one container every five minutes for ten years, could achieve the 1.8% reduction, and it is hoped that the discs could last for up to 50 years. 

The danger with all of these techniques would be if they were relied on to cancel out the effect of rising CO2 levels, thereby allowing CO2 to build up to high levels. Should the regular renewal of the sunshades then fail for any reason, the consequences to the climate of being suddenly exposed to high levels of atmospheric CO2 could be sudden and catastrophic.

A lower-tech approach would be to install reflective surfaces on the roofs of buildings or in the form of material covering desert areas, in those locations not required for solar heating or power systems.

*Adapt to the changes*

It is now accepted by climate scientists that any effective moves to reduce CO2 production will now be too late to avoid some unpleasant consequences – our politicians have already failed us by avoiding the potentially unpopular measures required. Even the 2007 IPCC report predicted a rise in global average temperature of between 2 and 6.4 degrees C this century and, as we have seen, a recent conference of climate scientists concluded that the outlook has worsened since that was written. An increase of 4 degrees by the end of the century now looks quite possible on present trends. So as well as continuing to try to minimise the warming effect, we are going to have to prepare for the consequences of a warmer world. 

What this might mean is discussed in an article published in New Scientist on 28 February 2009 ("Surviving in a Warmer World"), which spells out the implications of a 4 degree warmer world. The picture painted is frankly horrifying. Much of the tropics would become uninhabitable due to drought, floods or extreme weather; the Amazon basin would become a desert, as would most of the USA, southern Europe, nearly all of Africa, southern Asia and Australia. Rising sea levels would mean that low-lying areas would vanish. On the bright side, there would be some potential for reforestation due to changing wind patterns, in west Africa and western Australia. However, the main areas suitable for habitation and farming would be Canada and Alaska, northern Europe and Asia, New Zealand, western Greenland and western Antarctica. These would become exceedingly crowded places, with the surviving population having to live in dense, high-rise accommodation to leave as much usable land as possible free for agriculture.

James Lovelock, who developed the "Gaia" theory, estimates that the devastation caused by climate change could result in the world's population reducing to 1 billion or less by the end of this century. Inevitably, there would be huge conflicts as displaced populations attempted to move to more favoured areas. Many observers think that the first climate change war has been underway for years, in the civil war in the Sudan. Christians and Muslims had lived peacefully side-by side in Sudan's Darfur province for centuries, but the trigger for their vicious war (in which 200,000 have already died and around two million been displaced) has been a dramatic reduction in rainfall over the past few decades, leading to increasing desertification and a conflict over the remaining usable land. If the regional climate projections are right, similar problems are likely to occur throughout the tropics during this century.

Other climate impact specialists consider that the worst consequences can be reduced, provided that we start planning and acting now, by determinedly adopting the kind of measures discussed in this survey. It's too late to prevent a lot of problems, but it's worth doing all we can to minimise the future scale of them, since that could prevent a bad situation from becoming utterly appalling. The political issues and pressures generated by all this are a potential source of material for near-future fiction.

Even if world leaders really begin to address this problem effectively, some changes will have to be made. The rising sea level, combined with more, and more violent, storms means that it would generally be futile to continue defending low-lying coastal areas. To give one well-known example, there is no point in the long term in trying to protect cities like New Orleans. This is already beginning to happen in a small way, with the evacuation of the 1,400 inhabitants of Papua New Guinea's Carteret Islands, and there are similar plans to abandon other low-lying oceanic islands. The prospect of millions of Bangladeshis moving into India as their land floods will raise problems on a very different scale. 

Water shortages resulting from a combination of climate change and population growth will also require some changes to farming to get the maximum value out of agricultural land. One consequence is that meat-eating will have to diminish because, for the same food value, animal farms use farmland and water at several times the rate of crop farms. So the only farm animals likely to survive will be those which can live on rough mountain pasture unsuitable for agriculture. To make matters worse, fish stocks will continue to shrink, not just through overfishing but through the increasing acidification and deoxygenation of the oceans. The water shortages will almost certainly end the current squeamishness about genetically-modified crops; to produce enough food, it will be necessary to develop drought-resistant strains. 

Even so, a switch to a largely vegetarian diet wouldn't provide a complete solution. Crops not only use up a lot of water, our commercial farms are also heavily dependent on oil, for farm machinery, transport and fertiliser. Reductions in the use of fossil fuels to cut back on CO2 production, combined with an increasing shortage of oil as cheap sources are used up, will make traditional crop-growing far more difficult and expensive. A recent UK TV programme on "farms of the future" predicted the decline of large-scale crop growing in favour of local "vertical farms", based on hedges and trees producing fruit, nuts and edible leaves, which can provide several times the food value of the same area of arable land. These require very little work or other resources to grow, but they are much more labour-intensive to collect.

That just about wraps up my survey. In a nutshell, climate change is accelerating, and if we wish to avoid some rather horrendous consequences, we need to put a far higher priority on taking the kind of preventative and precautionary measures I have been describing. I hope that all of this provides some useful material for the SF community; certainly there is scope for a wide range of backgrounds, from best-case to worst-case. My own novel, which I mentioned last time, was intended to represent a likely future but, in the light of the latest information, is now looking to be at the optimistic end of the spectrum!

(An extract from my SFF blog)


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## skeptical (May 30, 2009)

Larry Niven wrote a book called _The Descent of Anansi _which included the consequences of over reaction to global warming.   What happened was that everyone got right behind action to reduce CO2 emissions just as a new, totally natural, ice age began.   Result was a world with advancing glaciers, billions dying of hunger with crop failure, and a desperate need for more carbon emissions.

OK, that is fiction.   However, there is a very normal human trait that we need to be aware of.   If a bunch of people who share a point of view get together and talk, often and for long periods, then social feed-back will reinforce that opinion, and the group will end up as extremists.   This has been well documented for muslim terrorism.   What no-one will admit is that it applies to climate change also.

This explains the extreme views of people life Prof. Hansen, who now claims the world's sea levels will rise 6 metres by 2100.

It is hard to get a balanced viewpoint on this, and I tend to go back to quoting current trends when I hear people preaching imminent disaster.   The world, over the past 30 years, has been warming at a global average of 0.18 C per decade.  Sea levels have been rising at 3 mm per year.   That is, 300 mm per century (one foot).   Ice melt in the Arctic has been almost totally sea ice, which has no impact on sea levels.   

In Antarctica, the Antarctic Peninsular, which is a tiny fraction of the continent, has been warming with ice near the sea melting.   This could have a minor impact only on global sea levels.  The rest of the continent is warming at such a slow rate that it is almost unmeasurable.   Antarctica has an average temperature of minus 50 C, which means that normal global warming got one hell of a long way to go to have much impact.

Global warming is real, and caused by humans.  However, it is not going to cause massive disaster any time soon.   We have at least 50 years grace to begin to work on it.  As _Hitchhikers Guide_ says "Don't panic!


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## AE35Unit (May 30, 2009)

Yes its real but not just caused by us(oh how like to see ourselves at the centre of things. Homo sapiens is still very anthropocentric)
But we need to drop Global Warming and use Climate Change! Even David Attenborough agrees on this point!


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## Anthony G Williams (May 30, 2009)

I don't see any point in giving as an example one man whose predictions are so massively more than those of the scientific community in general. What is regarded as the most soundly-based recent estimate of the rise in sea level by 2100 is 1.0-1.5 metres. So Hansen is clearly out on his own, and can be ignored.

It isn't actually possible to "overshoot" and cause a new ice age, because if the climate starts to cool we have a fast, ready-made solution: burn all the coal and the forests, and spread the soot all over the ice! 

The problem we have is that CO2 levels are continuing to rise despite all the fine words about reducing them. Getting that under control will be very difficult and unpopular. Personally, I don't think that the public in general, and politicians in particular, will want to take the necessary action until the need for it is blindingly obvious - by which time it will be too late to avert major problems.


