"We have been sitting on a time bomb and have only just realised that it exists. Man-made greenhouse gases may set it off but it will go off by itself anyway eventually."
Synopsis Prior to the present interglacial period temperature fluctuations of 2-4 degrees commonly occurred. The past 5000 years have been unusually climatically stable and this has been accompanied by an unprecedented growth in world population. The period of climatic stability is ending. Mankind is now confronted with two alternatives, either to geo-engineer the climate so that 9 billion or more people can survive or to reduce the population. The failure of climate models to predict recent events in the arctic means that we do not, as yet, know how to geo-engineer the climate safely. Unilateral geo-engineering may be seen as a form of warfare and may be met with violent responses if mistakes are made. Geo-engineering may also cause the deaths of much of the planet's wildlife.
The problem of global warming is just one aspect of the way that the population of the world has got out of kilter with the amount of space and resources available in the world. Back about 25,000 years ago there was an ice age. Suppose an ice age happened today. If there were a billion people in the world, and people were charitable, the 300 million affected by the ice age would just migrate towards the equator, there would be plenty of food and other resources for all. Now suppose there are 7 billion people in the world. The 2 billion affected by the ice age would overwhelm areas that are nearer to the equator and vast numbers of people would die. You might think this is an imaginary scenario but ice ages frequently happen:
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
The five spikes on the graph correspond to severe global warmings and the deep troughs to ice ages. Notice that some of the spikes are very steep: catastrophic changes happen in centuries, not millennia. Even the smaller spikes are changes in global temperatures comparable to the predicted changes that have sparked the current global warming panic. In fact the past 5000 years have been surprisingly stable, given that a 3 or 4 degree change in global mean temperature is fairly catastrophic (IPCC report: Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report). The recent period of stability may have nurtured the growth of civilisation but we have no reason to believe that the current stability will continue.
The graph below shows ice core data for the recent past. The "Ice core temperature" is not global temperature but a measure that correlates with global temperatures. The graph covers the period that is the very end of the graph above.
Notice how catastrophic, historical events such as the "Little Ice Age" and "Medieval Warm Period" are tiny changes compared with what can happen. Mankind has had a lucky few millennia and this stability will end eventually whatever our actions so having a population of 7 billion is clearly unsustainable in the long term. The threatened cessation of the recent climatic stability exposes the real issue: if the population of the world is close to the carrying capacity of the world then natural changes in climate will kill large numbers of people. We have been sitting on a time bomb and have only just realised that it exists. Man-made greenhouse gases may set it off but it will go off by itself anyway eventually. Even without climatic change the overpopulation itself will set off a catastrophic collapse (see The Limits to Growth).
Mankind is faced with two alternatives, either to geo-engineer the climate to prevent natural or manmade fluctuations of a few degrees centigrade or to reduce the population so that unforeseen climatic events can be accommodated by migration or changes in agriculture. If mankind pursues geo-engineering it will be essential that our climate models are accurate. Without accurate climate models it will be impossible to predict the overall effect of intervening. Without accurate models interventions could cause worse problems than those they were designed to avoid. Unfortunately the current models have failed to predict even simple changes in climate (See Stroeve et al 2007. Arctic sea ice decline: Faster than forecast), as can be seen from comparing the black line in the graph with the zone covered by the IPCC predictions:
The palaeontological record shows that truly catastrophic natural changes in climate can occur in decades, will the geo-engineers be able to predict how their interventions will interact with natural catastrophes? Suppose the sudden falls in temperature in the record are due to volcanic activity and we have seeded the upper atmosphere with aerosols, will this create a doubled effect and kill everyone?
If geo-engineering is pursued it may also become the flashpoint for future wars, for instance, if the Indians unilaterally decide to seed the high atmosphere to reduce warming and, as an unforeseen consequence China becomes an arid desert, what will be the response of the Chinese?
