[Skybird]

When was it, two or three years ago there was this huge volcano eruption in the far East, it lasted for several weeks, but already after 2-3 weeks it was reported back then to have pumped out more climate-damaging emissions than the whole European industry in one year.


1991 the Pinatubo broke out. In the following 18 months, global temperatures fell by an average of 0.5°C, directly attributed to the volcano event.


There are many other natural phenomenonsns, in forests, in upper and lower layers of the atmosphere, in the oceans, that mess up man's projections on how climate will go and what man must do to be on the safe side, whatever that should mean, since these values vary tremendously. And whenever the next conference gets closer, the reduction values that they say must be reached, suddenly grow upwards (before the last IPCC report presentation it suddenly had grown to over 3.5°, and then even 5° of needed reduction). Thats is becasue many countries hope to get more money out of it the more dramatic a picture they paint. The good-doers of course are all in that scenario anyway, of course.


You said you refer to scientific results. I have hinted at that the scientific results are interest-led, from both sides of the spectrum. When the methods are corrupted and the intention rules out unwanted results from beginning on, then maybe one should not trust these results so blindly. Even more so when there is not just the conservative and industry-friendly lobby that opposes them, but also a small faction of relatively independent scientists whom you can occasionally read about, who put the mainstream dogma in question as well and for that get punished with merciless silence and getting ignored.


I was once the same like you on these issues, catfish. I saw a need over the past couple of years to change my views a bit. Sometimes massively. Sp much for those who accused me in the past that I never allow to have my opinion altered by somebody. I chnage my opinion - but I want to have a good reason for doing so. That I do not do it all too often, to me is a sign that my original option was a well-founded one. If I would cnage my views every months, I would just show that I know nothing and am a clueless idiot on things. Leaf in the wind, and all that.


There is a trend for warmer climate. I think that is clear. Ocean temperatures and salination, glaciers, polar ice caps, speak a clear language, clearer than atmospheric temperature and climate measuring alone. Man contributes to it, that also is beyond doubt to me - but there is more to it than just a human influx. Any values called out for reductions and limitations of global temperature rise, are not only relatively arbitrary, but also are financial interest-led and are result of the desired increase in money transfers from North to South. In the end all this does not impress or interest me that much. It happens, we cannot avoid it, either we are fit to deal with it, or we are not, period. Evolution means adaptation, and that is what I am interested in: if and how man will adapt to the changes in the climate environment. Preventing it, sounds like megalomania to me. Climate engineering is an option I do not want to see for real (once I was a fan of the idea), since I fear human hybris again.


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I repeatedly referred to the huge population. My number of 1-1.5 billion is the result of various inputs and things I read over the past 10 or 15 years. Books from various branches, media: geographers, biologists, environmentalists, oceanographists, really, a wild input. The number that got most often mentioned as beign the limit of what the Earth can sustain in ressources consummation and human emissions and garbage production, is in the range of 1-1.5 billion. Thats how I come to it.That is somewhere in t he range of global population at the beginning of the 20th century, I seem to recall.



Many people in africa and SE asia have many children not just due to the older ones being cared for, but but because of social prestige and status. Like also many places there are where bigger cattle herds get raised than a tribe actually would need to live, because again: bigger numbers mean more prestige, mean more "wealth". But these huge hers come at their own ecological costs, adn they are devastating, even when they are "fully bio". In short: cultural reasons for having many children overrule social needs by far, in Africa, Asia, and less so, but still: in South and Middle America as well. Children are seen as a gift. For some societies that practice aggressive expansionism due to ideological or powerpolitical motives, high birth rates also are a weapon. Demography is a weapon, lets be absolutely clear about that. I remind of the war index of Gunnar Heinsohn, which weighs the relation between old and young males in a society against the aggressiveness and the likelihood of internal wars in that society. The higher the index marking, the higher the probability of conflict and war. The system works stunningly well both for countries in the highly developed and the under-developed world.


The immense rat tails of consequences when practicing both intense industrial or bio farming, cannot be escaped. The balance has been shifted due to fertilzers and pesticides and artifical watering BUT - none of them is a free ride, they all have their own implicit costs. Too muc simpy is too much. Same is true for fish farms in the sea. You cannot eat the cake and still keep it. Its not possible. Earth's capacity to clean our disposal, is limited as well, so are many ressurces and their availability. I am very critical of the idea to mess up the balance even more by wanting to import ores from Moon or Mars in huge quantities so they make themselves felt in earth'S mineral and climate bilance. We simply know too little about that, and that is also the reason why I oppose ideas of climate engineering by releasing agents into the atmosphere or covering Earth with shields to deflect energy from space, and what else there is in "reasonable" concepts.


For any of these ideas, reduction of man'S global population is the inevitable precondition that cannot be evaded. The position of the Catholic church on issues of birth control and condoms, is not helpful, to put it very mildly. Personaly I think the Vatican should be held accountable at a tribunal like The Hague, for crimes against humanity. sAme is true for any idoelogy and religion propagating uncontrolled baby-booms. Its a recipe for civilizational suicide, and it creates suffering, more suffering, and utmost suffering.


In the medium term, to me all this talkign about ecology and temperature limitation goals and resourse preservation makes no sense as long as we are so many people. Growing. It is very simple. Moral or compassion or agape are things of man's imagination only, for nature they play no role. And if man does not get his acts together, then nature will care of it - with its characteristic lack of compassion and care for the individual. we see it happening everywhere already: wars, famines, ideologically fuelled hate, fight for sweet water, survival, migration. Several of the huge genocides in africa of the past 30 years were fueled by the massive dysbalance between old males keeping social key posts, and young males not finding a place in society and not being able to maintain their own family, since the older ones occupy all ground, options, seats of influence. The media then report just the surface and call it "ethnic hate" between two tribal groups. Thats is just the trigger, the strawman reason so to speak.



We have far to many babies in places where there should not be so many babies, and we have too little babies in places where we should have more. Still, the fundamental dysbalance between numbers in the developed and the less developed world, prevails. even if we would raise more babies in the west, it would mean little for the global population number. But it would mean more future adults runnign the industry that gets demonised so much by certain people - while it is the one thing that keeps the whole overcrowded boat afloat.


I once shared many of your views, Catfish, and I was as passionate in defending them. But I was forced to change quite some of my views. It is not as simplistic as I used to think of things in the past. Especially not with the scientific circus. I defend the method, but one needs to see its limits, and one has to be aware that everyday opportunism and politics have massively corrupted it. And that is true for fields of science that are of high practical value, and in theoretical science as well (string "theory", dont get me started...)