DISEASES AND NATURAL DISASTERS
“But there is more to worry about with temperature rises. With the increase in
temperature more countries will be infected with mosquito borne diseases like Dengue
Fever, malaria, Yellow Fever, West Nile virus, and some types of encephalitis. Dengue
fever has spread from nine countries 50 years ago to 100 countries today including most
of the United States.
“These communicable disease problems will probably go hand-in-hand with droughts and famines. It could certainly be expected also that we will find violence used as a tool to claim the land of others when we have lost ours to Neptune.
TREACHERY AMONG THE SKEPTICS
“You may remember back in about 2010 e-mails and documents from East Anglia University were hacked by people in Turkey and Russia and selected mails or excerpts from a few mails were put on the Internet. A major issue was that the climate
scientists were concerned with the skeptics. They showed a concern for keeping some of the research out of the hands of the skeptics. Some climate skeptics claimed that the e- mails fabricated research on the dangers of warming.
Both press and science organizations concluded no such thing from those e-mails.
There was no question that warming existed and that human activities were largely responsible. The legitimate criticisms of the e-mails was that the few scientists involved felt that there was a need for some secrecy of their work and many had sought to control premature disclosure of it. There was nothing in the e-mails to indicate any falsification of evidence. And in fact the evidence produced at East Anglia and Penn State universities was consistent with the findings of researchers at other research institutes. While the skeptics used some phrases taken out of context to cast doubt on all climate research,
thorough governmental investigations of the e-mails showed that there was no cover-up
and that the research showed clearly that warming was occurring.
“In one e-mail an author mentioned the word 'trick' to indicate a technique used by another scientist to describe yearly temperature variations, using actual temperatures and other dating techniques like tree rings. The skeptics took the word 'trick' to mean deception, which was not the intent of the author. Here is another illustration of a text being taken from its context and being misinterpreted by someone without the ability to interpret.
“Another similar term taken out of context and misunderstood was the term 'hide the decline' which the skeptics took to mean hiding evidence, but the real meaning related to what climatologists had to do with temperature differences between actual measured temperatures and tree ring dating indications of temperatures which varied.”
“Wreck, I can think of a few football terms that if taken out of context could certainly be misinterpreted. When we talked about ‘headhunting’ we were not talking about it in the sense that cannibals might, we were talking about making tackles. And when we
talked about ‘sky’ and ‘cloud’ we were talking about responsibilities in pass coverages, not about what we might see when we looked up. And when we talked about ‘dogs’ we were talking about linebackers rushing the passer. So I guess it’s pretty clear that when you take a term from one context and interpret it in another context you are certainly going to have semantic problems and your interpretations will be meaningless.
“When the tobacco companies hid or falsified evidence it didn't change the fact that people were dying from tobacco in large numbers. That was lying at the corporate level.“Then there is the common tactic of attacking a person rather than an argument
that the person is making. So often the skeptics make fun of Al Gore, but they don’t disprove his message. You remember our talk about logic, attacking a person rather than an argument is a logical fallacy.
EDUCATION IS ESSENTIAL TO MAKING PEOPLE
SCIENTIFICALLY AWARE
“More than a third of the world has never heard of global warming.(26) While 99% of Japanese have heard of it and 97% of Americans had heard of it, only 15% of the people of Liberia were aware of it. And when the people were asked about the cost of global warming it was the Latin Americans who generally came out with the highest percentages. In fact of the top 20 countries where people said that human activity is responsible for much of global warming, 13 were in Latin America. South Korea showed the most awareness of global warming being a human product, with 92% of the people believing this. In the US, by contrast, only 49% said they thought the warming was a result of human activities.”
”The internet should be your best way of educating people. Certainly it can be used
for negative purposes, such as teaching terrorists how to make bombs, and attempting to get people to narrow their thinking into one ideological pigeonhole. It may be a recruiting tool for a religious sect or for a political movement without requiring the user to think his or her way to a rational conclusion. It can also be used as a force for good. And I think on balance, far more good than bad results from using the Internet. Some countries, like China, are censoring the Internet access. This can be seen as bad if you think that
freedom of speech includes every aspect of one's freedom, such as access to child pornography or a terrorist bomb making. But I think the positive possibilities outweigh the negatives.
CONFRONTING SKEPTICS ON OVERPOPULATION
“Let’s move to your major problem, the skeptics who doubts overpopulation. The
propagandists lead the skeptics by often using condescending terms for those who say that there is an overpopulation problem. They may say it is a ‘pop creed’ or Malthusian. Ridicule is a way to make your followers feel superior to the people you are ridiculing. It can be an effective political technique for those who don’t think.