Apart from the possibility of catastrophic mistakes, if mankind decides to geo-engineer the climate and permit continued population growth there will be no relief for other forms of life on the planet. The vast population will mean that ever increasing amounts of the globe are being appropriated for agriculture. Even our current population has led to the "Holocene Extinction Event" which is comparable to the damage done to the biosphere when the dinosaurs died out. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN):
"The latest update of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ shows that 17,291 species out of the 47,677 assessed species are threatened with extinction."
This extinction is due to human population pressure, not climate change, so the refusal to lower population and instead to use geo-engineering is just plain evil, it is the urbanisation of the Garden of Eden.
If we wish to have a good standard of life and allow the continuance of wildlife on this planet the ideal population is probably near one half of its current level - about 3-4 billion (The Optimum Population Trust considers this order of population to be appropriate). The population of the UK should not exceed the capacity of domestic food production - about 40 million (see DEFRA report). Incidentally, the figure of 40 million is obvious to anyone who has been involved in agriculture but townies look at fields and think "look at all that empty space, you could put a housing estate on it!". The key fact here is that what a townie sees as empty space is actually part of the farming industry, it produces our food and recycles carbon dioxide and, yes, CO2 recycling has already been invented, its called agriculture. Build on a field and you destroy yet another CO2 recycling plant.
The strangest aspect of modern population control is that people routinely say that Thomas Malthus was proven to be wrong. But we are actually witnessing the results of overpopulation: global warming and the mass extinction of life on this planet shows that Malthus was right. We've got away with rampant population growth for a century but now the obvious truth is occurring, we cannot keep filling the world with people without occasional disasters in which billions die.
Despite the obvious dangers of overpopulation at a time when climate change could radically reduce food supplies the British Government is trying to increase the population of the UK. Even the ex Archbishop of Canterbury is opposed to this insanity, he and a group of MPs wrote:
"We are gravely concerned about the rapid increase in the population of England that is now forecast. We note that the official projections show the population of the UK will increase from 61.4 million in 2008 to exceed 70 million by 2029. Over the next 25 years the population will increase by 10 million, nearly all of the increase being in England. 70% – 7 million – will be due to immigration. We believe that immigration on such a scale will have a significant impact on our public services, our quality of life and on the nature of our society."Daily Telegraph 6/1/10
They did not mention that with a population of 70 million one of those normal climatic transients of temperature that are evident in the ice cores might cause a famine that could kill 20 million English people or more.
The really big question is why do people want to fill up the UK, and other parts of the world with people, destroying the biosphere and risking catastrophe? Why would you be in favour of taking such a huge risk with the lives of your grandchildren?
Postscript a comment below suggested that the UK population might already be at 77 million. I checked this and found the following article in the Independent (though the author of this article failed to spot that such high levels of population are unsustainable in the long term and thought they were a "good thing").
Note: please enter any objections to the use of images that may be copyright in the comments. The images will be removed if this is the case.
Written 24/02/2009
Also see:
The Limits to Growth
The Evidence for Global Warming. (1) the Himalayas
The Evidence for Global Warming. (2) Analysis using source data for global changes
Global warming (3) man or nature?
The strange case of the missing CO2
Global Warming: What Will Change?
Is climate change a threat because of overpopulation?
Blue Haze, Brown Clouds and the need to stop Geoengineering before it begins.
Global warming: what do we do now?
WWF 2006, 2008. WWF Living Planet Reports http://www.panda.org/news_facts/publications/living_planet_report/
The Optimum Population Trust.
DEFRA. Ensuring the UK’s Food Security in a Changing World. A Defra Discussion Paper. July 2008 http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/food/pdf/Ensuring-UK-Food-Security-in-a-changing-world-170708.pdf
Synopsis Prior to the present interglacial period temperature fluctuations of 2-4 degrees commonly occurred. The past 5000 years have been unusually climatically stable and this has been accompanied by an unprecedented growth in world population. The period of climatic stability is ending. Mankind is now confronted with two alternatives, either to geo-engineer the climate so that 9 billion or more people can survive or to reduce the population. The failure of climate models to predict recent events in the arctic means that we do not, as yet, know how to geo-engineer the climate safely. Unilateral geo-engineering may be seen as a form of warfare and may be met with violent responses if mistakes are made. Geo-engineering may also cause the deaths of much of the planet's wildlife.
