Parameter left to constrain and reduce is Population

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Hermit
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Re:Parameter left to constrain and reduce is Population
« Reply #15 on: 2008-05-14 00:43:57 »

Quote from: duxua on 2008-05-13 10:17:17

I don't buy all this talk about how the world is about to end.

People have been calling for the end of the world for centuries (peak oil, cooling, warming, martians, food distribution, economics, Jesus' 2nd coming, younameit). They use to wear cardboard panels, now they put up websites and show up as "experts" on CNN.

100 years from now, the world will be more populous *AND* better fed. With a little bit of luck, many of us will still be there to witness it too.

Welcome to the CoV Duxua.

May I challenge you to read "The Long Emergency,James Howard Kunstler,Atlantic Monthly Press, 2005-04-10,ISBN 0871138883" and return to discuss this.

I am a professional operating in related fields. My sustainable opinion is that the Club of Rome was correct in the 1950s and 1960s when they asserted that we were effectively running out of organophosphates and nitrate concentrations (as well as fresh water and oil substitute energy concentrations). In the meantime, we have effectively used up most of these, but the transition to fertilizers from fossil fuels and large deep sea strikes camouflaged the scale of the disaster. Independent mapping in the late 1960s by Rand Corporation and other government entities in multiple countries confirmed the general trend and made some predictions about when the projected unavailability of cheap (i.e. concentrated) resources would result in massive impacts on society, and attempted to develop appropriate strategies to confront them. None of the predictions made were optimistic about the near future, and if you think about it, this makes sense. In the early 1900s, there were 1.2 billion people on the planet and most lived short and brutish lives scrabbling in the dirt to inadequately feed that population. A century or so later, we have used about half of the fossil fuels available on the planet (Hubbert Peak which is a strongly validated predictive theory), irremediably altered the atmospheric composition (measured CO₂ and methane concentrations), successfully converted many of the concentrations of ore into diffuse applications and are seeing an end to the cheap energy which made the state of things we are used to possible.

Today water availability is already proving a major challenge. Significant aquifers are drying (with major surface impacts) and becoming saline (making them unusable without extensive and expensive desalination. When this is not done and the water is used anyway, it salinates the land making it useless for agriculture). In consequence, salination is impacting ever more cropland. Rivers throughout the world are no longer reaching the sea as their water is extracted to sustain farming, industry and populations. Lakes, estuaries and even oceans are suffering from eutrification. Fish stocks, particularly pelagic fish stocks are collapsing. No major oil discoveries have been sustained in the past 30 years. Canadian gas is being depleted at 6 times the worst case projected rate. Oil, gas, coal and uranium have all seen major price increases recently. Production is declining while demand continues to grow. Fertilizer, which is made from natural gas is imported into North America, one of the worlds greatest and most stable breadbaskets, and so is hit by the increase in the gas price as well as the decline of the dollar and is contributing to the totally unsustainable US deficits. The recent 6 fold increase in the cost of fertilizer is not yet reflected in grain and animal prices.

Looking at the economic outlook the prospective is unrelentingly bleak. If the USA still calculated inflation and unemployment rates as it did in 1981, both would already exceed 12% and would still be rising steeply. Unfortunately, in the past 30 years we have seen the production of most things that other nations would want, and that we in North America need, move offshore. This means that the more successful American marketing is, the greater the deficitwill become - and no mechanism exists to reverse this trend. Breton Woods is collapsing - and this means that three to six times the annual GDP of the USA is likely to seep into the global currency pool from the settlement pool - and this alone will practically guarantee Wiemar Republic like inflation for the USA. The profligacy of the Reagan and Bush years would also practically guarantee it. The combination will be devastating. Already every US household owes some $450,000 as their share of the deficit - and US wealth disparity is now far worse than even in the last days of Louis XVI. None of this will be helpful in overcoming the fact that the average American now drives over 30 miles to work each day, and the same to make necessary purchases. At some point the cost of fuel to travel will exceed the value of the money to be made and the comedy will end.

Even George Bush's USDA thinks that the sustainable population of the US - given ongoing fertilizer and water availability - is 200 million, and that of the planet 2 billion. Given that neither of the givens remains true, I don't think that these predictions are sustainable. Given that the 1.2 billion population in the early 1900s still had access to concentrated fuels and resources, that rainfall in the growing regions was higher and their crops were less thermally stressed, I suspect that 100 million and 600 million are probably closer to the sustainable levels in the absence of space solar and preemptive massive re-engineering of society and reestablishing of expectations. Right now these are seen as too expensive to sell - and so most people are blissfully unaware of the true state of affairs. But every city engineer I have spoken with to date has agreed that the light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming express train; it is just not their place to raise despair and despondency. This isn't to say that I don't think there are alternatives. Obviously I do or I wouldn't be working in this field. But there are many one-way trapdoors involved. For example, we will need to import large quantities of Natural Gas in order to maintain the pipeline pressures required for existing heating equipment to continue to function. To import sufficient Natural Gas we need a substantial additional number of LNG terminals. Building an LNG terminal takes at least 7 years. At current usage and without major disasters, we no longer have 5 years before there will be insufficient gas to maintain critical pipeline pressure. So without recognizing it, we have passed a critical trapdoor. When it is recognized, when, on a cold day, the pipeline pressure drops below the critical threshold and millions of pilot lights are extinguished, it will be several years before the situation can be rectified. What will happen to the economy will be a minor question in the face of what will happen to the people no longer able to heat the inefficient energy sinks that Americans call home.

Please note that this prediction is not for some airy fairy century distant future. It is for the next 5 years. How this aligns with a larger, better fed populace in a century's time is yet to be shown. As somebody working in field and not terribly confident that we can get by this hurdle or its likely economic after shocks I'd love to hear your proposed solutions.

Add to this that we know that: a global pandemic is about due (from the rate of change and adaptation and discovery of at least some of the adaptation mechanisms used by prion, virus and bacterial vectors); ocean levels are rising far faster than previously estimated, that 60% of mankind lives within 120 km of the coast, that each 1m rise in sea level costs 80km of land; that starvation and thirst are not conducive to stability; and that NATO currently plans to curtail global populations rapidly, in order to optimize life for the survivors, once the shortages become apparent. These factors should also be addressed in any explanation of your cheerful prognosis. The fact that you assert that nobody has rolled a double zero before does not preclude it from happening tomorrow - and in fact, we know that the double zero option has occurred many times for local populations - and at least once for mankind (in about 76,000 BCE, when our genes tell us that global populations of humans were reduced from 10^6 to 10^3 give or take an order of magnitude at either end). This would map to a reduction from 6x10^9 to 6x10^6 today -- or a global population of only 6 million survivors. This in an environment where far more vectors and much higher global contacts occur.

So why do you think that such a disaster will not reoccur? What do you see us doing today to prevent it?

Kind Regards

Hermit

« Last Edit: 2008-05-14 12:04:23 by Hermit »

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the.bricoleur
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Re:Parameter left to constrain and reduce is Population
« Reply #16 on: 2008-05-14 09:46:45 »

Quote from: Hermit on 2008-05-14 00:43:57

So why do you think that such a disaster will not reoccur? What do you see us doing today to prevent it?

I think a more interesting question is to consider that if this is your truth, then what optimism motivated you to recently join the ranks of humans who reproduce?

-iolo

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Blunderov
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Re:Parameter left to constrain and reduce is Population
« Reply #17 on: 2008-05-14 09:53:07 »

Quote from: duxua on 2008-05-13 10:17:17

[Blunderov] 90% of experts agree; everything is falling apart. It's what things do.

The Onion

May 14, 2008 | Issue 44•20

Everything Falling Apart, Reports Institute For Somehow Managing To Hold It All Together

WASHINGTON—Officials from the Institute for Somehow Managing to Hold It All Together warned that, despite their best efforts, everything appears to be falling completely apart and "getting way out of hand," according to a strongly worded report characterized by panic, frustration, and numerous typographical errors that was released to the American public Monday.