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## skeptical (May 31, 2009)

To Anthony
Re overshooting.

In fact, it is hard to make good predictions of any kind since there is still so much to learn about climate.  There are researchers who believe that we are entering what would normally be a new glaciation period - except that greenhouse gases are keeping the world warm.   Now I do not know whether this is true or not, and no-one who is honest will claim they have clear knowledge one way or the other.

However, the overshooting mentioned in Niven's book dealt with a fictional situation where a new glaciation period was coming, and at the same time, people reduced carbon emissions drastically, till there was too little CO2 in the atmosphere to hold back the ice.  Is this true in fact?   I dunno.

I tend to react with considerable scepticism to anyone who makes definitive claims about climate change.   I tend to think that a balanced view is more a middle ground - neither global warming denial, or global warming catastrophism.   We need a recognition of the existing situation, and an acceptance of the need for carefully managed change to the world's energy economy, without silly panic.


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## Anthony G Williams (May 31, 2009)

I agree with you that there's a lot that isn't known, and the more detail you try to obtain the more uncertain it gets. But to argue that the 'unknowns' mean that we shouldn't take the problem seriously is a logical fallacy: when we know that the CO2 levels are much higher than they've been for hundreds of thousands of years; and that this has a warming effect; and that the overwhelming majority of climate scientists are firmly of the view that this warming is going to continue into the foreseeable future unless we take some drastic action very soon; then arguing about the details is a bit like debating the exact specification of the rope that's going to hang you.

The problem with CO2 is that once in the atmosphhere, it hangs around for centuries. So even if it were possible to stop *all* human-sourced CO2 production now, the levels in the atmosphere would continue to be above pre-industrial levels for centuries.

As far as what is happening now is concerned, try this: Report: Climate change crisis 'catastrophic' - CNN.com


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## ManTimeForgot (May 31, 2009)

Need to consider the source; the global humanitarian forum uses the same data/modeling that the IPCC does...  There isn't a consensus in the scientific community on the interpretation of the modeling not even considering the lack of consensus regarding the accuracy of said modeling.


Now perhaps climate change really is responsible for that much death; how much of that is due to man's influence is wildly up for speculation since we don't really know how much influence on tidal and storm systems global temperature changes have.  Changes in sea level have been happening throughout human history, but it is only recently that people have been _forced_ to be situated so closely to the ocean that changes in sea level will guarantee the deaths of so many (so if we solved our housing and food issues the number of deaths would drop drastically).


We are already (information courtesy of Discovery Science channel) working on underwater habitats, floating cities, and pyramidal/suspension cities (which would resist earth quake and flooding quite readily).  So the architecture of the future is already planned on changing in response to _possible_ changes while still being functional.  Additionally we are working on and implementing ways to scrub the emissions from factories and will almost certainly be switching to plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles as a standard for vehicle manufacture in the next decade to score or so.

I don't think anyone other than a few corrupt nasty capitalists are suggesting doing *nothing* when it comes to air pollution (on general principle keeping what we breathe free from industrial fumes should be obviously a good thing).

But when it comes to science fiction I think you really need to consider that the possibility that the earth is going to "flip" immensely one way or the other is almost completely unrealistic (its cool for a fiction story obviously, but don't pretend its believable):  If we thought for even one moment that the earth was going to "freeze" over we would just boil sea water (nukes work wonders); put enough water vapor in the air and you get quite a bit of greenhouse effect & If we thought the earth was going the other direction then something similarly drastic gets put into place (NASA builds giant tin foil hat for earth or planets nuclear powers sterilize sahara desert in order to remove CO2 from atmosphere through nuclear weapons or industrial powers mass release aerosol compounds which have been shown to cool down the planet but break down more readily and do this over long term).  Sure these options all have pretty horrible consequences, but it all pales compared to the possibility of earth being rendered into an uninhabitable wasteland.

MTF


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## skeptical (May 31, 2009)

Anthony

I don't think I have suggested that we take global warming casually, or ignore the need to mitigate its effects.   I merely caution people not to jump to the extreme of accepting ideas of massive catastrophism.

And that is dangerous.  The EEC with its demand for biofuels is already responsible indirectly for the destruction of millions of hectares of Asian tropical rain forest, due to it creating a market for palm oil, and the locals cutting down the forest to plant oil palms.   Action to reduce carbon emissions needs to be well researched, and introduced cautiously, with only the best of management.

The reference from CNN you quoted is not one that can be backed up with empirical research.   It is easy to look at human deaths and say they are due to climate change.   However, what would the overall human fatality rate be with, or without climate change.   In the tropics, warming is minimal.   It is more extreme far from the equator, but this is more likely to save lives than take them.   Historically, a lot more people have died in cold snaps than heat waves.

Total sea level increase since pre-industrial times has been less than 200 mm.  And any suggestion that climate change is increasing rate or intensity of hurricanes is immediately countered by climate scientists who point out that this is conjecture only.   In other words, to suggest lives lost due to storms, or sea level rise, is to enter the world of speculation, not science.

I got into an argument on another forum, in which people claimed that climate change was causing thousands of extinctions.   I countered by asking "name one'.   The only one that my opponent could come up with was the harlequin frog.   Minimal research informed me that it died out due to chytrid fungus infection - a disease brought from Africa to South America, where the frogs had no immunity.  

I suggest that the same counter would apply here.   Any specific example of human lives lost due to climate change would rapidly be, if not disproved, have massive doubt cast after only minimal research.

I agree that we should be acting on climate change - but cautiously.   We need to develop the tools first, rather than rushing into panicky action.   For example :  develop and release electric cars - which has already begun with Tesla and Reva cars.   More are coming.
Tesla Motors The REVA Electric Car Company - Home Page

MTF has suggested mega-engineering on a global scale may solve problems.  Any such plan would have to be an absolute last resort, and only when faced with immediate, massive and irreversible damage.    Currently less than half of the CO2 released ends in the atmosphere long term.   Absorption occurs by solution in seawater, uptake by plants, and conversion of minerals to carbonates.   Humans do not need to remove CO2 - just stop emitting it.  That is quite possible without mega engineering projects.

Not is there need for catastrophism, or for panic.


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## ManTimeForgot (May 31, 2009)

I wasn't suggesting that "mega engineering" was going to cure the world's woes, but rather that slowly but surely as time passes we will be phasing out traditional cities in favor of designs which will prove much more resilient to damage and will likely be constructed to be "far more green" than today's cities simply because they are more energy efficient (thus saving dollars).  I also stated in my post that "drastic measures" are what would the response to facing near total disaster would be; obviously "bankrupting" the planet would be included on the list of things I would call "drastic measures."


On the other global annihilation thread I quite vociferously argued against global warming alarmist platforms.  I believe that while it is pretty clear that the world isn't going to end tomorrow if we don't stop our "evil ways" today that changing some things to be "greener" when it saves money, reduces human casualties from natural disaster, and cleans toxins out of the air (my lungs to this day don't work correctly after living in Riverside, CA for several years; I've never smoked anything in my life and I've been told my lungs look like someone who used to smoke) is a good thing.

MTF


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## Anthony G Williams (May 31, 2009)

The basic premise concerning global warming is now accepted by the scientific community - see Climate myths: Many leading scientists question climate change - environment - 16 May 2007 - New Scientist



> The fact is that there is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific community about global warming and its causes. There are some exceptions, but the number of sceptics is getting smaller rather than growing. In January 2009, a poll of 3146 earth scientists found that 82% answered yes to the question: "Do you think human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures?". Of the 77 climatologists actively engaged in research, 75 answered yes (97.4%).


