Global environment science -- learn or debate?

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Just checking to see if anyone is interested in engaging global climate science here. I can teach a little of what I've learned, deal with questions and objections with as informed an approach as I can manage, and we could proceed that way.

Or I could also go with sharp disagreement and some seriously posed doubts, just so long as we can agree to pursue it to its endpoint and to put in whatever necessary time each of us must do to own our opinions. I won't debate a website or a quote from someone. They cannot respond to me. This means we each must decide and commit ourselves to the idea of learning whatever we need to learn in order to make the points here, ourselves. That way, we can actually engage in a reasoned debate on the points, instead of just throwing mud (non-responsive words from someone else that you or I don't really understand ourselves and cannot deal with if asked directly) at each other. I'd focus on providing the best interpretations I can manage of the science and if I didn't feel that I knew it well enough or comprehensively enough, I'd ask for help from a lead scientist in the area so that I could master enough of it myself to make the argument from my own understanding here. I'd expect something of a similar nature from someone disagreeing with me. We each must agree to WORK for our opinions or there is no point starting. That way, also, it's worth my effort. I learn from the process, no matter what.

It is my sincere hope that this isn't the case where I can hear the pin dropping.

Jon

What is your question or opinion on the subject? Global environment encompasses a lot of area; I wouldn't mind discussing the issue if it was narrowed down a bit.

It was an open invitation and necessarily wide in scope. Pick an issue and a position.

Jon

How far do you think governments should go to get other governments or their own citizens for that matter to take care of the environment?

What is the best way to get people to actually care about the planet?

How do you get a powerful country such as the USA to care more about people than they do about profits?

When you use the term global enivironment are you also referring to the globalization of people, companies, and products or just solely the natural enivironment and it's resources?

Your question brings to mind Hardin's 1968 essay published in Science:
http://www.garretthardinsociety.org/art ... mmons.html

You don't mention what you mean exactly by "take care of the environment," so it is really hard for me to pick a specific position, though. So I brought up that essay for two reasons. The general reason is that your reference to governments brought to mind the concept of sovereignity on a large scale while your reference to citizens brings up a similar concept writ small - individual rights. And I wanted to set a tone for such a discussion with the article. In addition, though, I had a more specific reason. The essay says something at the end which is quite specific and which I agree with, firmly, which is "The only way we can preserve and nurture other and more precious freedoms is by relinquishing the freedom to breed..."

So perhaps we can start there in terms of specifics. It serves to "protect the environment" by addressing itself to the core underlying most of the environmental problems. More, there is no other possible option. Might as well face it squarely and deal with it.


Most effective is to have the world burn up right up around their feet and burn their noses with the smoke. Then, of course, they will care. But that's not 'best' to my mind. Anyway, I don't know enough about how people function to be much use about changing their desires. So I can't take any strong position on this.


I live here and I've no idea. I suppose, making a failure in caring about people cost them part of their profits.

I can suggest some thoughts, that's all. None I'm going to be able to defend all that well, though. But if other countries reacted in tandem and concert with each other towards the US, I'm sure we could be "cowed" around like any dumb animal can be. Stop buying US debt. Stop selling products or raw materials to the US. Stop buying US products. Etc. The rest of the world could survive without the US, technically anyway. I don't think the US holds anything unique. Works like a charm. Responsibility goes all around on this one. No one gets let off, unscathed. Different actions for different folks, that's all.


No, I mean it in a precise way. I mean to refer to what we do finally have pretty good science on, namely the global climate system. We cannot yet do a particularly good job on regional areas, such as for example my area -- the Pacific Northwest of the US, or Washington, Oregon, and Idaho and perhaps a little of Canada's Vancouver BC area. The global climate science is much better known regarding the globe as a whole. So I just didn't want to get into bickering about weather, which is why I chose "climate," and I just didn't want to get into bickering about the climate for London when the science is best regarding the globe and not one specific spot on it.