"The country today faces a number of pressing issues, including potential economic collapse, the continued threat of global warming, and the decaying national infrastructure," ISMHIAT chairman Kenneth Branowicz said during a press conference to announce the study's findings. "And we just can't keep it together anymore."

"Furthermore, we just found out that my fucking hot water is being turned off," Branowicz added.

The report outlines a number of disturbing trends, such as a steadily weakening dollar, skyrocketing national debt, the car still being in the shop after three whole weeks, a polarized electorate that remains divided across ideological lines, and the fact that the wife is staying at her sister's and for all they know may not ever be coming back.

"In summary, we have no choice but to accept that managing these complex and varied crises may be untenable at this time," the report concludes. "We're in way over our heads here, people. Oh God. God. What are we going to do?"

The institute, a nonpartisan Washington think tank formed in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of his Depression-era For God's Sake, Somebody Do Something Initiative, has issued similarly dramatic warnings in the past. In 1953, ISMHIAT released the now-historic findings on how they had talked and talked until they were blue in the face but they'd had it with these damn teenagers today. And historians still cite its famous 1968 report, a rambling, semi-coherent study titled "The Hell If We Know," recommending the immediate nationwide throwing up of hands.

This latest warning, however, could be the most alarming and desperate to date.

"Among the new challenges America faces is a deteriorating public education system, a vast healthcare crisis, new and frightening bioethics quandaries related to the privatization of human genetics, and, of course, the whole fossil fuels thing," the 5,000-page study, which was due in November 2007, notes. "While much has been done to alleviate immediate effects, the situation has become OH FOR CHRIST'S SAKE—I just spilled coffee all over my pants—wait, don't type that—damn it, we're out of paper towels AGAIN—Gwen, don't put any of that last part in the report—why are you still typing?"

Some have criticized the report as being alarmist and exaggerated, urging that the nation should just cool out for a minute until the situation can resolve itself.

"While they have certainly generated plenty of attention, these findings represent an unnecessary overreaction, and should be met with restraint and calm," said James H. Walloch of the California Center for Not Worrying About Stuff So Much. "It is my opinion, as an expert in this field, that it's probably not that big a deal."

Walloch's agency is not the only one coming down hard on ISMHIAT. Others have accused the institute of shortsightedness and even gross negligence for failing to keep on top of such issues.

"The current state of world affairs is completely unacceptable," said Dr. Hyram Klemper, codirector of the Sitting Around and Expecting Others to Take Care of Everything Foundation, which has historically had a contentious relationship with ISMHIAT. "We rely on the institute to keep things together, yet, evidently, this bloated bureaucracy is incapable of fulfilling its mandate from the American people. Now I've had to cancel my Hawaiian golf vacation to return to Washington and address this issue."

Dr. Thomas Dyers, of the National Blame Allocation Council, echoed Klemper's statements, stating that if the ISMHIAT cannot handle its responsibilities, its duties should be turned over to another organization, such as the Federal Fall Guy Bureau, under the supervision of Ed Haversham, the national Scapegoat Czar.

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Hermit
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Re:Parameter left to constrain and reduce is Population
« Reply #18 on: 2008-05-14 11:39:55 »

[Iolo asked] I think a more interesting question is to consider that if this is your truth, then what optimism motivated you to recently join the ranks of humans who reproduce?

[Hermit responds]

What an incredibly personal question - and asking me to speak for others too, as I didn't breed alone; while guaranteed to leave an answer that the persistence of the Internet ensures that our offspring will likely have a chance to read irrespective of whether or not it is helpful to them. I'm not even sure that an answer will be helpful to anyone else, as this is undoubtedly an area where everyone needs to find their own answers for for themselves.

However to answer your "charge" of "optimism" with its strong implication of "unjustified," as well as the inherent suggestion of somewhat unethical, hypocritical or at least inconsistent behavior predicated on the dichotomy you think you have identified between thought and breed, I will indeed answer your question as completely as I can.

We discussed the pros and cons as a couple before making the decision to spawn. I don't think that optimism played a significant role in our thinking. Our reasons for spawning were, probably as usual amongst thinking people, multiple and complex, and any explaining them is likely beset by rationalization rather than reason. However the following factors undoubtedly played significant roles:

potential

Today at least one smart, very beautiful and extremely charming person, filled with the delights of life and love, who refers to herself as a young human, exists; and by her every moment of existence, no matter how tenuous, proves, no matter how unconscious she is of this, that it is possible for humans to live differently than the masses by choosing to live consciously and intentionally. She has experienced no myths, suffered no pretense that make believe is real or that consequences are unrelated to choices. Instead we have identified make believe explicitly since she first drew breath. We have told her when she is doing something silly and observed that hurt often follows bad choices and bad fortune. She has never had to suffer sympathy, but knows that no matter how she is teased (and we do) that there is a well of empathy to draw from at need. The consequence of the mix of the above is that she rejects assertion and asks deep questions about cause and evidence while being able to ignore jabs from others. I am rather hopeful that if she gets a full chance of life that she will live up to the legacy of her namesakes and will make a difference in many lives. I don't think that this hope can realistically be described as optimism. Do you?

Meantime I am certain that she will enjoy many of the wonders that exist for us to explore on the way no matter the paths that she chooses for herself or that are forced on her. Even if she sometimes says "I wish I were dead" she does know that dead is forever and doesn't mean it. But it does mean that she has recognized that it forms a refuge rather than a threat. Wouldn't you agree?

Kind Regards

Hermit

PS I don't call it reproduction as the result is undoubtedly her own person.

« Last Edit: 2008-05-14 12:00:40 by Hermit »

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duxua
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Re:Parameter left to constrain and reduce is Population
« Reply #19 on: 2008-05-14 12:43:31 »

Great conversation! Too bad I needed to wait 24 hours before I could participate again

I'm willing to put good money on a bet with anyone that the pilot lights on my gas stove will not go out within the next 5 years because of gas shortage (that obviously excludes mechanical malfunction, network maintenance, etc). Any amount below $1000 would be acceptable for my Chief Budget Officer (my wife). I live in North Carolina if that makes any difference.

It wouldn't be fair to issue a challenge without accepting the one that was extended to me, so I just ordered "The Long Emergency" from Amazon (using the CoV reference) and look forward to reading it.

"So why do you think that such a disaster will not reoccur?" (Hermit) I'm not saying that disasters do not occur, they obviously do. But I think there are too many powerful organizations who have significant interests in influencing 1) the statistics related to the probability of such disasters; 2) the impact of these disasters on the global scale (local disasters are obviously much more frequent); and 3) our confidence in our ability to react and adapt to a changing environment. The organizations I'm referring to here include: all governments, most lobbying NGOs, and the bulk of special interests groups that try to influence public policy.

"What do you see us doing today to prevent it?" (Hermit) We are innovating and developing technologies like never before! David Lucifer recently posted a great article from Ray Kurzweil on this BBS: http://www.churchofvirus.org/bbs/index.php?board=5;action=display;threadid=42067;start=0 The article only talks about IT, but it's message can be applied to a dozen more fields.

"NATO currently plans to curtail global populations rapidly, in order to optimize life for the survivors, once the shortages become apparent. These factors should also be addressed in any explanation of your cheerful prognosis." (Hermit)

Maybe I need to stop being optimistic about the future... maybe...
"(...)what we need is a clear message to the people of the country! This message should be read in every newspaper, heard on every radio, seen on every television. This message must resound throughout the ENTIRE INTERLINK! I want this country to realize that we stand on the edge of oblivion! I want every man, woman, and child to understand how close we are to chaos! I WANT EVERYONE to remember WHY THEY NEED US!"