 
I am not advocating panic, just a recognition of the scale of the problem and a practical plan of action to address it. This would cost a lot less than letting it ride and then coping with the problems once they've hit us. As I have repeatedly said, there is a lot that is not yet known, but it is becoming increasingly obvious that the great majority of the changes which will happen will have a negative impact on our civilisation. Furthermore, once they really get going they will be extremely difficult to stop, or even slow down - some of the changes will be self-reinforcing.

The climate models we have may be wrong - but a huge amount of effort and processing time has gone in to them, and they are the best guide we have. What comparable body of contrary evidence do we have? There is none.

No one approach is going to solve this problem, it needs a concerted effort across the board. Electric cars are fine, but unless we recharge them using non-polluting energy sources they will have a negligible effect. 

Finally, one point which seems to be being overlooked here is one I made in an earlier post: even if we stabilise the per-capita output of greenhouse gases (of which there is no sign at the moment) the problem is going to get worse bcause the population of this planet is increasing by 80 million per year, every year. To quote the Wiki summary:



> According to population projections, world population will continue to grow until around 2050. The 2008 rate of growth has almost halved since its peak of 2.2% per year, which was reached in 1963. World births have levelled off at about 137-million-per-year, since their peak at 163-million in the late 1990s, and are expected to remain constant. However, deaths are only around 56 million per year, and are expected to increase to 90 million by the year 2050. Since births outnumber deaths, the world's population is expected to reach about 9 billion by the year 2040.


 
From the present figure of around 6.8 billion to 9 billion....an increase of 32% over the next three decades. That alone should be sounding alarm bells. Especially as the developing world, where the population growth is concentrated, is also seeing the most rapid per-capita growth in energy use.


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## ManTimeForgot (May 31, 2009)

http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/50199-we-have-a-unique-opportunity-before-we-die-5.html


Barking up the wrong tree.  We've already hashed this out here.  There is consensus that climate change is occurring.  And then it stops there.  How much of it is due to man's influence is still entirely up for grabs.

The problem here is lay-persons thinking that scientific terminology has the same meaning for scientists as it does for them.  A significant contribution to a scientist does not definitionally mean something plays a large part causally, but rather that it is statistically meaningful.



And as far as those IPCC predictions go they are based on models that quite a few scientists are starting to call into serious question due to flaws.  Of course that doesn't even bring up the issue of detracting arguments found in the IPCC's own reports which most global alarmists are want to ignore.

If you look at regional predictions of global climate change over a "short" period of time you will notice that some areas are expected to go down in temperature due to the influence of aerosols in the atmosphere.  Who is to say what sort of industrial changes are going to be made regarding the release and production of aerosols over the next 50 years?  And since this is the case (assuming we are want to worry about a global warming trend if it exists), then why wouldn't a sustained long term moderated aerosol release strategy (we know what these aerosols break down to and how long it takes) be usable to combat "global warming?"

MTF


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## AE35Unit (May 31, 2009)

A lot of people are poo pooing climate change and yet look at Britain. Its been years since we had a proper winter. Oh we get frosts and strong winds,the latter incidental to where I live I think,but the frosts tend to come late nowadays. And yet someone said that britain is set to get colder? Its all so much speculation really,and without the software and years of accumulated data we can't know one way or the other. All I know is the climate of today is different to what it was when I was a schoolboy. But it seems that its mostly the winters that are different.


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## skeptical (May 31, 2009)

There is a difference between climate skeptic and global warming denier.  I am a sceptic, but not a denier.   That is :  I am sceptical of the more extreme claims by those pushing catastrophism, while accepting the reality of anthropogenic global warming.

I am also an optimist, in regard to human fate.   We have already passed a number of potential environmental problems, and adapted to them.   We had the pesticide 'crisis' reported by Rachel Carson's 1963 book _Silent Spring.  _We had the famine crisis, publicised by Dr. Paul Ehrlich's 1968 book _The Population Bomb.   _There is ozone layer destruction.  Y2K disaster.  Nuclear War.  Nuclear Winter.  And so on.

All of these were genuine, and all were taken care of.  Our track record is pretty damn good!  I have no doubt that global climate change is something we will adapt to, by altering our energy economy, and reducing carbon emissions.

Anyway - about the so called population explosion.  In fact, that has already ended, in a real sense.   50 years ago, third world nations averaged a fertility of 5.5.  That is, each woman on average had 5.5 children.   Today it is 2.5 and dropping.  First world nations are around 2.0 - replacement level, with a number well below 2.  For example :  Japan is well below 2 - enough to alarm the government which has tried to set up financial incentives for women to have more kids.

The current global growth in population is mostly driven by the fact that third world countries which had high birth rates a generation ago now have young people getting married in large numbers.   A much smaller number are old and dying.  However, the young ones getting married are only having 2 to 3 kids.   This still outnumbers deaths.   But the high birth rate is now a thing of the past.   This is why the United Nations predicts a maximum of 9 billion within a few decades, and a falling population thereafter.  
www.un.org/popin

In fact, some economists are predicting massive labour shortages in a few decades, and a desperate need for robotics to carry out the routine work now done by people.  For example : George Friedman in his book _The Next 100 Years._
Amazon.com: The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century: George Friedman: Books


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## Nik (May 31, 2009)

Skeptical, you forgot AIDS...

By itself, that's a time-bomb to rival a fulminating mega-volcano. Combined with any of a dozen tropical diseases, it's a cull.

Um, what happens if hypothetical, virulent, 2-nd wave Swine/Avian 'flu gets loose in communities already ravaged by AIDS ? 

My fear is that Very Many will die in ensuing Malthusian Event...

Good news could be that half a dozen potential water-wars are deferred by a generation, and there's ample land to be worked by young men who might otherwise take up arms... 
---

FWIW, I was in a similar, but *much* less civil discussion on another board. IIRC, my question was simple, "What would hard-core AGW sceptics accept as proof ? What would suffice ??"

Greenland sloughing ice-cap ?? Half of Antarctica thawing ? Siberia, Alaska & Canada permafrost turning to methane-bubbling swamp ? Coastal-shelf clathrates burping ? Arctic Ocean ice-free all Summer ? Metres of sea-level rise ? All of the above ??

The flaming I received convinced me that it had become a 'faith-based' argument, with scant scope for reasoned debate. I signed off from the topic with the wry comment that I was not concerned about sea-level rise due to my location's Medieval dry-foot suffix, 'On The Hill'...


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## AE35Unit (May 31, 2009)

Err I think you'll find the Y2K event was a mistake,was never actually a threat.


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## Urien (May 31, 2009)

Y2K proved not to be a threat. Though it was very much treated as one prior to 2000. Billions of dollars were spent, very large corporations and governments were genuinely concerned.


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## Anthony G Williams (May 31, 2009)

I am not a climate scientist and do not have a super-computer to run my own models and check their conclusions. So like everyone else who isn't a climate scientist, I have to rely on the work and conclusions of experts. And when an overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that the world is warming up, that human activities are making a significant contribution to this, and that the consequences if we don't take major remedial action will potentially be very serious, I believe that the only sensible course is to accept what they say. After all, the sceptics have nothing like the same body of research and evidence to back their views.

Incidentally, I think it's rather optimistic to say that the world population problem "has already ended, in a real sense" when it is predicted to increase by 32% over the next three decades. That indicates a rather excessive reliance on rose-tinted spectacles. Certainly the growth in population should drastically slow by then, but current estimates (for what they're worth - but they're the best we have) put the total as eventually levelling off at around 10 billion (see: http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/sixbillion/sixbilpart1.pdf )
Yes, the population of Europe is projected to shrink significantly and that will cause (indeed, is already causing) structural problems (hence the pension issue) but in global warming terms, it's the total population that matters.


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## Anthony G Williams (May 31, 2009)

Urien said:


> Y2K proved not to be a threat. Though it was very much treated as one prior to 2000. Billions of dollars were spent, very large corporations and governments were genuinely concerned.