Jon

How do you suggest the privilege of breeding would be parcelled out in that case? I notice you mention this on another thread too so presumably you are serious about it. But isn't it a dangerous, ( + deeeply dodgy) thing to institute state control (?) of reproduction? Who would be allowed to have children? Why? Who would decide who got to do it?
China has already tried and it has been a tragic disaster. Families choosing to abort girl babies etc

I don't think the debate should have anything to do with climate. The climate thing causes arguments, because profit making opinions and advertising are too far ahead of the research.

I think the debate should be more about:
Finite resources
Natures beauty and habitats
Human shelter, hobbies, and desires
Food production
Transportation
The creation and disposal of poisons (pollution)
Providing security and quality of life

This list has no order of importance and is not all inclusive. They are the subjects I can think of, that need addressed. All while trying to retain and improve everyones freedom, happiness, and quality of life.

Oh, don't get me wrong. It's probably one of the more important and more difficult problems ever. I think the only truly good solution is to let me become world dictator and I'll decide. More seriously, though, the problem is quite profound. I'm very interested in thoughts about the problems and thoughts about the solutions, though. Let me start by proposing a problem that isn't a knee-jerk response to the obvious political questions (cripes, everyone on Earth is going to state the obvious, so on that score I only want to hear possible solutions not restatements of the obvious again and again.)

If a planetary wide population cap is to be implemented by whatever possible political means coupled with whatever coercive tools there may be to enforce it (long, long discussions there about myriad obvious quandaries, but set them aside for the moment), what does any selection process that might be applied do to the human gene pool? How can we approach the design of a selection process here? How much do we really know that will aid us in making intelligent and informed choices, as opposed to horribly distorting and twisted ones that will inevitably also lead to demise?

For example, sickle cell anemia actually was selected _for_ because of its useful protection in regions of endemic malaria. It may very well be the diversity in our genetic pool that saves enough of us from some future disease to make a difference. And if we observe it as a "problem" today, who knows if it will become the "savior" of tomorrow? We simply have no way of knowing what the future may bring us. So how can we possibly develop a process which will quite obviously have to say "these parents can have children and those potential parents may not?" Or... when will we know when we know enough, at all?

Forget the politics. Just think technically. And even there, it's complicated enough. Add in the politics and whatever coercive forces that may be required and... well, it's not an easy thing.

Part of the reason I bring up the above issue is that a solution to the political question may be found here. If there can be a relatively objective scientific understanding developed, sufficient to make reasoned quantitative choices without a crystal ball about the future which we will never ever have, then perhaps that is the only way we may be able to find political agreement. In other words, it may be that science provides the segue to a political answer.

But one thing is absolutely clear. If we do not figure it out, we cut our own throats quite assuredly. The objective truth is inescapable, regardless of the quandaries.

Jon

Unfortunately when an areas population exceeds its ability to support them, people get desperate. This desperation causes people to strike out at their neighbors. Civil and border wars reduce the population back to acceptable levels. The destruction and hatreds live generations longer than the actual combatants. The reminders ensure this method of population control continues its ugly cycle. I see no new solutions to the issue. The definition of crazy is to do the same thing over and over, while expecting a different outcome. Humans are still a mentally unstable species.

Yes, what parent would stand by and observe political borders, for example, when their own children are literally starving to death?

And as you suggest, violence begets violence. The way I look at it is this: if I throw garbage in your yard, you come over and punch me, then I go back with a bat and break your arm, then you come back and kill my child, then I go over and slaughter your entire family, then your relatives come back and... well, you get the idea. It is almost fundamental to human psychology that we respond to violence in a positive feedback cycle that escalates almost without limit. We need to learn how to respond to violence with LESS violence, not more. So as to act to dampen out the ringing effects, rather than to exacerbate them. It's not going to be easy.

But rationality never is.

Jon

,"

Yeah I did kind of phrase that vaguely due to in part to my own ineptness to try to say what exactly I meant and the controversy over the US's pussyfooting around the Kyoto Protocol. But I am glad you picked a better place to start than I.