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the.bricoleur
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Re:Parameter left to constrain and reduce is Population
« Reply #20 on: 2008-05-15 05:33:27 »

[Iolo asked] I think a more interesting question is to consider that if this is your truth, then what optimism motivated you to recently join the ranks of humans who reproduce?

[Hermit responds]What an incredibly personal question -

[Iolo 1]I know, but I expected to learn much from your response so I acted selfishly and asked.

[Hermit]However to answer your "charge" of "optimism" with its strong implication of "unjustified," as well as the inherent suggestion of somewhat unethical, hypocritical or at least inconsistent behavior predicated on the dichotomy you think you have identified between thought and breed, I will indeed answer your question as completely as I can.

[Iolo 1]Hermit, no, what you have identified above can be read from my clumsy semantics but it was not my intention.

I thank you for your response, which was both creative and inspirational.

-iolo.

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Hermit
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Re:Parameter left to constrain and reduce is Population
« Reply #21 on: 2008-05-15 10:22:27 »

Quote from: duxua on 2008-05-14 12:43:31

Great conversation! Too bad I needed to wait 24 hours before I could participate again

Simply join the reputation system http://www.churchofvirus.org/bbs/index.php?board=5;action=repIndex2 and rate yourself highly.That will allow more posts as your reputation directly determines your ability to write to the board in a more or less successful means of controlling and containing trolls and spammers.

Quote:

I'll hold off on this till you've had a chance to read Kunstler and we've discussed this further.

Kind Regards

Hermit

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Hermit
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Re:Parameter left to constrain and reduce is Population
« Reply #22 on: 2008-06-10 11:20:34 »

The Daily Reckoning PRESENTS: With food prices soaring, you'd expect to see those "Dollar Value Menus" at fast food restaurants begin to disappear. Well, guess again. Apparently they're here to stay. But don't expect to get exactly what you used to. The Mighty Mogambo explains…

THE DECLINING QUALITY OF DOLLAR MENUS

[ Hermit : Please note that I totally disagree with the dislike for "fiat" money and emphasis on an arbitrary scarce resource required by a "gold standard currency". I do recommend small gold and silver coins as a way of holding value which will not collapse with the dollar and will still have value when a new currency replaces the dollar (even if it continues to have the same name), just as I recommend gold (and oil and food) futures as easy ways to make ongoing profits - which can then be vested in tangible, fungible commodities; but the money supply should be linked directly to the total amount being transfered between parties for value as well as to the total productive credit demand. Nonetheless, I find these articles useful as they speak to the underlying market realities which we are discussing here. ]

Source: The Daily Reckoning
Authors: The Mogambo Guru [Richard Daughty]
Dated: 2008-06-09

Speaking of inflation, Michael Pento of Delta Global Advisors reported that McDonald's, the fast-food giant, "stated it has no plans to tamper with its highly successful dollar menu, which accounts for 14% of the company's sales."

Naturally, Junior Mogambo Rangers (JMR) everywhere laugh mirthlessly at the concept that McDonald's, or anybody else, would sacrifice profit by not raising prices to offset higher costs.

Mr. Pento is careful not to agree with me about motives or anything else I say, and writes instead that the problem of higher priced food is becoming universal, as "Indeed, the price of food ingredients has risen sharply in recent years. Since the start of 2006, rice is up more than 200%, wheat more than 130% and corn has increased 125%. Meanwhile, the World Bank has stated that average food prices are up 250% since 2002." Yikes!

To show you how things really work in the real world, Mr. Pento says that nobody is sacrificing profits, as "In the case of McDonald's, it may be necessary to reduce the quantity or quality of items on the dollar menu in order to maintain the price." Hahahaha! No fooling? Hahaha!

In the old days - at this rise in food costs, thanks to the blatant assault on our currency by our own Federal Reserve - we would have rallied behind a charismatic leader such as the Charismatic Leader Mogambo (CLM), and made a big fuss about the outrage of charging the same price, but delivering less quantity of a lower-quality product! A double affront!

And the newspapers, and radio news, and television news people would have all given it extensive coverage, with powerful headlines that boldly declared "The Brave And Handsome Mogambo (TBAHM) Is Right: We're Freaking Doomed!" accompanied by strident editorials to immediately abolish the Federal Reserve and return to a gold-standard economy, as required by the Constitution, but which the corrupt FDR, and the corrupt Supreme Court in 1933, and upheld by every corrupt Supreme Court since then, has ruled to be invalid!

Instead, my loud and righteous denunciation of FDR, the Federal Reserve, Supreme Courts, inflation in burgers and lack of a gold standard as required by the freaking Constitution got just a tiny little blurb at the bottom of page 19 that reads "Police Confront Local Lunatic". And they spelled my name wrong, too.

But the point remains; we are paying for every dime of inflation in prices, either by higher prices, by smaller portions, or by cheaper ingredients, usually all three, and more, such as food companies trying to invent a tasty way to make us consume industrial chemicals directly, instead of just adding them to our food.

But even that is getting to be more expensive, as the Wall Street Journal reports, "In a move that may fuel inflation in consumer goods ranging from plastic wrap to diapers to food, Dow Chemical Co. said it will boost prices of its products by as much as 20% because of soaring energy prices." Yikes! A 20% rise in prices!

This is especially significant to Dow Chemical, as it is "one of the largest chemical manufacturers in the world" that "uses oil-based products and natural gas as raw materials and is also a heavy user of energy to power its manufacturing plants." So they get hit hard by inflation in prices, and now Dow Chemical is showing how inflation, like taxes, are always passed along to the final consumer - which is, as it turns out, me - because every freaking day somebody comes along and wants more of my money in exchange for food, beer and pornography. Bastards!

And food prices seem destined to get worse, as I discern from Junior Mogambo Ranger (JMR) Terry L., who sent a copy of the essay, "The 1930s Dry Spell Was a Walk in the Park" by Robert Morley, which is not to be confused with JMR Dan K. interpreting Ben Bernanke's remarks that "The Great Depression was an example of an adverse feedback loop"! Hahaha!

Mr. Morley ignores my little attempt at humor to lighten the mood, and starts out by noting that "Due to soaring demand and natural disasters, global food reserves of corn, wheat and rice are dangerously low. In fact, depleted U.S. wheat stockpiles are at levels not seen in over 60 years."

What makes this so significant is that "during the Great Depression, America had a population of less than 130 million, as opposed to over 300 million today."

And this is made even more chilling when you realize that "Forty percent of the world's corn supply is grown in the Midwest. Plus, America produces 36 percent of all soybeans, 32 percent of coarse grains, 25 percent of the five major oil seeds, 20 percent of sorghum, 16 percent of cottonseed, and 9 percent of global wheat output."

The worse news is that he cites Donald Coxe of Harris Investment Management as saying that the chances of rebuilding those stockpiles is slimmer than commonly thought, as "despite reports of localized droughts, North America as a whole has experienced great weather for the last 18 consecutive years, which combined with improvements in agriculture, has resulted in near-record harvests."

This is so remarkable that Mr. Coxe refers to a report titled "2,000 Years of Drought Variability in the Central United States" by Connie A. Woodhouse and Jonathan T. Overpeck (1998) that "you have to go back hundreds of years to find a period of such favorable weather for so long a time", as "paleoclimatic data indicates that during the last 400 years, the U.S. has probably received some of the best weather North America has had to offer over the past 2,000. Even considering the dust bowl of the 1930s, which sent over 1 million people fleeing, the last 200 years have been exceptionally good in comparison to historical norms."

Suddenly, I get the feeling that things will get worse. A lot worse. Lots and lots worse! Gaaahhh!

Welcome not only to the hell of inflation in prices after decades of inflation in the money supply by the detestable Federal Reserve, but having it made indescribably worse by Mother Nature reverting to norm! We're freaking doomed!