The fact that nothing went wrong in 2000 just might have been connected with the "billions of dollars" spent beforehand to make *sure* that nothing went wrong...

By the same logic, if the world's governments finally get their act together and drastically reduce CO2 production to ensure that the global warming consequences are minimised, no doubt future sceptics will be saying "look at all that money wasted when it turned out not to be a threat after all!"


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## AE35Unit (May 31, 2009)

Urien said:


> Billions of dollars were spent, very large corporations and governments were genuinely concerned.



Unwisely!


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## Nik (May 31, 2009)

*Y2K event...*

IMHO, Y2K roll-over was actually more serious than most people thought, but most of the problems were down to 'legacy' programs.

FWIW, I went around our Pharma labs in mid-1998, needed an hour to identify potential problems. We had several whatsits that would need re-setting, several widgets whose printouts would need amending from 19xx to 20xx, initial & date. Oh, and we had some old spectrophotometer-control PCs with Windows 3.1 software that *must* be OFF during roll-over, but that was okay as everything would be off at NewYear anyway.

A later, 'fact finding' site-survey missed several of the items I'd noted. Six months later, a site IT survey missed several of the items I'd noted. Six months later, an inter-site IT survey missed several of the items I'd noted. Six months later, a global IT survey missed several of the items I'd noted. Six months later, a global Y2K Audit came through with tiered challenges and checklists which, yes, missed several of the items I'd noted. 

At least this time, we got the authorisation to upgrade / patch those PCs' control software. By the time that was sourced and bought, we had three months left. Three weeks later, while doing the routine 'monthlies' on the instrument, I found the new software had a less discerning algorithm for Mercury calibration peaks. It wasn't actually a 'bug', it just meant a dozen extra pages of printouts and much more swearing per instrument...

Funny thing is that a bunch of IT stuff that had been checked, patched, challenged and okayed for Y2K just refused to run when 2001 arrived...


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## AE35Unit (May 31, 2009)

Yea but like everyone made out 2000 would be the end of the world,big catastrophe,things never the same again,and come 2000 nothing happened! 
Climate change on the other hand(NOT global warming) is real,and is a potential threat,but is laughed at,mainly because of the phrase global warming I expect.


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## Urien (May 31, 2009)

Yes we spent billions on Y2K in the west and as the world turned on the last night of 1999, and all those Asian and Eastern European countries didn't go dark at the stroke of midnight... we wondered at the efficacy of all the money we'd authorised the IT departments to spend.


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## AE35Unit (May 31, 2009)

Urien said:


> Yes we spent billions on Y2K in the west and as the world turned on the last night of 1999, and all those Asian and Eastern European countries didn't go dark at the stroke of midnight... we wondered at the efficacy of all the money we'd authorised the IT departments to spend.



Exactly,big fuss about nothing


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## skeptical (May 31, 2009)

I get the impression that most, if not all, the participants in this discussion accept that climate change is happening, and probably that it is, at least partly, caused by humans.   Assuming that is true, we do not need to argue about this basic point.   I am a sceptic, not a denier.   I know climate change is happening, and the main cause is human, but I am sceptical of the catastrophist interpretation.  I believe we have ample time to act, and that we will act, and the extreme disasters will not happen.

I have described potential disasters of the past that humans have averted.   There are three kinds of disaster that we are not so good at averting.    War.  Famine.   Pestilence.

However, even those three are diminishing.
War continues, but is now mainly small scale.   The death toll from war is lower than any time since WWI.   Sadly, people still die - just not so many.

Famine is drastically reduced since the 1960's, when a famine could kill 10 million in one season.   Today, there are still famines, but the death toll is much reduced.

Pestilence is still there, but nothing recently matches the Spanish Flu of 1918, when 20 million died.   Even AIDs is coming under control, believe it or not.   There was an article in _New Scientist_ recently  which pointed out that we now have means to keep HIV infected people healthy, and non infectious.   With the right investment, we can treat all HIV positive people around the globe.  The treatment reduces virus counts to the point where they do not pass on the virus.   Once we do that, the disease should diminish.   Ther eis even the chance, in the more remote future, of making it extinct.

SARS, Bird Fly, Swine flu and the like are all essentially speculative.   Swine flu has a death toll that is tiny compared to normal seasonal flu.   Unless and until this changes, it cannot even be called a pandemic.

On population.
When I suggested the population explosion had ended, I intended to suggest that the effects still continue.   It is like the bomb has stopped exploding, but people are still being whacked with shrapnel.   The population bomb has stopped, but the shrapnel continues to scatter.

Birth rates have dropped, including most developing nations.  Fertility at 2.5 is *not* a bomb.    However, the effects of the earlier high fertility rates continue, in that the offspring of those who made lots of kids are now having their own children.  It is this effect that continues the growth in population.  However, it is predictable that the population growth will stop in a few decades (the shrapnel stops falling) and then global population will begin to fall.


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## Nik (Jun 1, 2009)

"Famine is drastically reduced since the 1960's, when a famine could kill 10 million in one season. Today, there are still famines, but the death toll is much reduced."

Um, I'd say we're between mega-deaths. A lot of the slack has gone out of the system, a lot of the stock-piles have gone, a lot more land has gone out of production. IIRC, several large grain exporting nations have gone over to importing as their 'Green Revolution' gains have been overtaken by demand...

The current El Nino/la_nina transition could yet throw some nasties. Fortunately, there doesn't seem much chance of a 'Failed / Late monsoon' for several more years. 

Long term, IIRC, varve (lake-bed deposit) analysis has just shown that Africa is currently at 'wet' end of a long drought cycle...

IMHO, the food situation is a lot less robust than I'd like...


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## Anthony G Williams (Jun 1, 2009)

skeptical said:


> I believe we have ample time to act, and that we will act, and the extreme disasters will not happen.


I hope you are right, but climate change differs in some important respects from other problems, in terms of lag and momentum. Once CO2 is in the atmosphere it stays there for centuries, having a long-term effect on the climate. 

Climate change is like pushing a heavy boulder down a gentle slope. At first, it's very hard to get it moving but once it's rolling, it keeps accelerating and becomes increasingly difficult to stop. At the moment, the climate change boulder is moving very slowly and we could stop it with a concerted effort. But the longer we leave it, the harder it will get and the worse the consequences will be. 

My personal opinion is that we will take action to avoid the worst consequences, but only when the problems have become so obvious (= the boulder is travelling at such a speed) that even politicians can't ignore them. By that time, it will be too late to prevent some serious consequences - just not as bad as the doomsday scenario. 



> Birth rates have dropped, including most developing nations. Fertility at 2.5 is *not* a bomb. However, the effects of the earlier high fertility rates continue, in that the offspring of those who made lots of kids are now having their own children. It is this effect that continues the growth in population. However, it is predictable that the population growth will stop in a few decades (the shrapnel stops falling) and then global population will begin to fall.


If you checked out the link to long-term population forecasts in my last post, you will see that the prediction is for the population to *stabilise* at around 10 billion, by about 2100. Of course, such predictions are no more than projections of current trends and are unlikely to prove accurate, but they're the best we have to go on at the moment.


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## skeptical (Jun 1, 2009)

To *Nik*, who believes we are between mega-deaths.

This is a common belief.  In fact, predictions of catastrophe go back as far as human history reaches.   In past centuries, it has tended to centre round religious catastrophe (God is coming back and gonna kill all them sinners) or wartime catastrophe.   

For example : the one time in history where people should have been optimistic was the renaissance.  But no.   The prevailing mood was pessimism because of the expansion of the Ottoman Empire, which was feared would swallow up Europe.   The literature of the time was full of such predictions.   Fortunately, the Turks were stopped in an epic battle at the gates of Vienna.    Battle of Vienna - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In modern times, we have gotten creative, and the urge to predict catastrophe now encompasses all sorts of ecological and natural disasters.  The one thing that all these predictions have in common is that none actually happened.   For this reason, it is definitely hazardous to make such predictions.