The problem of global warming is just one aspect of the way that the population of the world has got out of kilter with the amount of space and resources available in the world. Back about 25,000 years ago there was an ice age. Suppose an ice age happened today. If there were a billion people in the world, and people were charitable, the 300 million affected by the ice age would just migrate towards the equator, there would be plenty of food and other resources for all. Now suppose there are 7 billion people in the world. The 2 billion affected by the ice age would overwhelm areas that are nearer to the equator and vast numbers of people would die. You might think this is an imaginary scenario but ice ages frequently happen:
Courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
The five spikes on the graph correspond to severe global warmings and the deep troughs to ice ages. Notice that some of the spikes are very steep: catastrophic changes happen in centuries, not millennia. Even the smaller spikes are changes in global temperatures comparable to the predicted changes that have sparked the current global warming panic. In fact the past 5000 years have been surprisingly stable, given that a 3 or 4 degree change in global mean temperature is fairly catastrophic (IPCC report: Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report). The recent period of stability may have nurtured the growth of civilisation but we have no reason to believe that the current stability will continue.
The graph below shows ice core data for the recent past. The "Ice core temperature" is not global temperature but a measure that correlates with global temperatures. The graph covers the period that is the very end of the graph above.
Notice how catastrophic, historical events such as the "Little Ice Age" and "Medieval Warm Period" are tiny changes compared with what can happen. Mankind has had a lucky few millennia and this stability will end eventually whatever our actions so having a population of 7 billion is clearly unsustainable in the long term. The threatened cessation of the recent climatic stability exposes the real issue: if the population of the world is close to the carrying capacity of the world then natural changes in climate will kill large numbers of people. We have been sitting on a time bomb and have only just realised that it exists. Man-made greenhouse gases may set it off but it will go off by itself anyway eventually. Even without climatic change the overpopulation itself will set off a catastrophic collapse (see The Limits to Growth).
Mankind is faced with two alternatives, either to geo-engineer the climate to prevent natural or manmade fluctuations of a few degrees centigrade or to reduce the population so that unforeseen climatic events can be accommodated by migration or changes in agriculture. If mankind pursues geo-engineering it will be essential that our climate models are accurate. Without accurate climate models it will be impossible to predict the overall effect of intervening. Without accurate models interventions could cause worse problems than those they were designed to avoid. Unfortunately the current models have failed to predict even simple changes in climate (See Stroeve et al 2007. Arctic sea ice decline: Faster than forecast), as can be seen from comparing the black line in the graph with the zone covered by the IPCC predictions:
 |
| Graph 1: Arctic sea ice area, observed versus predicted from climate models. Based on Climate Denial Crock of the Week (Adapted from Stroeve et al 2007) |
The palaeontological record shows that truly catastrophic natural changes in climate can occur in decades, will the geo-engineers be able to predict how their interventions will interact with natural catastrophes? Suppose the sudden falls in temperature in the record are due to volcanic activity and we have seeded the upper atmosphere with aerosols, will this create a doubled effect and kill everyone?
If geo-engineering is pursued it may also become the flashpoint for future wars, for instance, if the Indians unilaterally decide to seed the high atmosphere to reduce warming and, as an unforeseen consequence China becomes an arid desert, what will be the response of the Chinese?
Apart from the possibility of catastrophic mistakes, if mankind decides to geo-engineer the climate and permit continued population growth there will be no relief for other forms of life on the planet. The vast population will mean that ever increasing amounts of the globe are being appropriated for agriculture. Even our current population has led to the "Holocene Extinction Event" which is comparable to the damage done to the biosphere when the dinosaurs died out. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN):
"The latest update of the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species™ shows that 17,291 species out of the 47,677 assessed species are threatened with extinction."