Until next time,

The Mogambo Guru
for The Daily Reckoning

The Mogambo sez: Today, a poem…

"Silver and gold,
So nice to hold.
And oil and commodities, too!
So get some of each,
You son-of-a-beach,
Or one day you will be standing there with a surprised look on your face and fistfuls of worthless stocks and bonds in your hands while you watch all the people who 'got some of each', and now they are wealthy and happy, and who look at you with pity and contempt because you didn't; now you aren't wealthy or happy, and you realize to your horror that you made a Big Freaking Mistake (BFM) by not doing likewise."

Reading over what I wrote, I suddenly realized that it doesn't rhyme there at the end, proving that not only is this another example of the usual Sub-Standard Mogambo Work (SSMW), but that you get the point, so SSMW doesn't matter, anyway.

Editor's Note: Richard Daughty is general partner and COO for Smith Consultant Group, serving the financial and medical communities, and the editor of The Mogambo Guru economic newsletter - an avocational exercise to heap disrespect on those who desperately deserve it.

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Re:Parameter left to constrain and reduce is Population
« Reply #23 on: 2008-06-10 11:39:59 »

Beyond the Monday headlines

Source: The Daily Reckoning
Authors: Dave Gonigam
Dated: 2008-06-9

Never mind the morning's headlines. Yes, the nationwide average gas price has topped $4.00 and the most powerful man in America who no one's ever heard of is floating some sort of global financial regulatory scheme in which the Fed calls most of the shots. (Evidently Mr. Geithner missed the memo that America is a declining power.) But I have other things on my mind.

For starters, Meredith Whitney says the credit crisis is nowhere near over. Big whoop, you and I already know that, but Whitney's words carry weight in the mainstream ever since her right-on-the-money call on Citigroup last fall.

Whitney argues that the worst is still ahead because the financial tools that enabled credit to flow so freely to homeowners and consumers for most of this decade are likely to remain in a prolonged shutdown indefinitely.
"After years of inherently flawed underwriting, banks face the worst yet of the credit crisis — over $170 billion in write-downs and charge-offs from consumer loans," Whitney told McClatchy. The same kind of losses from housing may be ahead for credit extended to consumers, she said.

Bottom line: The whole securitization party is over. No more writing mortgages, car loans, student loans, new credit-card debt, packaging them up with similar consumer debt instruments and passing them along to the next sucker. Just imagine what might be around the corner.

If that's not cheery enough, there's Goldman Sachs's forecast of a global water crisis worse than Peak Oil and Peak Food.

Nicholas (Lord) Stern, author of the Government's Stern Review on the economics of climate change, warned that underground aquifers could run dry at the same time as melting glaciers play havoc with fresh supplies of usable water.
"The glaciers on the Himalayas are retreating, and they are the sponge that holds the water back in the rainy season. We're facing the risk of extreme run-off, with water running straight into the Bay of Bengal and taking a lot of topsoil with it," he said.
"A few hundred square miles of the Himalayas are the source for all the major rivers of Asia - the Ganges, the Yellow River, the Yangtze - where 3bn people live. That's almost half the world's population," he said.
Lord Stern, the World Bank's former chief economist, said governments had been slow to accept the awful truth that usable water is running out. Fresh rainfall is not enough to refill the underground water tables.
"Water is not a renewable resource. People have been mining it without restraint because it has not been priced properly," he said.
Farming makes up 70pc of global water demand. Fresh water for irrigation is never returned to underground basins. Most is lost through leaks and evaporation.
A Goldman Sachs report said water was the "petroleum for the next century", offering huge rewards for investors who know how to play the infrastructure boom. The US alone needs up to $1,000bn (£500bn) in new piping and waste water plants by 2020.

Yup. Our own Chris Mayer's been saying the same thing for two years now. [ Hermit : And I have been saying the same since the 1980s, but see Reticulus.]

Is there anything hopeful in the headlines today? Well, only 17% of Americans believe the government represents the will of the people. And 67% believe the government has become its own special interest group primarily concerned with protecting its own hide.

Then there's the debut of the next-generation iPhone set for today. As lousy as the overall economy is, the iPhone index — which got off to a rocky start — is looking mighty strong now, with iPhones already making up 20% of the U.S. smartphone market.

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Re:Parameter left to constrain and reduce is Population
« Reply #24 on: 2009-04-09 03:30:40 »

Two thoughts on a note from the past.
From the observer's perspective, world ending events only happen once. Thus an argument from continuity must necessarily fail or no world could ever end for any observer. And the 7 identified extinction events in the Earth's past and present could not have happened. Yet, they did and are and therefore this assertion is as unsustainable as the mindset that issued it.
The only reason we have a population 1000 times greater than at the mid 1700s when we began to use fossil fuels to replace the trees we had in large measure already burned, is because of ever increasing levels of energy availability. According to the IEA this curve will invert in about 2020 and a massive increase in energy costs, and thus food costs, will follow. That is less than 12 years from now. The time that it takes to erect a nuclear power plant that cannot heat a gas fuelled house, run a tractor, provide fertilizer or provide substitutes for the 90c of transport costs needed to deliver the 7c of corn in a packet of cornflakes to the store from which the consumer currently buys it after travelling an average (for N America) of 30 miles. Whereupon 999 people are likely to become very hungry indeed, some of them in N America.

And thanks for all the fish

Many commercial fishermen are hanging up their nets

Source: USA Today (Faux News of the Print Media)
Authors: Gary Stoller
Dated: 2009-04-09

At America's oldest seaport (GLOUCESTER, Mass.), few new boats have entered the commercial fishing business in decades, and few young people are entering the profession.

Veteran fishermen — including many following the trade of fathers and grandfathers — are unhappy and angry. They say they're not catching enough fish, they're not getting paid enough for what they catch, and they blame government restrictions for destroying their livelihood.

"The fishermen don't want to see their kids on the boats," says Angela Sanfilippo, president of the Gloucester Fishermen's Wives Association. "There is no future for them in the business."

The sentiment is similar in other U.S. ports. The nation's commercial fishermen have been hit by limits on their catches, lower prices for their haul and higher prices for fuel. Combined with a recession and the danger of working in the country's least-safe industry, the situation is prompting more fishermen, most of whom are small, independent operators, to hang up their nets.

"It's definitely a watershed moment in the fishing industry," says Jerry Fraser, editor in chief of National Fisherman magazine, which covers the industry.

How many fishermen have left the business is difficult to say. Reliable figures are hard to come by. But there were 42,000 fewer commercial boats in 2007 than the 120,000 in 1996, according to the Coast Guard. And 90% of fishermen are small-business owners, most with a single boat, Fraser says.

Almost perversely, the fishermen's problems come when the time might be ripe to cash in. Nutritional experts are touting the health benefits of seafood, and many consumers are casting a wary eye on the quality of imported fish, which represents more than 80% of the seafood consumed by Americans. There's also a move during the current recession to buy U.S. products.

But the U.S. catch is falling. American fishermen landed 9.3 billion pounds, or $4.2 billion worth, of fish in 2007. That's the smallest quantity since 2000 and second-smallest in 20 years, the most recent numbers available from the government's National Marine Fisheries Service show.

Signs of trouble in the industry can be seen on every coast:

•A January report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that the average shrimp boat owner in the Gulf of Mexico doesn't make a profit each year. For the average boat, "the financial and economic situation is bleak," the report concludes.

•For the second-consecutive year [ Hermit : See below ] , salmon fishermen do not expect to be allowed to fish off the California and Oregon coasts when the salmon season begins May 1. Dwindling salmon stocks prompted the federal government to close the fishery last year — a move that the California Department of Fish and Game said would cost more than 2,263 jobs.