However, there still appears to be a very human urge to predict disaster, even when the evidential basis of such predictions is shakey.

To *Anthony*, on human populations.
I quote the United Nations at
http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/longrange2/2004worldpop2300reportfinalc.pdf

The relevent text is :

_"According to the medium scenario, world population rises from 6.1 billion persons in 2000 to a maximum of 9.2 billion persons in 2075, and declines thereafter to reach 8.3 billion in 2175."  _

The text continues with longer range predictions, but I doubt their accuracy, since predictions become less and less accurate, the further you project them into the future.

You will see that the United Nations demographers do *not *believe population is likely to stabilise at 10 billion.  Of course, this is just the medium projection, and there are other projections that are considered less likely.   Your source may have quoted one of them.


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## Anthony G Williams (Jun 1, 2009)

skeptical said:


> You will see that the United Nations demographers do *not *believe population is likely to stabilise at 10 billion. Of course, this is just the medium projection, and there are other projections that are considered less likely. Your source may have quoted one of them.


Well, *this* UN report says otherwise! http://www.un.org/esa/population/publications/sixbillion/sixbilpart1.pdf

In any case, even if the report you quote is correct, that still means that the population will be 22% higher than it is now in 2175. Considering that estimates of the sustainable long-term maximum population run between 2 and 4 billion, that is not encouraging...


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## Urlik (Jun 1, 2009)

predictons about the Ottoman Empire swallowing Europe are not even similar to predictions concerning natural disasters, but on the other hand, the only reason those predictions concerning the Ottomans didn't occur was that the Habsburgs went and did something about it. if they had ignored it then maybe Europe would be Islamic today.

Anthony's ballpark figure for population growth is close enough to that UN population report medium scenario (around 10 billion at around 2100 isn't far off 9.2 billion in 2075 with a dip to 8 billion followed by a rise to 9 billion by 2300) given that a lot of assumptions are made in those predictions.

one thing that has to be acknowledged is that mass extinction events have happened in the past quite regularly and some extinctions may have been due to climate/atmospheric change.


> source
> a University of Washington paleontologist theorizes that low oxygen and repeated short but substantial temperature increases because of greenhouse warming sparked two major mass-extinction events, one of which eradicated 90 percent of all species on Earth.


 
just because the climate has changed dramatically over the Earth's history without man's interference doesn't mean that future changes (in either direction) can be ignored. for much of Earth's past the climate and atmosheric composition would have been very inhospitable to humans and the best way to combat that is to plan for the worst as soon as possible


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## skeptical (Jun 1, 2009)

To *Urlik*
My point about the Ottoman Empire was simply that humans have a predilection to predictions of disaster.    This psychological quirk continues to this day with people constantly predicting disaster - with those predictions pretty much always being proven wrong after the event.

To *Anthony*
Re population growth.   Yes, your reference has a slightly different prediction.   It suggests the following in billions of people.
2000    6.06
2020    7.5
2050    8.9
2100    9.46
2150    9.75
2200    10
This is clearly a different scenario, with different assumptions.  This is not unusual.   The IPCC does exactly the same thing with its climate change predictions - listing a range of scenarios from least to most probable.  

Even if the above proves correct, it still makes my point.  ie. that population growth is slowing dramatically, and the population *explosion *is over.

And no.   The world's carrying capacity is not 2 to 4 billion.  The truth is that we have not the faintest idea of what that number is, and any estimate of that number is based on all sorts of highly questionable assumptions.   Just to illustrate my point, it has been calculated that the northern one quarter of the continent of Australia could produce enough food to sustain 10 billion people if it was all converted to hydroponics and everyone ate vegan food.

I would suspect that, if we were prepared to pay the price (goodbye wildlife and wilderness) we could easily support 100 billion humans indefinitely on planet Earth assuming some degree of improved technology plus no animal based foods.


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## Urlik (Jun 1, 2009)

but your point about the Ottoman Empire proves exactly the opposite.
the predictions were that the Ottoman Empire would swallow Europe if left unchecked.
the Habsburgs checked it at Vienna.
you can't say that they wouldn't have expanded across Europe if the Battle of Vienna hadn't happened, but it is pretty safe to say that because of the actions taken the predicted disaster was averted.

here's a different analogy that everyone should be familiar with, smoking.
if you smoke you are likely to suffer health complications but these can be averted by giving up.
does that mean that someone who gives up and after that doesn't suffer health problems could have carried on smoking without suffering from a smoke related illness?


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## Anthony G Williams (Jun 1, 2009)

skeptical said:


> Re population growth.
> This is clearly a different scenario, with different assumptions. This is not unusual. The IPCC does exactly the same thing with its climate change predictions - listing a range of scenarios from least to most probable.


Yes, it does - but the range from best-case to worst-case (from +2 to +6.4 degrees by 2100) depends on varied assumptions about the effectiveness of the efforts to limit CO2 production. If we take no action, we get something close to the worst case. And the worst-case scenarios don't just threaten our civilisation, but our survival as a species. 

The recent conference of climate change scientists in Copenhagen concluded that most of the indicators have got worse since the IPCC report was published; for instance, the new estimate of sea level rise by 2100 of 1-1.5m is double that in the IPCC report.



> Even if the above proves correct, it still makes my point. ie. that population growth is slowing dramatically, and the population *explosion *is over.


Frankly, that's irrelevant. It's like saying "_OK, I've been increasing my smoking very rapidly, but now I'm limiting my future intake to 100 cigarettes a day: my 'explosion' in smoking is over, so my health will now be fine!"_



> And no. The world's carrying capacity is not 2 to 4 billion. The truth is that we have not the faintest idea of what that number is, and any estimate of that number is based on all sorts of highly questionable assumptions. Just to illustrate my point, it has been calculated that the northern one quarter of the continent of Australia could produce enough food to sustain 10 billion people if it was all converted to hydroponics and everyone ate vegan food.
> 
> I would suspect that, if we were prepared to pay the price (goodbye wildlife and wilderness) we could easily support 100 billion humans indefinitely on planet Earth assuming some degree of improved technology plus no animal based foods.


 
If everyone behaved reasonably, we could disband the police force, close the jails, get rid of all armed forces and live for ever after in peace under a world government. That's considerably more likely than your scenario, IMO.

There's an academic study of the factors affecting sustainable population here: http://dieoff.org/page112.htm It's rather old and doesn't come to any simple conclusions, but it provides some pertinent observations: 



> Planning a world for highly cooperative, antimaterialistic, ecologically sensitive vegetarians would be of little value in correcting today's situation. Indeed, a statement by demographer Nathan Keyfitz (1991) puts into perspective the view that behavioral changes will keep _H. sapiens_ below social carrying capacity:
> "If we have one point of empirically backed knowledge, it is that _bad policies are widespread and persistent. Social science has to take account of them/"_ [our emphasis]​In short, it seems prudent to evaluate the problem of sustainability for selfish, myopic people who are poorly organized politically, socially, and economically.


 
and:



> Given current technologies, levels of consumption, and socioeconomic organization, has ingenuity made today's population sustainable? The answer to this question is clearly no, by a simple standard. The current population of 5.5 billion is being maintained only through the exhaustion and dispersion of a one-time inheritance of natural capital (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1990), including topsoil, groundwater, and biodiversity. The rapid depletion of these essential resources, coupled with a worldwide degradation of land (Jacobs 1991, Myers 1984, Postel 1989) and atmospheric quality (Jones and Wigley 1989, Schneider 1990), indicate that the human enterprise has not only exceeded its current social carrying capacity, but it is actually reducing future potential biophysical carrying capacities by depleting essential nautral capital stocks.


 
and:



> A few simple calculations show why we believe it imprudent to count on technological innovation to reduce the scale of future human activities to remain within carrying capacity. Employing energy use as an imperfect surrogate for per-capita impact, in 1990 1.2 billion rich people were using an average of 7.5 kilowatts (kW) per person, for a total energy use of 9.0 terawatts (TOO; 10 12 watts). In contrast, 4.1 billion poor people were using 1 kW per person, and 4.1 TW in aggregate (Holdren 1991a). The total environmental impact was thus 13.1 TW.
> 
> Suppose that human population growth were eventually halted at 12 billion people and that development succeeded in raising global per capita energy use to 7.5 kW (approximately 4 kW below current US use). Then, total impact would be 90 TW. Because there is mounting evidence that 13.1 TW usage is too large for Earth to sustain, one needs little imagination to picture the environmental results of energy expenditures some sevenfold greater. Neither physicists nor ecologists are sanguine about improving technological performance sevenfold in the time available.
> 
> ...


