Global Warming and SF

[skeptical]

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

 

[Nik]

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'...

 

[AE35Unit]

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

 

[Urien]

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.

 

[Anthony G Williams]

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.

 

[Anthony G Williams]

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!"

 

[AE35Unit]

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

Unwisely!

 

[Nik]

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...

 

[AE35Unit]

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.

 

[Urien]

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.

 

[AE35Unit]

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

 

[skeptical]

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.

 

[Nik]

"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...

 

[Anthony G Williams]

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.

 

[skeptical]

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.

 

[Anthony G Williams]

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...

 

[Urlik]

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

 

[skeptical]

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.

 

[Urlik]

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?

 

[Anthony G Williams]

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.

There is, indeed, little justification for counting on technological miracles to accomodate the billions more people soon to crowd the planet when the vast majority of the current population subsists under conditions that no one reading this article would voluntarily accept. Past expectations of the rate of development and penetration of improved technologies have not been fulfilled. In the 1960s, for example, it was widely claimed that technological advances, such as nuclear agroindustrial complexes (e.g., ORNL 1968), would provide 5.5 billion people with food, health care, education, and opportunity. Although the Green Revolution did increase food production more rapidly than some pessimists (e.g., Paddock and Paddock 1967) predicted, the gains were not generally made on a sustainable basis and are thus unlikely to continue (Ehrlich et al. 1992). At present, approximately a billion people do not obtain enough dietary energy to carry out normal work activities.

Furthermore, as many nonscientists fail to grasp, technological achievements cannot make biophysical carrying capacity infinite. Consider food production, for example. Soil can be made more productive by adding nutrients and irrigation; yields could possibly be increased further if it were economically feasible to grow crops hydroponically and sunlight were supplemented by artificial light. However, biophysical limits would be reached by the maximal possible photosynthetic efficiency. Even if a method were found to manufacture carbohydrates that was more efficient than photosynthesis, that efficiency, too, would have a maximum. The bottom line is that the laws of thermodynamics inevitably limit biophysical carrying capacity (Fremlin 1964) if shortages of inputs or ecological collapse do not intervene first.

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