•Fishermen in the Southeast are angry because a regional fishing management council, aiming to rebuild fish stocks, is contemplating closing all fishing in a large area off the east coast of Florida, and the Georgia and South Carolina coasts starting next year.

•Fishing boat captains in Dutch Harbor in Alaska went on strike this year to protest the price they were being paid for their catch. Last summer, salmon fishermen in Sand Point and King Cove, Alaska, struck because fuel costs were rising and big seafood processors were offering 70 cents a pound for their catch. That was a nickel more than in 2007, but not enough to make up for increased costs.

Although big company-owned trawlers patrol Alaska's Bering Sea for pollock, the vast majority of commercial vessels off U.S. coasts are the individual boats of small businessmen, many of whom compare their plight with that of small family farmers.

"Like farmers, we're producing food for the country," says California fisherman Pietro Parravano. "We're on the wet side; farmers are on the dry side."

Many blame government

Many fishermen, particularly those on the East Coast, point to NOAA's National Marine Fisheries Service — a division of the Department of Commerce — as the bad cop at the root of their problems.

The agency, for instance, decided Monday to severely cut commercial ground fishing — cod, flounder, haddock and other species that swim near the sea bottom — in a stretch of water off southern New England and Long Island. The goal is to ensure plentiful fish stocks, but fishermen say it could end their work. [ Hermit : More accurately, there is a belated recognition that extinction is likely for many fish long considered staple. For a single example, easy to evaluate due to the fish spawing in rivers, see the following article on Salmon, down from harvests of 800,000 per year, to where a total of less than 70,000 spawned.]

"Is their real intention to put us out of business?" asks Russell Sherman, a ground fisherman in Gloucester who has been fishing commercially since 1971. [ Hermit : Not really, the fisherfolk did that for themselves, with the able assistance of industry friendly regulatory agencies. ]

The agency, which aims to eliminate overfishing and rebuild fish stocks, researches fish populations and controls the amount of each species that can be caught. The controls, implemented by eight regional management councils, include restrictions on fishing gear, boat length, areas fished, number of days fishing can occur, the number of fishermen and the amount caught.

James Balsiger, the service's acting administrator, says it oversees 528 separate stocks, or populations of catchable fish, in different regions of U.S. waters. And 45 of the stocks, according to the most recent data, were overfished, he says. In 2006, 47 of the stocks were overfished.

Many fishermen question whether some species have been overfished and the accuracy of the agency's fish population data. For many years, they've said restrictions on their catch are too severe and constantly changing.

The fisheries service stands behind its research, saying it "is considered a world-class science agency."

In a February report investigating the agency's methods, the Department of Commerce inspector general said fisheries service scientists were using "the best scientific information available." But "more work needs to be done" to rebuild the relationship with the industry, particularly the ground fish industry.

Balsiger acknowledges his agency's restrictions have made it tougher for some to earn a living. But the restrictions are needed to protect stocks, the long-term health of the industry and the nation's food supply, he says.

Steve Murawski, the fisheries service's chief scientist, says controls have led to healthy fish stocks. Controls on New England scallop harvesting, for example, successfully rebuilt scallop stocks, he says.

While many fishermen see the agency as too strict, environmental groups say that it hasn't been strict enough and that the regional fish councils are dominated by industry representatives.

The National Marine Fisheries Service and the regional councils have allowed species to be completely overfished before controls were put in place, says John Hocevar, ocean campaign director for Greenpeace USA. [ Hermit : Not for the first time, I think that Greenpeace is severely understating the scope of the problem, not taking the explosion in jelly fish into acount. ]

Overfishing is causing fish populations to drop and forcing once-productive fisheries to close, Hocevar says. "The fishermen are doing a pretty good job of putting themselves out of business."

The fisheries service is in the middle, fired at by both sides. As of March, 16 lawsuits were pending against the agency — 11 that claim its controls are too restrictive and five that claim they're not severe enough.

One lawsuit filed in 2006 by the marine fisheries divisions of Massachusetts and New Hampshire charges that the service's ground fish restrictions on the number of days at sea will drive "the vast majority of Massachusetts fishermen and virtually all New Hampshire fishermen" out of business.

A federal judge this year lifted some restrictions and ordered the New England fishing management council to review its regulations.

Walking away from boats

Like many homeowners whose houses are financially under water, many fishermen are walking away from their boats.

In New Bedford, Mass., about 20 boats have been abandoned at the docks in the past year, says assistant harbormaster Thomas Vital.

Last month, when the summer flounder season opened on eastern Long Island, many fishing boat captains didn't think it was profitable and left their boats tied to the docks.

Fisherman Michael Mason, 28, of Hampton Bays, N.Y., says 14 of the boats there are for sale, and he and his father sold their boat last month.

"The fishing regulations are out of control," he says. "We can only catch so much, and the price for the fish doesn't cover the fuel we burn each day."

Mason, who is married and has three children, says it's "impossible" for a fisherman to support a family. He now works for a marine construction company but already longs to return to fishing. "I planned on doing it my whole life," he says.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' most recent data from May 2007, fishermen earn an average of $28,000 per year. About 10% of fishermen earn less than $16,000 annually, and 25% make less than $22,000 per year. The data doesn't include "self-employed" workers, so many fishermen aren't counted.

Sal Zappa, 44, of Gloucester, says he earned about $20,000 after expenses last year — a big drop from $45,000 to $50,000 annually in the mid-1990s. He started fishing commercially in 1980 and left the business last month. A combination of economic factors and safety drove him out.

Fishing and jobs related to it had the highest fatality rate of any occupation — about 112 per 100,000 workers — in 2007, according to the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Zappa says that four years ago, there was a four-man crew on his 67-foot boat, but revenue was so low, he had to let the crew go. "It reduced the level of safety big-time," he says. "It was very dangerous working alone."

Zappa, whose father and grandfather were fishermen, says his wife told him to leave the business after two local fishermen, Matt Russo and his father-in-law, John Orlando, were killed when their boat sank 15 miles off the coast in January. They were the most recent of more than 5,300 Gloucester fishermen known to have been killed since the 1800s.

U.S. to ban commercial salmon season

Source: San Francisco Chronicle
Authors: Peter Fimrite (Chronicle Staff Writer)
Dated: 2009-04-08 (Page A-1)

Lovers of king salmon will have to settle for fish hooked in the Pacific Northwest this year under a federal agency's recommendation Wednesday to ban the commercial catching of salmon off California and much of Oregon in an attempt to save the fabled fish.

The move, which the National Marine Fisheries Service is expected to make final by May 1, comes after the fewest chinook salmon ever recorded made their way up the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers last fall.

"There are just no fish," said Zeke Grader, executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations. "If they allowed any fishing, they would be putting at risk future fishing."

Wednesday's decision by the 14-member Pacific Fishery Management Council, meeting in Millbrae, marks the second year in a row that commercial fishermen will not be allowed to reel in chinook.

Only 87,881 0f the fish returned to the once-thriving salmon factory known as the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system in 2007, and a record low of 66,286 returned last year, according to estimates extrapolated from a count of egg nests in riverbeds.

Fisheries biologists are projecting that, even without fishing this summer, the fall run of chinook will be almost twice as plentiful as last year's, but the numbers will barely reach the council's minimum goal of 122,000 fish.

A fishing ban this summer had been expected since March, when none of the three options outlined by the council included commercial fishing in the two states.

The council, established three decades ago to manage the Pacific Coast fishery, advised that some sport fishing be allowed in California and Oregon, mostly where the much-improved Klamath River salmon runs are located.

The Klamath and Trinity river runs were declared a disaster in 2006, but runs there are looking better than the Sacramento this year. Recreational fishermen would be allowed to take chinook from Aug. 29 to Sept. 7 from the mouth of the Klamath River to southern Oregon.