 
Wiki also has a good summary of the overpopulation issues here: Overpopulation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia and sustainabbility here: Sustainability - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


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## Urien (Jun 1, 2009)

Seems like the Malthusian argument never goes away, every generation restates it to conjure the same visions of doom. 

If MTF were here he would no doubt mention the exponential expansion of human knowledge as opposed to mere growth of population. The same under-estimation of technological progress has been going on ever since the original argument began.

I think Skeptical had a point about humanity and its need to constantly horrify itself with potential calamity. It's in our nature it seems to contemplate mega death, in the same way we contemplate individual extinction. 

I'm not sure how much it helps to stand atop Masada and shout doom, doom, doom at the masses below. It can seem at times as though one wants the worse to be true. I'm not sure what the opposite of wishful thinking is, baleful thinking perhaps; it seems to me that on occasion we're terribly guilty of it.


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## Anthony G Williams (Jun 1, 2009)

Crying "doom" is not my position. What I am saying is that we can avoid a lot of the forthcoming problems caused by climate change, but only if we take appropriate action to do so. The three survey posts I have included in this thread are all about different practical ways of tackling the problems that are facing us.

Having said that, the population problem is a lot more intractable than technological solutions to climate change.


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## Urlik (Jun 1, 2009)

Urien said:


> If MTF were here he would no doubt mention the exponential expansion of human knowledge as opposed to mere growth of population. The same under-estimation of technological progress has been going on ever since the original argument began.


 
maybe, in the future, we will have the technology to repair the damage done to the environment, but that technology will arrive quicker if there is research and there is more chance of that if it is seen as the solution to a problem and that means the acknowledgement of the problem in the first place.
maybe there isn't a problem at all, but that still needs research which will only happen if people see it as important enough.



Urien said:


> I think Skeptical had a point about humanity and its need to constantly horrify itself with potential calamity. It's in our nature it seems to contemplate mega death, in the same way we contemplate individual extinction.


 
I think any rational person would rather plan for the worst and be proved wrong than hope for the best and come unstuck.
by seeing potential calamity we can avoid it. this is a good thing and one of the reasons we have survived as long as we have, individually and as a species.


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## Urien (Jun 1, 2009)

Urlik,

Oddly humans don't typically plan for the worst. On an individual basis our behaviourial biases are inherently (on average) optimistic, we expect the worst to not happen. If we expected the worse we wouldn't travel in cars, cross the road or take lifts. It's for this reason that I haven't fortified a farm house, bought guns or stocked up on cans of tuna. It's also the reason why most people don't have a significant level of savings. There are distinct blind spots in our rationality. 

It tends to be at a macro level where we contemplate the worst, hence the existence of a health service and an army. The worst is a depersonalised entity. And as a depersonalised entity it can be subject to the psychology of mass human action, which in of itself can be hysterical, prone to panic, exaggeration, wishful thinking, baleful thinking, group think and error. Fortunately and confusingly it can also be at times logical and correct.

Hence like the judgement to cross the road many things ultimately come down to a formal or informal probabilty weighted cost-benefit analysis. Unfortunately we're very weak at sorting important strands of debate from unimportant ones, classically we are not good at weighting an argument. 

Humans have a long history of been wrong en masse or as individuals; an appeal to rationality is perhaps an appeal to something that isn't really there. 

Bring on the benign AIs.


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## Nik (Jun 1, 2009)

Hi, I'm not crying 'DOOM'-- I'm just pointing out that a lot of popular assumptions are flawed.

After the chaos of those African famines, aid-agencies got *much* better at organising relief supplies. Snag is that system-slack has been removed, stock-piles are reduced, populations have increased, more people are living on vulnerable margins, we need those 'biblical' SevenGoodYears to build reserves...

Perhaps an exaggeration, but I've read that Mt StHelens blasting sideways instead up was very, very fortunate. Had much of that ash fallen across MidWest croplands, they would have collected toxic levels of fluoride etc, been off-line for a decade, might even now be fit only for bio-ethanol...

There are some seriously scary 'global' failure modes, and little can be done about most except hope they happen on some-one else's watch...


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## skeptical (Jun 1, 2009)

To* Urlik*
Re Ottoman Empire.

Humanity has predicted all kinds of disasters, and my point about the Ottomans was simply that, even in the best of times, there are lots of people who love to predict disaster.   That trend continues today.

Nor have I said that problems can be solved by ignoring them.   Rachel Carson's pesticide disaster was fixed by the invention of biodegradable pesticides.   Paul Ehrlich's famine disaster was prevented by the green revolution, and high yielding hybrid crops.   Ozone layer disaster was prevented by the Montreal Accord, and the banning of CFC's.  In the same way, humanity will deal with global warming through action on greenhouse gases.

To *Anthony*
Re population explosion.   The fact that the explosion is over is *very* relevent.   That is what makes it possible to predict, as the UN has, the slowing of population growth.

On the carrying capacity of the globe.  Your references simply make my point that estimates depend drastically on the assumptions you put in.   If youa re assuming that we retain high wilderness values and limited technology, then the carrying capacity will be no more than (perhaps) one billion.   However, we already know that wilderness values have been compromised and will probably be compromised much further (I am NOT suggesting this is a good thing) meaning more humans are possible.   Also we know that technology is increasing its abilities all the time, and what humanity will be capable of in 50 years will be far greater than today.

Just as a f'rinstance.  Lots of arguments talk of reducing soil fertility as a limiting factor for the world's carrying capacity.   Did you know that, it is possible to make the most fertile soil ever recorded by grinding granite to dust and blending that dust with composted leaf litter?   This is an expensive process, but fully within our capabilities today.    Within 50 years, it will be far easier and cheaper.   The concept of reducing soil fertility as a limiting factor may be ancient history by then.

In addition, modern hydroponics means massive increases in food production per hectare compared to growing in soil.   Combine modern, and futuristic forms of agriculture, and food production will be something fantastic.

Disasters can happen, and do.  However, humanity *does* learn from experience, and our technology does improves.    If we track the trends in social poverty/wealth over the past 150 years, we see a steadily increasing level.    Numbers of sick and hungry going down, and even the number killed in wars each year diminishing (though Bush tried to reverse that!).   I think this is a sufficiently long historic trend to be likely to continue.


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## Anthony G Williams (Jun 2, 2009)

No population explosion? Well, bearing in mind that the world's population is increasing by 80 million per year - that's like adding a country the size of Germany *every year*, but without *any* additional resources to cope with them - it is at least an out-of-control wildfire!

Hydroponics uses lots of fresh water, and that's likely to prove the biggest natural resource problem in the future. In many places, ground water is being "mined" like oil, and the aquifers are being used up. Then what? And that's even before taking into account the predicted effects of climate change in reducing the rainfall to many agricultural areas, or the increased demands resulting from the projected world population increase.