"

Educated women are less likely to have large families. Educating women throughout the world has (and can still have) a large effect on the population crisis. A mountain would have to be moved to get population growth to zero or even close to it. I would be too pessimistic on the issue if I thought that the only solution would be population control. Ironically like in children of men ( Sci-Fi movie) , i think the pollutants that we are are drinking (such as those found in detergents) will lower sperm counts (it has been theorized before) which would have an effect on births. I just wish in vitro fertilization clinics weren't in such vogue. So while logically I would say yes; I would think that there would have to be ways to manipulate others to forgo breeding without them even consciously realizing it because the procreation is a force to be reckon with.



Yet that would be the key or multiples keys considering cultural influences. There is a whole field of psychology dedicated to this problem called Ecopsychology. I find it interesting that Hardin is against propaganda when it comes to population control but yet thinks that a coercion law will ever come into effect. I agree that propaganda doesn't work on it's own. Like motivation it flucuates and should not be relyed on to change peoples' behaviors. But I do think it can promote awareness of the problem. Moral responsiblity can work to push people to consider passing laws which limit resources, prevent pollution exc. Either way it wouldn't effect the legal system by much considering the legalizaton system is absymally slow because people hate change and they fear even the most minute kind of social control such as no smoking bans or eliminating trans fat from restaurants.
Environmentalism kind of reminds me of another social problem, obesity. People are told that they only have to do a little to fight the bulge. Such as walk for 20 minutes or don't drink a Big Gulp. But the problem in that type of thinking is that it's untrue. It takes a lot to burn off just a small amount of excess calories and it's been medically proven now that even a lit bit of excess fat in the wrong areas can lead to an early death. Environmentalists are telling the same story except they are saying just use less water or use a different type of lightbulb. There has been some promising studies done that show with a carefully done propaganda campaign that people are more likely to make these small changes. It can be argued in both cases that doing a little good of something is better than nothing. I certainly won't tell someone to give up but to do more, yet I feel that the problem isn't in the propaganda so much as it is in the lie that these people tell themselves that if I just do a little I will be doing a lot. I havn't myself figured out how to get people to transition from doing small things to big things that would actually change the outcome of our fate.



I agreed with Hardin on that. That it is economically sound and such. And corporate fines do go a long way in improving corporate practices. Perhaps if the US had better corporate crime units to invesigate potential corporate crime cases. Corporate crime would be less of a problem because it would be bad for buisness if every company knew that they could get busted as easy as Enron.

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I know that is happening in small ways. But US corporations do more damage than the US government so it seems to me even if the US falls faster than the Roman empire, US corporations ( depending on their consumers/ and global employees) would still have to brought into consideration. Dumb animals can still be dangerous. I like the quote from Nip/Tuck; "Your dangerous because you're weak." Your scenerio could also be a problem for the environment if the US is willing to do anything to maintain it's stranglehold on the world's resources.




No, I mean it in a precise way. I mean to refer to what we do finally have pretty good science on, namely the global climate system. We cannot yet do a particularly good job on regional areas, such as for example my area -- the Pacific Northwest of the US, or Washington, Oregon, and Idaho and perhaps a little of Canada's Vancouver BC area. The global climate science is much better known regarding the globe as a whole. So I just didn't want to get into bickering about weather, which is why I chose "climate," and I just didn't want to get into bickering about the climate for London when the science is best regarding the globe and not one specific spot on it.

Othila, if you get a chance, see about fixing up the quoting a bit. I think, at the end, that you have my words placed as your voice, in fact. And nothing after that, which makes me curious if you had written and lost something there.

Jon

This point you make is probably the ONLY thought I've ever had about helping in a significant way that I felt also had any real chance of making a measurable difference.

A problem remains in my mind. Evolution works quite rapidly, in surprisingly few generations to my way of thinking, in sorting out traits that confer minuscule advantage differences. Those who make the choice not to have children, or even those who choose only to have just one fewer child than they otherwise might have, I think, will quickly find themselves in a growing minority (if you don't mind the oxymoron.) The behavior will be expunged rather quickly. And likely, some moral or ethic will fill the void to rationalize the behavior and make it seem "normal." But the point is that those who have genes which permit them to consider the idea of not having children for some purpose they can foresee through education, perhaps, will not pass on their genes as competitively as those who simply cannot foresee such things because (perhaps) they also don't have a motivation to self-educate in the face of difficulties or aren't attracted to education or otherwise simply aren't able to foresee such things or perhaps aren't of a mind to let such foresight modify their behavior in that direction. One way or another, breeding will continue.

