Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

[Slimprofits]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

The Obama 650bn carbon-tax will be used to pay off social security related debt, NOT to invest it in alternative/green energy or carbon cuts.

This is as per the proposed budget.

So yes, Obama administration will milk US citizens on the promise of greener future, but keep on piling up the old coal.

So much for CHANGE.

Also, per government documents, it will be used to send bribes, sorry, rebates, out to taxpayer / citizens.

[Scott4139]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

half the world frozen solid (70s style) the other half burned up (90s style).

Only time will tell what climate changes are in store for us in the near future; bored to death with temperate weather?

I'll burn a candle in honor of the always determined climatologists.

[Scott4139]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

"can at best support 1B" Where did you get this? What are we short of at 6B people? Good science it seems.

[Mn_Mark]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

I do tend to be black or white on issues and I know it is something I need to work on.

But sometimes the "other side" really is wrong. And sometimes the stakes are very high.

For those who are concerned about global warming and who feel quite sure that it's a serious problem and that the debate should be over and big government intervention into our lifestyles should be implemented, I suggest watching this:

The Great Global Warming Swindle

We've all been exposed to the arguments for the global warming hypothesis. But have you really, honestly been exposed to the arguments against it?

[Rajiv]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

The question is 1B at what standard of living, and also what are the environmental impacts of additional crowding (in other words impact of 6.5 B people on the carrying capacity of the planet.)

These are really two different questions. One is that of resource availability, and the other is the impact of crowding and human activity on the other interlocked systems that make the living planetary body (that is the contribution of Lovelock to our understanding of how ecological systems work and sustain themselves)

I do not know if you have spent any time outside the US, and particularly in the densely populated areas of the world.

India for example has 1.2 B people in a land area that is 1/3 the size of the US (all 50 states and territories) -- in other words imagine the US with a population of 3.5B. I will leave it at that.

Just for reference is this article - How much of the world's resource consumption occurs in rich countries?

[tombat1913]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

But he does offer a solution, and I think that solution could be quite profitable as well as potentially saving our collective bacon! I have referred to the solution elsewhere on this forum much earlier.

But personally, I am not very optimistic about avoiding catastrophic collapse (not so much in the US, but elsewhere in the world where the now 6.5B and soon to be 8B live -- but of course there will be a ripple effect here as well)

Wow Rajiv I never would have thought you were in the global warming camp!

[Guest]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

I am not suggesting Rajiv needs to wade into this further, and in fact perhaps wise for everyone to keep their own counsel rather than hammer this question back and forth, or into the ground - but actually there really are some large real world issues tangled into Lovelock's admonition. Put the guy and his believability aside for a moment and consider whether these following issues are today in much dispute.

On resource depletion and desertification, and their implications to the population time bomb, this is a hard thesis to refute. I would suggest Rajiv's point here (and on this score Lovelock can hardly be said to be wildly off the mark), is that whatever is causing the increasing aridity of the planet (are we all on the same page that much is occurring, and have'nt we all read the term "water crisis" in dozens of places?) is on a collision course with A) runaway and now sharply exponential population growth, and B) what is quite manifestly a brewing emergency with depletion of multiple critical resources, of which water alone is a highly thought provoking detour.

And most important of all C), peak oil, the "super condensed energy battery" which underpins the entire global food production boom that we've witnessed in the past 100 years which drove this population explosion to begin with. You've got:

Collapsing fisheries.
Mineral grades averaged across decades are collapsing in critical *strategic* minerals
Galloping *accelerating* global desertification
Population explosion entering into a critical exponential trend
Galloping *accelerating* global deforestation
Collapse of many species annually
Peak Oil > what are the full implications to global agri-productivity from this one trump card alone?

All of these global scale trends stir together into a really nasty soup of consequences, and Lovelock's thesis is right squarely overlapping some themes that I must assume we all freely grant, are daunting enough that they not only cannot be easily dismissed - rather it seems they cannot be dismissed at all in 2009. The point getting lost maybe in the debate about whether or not global warming is anthropogenic, is the desertification of the planet which is accelerating (is anyone here not on board with this much?), and the massive threat to water for some of the most populous regions of the planet e.g. for both China and India from the Himalayan glaciers melting rapidly (anyone not on board with that much?) - I think this was Rajiv's main point.

There is (much less polemical than anthropogenic global warming) a quite evident trend towards global desertification, combined with a quite obvious population time bomb, and with increasingly obviously, peak oil - and all this together does not suggest that some percentage of the world's population won't take the full brunt of this event, as a billion at least are on the edge of food hardship (a polite euphemism for starvation) right now already and are balanced in a delicate equilibrium with avalable food. Forget global warming, desertification or the population time bomb. What happens to their delicately balanced food supply when petroleum goes to $300 a barrel and drives up world grain prices along with it?