The carrying capacity of the earth in terms of the maximum population depends heavily on what standard of living you expect people to have. Bluntly, the fact that billions of people are extremely poor and use up very few resources - with hundreds of millions of them on a starvation diet - is fundamental to the fact that we can keep going now. The 32% rise in population over the next three decades is going to put even more pressure on resources. And advanced technological fixes cannot be afforded by the peoples who most need them.


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## skeptical (Jun 2, 2009)

The population explosion was a consequence of large average fertility.  50 years ago in the third world, it was 5.5.    Today it is only 2.5.    Thus the explosion is over.     That does not mean there is no increase in population.   Just that it is not explosive growth.    

All the predictions we have seen earlier in this thread show a reducing growth rate.   My quote from the United Nation's 'medium scenario' shows that the population will peak by 2075 and then start to reduce.   Other scenarios indicate a different peak.  No matter.  All show reducing growth rates, and this means the explosive growth is finished.

If you think we should be concentrating resources on reducing growth even further, that can be done.  George Bush had an idiotic policy of preventing foreign aid dedicated to birth control.   Under a new president, that has changed.   Surveys in third world countries show that most women do NOT want lots of kids, and the only reason why women still sometimes have too many is because they have no way of preventing pregnancy.

If the tools of birth control are made available to all women everywhere, the growth rate will reduce much more quickly.   Lobby your local politicians to dedicate more foreign aid to birth control.

On fresh water.  
Yes, there is a major problem.  However, this problem, too can be and will be reduced.   The biggest use of fresh water by people is inefficient irrigation of agricultural land.    The worst is the very common practise of flooding fields to irrigate them.  This wastes enormous amounts of water.   By switching to such technologies as trickle field irrigation, the effective quantity of water will double, or even triple.

Believe it or not, hydroponics uses a hell of a lot less water than most forms of irrigation of fields.   That is because the water is controlled, and can be recycled.   In most crude irrigation methods, vast amounts of water evaporate, or flow into streams rather than go into plants.   Hydroponics maximises the efficient use of water, by preventing such losses.

Carrying capacity depending on standard of living?   
Yes, but only up to a point.  There are far more variables affecting carrying capacity than just this.   There is, in fact, no reason at all why we cannot have 10 billion people on planet Earth, all having a standard of living equivalent to a year 2009 millionaire.   It takes better economics and better technology than we have right now, but is eminently do-able.   Sadly, it is not likely to happen any time soon, mainly due to human stupidity and corruption.

This is something well understood by all wealthy people.  Wealth is generated mainly by human ingenuity.   It does not need vast amounts of natural resources.  Ask Bill Gates, who became a multi-billionaire based purely on ideas.   

When I was younger, I calculated that I could become a millionaire by a process of postponing material gratification, thus saving money, and careful investment.   It took me 25 years.    In fact, anyone in the wealthy west can do it, if they rise above the standard tendency to blow their earnings.

For those in the impoverished African nations, and other poor areas, it can be done also.  Except that here, it has to start by getting non corrupt and smart leaders.   I am often heartened by the example of Singapore (and a few other places) which lifted themselves by their own bootstraps.  Singapore was occupied by Japan in WWII, and when the occupiers left, they left the place an economic disaster area, with total poverty.   Under good leadership, and due to the hard work and savings of the people, Singapore rose to the point where its average income is higher than that for the OECD average, in just 50 years.   All things are possible if human ingenuity and hard work is permitted to operate without corruption based, or stupidity based restrictions.


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## Anthony G Williams (Jun 2, 2009)

skeptical said:


> The population explosion was a consequence of large average fertility. 50 years ago in the third world, it was 5.5. Today it is only 2.5. Thus the explosion is over. That does not mean there is no increase in population. Just that it is not explosive growth.


 
Can we get away from your phrase "explosive growth"? It is unscientific and emotive. Let's just stick with the undisputed figures - that the world's population is increasing by 80 million every year (that's more than the population of the USA every four years), that on current trends it will hit 9 billion before the middle of this century (that's a 32% increase) and that long-term estimates have it stabilising in the 8 to 10 billion range (that's 1.2 to 3.2 billion more than today). And that no more land, fresh water or other resources are being provided to cope with these increased numbers.



> Surveys in third world countries show that most women do NOT want lots of kids, and the only reason why women still sometimes have too many is because they have no way of preventing pregnancy.
> 
> If the tools of birth control are made available to all women everywhere, the growth rate will reduce much more quickly. Lobby your local politicians to dedicate more foreign aid to birth control.


 
I agree with that, but more is needed than just the technology of birth control. You can provide as much of that as you like in a highly male-dominated society like the Taleban's and it will make little or no difference. What really matters most to women is social change, especially education, and the opportunity to take control of their own lives. This is being provided in some developing countries by giving small business loans just to women, so they can make themselves financially independent.

However, even that doesn't help the poorest countries where people are barely surviving - or not even that. There has to be some sort of economy functioning for women to become a part of. Large parts of Africa are just disaster areas, with entire populations dependent on international aid.



> On fresh water.
> Yes, there is a major problem. However, this problem, too can be and will be reduced. The biggest use of fresh water by people is inefficient irrigation of agricultural land. The worst is the very common practise of flooding fields to irrigate them. This wastes enormous amounts of water. By switching to such technologies as trickle field irrigation, the effective quantity of water will double, or even triple.
> 
> Believe it or not, hydroponics uses a hell of a lot less water than most forms of irrigation of fields. That is because the water is controlled, and can be recycled. In most crude irrigation methods, vast amounts of water evaporate, or flow into streams rather than go into plants. Hydroponics maximises the efficient use of water, by preventing such losses.


 
Hydroponics is an extremely expensive way of growing crops. Feasible for a first-world country perhaps; although farmers in the USA and EU are already subsidised, making our food cheaper than its economic price, without taking on the higher costs of hydroponics. It's just out of the question for the poorest countries.



> Carrying capacity depending on standard of living?
> Yes, but only up to a point. There are far more variables affecting carrying capacity than just this. There is, in fact, no reason at all why we cannot have 10 billion people on planet Earth, all having a standard of living equivalent to a year 2009 millionaire. It takes better economics and better technology than we have right now, but is eminently do-able. Sadly, it is not likely to happen any time soon, mainly due to human stupidity and corruption.


 
You are fond of making sweeping claims without posting any evidence to back them up - I have been posting lots of references and links to sites with more information. In particular, the Wiki summaries on overpopulation and sustainability which I posted links to before make it clear that the prevailing view among professionals in this field is that you are wrong.



> This is something well understood by all wealthy people. Wealth is generated mainly by human ingenuity. It does not need vast amounts of natural resources. Ask Bill Gates, who became a multi-billionaire based purely on ideas.


 
Bill Gates started work in what was already the richest and most advanced economy on the planet, where people had relatively huge sums to spend on non-essentials, and where their per-capital use of resources is many times the global average (and hundreds of times that of the poorest countries). You don't have to be a genius to siphon off a little of that surplus income for yourself. The problems of the poorest countries will not be solved by clever technical ideas.



> For those in the impoverished African nations, and other poor areas, it can be done also. Except that here, it has to start by getting non corrupt and smart leaders....All things are possible if human ingenuity and hard work is permitted to operate without corruption based, or stupidity based restrictions.


 
Sure, but as I said, if nobody behaved dishonestly or stupidly we'd have no crime, no wars, need no armies or even any laws. But that isn't the way the world is - that isn't the way people are made. As I've quoted before:



> Planning a world for highly cooperative, antimaterialistic, ecologically sensitive vegetarians would be of little value in correcting today's situation. Indeed, a statement by demographer Nathan Keyfitz (1991) puts into perspective the view that behavioral changes will keep _H. sapiens_ below social carrying capacity:
> 
> "If we have one point of empirically backed knowledge, it is that _bad policies are widespread and persistent. Social science has to take account of them/"_ [our emphasis]​In short, it seems prudent to evaluate the problem of sustainability for selfish, myopic people who are poorly organized politically, socially, and economically.


