Jake Wagner
Santa Barbara, CA
Whether Republicans are willing to admit it or not, the evidence for global warming is overwhelming. Among other things, before and after pictures of glaciers show melting and satellite photos show a steadily decreasing Northern ice cap. It is also true that the effects are potentially devastating.
But global warming is only one symptom of overpopulation, and overpopulation is the crisis that even environmentalists seem unwilling to discuss. Why is this issue never discussed even in supposedly liberal newspapers like the NY Times?
In addition to global warming, overpopulation is causing the world to run out of nonrenewable resources such as oil. Several decades ago, geologist Marion King Hubbert predicted that the lower 48 states would run out of easily recoverable oil in 1965-70 and his prediction turned out to hold. Applying his methods to total world oil production suggests peak world crued oil production may have already occurred or will shortly. The issue is complicated by the fact that as oil more expensive it becomes economically feasible to obtain oil from oil sands, oil shales, oil from coal and so-forth.
In addition, other resources are limited, including water and land to grow food. For example, some news sources have correctly blamed rising food prices for the unrest in the Middle East leading to the downfall of Mubarak; see http://www.thestreet.com/story/10992047/
It has been reported for years that the capital of Yemen is running out of water. Yet not only in Egypt and Yemen, but also in Libya and Bahrain, population growth per year has exceeded 2% per year, way above the world average. Amidst all of the reporting, it is seldom mentioned that population growth in countries with limited resources makes unrest inevitable.
Even in the US, breadbasket to the world, over 40 million people are now enrolled in the food stamp program. Census figures show that from April 2000 to April 2010, the US population grew by over 27 million people while the number of US jobs actually went down! The simplest explanation is that overpopulation within the US is one of the primary reasons that living standards among the middle class and poor have stagnated.
What good does it do to cut down auto emissions by 10 or 20% when the population grows by the same amount? The real issue is not global warming at all, but population growth. And Democrats, just like Republicans, have their heads in the sand on this issue.
Michael Hutchinson
NY
[Most supporters of the global warming thesis] miss the point. The real debate is not about whether global warming is occurring, but rather what is causing it. Your comment about "large numbers of prominent scientists" and quotes of Upton Sinclair ("it’s difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it") actually cut both ways.
Look, the volcanoes continue to spew CO2 at 100 times the rate we do, and have done so for the last billion years. The Earth simply doesn't care whether or not you drive a hybrid - or burn smokeless fuel in Princeton - GOP idiocy notwithstanding.
This is of profound importance in the wake of Fukushima.
DGH
Seattle
I spent my entire life thanking the scientists. Disney World had those wonderful programs back in the late fifties early sixties. They gave all credit to the scientific-technical community. Advances in the simple tools for daily life. This was a follow-on for the A-bomb which all boasted was an achievement of the S-T community.
But we had always listen to our TV and now it is telling us that all of these scientists who had given us the spaceship and the myriad other modern devices were wrong, what they were saying was confused.
And a man like James Inhofoe could stand up and contradict the many scientists statements. A man like Jimmie I. could get a hearing without any training or background for the statements he would make. He might make a biblical reference, BUT When I Was A Kid we believed our scientists because we were at WAR! No man when we are at war will stand up and say these stupid things. But we haven't really been at war since 1945. So, a man like Jimmie I. will say stupid things and it will not damage his political position.
I yearn for those days of "Disney," When America not only believed their Scientists but chose their opinions on matters related to their expertise.
Scientist
California
As a Scientist who works in numerical methods for solution of systems of differential equations I can tell you point blank that current estimates of the dangers of global climate instability are woefully understated, even by articles like this one. The danger isn't just long term, there are significant short term dangers that are hidden by the use of "smoothing" in the simulation codes commonly used in such problems. Specifically when "leap frog" integration is used which is common in the field. As a scientist, I fear that we will fail to act decisively until its far too late to stop widespread loss of human life, and as a father, I'm sad for what that will mean for my children and grandchildren.
John Kova
New York
Once again, there is no empirical evidence that A) global warming, oops climate change exists beyond the typical and expected peaks and valleys since scientific discovery has actually been able to measure such things i.e. temperature, humidity, ice flow, etc.. Heck, we've only been keeping temperatures since the 1840s, but who is counting right.
B) Even if A is correct (which it isn't), there is no evidence to support that man is causing global warming, oops climate change. Remember that ice age that occurred over 20,000 years ago? Well, the ice didn't melt because cavemen were driving Cadillacs, flying around in private jets ala Al Gore, nor were they burning coal. Well? So? Cat gotcha tongue?
While in high school in the 1980s and photosynthesis was being explained by my biology teacher aka warm hearted union member, the production of CO2 was necessary to plant and vegetation. Now unless I missed the revision on CNN at some Nobel Prize award between Reagan and Obama, shouldn't the earth by overrun by plants? Shouldn't deserts be full of brush? Shouldn't Scandanavia been able to extend its growing season? And if growing seasons were extended, would that be a bad thing? Ah, but don't answer those logical questions, just stick to the ususal Liberal "oh, it must be getting hotter, look at all those evil cars on the road."
FredDoug
NJ
As a climate scientist (to be distinguished from a climate modeler), my research concerns how historical climate changes have influenced the biosphere. So let me state the facts that Paul Krugman de nies.
(a) Current global temperatures are not excessive, neither in degree nor rate of change, compared to those that have occurred historically.
(b) The Medieval, Roman, and Minoan warm periods were as warm (or warmer) than today, as was the Pliocene, yet there was no "runaway" temperature rise that Krugman's favorite models propose (note, Krugman is a true macroeconomist; he cherry picks models that agree with his pre-selected ideology). The past times, which were warmer than today, did not generate runaways through the loss of the albedo from melting polar ice, nor through the release of methane from clathrates, nor any of the other factors that climate modelers claim pose this threat.
(c) Computer climate models that predict such catastrophes are highly parameterized mathematical constructs (quite different from "science"). They have failed to predict anything better than random (a broken clock is wrong twice a day). Nor do they account for the Medieval, Roman, Minoan and Pliocene warm periods.
(d) It is entirely clear why "number crunching" climate models fail: They do not capture correctly factors that are significant regulators of Earth's temperature, including cloud formation (low clouds damp temperature rise), the biosphere, and the oceans. Indeed, to offset the rise in temperature that is expected to result from the increase in human-generated CO2, low clouds would need to increase by 2%. Krugman's models do not begin to capture this detail.
(e) Human generated CO2 is about 10% of total CO2, which which is about 10% of the greenhouse effect of water. Without major, unopposed amplifying feedbacks, changing human CO2 emissions by any amount would have no significant effect on the global temperature.
(f) The fact that global temperature has regulated itself for a million years between two states, the Ice Ages and the current warm period, means that there are opposing feedbacks, clouds undoubtedly being one of them, opposing feedbacks that are not captured in alarmist models.
(g) The only scientific grounds for any alarm whatsoever is the possibility that human activity might radically change the mechanism by which the Earth has naturally regulated its temperatures between these two states. There is very little evidence for that possibility, however.
People like Al Gore and Paul Krugman simply deny the conclusions that a half century of climate science have produced.. Having corrupted climate science, they have attracted a small group of computer modelers who, as climategate has shown, will game peer review and hie data, will give them the "science" that they want to further their political agenda.
And what if we climate scientists are wrong, and CO2 IS a problem? Well, as Jim Hansen has pointed out, the impact of "cap and trade" taxes will be so small as to make no difference. Remember, we can reduce the US CO2 emission to zero and have growth in China and India re-create it in just three years.
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