It's impossible, right now, for me to see a solution that has any chance at all. Inevitability is manifest.


Indeed. Which reminds me. We don't even have a clue how to run a civilization that isn't based upon a youth bubble. A stable population has never really been done before on any large scale, let alone planet wide. We depend on the influx and the resulting shift in age distributions associated with it to operate our current economies, not to mention less clearly associated things such as ethics, law, the concept of ownership, and so on. We aren't prepared for a stable population on any level. Even if we could move ourselves to that point, we'd face yet another disaster in the making. Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

I don't see a way out. Which, of course, makes us ultimately about as collectively intelligent as any bacteria.


The reason it must be tied to that should be obvious. But I'll state the obvious. We live on a small planet, in a vacuum bottle, in a very sensitive region of balance from the sun. According to an NAS report in 1996, humans and their domesticated animals account for 98.5% of the total mass of land based vertebrates. It's worse, today. We are currently consuming just the renewable part of resources in excess of 30% over the rate at which they are being replenished. And as I have mentioned before, the exponential curve of our expected growth rate (it's less than its peak in the mid 1960's, but still continuing) eats away quite quickly at any linear change we make in terms of reducing our per capita consumption. Even a return to horse and buggy days in the US would be quickly absorbed by just the more conservative projects of world population growth in the next couple of decades alone. If you work the math, and I have, the numbers speak volumes.

See: Reindeer on St. Matthew Island


I'll need more than scifi. I think I've read the suggestions, but frankly even if I allow for that possibility I don't have the least reason to imagine it will make enough of a difference. Much more likely, will be that pollution will have non-linear "crash" effects that will be more pronounced and far less _gentle_ than some nifty and "just the right amount" of population control you are imagining. There is no negative feedback to linearize the process, that I see. But perhaps you could help be more convincing on this point by providing some references and sample calculations that would argue for a self-correcting system that brings everything into nice closed-loop control.

What I see is St Matthew Island.


I'm still letting that one settle in. Anyway, we still have no idea what we would be tinkering with, even assuming that those in power wouldn't abuse their power and would be even handed.'

I'll stop for now.

Jon

I do apoloize for not deleting your words at the end of my post. I was having trouble with it so I said all the hell with it. If people follow this thread they will see the error.

I disagree. Mutations can happen quite rapidly but evolution takes more than one generation. I did think of Idiocracy (yes another movie; sorry it's one of the few ways for me to understand my generation) when you rationalized how the stupid will continue to breed. As a "what if" scenerio it's quite powerful. I disagree with the premise on the basis that intelligence isn't purely based on genetics. I also think the more the legal system gets embroiled in the issue, the more likely this will not happen. Subtle measures such as creating child support enforcement agents are actually putting independent freedoms to the test as irresponsible men are going to be left with the dilemma of either to be able to financially afford their children or lose both their freedom of movement and the freedom to procreate along with it. I didn't bring this up in my last post but I have thought about prisons and how long-term sentences are beneficial in one way towards US society; men are unable to have any more children . Of course I think a more humane system can be used instead.

It's too bad the feminist movement became so fragmented to the point of uselessness considering that the global problem would be the main answer in the dismantling of patriarchy. Dispelling the cult of motherhood would actually make women independent more so than any other proactive measure.



Poverty does play a big role in the issue. It has been shown that those in impoverished circumstances are less likely to take the future into account of their actions. The best way to get impoverished nations on the same playing field as say the US or Europe is concentrate more upon giving them a chance to actually compete in our world. This is where globalization rears it's ugly head because there will be those who would argue against monoculturalism. I will save that for another time because I am kind of on the fence at this moment about the pros and cons of having a monocultural world.