 
We seem just to be repeating ourselves now, so I'll bow out on that note unless any new points are made.


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## skeptical (Jun 2, 2009)

Anthony
The reason we are repeating ourselves is due to the fact that there is misunderstanding.   I know you are misunderstanding some of my points, and it may be that I misunderstand some of yours.

First : explosive population growth.   The whole point I was making is that the big growth was in the past, and we are now experiencing lesser growth as a result of the earlier growth.   We both agree that growth rates are reducing and population growth will in time plateau out.

Yes, in many places social change and education are essential.  They are needed just as birth control is needed.   It is all coming, and it can come faster with the right effort by western nations.

Hydroponics too expensive?    Everything is too expensive when first set up, and becomes cheaper as it is used more, and in larger quantities.   In fact, I eat a lot of hydroponically grown food.  It is, indeed, more expensive than seasonal food of the same type, but can be grown pretty much all year round.  The price is not excessive - more expensive than seasonal, but not too much more.   The key to getting hydroponically grown food down in price is to grow more.  Large scale agriculture is always cheaper than small scale.

The reason I am not posting references on carrying capacity is because it is meaningless.   You can get estimates that vary by orders of magnitude.  As I said before, it all depends on your basic assumptions.   This is not something that can be called an exact science, and cannot be measured or calculated to three decimal points.   It is simply someone's guesstimate based on the assumptions at the time.  And I do not want to get into an argument over whether your so-called expert is better than my so-called expert.   The people who make these guesses are less accurate than economists.   And I was recently told that God invented economists in order to make weather forecasters look good!

Even something more apparently exact such as estimating how long a natural resource will last has been shown over the years to be utterly inaccurate.   The Club of Rome in 1973 published their study called _Limits to Growth_.  In it, for example, they predicted no oil left by the year 2000.  Clearly they were wrong.   And anyone who claims to know how many people the world can support are also just making guesses.

The usual reason such people are proven wrong is that they utterly underestimate human progress.  Dr. Paul Ehrlich in 1968 predicted a billion dead from malnutrition before 1980.   He was wrong because he did not take into account improvements in agricultural productivity.  All kinds of neo-Malthusians  have made similar errors.    Those who claim limits on the Earth's carrying capacity are generally also failing to take into account human progress.   Personally, I have no doubt that, in 50 years, the new technology will permit things that current would-be prophets simply do not dream of.

Your last point seems to imply that people cannot change, and that Africa will always be saddled with corrupt and incompetent leaders.   I need to point out that European leaders 200 years ago were just as corrupt and incompetent as African leaders are today.  And we *do* get good African leaders.  Obviously Nelson Mandela is a shining example.  But he is not alone, and there are many Africans that are caring and competent.  Given time, there is no reason why they cannot lead their people into real prosperity.  South Africa, Botswana and Namibia, for example, are better off than most of Africa, and indeed, many non African nations.
SA leads continent in prosperity - South Africa - The Good News

Since you want a reference, try reading the following.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/5.02/ffsimon_pr.html

And I quote :

_These, he says, are the actual and empirical facts of the matter, information available to any inquirer. Simon first got a taste of those facts while studying the data amassed by the economic demographer Simon Kuznets (winner of the 1971 Nobel Prize in economics) and by economist Richard Easterlin, in the mid-1960s. Kuznets had followed population growth trends that went back 100 years and compared them against standard of living, while Easterlin analyzed the same data for selected countries since World War II. The studies showed that while population growth rates varied from country to country and from year to year, there was no general negative correlation with living standards. People did not become poorer as the population expanded; rather, as their numbers multiplied, they produced what they needed to support themselves, and they prospered. _
_The trends were the same for food supply. Rising population did not mean less food, just the opposite: instead of skyrocketing as predicted by the Malthusian theory, food prices, relative to wages, had declined historically. In the United States, for example, between 1800 and 1980, the price of wheat plummeted while the population grew from 5 million to 226 million. Accord-ing to Malthus, all those people should have been long dead, the country reduced to a handful of fur trappers on the brink of starvation. In fact, there was a booming and flourishing populace, one that was better-fed, taller, healthier, more disease-free, with far less infant mortality and longer life expectancy than ever before in human history. Obesity, not starvation, was the major American food problem in 1980. Those were the facts._


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## ManTimeForgot (Jun 3, 2009)

We must be careful when arguing about population growth/expansion that we take into account useful land area (housing) and arable land to non-arable land ratio.  The reason why "population explosion" is curtailing is exactly because housing is starting to become a problem world-wide.  We can only house so many people when building in "strictly" two dimensions.

So in a general sense Malthus is correct.  Any time population exceeds the various mitigating constraints such as useful land area, maximum arable land area, maximum volume of sanitation, etc then some form of backlash is going to start retarding human population growth until a technology comes about to shore up that limit in some way.


MTF


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## Granfalloon (Jun 4, 2009)

Okay, so The topic was "Global Warming and SF", Right? I think Anthony's original point was that any current SF being written (assuming it includes Earth's future) should take into account the issue and what resulting effects/challenges and/or solutions occured once the situation became internecine, etc. I would agree that it could certainly be included in the backstory or "world-building" sections of the writing, and that it would also serve the purpose of getting that many more readers "on board" with the issue, and stir up new concern, or better yet - preventative action.

Even those nay-sayers who don't believe the scientific findings are real, or that the whole idea of Global Warming is somehow "alarmist", must agree that the air is getting polluted. What few people understand, and doesn't seem to have been mentioned in this thread is that there is really a double threat. I cannot post the link because I'm new, but here it is if you want to cut and paste: "www-dot-ess-home-dot-com/news/global-warming/ozone-depletion-dot-asp" The atmosphere is made of 3 layers - many know that. What they may not realize is that when heat is trapped in the lower layer (the troposphere) it isn't radiating back through the stratosphere where the ozone is. Because global warming traps heat in the troposphere, less heat returns through the stratosphere which ultimately cools the stratosphere. Ironically, this doesn't help, it hurts. A colder stratoshpere equals less ozone. The ozone layer protects _all _life from harmful Ultraviolet-B (UV-B) radiation. So, now you have a runaway system where one problem actually enhances (worsens) the other one. Eventually, food crops will die from over exposure to this harmful radiation, and people will starve. The Earths climactic system is extremely complex, and just because it gets colder where you live doesn't mean global warming isn't real. In fact, sometimes the effects of global warming are actually moving cold air to places where it has not normally gone, and once it gets warmed up, there will be less and less cool air to replace it. 

My argument is that all pollution is bad anyway. Chemicals that had never filled the air, the lakes, the rivers, the dirt are being produced by companies whose only aim is to make profit. Not only are they greedy, but they are incredibly short-sighted. Science must be tempered with wisdom, and as was stated in the documentary An Inconvienient Truth - (paraphrased) "A man will tell the truth, as long as it doesn't affect his paycheck."


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## Urlik (Jun 4, 2009)

Granfalloon said:


> Okay, so The topic was "Global Warming and SF", Right? I think Anthony's original point was that any current SF being written (assuming it includes Earth's future) should take into account the issue and what resulting effects/challenges and/or solutions occured once the situation became internecine, etc. I would agree that it could certainly be included in the backstory or "world-building" sections of the writing.


 
in the preface of an anthology of SF short stories, the editor describes SF as "stories set in the worlds of if". given that, it makes sense for authors to use it in one way or another


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## Anthony G Williams (Jun 10, 2009)

I've compiled, edited and added to my three blog posts and put the resulting article on my website for permanent reference, here: Global Warming and SF


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