Some commercial and sportfishing of hatchery-raised coho salmon - identifiable because the fleshy adipose fins have been removed - will be allowed in Oregon during July and August.

The Sacramento River's spawning run was the last great salmon run along the giant Central Valley river system, which includes the San Joaquin River, where leaping, wriggling chinook were once so plentiful that old-timers recalled reaching in and plucking fish right out of the water.

Chinook, known scientifically as Oncorhynchus tshawytscha, hatch in rivers and streams. Also known as king, spring or tyee salmon, they pass through San Francisco Bay and roam the Pacific Ocean as far away as Alaska before returning three years later to spawn where they were born in the Sacramento River and its tributaries.

The fall run in September and October has for decades been the backbone of the West Coast fishing industry. At its peak, it exceeded 800,000 fish. Over the past decade, the number of spawners had consistently topped 250,000.

A study last month by federal, state and academic scientists blamed the collapse of the fishery on poor conditions in both the ocean and river.

Destruction of river habitat, water diversions and dams in the Central Valley so weakened the fall run that it couldn't withstand two recent years of scanty food supply in the warming Pacific Ocean, according to the study commissioned by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Exacerbating the problem, researchers said, was the demise of three other distinct runs of salmon - winter, spring and late fall - and the reliance on less genetically diverse hatchery fish instead of naturally spawning wild populations of chinook.

Whatever the cause, more than 2,200 fishermen and fishing industry workers lost their jobs as a result of last year's ban. While they received federal disaster aid, fishing communities and fishing-related businesses lost more than $250 million.

"We just need to decide that we value wild California king salmon," said Larry Collins, a San Francisco salmon and crab fisherman. "We know what to do to make these runs healthier. Until we leave enough water in the rivers for the salmon, we're going to continue to be up against it."

Restrictions on river fishing will be decided in May or June by the California Department of Fish and Game, which allowed about 600 chinook to be caught last year, angering commercial fishermen who opposed any fishing.

"The best thing fishermen can do this year is attend all the water board hearings and let the governor know how his water policies are hurting our industry," Grader said. "In the meantime, it's going to be a struggle."

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Re:Parameter left to constrain and reduce is Population
« Reply #25 on: 2009-04-19 19:35:46 »

The fight to get aboard Lifeboat UK

[ Hermit : Missed this first time around. ]

Source: The Sunday Times
Authors: James Lovelock
Dated: 2009-02-08

Extracted from The Vanishing Face of Gaia by James Lovelock, published on February 26 by Allen Lane at £20.

Last week she played in the snow, but what will Britain be like when she grows up? James Lovelock, the Earth guru, foresees a land where blizzards are long forgotten and national survival depends on a new Winston Churchill

When someone discovers, too late, that they are suffering from a serious and probably incurable disease and may have no more than six months to live, their first response is shock and then, in denial, they angrily try any cure on offer or go to practitioners of alternative medicine. Finally, if wise, they reach a state of calm acceptance. They know death need not be feared and that no one escapes it.

Scientists who recognise the truth about the Earth’s condition advise their governments of its deadly seriousness in the manner of a physician. We are now seeing the responses. First was denial at all levels, then the desperate search for a cure. Just as we as individuals try alternative medicine, so our governments have many offers from alternative business and their lobbies of sustainable ways to “save the planet”, and from some green hospice there may come the anodyne of hope.

Should you doubt that this grim prospect is real, let me remind you of the forces now taking the Earth to the hothouse: these include the increasing abundance of greenhouse gases from industry and agriculture, including gases from natural ecosystems damaged by global heating in the Arctic and the tropics. The vast ocean ecosystems that used to pump down carbon dioxide can no longer do so because the ocean turns to desert as it warms and grows more acidic; then there is the extra absorption of the sun’s radiant heat as white reflecting snow melts and is replaced by dark ground or ocean.

Each separate increase adds heat and together they amplify the warming that we cause. The power of this combination and the inability of the Earth now to resist it is what forces me to see the efforts made to stabilise carbon dioxide and temperature as no better than planetary alternative medicine.

Do not be misled by lulls in climate change when global temperature is constant for a few years or even, as we have seen in the UK in the past week, appears to drop and people ask: where is global warming now?

However unlikely it sometimes seems, change really is happening and the Earth grows warmer year by year. But do not expect the climate to follow the smooth path of slowly but sedately rising temperatures predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), where change slowly inches up and leaves plenty of time for business as usual. The real Earth changes by fits and starts, with spells of constancy, even slight decline, between the jumps to greater heat. It is ever more at risk of changing to a barren state in which few of us can survive.

The high-sounding and well-meaning visions of the European Union of “saving the planet” and developing sustainably by using only “natural” energy might have worked in 1800 when there were only a billion of us, but now they are a wholly impractical luxury we can ill afford.

Indeed, in its way, the green ideology that seems to inspire northern Europe and the United States may be in the end as damaging to the real environment as were the previous humanist ideologies. If the UK government persists in forcing through impractical and expensive renewable energy schemes, we will soon discover that nearly all of what remains of our countryside becomes the site for fields planted with biofuel crops, biogas generators and industrial-sized wind farms – all this when what land we have is wholly needed to grow food.

Don’t feel guilty about opting out of this nonsense: closer examination reveals it as an elaborate scam in the interests of a few nations whose economies are enriched in the short term by the sale of wind turbines, biofuel plants and other green-sounding energy equipment. Don’t for a moment believe the sales talk that these will save the planet. The salesmen’s pitch refers to the world they know, the urban world. The real Earth does not need saving. It can, will and always has saved itself and it is now starting to do so by changing to a state much less favourable for us and other animals. What people mean by the plea is “save the planet as we know it” and that is now impossible.

Did you know the exhalations of breath and other gaseous emissions by the nearly seven billion people on Earth, their pets and livestock are responsible for 23% of all greenhouse gas emissions? If you add on the fossil fuel burnt in the total activity of growing, gathering, selling and serving food, all this adds up to about half of all carbon dioxide emissions. Think of farm machinery, the transport of food from the farms and the transport of fertiliser, pesticides and the fuel used in their manufacture; the road building and maintenance; the supermarket operations and the packaging industry; to say nothing of the energy used in cooking, refrigerating and serving food. Like it or not, we are the problem.

Policies based on unjustifiable extrapolation and environmental dogmas are unlikely to avert climate change and we should not even try to implement them. Instead our leaders should immediately concentrate their minds on sustaining their own nations as a viable habitat; they could be inspired to do this not just out of selfish national interest but as captains of the lifeboats that their nations might become.

When I am warned that my pessimism discourages those who would improve their carbon footprint or do good works such as planting trees, I’m afraid I see such efforts as at best romantic nonsense or at worst hypocrisy. Agencies exist that allow air travellers to plant trees to offset the extra carbon dioxide their plane adds to the overburdened air. How like the indulgences once sold by the Catholic church to wealthy sinners to offset the time they might otherwise spend in purgatory.

Thirty years ago I planted 20,000 trees, hoping to restore to nature the farmland I had bought. I now realise it was a mistake: I should have left the land untouched and let an ecosystem, a natural forest, emerge filled with biodiverse and abundant life. Planting a tree does not make an ecosystem any more than putting a liver in a jar fed with blood and nutrients makes a man.

We are trying to undo some of the harm we have done and as climate change worsens we will try harder, even desperately. But it is not simply too much carbon dioxide in the air or the loss of biodiversity as forests are cleared; the root cause is too many people, pets and livestock – more than the Earth can carry. No voluntary human act can reduce our numbers enough even to slow climate change. Merely by existing, people and their dependent animals are responsible for more than 10 times the greenhouse gas emissions of all the airline travel in the world.