This extinction is due to human population pressure, not climate change, so the refusal to lower population and instead to use geo-engineering is just plain evil, it is the urbanisation of the Garden of Eden.
If we wish to have a good standard of life and allow the continuance of wildlife on this planet the ideal population is probably near one half of its current level - about 3-4 billion (The Optimum Population Trust considers this order of population to be appropriate). The population of the UK should not exceed the capacity of domestic food production - about 40 million (see DEFRA report). Incidentally, the figure of 40 million is obvious to anyone who has been involved in agriculture but townies look at fields and think "look at all that empty space, you could put a housing estate on it!". The key fact here is that what a townie sees as empty space is actually part of the farming industry, it produces our food and recycles carbon dioxide and, yes, CO2 recycling has already been invented, its called agriculture. Build on a field and you destroy yet another CO2 recycling plant.
The strangest aspect of modern population control is that people routinely say that Thomas Malthus was proven to be wrong. But we are actually witnessing the results of overpopulation: global warming and the mass extinction of life on this planet shows that Malthus was right. We've got away with rampant population growth for a century but now the obvious truth is occurring, we cannot keep filling the world with people without occasional disasters in which billions die.
Despite the obvious dangers of overpopulation at a time when climate change could radically reduce food supplies the British Government is trying to increase the population of the UK. Even the ex Archbishop of Canterbury is opposed to this insanity, he and a group of MPs wrote:
"We are gravely concerned about the rapid increase in the population of England that is now forecast. We note that the official projections show the population of the UK will increase from 61.4 million in 2008 to exceed 70 million by 2029. Over the next 25 years the population will increase by 10 million, nearly all of the increase being in England. 70% – 7 million – will be due to immigration. We believe that immigration on such a scale will have a significant impact on our public services, our quality of life and on the nature of our society."Daily Telegraph 6/1/10
They did not mention that with a population of 70 million one of those normal climatic transients of temperature that are evident in the ice cores might cause a famine that could kill 20 million English people or more.
The really big question is why do people want to fill up the UK, and other parts of the world with people, destroying the biosphere and risking catastrophe? Why would you be in favour of taking such a huge risk with the lives of your grandchildren?
Postscript a comment below suggested that the UK population might already be at 77 million. I checked this and found the following article in the Independent (though the author of this article failed to spot that such high levels of population are unsustainable in the long term and thought they were a "good thing").
Note: please enter any objections to the use of images that may be copyright in the comments. The images will be removed if this is the case.
Written 24/02/2009
Also see:
The Limits to Growth
The Evidence for Global Warming. (1) the Himalayas
The Evidence for Global Warming. (2) Analysis using source data for global changes
Global warming (3) man or nature?
The strange case of the missing CO2
Global Warming: What Will Change?
Is climate change a threat because of overpopulation?
Blue Haze, Brown Clouds and the need to stop Geoengineering before it begins.
Global warming: what do we do now?
WWF 2006, 2008. WWF Living Planet Reports http://www.panda.org/news_facts/publications/living_planet_report/
The Optimum Population Trust.
DEFRA. Ensuring the UK’s Food Security in a Changing World. A Defra Discussion Paper. July 2008 http://www.defra.gov.uk/foodfarm/food/pdf/Ensuring-UK-Food-Security-in-a-changing-world-170708.pdf
Comments
Reported on radio 4 farming today at 77 million plus.
The independent sunday newspaper October 2007 80 million plus.
Result reached via the four largest supermarkets food sale's.
A Top agriculture advisor after all food production cannot work on false stats.
An home office employee confirmed the figures' off the record in fear of his job.
The writer of the article said- "The noise you hear is the falling off the record"
BNET reported this also, was removed a few months later.
I sent a copy to migration watch- no reply.
Sent a copy to optimum population trust- they replied saying- they have to use official stats.
What caused Global warming over billions of years'?
Not over-population!
We should be tearing our hair out over food production and land preservation to grow crops.
We can't over populate the UK and have sufficiant food.
As usual we are being fed lie's!!!