This is the core thesis, and it stands entirely un-affected by any of the comments contributed so far "debunking" anthropogenic global warming as having fostered a politicized community of specious agitators. I have no idea wether that many billions of human souls will be put against the wall by the confluence of those factors, but it seems if we are questioning whether any emergency really exists, we might note that it's highly likely that at least one billion people will indeed act as the "shock absorber" for this event. And when we weigh human life in those sorts of very large numbers (a billion humans?), it is best that we all adopt a suitably sober minded tone in approaching Mr. Lovelock's core thesis as this describes. To seek to "debunk" this overarching point would be well and truly reckless.

Are desertification, peak oil now, or within five years, a water crisis, collapsing fisheries, and a population time bomb real, or not? What do they mean, in the context of this comment of Mr. Lovelock's? Why have the CIA and a dozen other intelligence agencies of the OECD countries already game-planned the potential for a massive exodus from desertifying southern regions across Eurasia? Perhaps lost in the debate is the fact that food security is not exactly assured for a couple of billion souls, and that's just today in 2009.

Wow Rajiv I never would have thought you were in the global warming camp!

[Rajiv]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

I think you got to the crux of my argument.

I would like to add that I am not necessarily in the global "warming" camp. But I do not dispute that CO2 in the atmosphere and the oceans is increasing, and is likely having a deleterious impact. It IMO is also incontrovertible that human activity has an important role in that.

Global climate is complex, and CO2 and CH4 are greenhouse gases. That could lead to either global warming or global cooling -- either is possible -- however I do not doubt that the overall impact could well be drastic ecological change.

[Guest]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

Very interesting documentary MN_Mark. Thanks. Watched it through with care.

[tombat1913]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

The overarching point here that's getting swept away in the *highly distracting* debate about whether or not global warming is anthropogenic (it is warming and that's like a bonfire lit underneath desertification, that's the salient point!)

"All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.
The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out most of the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down."

The rest of the article is here

I wasn't seeking to enter a debate with Rajiv, I was merely stating that knowing what I know about Rajivs previous posts I would be somewhat suprised to learn he was a believer in global warming. That's all.

Do you like beer? Maybe next time I'm in San Diego I can buy you a drink.

[tombat1913]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

I think you got to the crux of my argument.

I would like to add that I am not necessarily in the global "warming" camp. But I do not dispute that CO2 in the atmosphere and the oceans is increasing, and is likely having a deleterious impact. It IMO is also incontrovertible that human activity has an important role in that.

Global climate is complex, and CO2 and CH4 are greenhouse gases. That could lead to either global warming or global cooling -- either is possible -- however I do not doubt that the overall impact could well be drastic ecological change.

I agree that humans are undoubtedly having a negative impact on the environment and we simply cannot continue with business as usual.

I suppose I misunderstood this statement as meaning that you believe in global warming.

But he does offer a solution, and I think that solution could be quite profitable as well as potentially saving our collective bacon!

[Rajiv]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

Look at the terra preta links of Marvenger, and my link to "the Secret of El Dorado" to understand the nature of the solution.

[Guest]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

Do you like beer? Maybe next time I'm in San Diego I can buy you a drink.

No Tombat 1913 - I'd be the one buying. Forget the shocking global temp decline you are referencing this year. That's like taking a mean vehicle velocity reading from a three second time sample and counting it as reliable. Start reading around about what's happening with declining ore grades in multiple mined metals, the reality of water scarcity, the drastically shrinking glaciers in Andes, Alps Himalayas and the studies projecting what a continuation of that trend will do for farming in both India and China. Runaway deforestation of the remaining world old growth forests? Fisheries collapse in oceans worldwide? Read a little about the implications to the world's agri production should we halve it's petroleum consumption. Read something about the number of species becoming extinct each year, vs. the human population projections for mid century. On and on. What is to debate on that front? It is all sitting there, degrading and converging out into a window around 2030-2050. Plain as day.

[thousandmilemargin]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

Although I am skeptical about AGW I would definitely support calls for a massive nuclear buildout and subsidies for Pretta Terra
Oil and coal are both finite resources, not to mention very dirty, and we are going to need to replace them at some stage, so a big nuclear rollout will be a good investment either way.

Likewise, soil degradation is a serious issue globally, and Pretta Terra will help food sustainability, particularly once we start to run low on artifical fertilisers (NPK).

I also see PV, solar thermal and EV technologies as worthy of major funding even if global warming turns out to be a natural variation.

And regardless of the effects of CO2, cutting down what is left of the world's forests is a bad idea. We should be pushing for reforestation on a continental scale to help make rainfall patterns more consistent.

A lot of these things are solutions to multiple problems and are worth doing even if AGW is just hot air. As opposed to cap and trade, which is just a diversion.

Lastly, I don't think the world can support 3 billion people with any decent quality of life, let alone the current 6.5B. Overpopulation is the real threat here. The trend over the last century has been to cut down what little forest is left and support the extra billions on beans, rice and wheat. The natural world is sacrificed so that an extra billion humans can live in malnourished poverty.

[BadJuju]

Re: Lovelock Warns: One Last Chance Or 8 Billion Die

Pretta Terra

Terra pretta, good sir.