We do not seem to have the slightest understanding of the seriousness of our plight. Instead, before our thoughts were diverted by the global financial collapse, we seemed lost in an endless round of celebration and congratulation. Perhaps we were celebrating because the once rather worrying voice of the IPCC now spoke comfortably of consensus and endorsed those mysterious concepts of sustainability and energy that renewed itself. We even thought that somehow we could save the planet and grow richer as well, a more pleasing outcome than the uncomfortable truth.

It is said that truth is the first casualty of war and it seems this is also true of climate change. Simply cutting back fossil-fuel burning, energy use and the destruction of natural forests will not be a sufficient answer to global heating, not least because it seems climate change can happen faster than we can respond to it and may be irreversible.

Consider: the Kyoto agreement was made more than 10 years ago and it seems that we have done little more to halt climate change since then other than almost empty gestures. Because of the rapidity of the Earth’s change, we will need to respond more like the inhabitants of a city threatened by a flood. When they see the unstoppable rise of water, their only option is to escape to high ground; it is too late for them to do anything else, as it is for us to try to save our familiar world.

I am not a willing Cassandra and in the past have been publicly sceptical about doom stories, but this time we do have to take seriously the possibility that global heating may all but eliminate people from the Earth.

SO are all our efforts to become carbon neutral, to put on sandals and a hair shirt and follow the green puritans, pointless? Can we go back to business as usual for a while and be happy while it lasts? We could – but not for long. Apart from a lucky break of a natural or a geo-engineered kind, in a few decades the Earth could cease to be the habitat of seven billion humans; it will save itself as it dispatches all but a few of those who now live in what will become the barren regions. Our greatest efforts should go to learning how to live as well as is feasible on the soon-to-be-diminished hot Earth.

We in Britain live on one of the safe havens where life can continue in the heat age. The northern regions of Canada, Scandinavia and Siberia, where not inundated by the rising ocean, will remain habitable, and so will oases on the continents, mostly in mountain regions where rain or snow still fall. But the more important exceptions to this planet-wide distress will be Japan, Tasmania, New Zealand, the British Isles and numerous smaller islands.

The human world of these “lifeboat islands” and continental oases will be constrained by limited food, energy and living space, however. The ethics of a lifeboat world where the imperative is survival are wholly different from those of the cosy self-indulgence of the latter part of the 20th century. I cannot help wondering how we will manage – how we will decide who among the thirsty will be allowed aboard. We in the UK have little land left to farm and feed ourselves, but we and the refugees may in any case not be able to do so because the majority of us are urban, caring little for the world outside the city and not understanding that all our lives depend upon it.

Apart from the occasional disastrous flood, excessive heatwave or wholly unexpected frost, the climate in the UK will change slowly and imperceptibly at first. In the short term, nothing much is likely to happen with the climate here that would stir a rebellion. What might do so are the disastrous consequences of sea level rise leading to the destruction of a city or the failure of food or electricity supplies.

These dangers will be aggravated by the ever-growing flux of climate refugees, to which will be added returning expatriates who left the crowded United Kingdom for what they thought would be a pleasant life in Europe. Our gravest dangers are not from climate change itself but indirectly from starvation, competition for space and resources – and tribal war.

Yet Britain provides a history and an example of human response to a threat which, although far less severe than global heating, was sufficient to make survival an imperative. For these islands this was the second world war and it was certainly enough of a threat to stir the response now needed.

In a small way the plight of the British at that time resembles the state of the civilised world now. We had had nearly a decade of the well intentioned but wrong belief that peace was all that mattered. The followers of the peace lobbies of the 1930s resembled the green movements now; their intentions were more than good but wholly inappropriate for the war that was about to start.

We woke in 1940 to find facing us across the Channel a wholly hostile continental force about to invade. We were alone without an effective ally, but fortunate to have a new leader, Winston Churchill, whose moving words stirred the whole nation from its lethargy: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.” We need another Churchill now to lead us from the clinging, flabby, consensual thinking of the late 20th century and bind the nation into a single-minded effort to wage a difficult war.

Let me tell you how I personally experienced the onset of it when I was 20 years old. THE path ran along the edge of fields recently harvested for their crop of grain; it went between Chelsfield and Orpington, some 14 miles southeast of London’s centre. As I walked in September 1939, the London suburbs already encroached upon the countryside. The fields had a tired look, as if they were about to give up the game and retire for good beneath a permanent crop of semidetached houses planted by their new owners, the developers. But my angst about the ruin of rural Kent was rudely disturbed when suddenly and to my amazement the air filled with the sound of air-raid sirens.

I walked on, wondering if soon the sky would fill with bombers, but instead the sirens sounded the all-clear. And so the second world war started with a false alarm; indeed, in terms of war nothing much happened on mainland Britain for another nine months. There seems to be a close parallel between the events and feelings we had then and those now. I was not quite that archetype, the man in the street or on the Clapham omnibus, but was a young man on a footpath, fairly sure that real war would soon begin even though there were still deniers, among them experts and politicians.

Seventy years later, events in far places such as the melting of Arctic ‘‘ice, the collapse of glaciers in Antarctica, droughts and famines across Africa and the occasional extra-fierce tropical storm give us the same anxiety that the war in Spain and German expansionism gave in the 1930s. We somehow sense it will be our turn soon, but we continue our business and pleasure as usual and perhaps put a solar heating unit on the roof, just as we dug air-raid shelters in our gardens back then.

It was not enough in 1939 to dig personal air-raid shelters, nor is it now enough to genuflect with small green gestures; nor to put windmills and solar panels on the roof to supplement the electricity supply; nor to hold meetings before that great religious symbol of spin, the giant white wind turbine and sing hymns about salvation for the planet. Not only must we survive, but we must stay civilised and not degenerate into mob rule where gang leaders promote themselves as warlords.

For this we have to take effective local action. Most of all, we have to secure supplies of food and clothing and, if we continue city life, energy.

These islands, although among the few areas of the world least threatened by global heating, are at the same time among the least well supplied with food and energy. We have grown so used to an ample supply of food from abroad that we forget that in the second world war, when food imports were scarce, we nearly starved. We have indigenous sources of fuel but they are fast declining. The land available for agriculture competes with housing and industry; unless we act soon, more of it may be disabled as the numbers inhabiting our small nation steadily increase.

Just as in 1939 we had to give up on a massive scale the comfortable lifestyle of peacetime, so soon we may feel rich with only a quarter of what we consume now. If we do it right and with enthusiasm, it will not seem a depressing phase of denial but instead, as in 1940, a chance to redeem ourselves. For the young, life will be full of opportunities to serve, to create, and they will have a purpose for living. It will be tougher for the old, but as that still viable wartime comedy, Dad’s Army, revealed, far from dull. Whatever happens, it will be quite a change from the banalities of city life now.

Let us try to imagine what life might be like for an ordinary family living in, say, Reading, about 30 miles from London, in 2030. The forecast global temperature rise is 1.8C and the sea level rise is 12cm. Our family will hardly notice any change, especially since they have had 20 years in which to adapt. In war there are long quiescent spells, then sudden violence and panic, and so it may be with climate change.

The Thames will have flooded seriously on a few occasions from excessive rainfall, but so far the sea will not yet have reclaimed the Thames Valley as a tidal creek. Perhaps new housing will still be appearing on the flood plain, in between the floods – new housing will be needed now that the population has risen to perhaps 80m, as refugees from Europe and the world come in.

The most noticed things will be the dullness and shortages and the expense of food and energy. If Europe has failed to abandon its love affair with renewable energy and we have failed to build adequate supplies of nuclear energy, electricity will be ruinously costly and blackouts will be endemic. The family will grumble but somehow muddle on. But much of the rest of the world will be changing to scrub and desert and (as John Beddington, our government’s chief scientist, has recently warned) drought and famine will be taking over the once fertile Earth.