We use to. Of course biology helped us out a lot more given that most children didn't use to be able to make it to adulthood. Before the Victorian age there was nothing wrong with the idea of a woman deciding to remain childless. We were bought into the propaganda that the purpose of our existence was to have children. Industrialization most likely had it's effect but so to did the fact that women were becoming more independent. No longer was the home the main source of income as more people were working outside of their homes and off of farms. Men were thrown off their pedastel so to speak and turning motherhood into sainthood was pure genius in keeping women in their place. Youth bubbles seems to pop up after major wars. Ironically if we stopped killing people off in merciless and inhumane ways such as the Civil War and WW2 we won't have to deal with the after-effects of our survival gene.



Yes and no. Before the prevalence agriculture people were more dependent on their ecosystems. Women had fewer children due to the lactation effect and perhaps due to males and females being more seperated for longer periods of times. I would guess that without modern medicince and no place to go when natural disasters hit that nature a long time ago did make human populations stable.




Yes that is quite obvious. The US and Europe has already did much to lower their populations but it's not their populations that will kill them it is immigration. Talk about a political minefield. I have been so careful not to step on the feet of that elephant yet there it is. Thanks in part to Catholicism there are large regions of the world where birth control isn't practiced and large families are still the norm. Farming has a lot to do with it also as around the world farming is still a profession. I read somewhere that third world countries are about 100 years behind us ecnomically so it makes sense that large families benefit them invididually by putting more workers at their disposal.

I keep thinking about Hardin's lifeboat analogy. It reminds me of when when Sherman left many freed slaves stranded during the crossing of Ebenezer Creek oh his march. The freed slaves started following the soldiers and the men especially were encouraged to join the march. The problem was that the freed slaves families were slowing down the march and having a deterimental effect on the limitied supplies the soldiers had. The solution was to remove the portable bridge and leave the freed slaves on the other side of the creek. The freed slaves families weren't told that they were being left behind and many drowned trying to cross the creek and join the march. It is hard to implement rationality even during times of war because there is something in human nature that makes us want to save everyone and leave no one behind even if we end up drowning in the process. If people like Sherman go against this impulse they are criticized even if the choice they made was the only forseeable choice availible.



Well eventually the problem will correct itself with the unfortunate side effect of destroying almost everything else on the planet. Of course there have been biologists out there who see a way to prolong this destruction by saving key ecosystems and having these ecosystems connect with each other. I am going to the library tommorow given I need to give my brain a good kick given how little I remember anything these days. So my next post I will find some credible scientific journals/books that will put more bearing on words. I will be honest in that I am not an expert on the issue but I think the isolation of expertise in American society can be blamed for more societal problems than just about anything else. So I enjoy trying to wrap my mind around the issues instead of being passive about them and letting life just pass me by.

I agree with what you're saying but if I may; in some parts of the world, people have very large families because they depend on family for future income. The more the better. With high child mortality rates (motivation) and lack of birth control for all, its baby boom all the time. Yes, they're not as educated on the issue, but it's culturally ingrained. They're not worrying about the world's growing population, environmental problems and lessening world resources but about how to bring food to the table in years to come.

The opposite problem with birth control: too few are being born. The population is getting older, with all the problems that brings with less and less of a younger, productive population taking their place. This puts an awful lot of strain on the lessening younger, productive and tax-paying population. This is starting to happen in some third World countries (industrialized) and is already in many First World countries.

The question of birth control is solving some problems on one hand, but bringing others on the other. It's not as simple as "have less children and everything will be fine." What about other aspects? Like economical, which in turn impact systems and even environment?

[rant]I think people have to figure out ways to at least delay environmental problems, come up with new technologies (if there were more funding in this area, surely things would get a bit better and problems delayed a little longer) and especially stop being so selfish when it comes to money and stopping at nothing to get it. Even destroying the environment. [/rant]

Whew. Rant over.

Well, that is a strawman as that wasn't what I was saying. It would obviously take a number of generations, but that would be the context under consideration.

I'll await your research and, if you point it up and discuss it, I'll go out and get copies if I can. Perhaps contacting the lead researchers for more thoughts, as well, as appropriate.

Jon