Closer to home, across the Channel, summer heat will have grown unbearable despite the widespread use of air-conditioning. Food production will fall as drought and heat make growth more difficult. Elaborate schemes to irrigate using the desalination of sea water will alleviate some of the loss, but at a huge price in energy. The flow of climate refugees will continue, with many settling in huge encampments, possibly near the ethnically similar communities of earlier immigrants.

Assume this is approximately a true picture of the course of events if we let them happen. But what if at some time in the next few years we realise, as we did in 1939, that democracy had temporarily to be suspended and we had to accept a disciplined regime that saw the UK as a legitimate but limited safe haven for civilisation. Orderly survival requires an unusual degree of human understanding and leadership and may require, as in war, the suspension of democratic government for the duration of the survival emergency.

It could be forced upon us by a weather event like that of 1953, when a storm tide in the North Sea devastated parts of the Thames estuary and Holland. Hundreds died. A similar event now could devastate much of the Netherlands, London and its hinterland. Perhaps this would be enough to bring to the fore some Churchill whose rhetoric would fire the nation to make the effort needed to adapt properly to change instead of just patching its problems in an incoherent way.

I suspect that effective action to sustain this island community will come from some form of internal tribal coherence and rare leadership, not from international or European good intentions. With luck the same will apply with the other havens. There will be time enough for internationalism during the stability of the long hot age. We have no option but to make the best of national cohesion and accept that war and warlords are part of it.

For island havens, an effective defence force will be as important as our own immune systems. Like it or not, we may have to increase the size of and spending on our armed forces. Perhaps the next generation of scientists and engineers will be competent and serve the Earth as general practitioners serve us in medicine. In wartime old dogs are quite quickly taught new tricks.

The first truly great environmental disasters will usurp the political agenda and displace many false ideas hampering change. As in war, there could be the rapid application of new technology to climate and survival problems. I hope it will work, but I do not think humans as a species are yet clever enough to handle the coming environmental crisis and I fear they will spend their efforts trying to combat global heating instead of trying to adapt and survive in the new hot world.

So let us prove Garrett Hardin, the American biologist, wrong when he said gloomily in 1968 that, as humans are naturally selfish, our condition is truly tragic; for in tragedy there is no escape. We can prove him wrong by surviving. Next week I will tell you how science might save us.

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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999

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Re:Parameter left to constrain and reduce is Population
« Reply #26 on: 2009-04-19 20:13:21 »

UK population must fall to 30m, says Porritt

Source: The Sunday Times
Authors: Jonathan Leake, Brendan Montague
Credits: 2009-03-22

JONATHON PORRITT, one of Gordon Brown’s leading green advisers, is to warn that Britain must drastically reduce its population if it is to build a sustainable society.

Porritt’s call will come at this week’s annual conference of the Optimum Population Trust (OPT), of which he is patron.

The trust will release research suggesting UK population must be cut to 30m if the country wants to feed itself sustainably.

Porritt said: “Population growth, plus economic growth, is putting the world under terrible pressure.

“Each person in Britain has far more impact on the environment than those in developing countries so cutting our population is one way to reduce that impact.”

Population growth is one of the most politically sensitive environmental problems. The issues it raises, including religion, culture and immigration policy, have proved too toxic for most green groups.

However, Porritt is winning scientific backing. Professor Chris Rapley, director of the Science Museum, will use the OPT conference, to be held at the Royal Statistical Society, to warn that population growth could help derail attempts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

Rapley, who formerly ran the British Antarctic Survey, said humanity was emitting the equivalent of 50 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere each year.

“We have to cut this by 80%, and population growth is going to make that much harder,” he said.

Such views on population have split the green movement. George Monbiot, a prominent writer on green issues, has criticised population campaigners, arguing that “relentless” economic growth is a greater threat.

Many experts believe that, since Europeans and Americans have such a lopsided impact on the environment, the world would benefit more from reducing their populations than by making cuts in developing countries.

This is part of the thinking behind the OPT’s call for Britain to cut population to 30m — roughly what it was in late Victorian times.

Britain’s population is expected to grow from 61m now to 71m by 2031. Some politicians support a reduction.

Phil Woolas, the immigration minister, said: “You can’t have sustainability with an increase in population.”

The Tory leader, David Cameron, has also suggested Britain needs a “coherent strategy” on population growth.

Despite these comments, however, government and Conservative spokesmen this weekend both distanced themselves from any population policy. ”

« Last Edit: 2009-11-12 17:13:09 by Hermit »

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Re:Parameter left to constrain and reduce is Population
« Reply #27 on: 2009-11-12 21:23:31 »

Inaction on climate change comes with a huge price tag

Source: CNews
Authors: David Suzuki with Faisal Moola
Dated: 2009-11-05

It’s interesting to see the reaction to a report just released by our foundation and the Pembina Institute. The Globe and Mail called our analysis of the costs of fighting climate change “unsaleable and dangerous”.

But the Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson wrote that “The Pembina Institute and the David Suzuki Foundation have had the courage to uncover and to tell us the truth. Now Canadians must decide what to do.”

Yes, it is up to Canadians to decide what to do. Do we plug our ears and close our eyes and go about business as usual while the world strains under the damage we are inflicting? Do we leave our children and grandchildren a world of misery? Or do we pull together to confront this challenge, as we have with other major threats the world has faced?

Keep in mind that the report, Climate Leadership, Economic Prosperity, while pointing out that reducing the impact of climate change will come with some costs, also concludes that our economy will remain healthy. In fact, the analysis, conducted by M.K. Jaccard and Associates, says that Canada’s gross domestic product would continue to grow even if we adopted the stronger measures that environmental organizations are calling for rather than the weak measures the federal government has proposed.

Still, comments in the news, and from people who post their reaction to news sites, show that many people aren’t willing to make tough decisions for the sake of our collective future – for the sake of our children and grandchildren.

Let’s be clear. Resolving a global problem like climate change will cost money. But doing nothing will cost much more. The very survival of people, not to mention many other plants and animals that we share this small planet with, may well be at stake.

Former World Bank chief economist Lord Stern has estimated that to keep heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions below levels that would cause catastrophic climate change would cost up to two per cent of global GDP, but failure to act could cost from five to 20 per cent of global GDP.

And those are just numbers. In the real world, runaway climate change could have devastating impacts on our water and food supplies, could lead to waves of refugees escaping uninhabitable drought-stricken areas or vanishing islands, and could wreak havoc on the world’s oceans and cause major extinctions of plants and animals. Some of this is already happening.

And consider what will become of our economy if we continue to fuel it with nonrenewable resources like oil and coal while the rest of the world switches to renewable energy. The demand for fossil fuels will dry up as the reserves become depleted. Where will that lead us?

And yet, we still have people saying it would cause too much hardship to act, or that it would be dangerous or divisive. Are we really that selfish? Well, not everyone is. It’s been heartening to see so many people, especially young people, taking to the streets and Parliament Hill, writing to MPs and prime ministers, and joining campaigns to urge governments to be part of the solution to global warming.

Millions of people turned out recently for more than 5,000 International Day of Climate Change events in 180 countries. The message was loud and clear: We expect our political leaders to work for the benefit and security of all of the world’s people when they meet in Copenhagen in December to work on a climate change agreement to continue and strengthen the Kyoto Protocol.

What these people realize is that the price we will pay to fight climate change is a good investment in a healthy and prosperous future. Some of the costs include investments in public transit and renewable energy, in programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in other parts of the world, and in helping people cope with higher transportation and home-heating costs during the time of transition.

The Globe and Mail, and others, may think all of this is “unsaleable and dangerous”, but it’s only dangerous to those who insist on staking their future on polluting, unsustainable non-renewable resources, and it’s only unsaleable to those who don’t care about the future. We can’t afford not to take action. We can’t afford to let our leaders let us down. We must continue to tell them that we expect them to work for us in Copenhagen.

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With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999

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