“The skeptics may say that the Founding Fathers felt strongly for freedom. And
naturally they extend that to having the freedom to have an unlimited number of children. Of course they didn’t think that the voters should have the freedom to vote directly for their president. Their system of choosing electors has resulted in the country having 18 presidents who were not chosen by a majority of the voters. Two of them are commonly
ranked among the top five presidents—Abraham Lincoln and Harry Truman. On the other hand three of those often are listed among the five worst—George W. Bush, James Buchanan and Benjamin Harrison. The ‘Great Compromise’ which allowed proportional representations in the House of Representatives, but two senators from each state did not give the larger states the freedom to influence treaties, Supreme Court appointments or such decisions as whether to go to war. California, with 60 times more people than Wyoming, has senators with equal legislative impact. The Founding Fathers who allowed gun possession in order to keep ‘a well regulated militia’ have had their intentions significantly changed by legislation and court decisions. The separation of church and state has been significantly altered with tax deductions for churches and the recognition
of God in the Pledge of Allegiance and in many other areas of government. So assuming that some ideas relative to the idea of ‘freedom’ were held by the Founding Fathers, ever if we could accurately determine them, should direct our thinking today is not borne out
by our laws and traditions today—since we have obviously moved counter to many of the ideas that they actually did have. And, none of the Founding Fathers ever expressed their opinions on global warming or overpopulation.
“With the intelligence of the Fathers we might assume that they would be well versed in the sciences if they lived today. They would probably therefore recognize what the top researchers in the world have determined about global warming.
“What the skeptics don’t do is to look at the decreasing amount of arable land and
fresh water. Both are limiting factors to living healthy lives. They never suggest a
maximum population for the world—especially one that takes into consideration the real factors that relate to o
verpopulation, like the using up of many natural resources and the production of wastes such as heavy metals, plastics, nuclear wastes, et cetera. They deny global warming in spite of the overwhelming scientific evidence for it. They say that ‘the population doomsayers have always been wrong’ but they seldom mention any. They misconstrue the ideas of Malthus who was speaking to an England that at the time was self-sufficient in agriculture. Today they are net importers of food. They are only about 60% self sufficient in producing their food.(27) The skeptics have some legitimate
criticisms of some of the predictions made by Paul Ehrlich in his book in the 1960s, but
they can’t criticize his basic message.
“It may not seem strange that their financing comes from businesses that would be hurt if population were to reduce. I have looked at the websites of their think tanks and have been appalled that they don’t accept comments. Libertarian and conservative think tanks, such as the Cato Institute seem to speak with the authority of the Pope—getting
their information directly from God or the oil companies.”
“Even so, your skeptics need to be reminded that those who never change their opinions will never be able to correct their mistakes so they will never be any smarter than they once were, or thought they were. The open-minded people, particularly those
with physical science backgrounds, should be able to understand the problems of global warming and the use of natural resources. People with medical or sociological backgrounds should be able to see the needs of better living through a reduced population and more concern for the children brought into the world. There's an old saying that 'a wise man can see more from the bottom of a well than a fool can see from a
mountain top.’ You will obviously have to clarify the visions for those fools on the
mountain tops. You must give them intellectual binoculars.”
“I know that your primary concern in reducing population is to reduce the global
warming effect on the planet.”
”That’s a major reason. But there’s also the need to have people in jobs throughout
their lives. There is certainly a reason to try to keep jobs in the home countries of people
rather than have them illegally migrating to other countries. There is the obvious need to keep people working longer in their lives rather than retiring in their 60s, so we won’t need so many young people to take their places. There is a need to reduce poverty and to get all the world’s people fed properly. And of course there’s also the freshwater problem.
But let’s start looking at what the skeptics will be saying when I approach the need to
control our population.
“It is unquestioned that more than 200,000 people are added daily to the world's population. It is unquestioned that fresh water is becoming more scarce. It is unquestioned that arable land per person is being reduced. It is unquestioned that global warming is a result of excess population. If only 10 1/2% of the world's land is arable, as the CIA has determined, then each baby born reduces the acreage for each person on
earth. When we realize that part of the arable land is forest or jungle which is necessary
to convert the carbon dioxide to oxygen, we have even less arable land per person. Yet we
need more forest and jungle for every person born to reduce his carbon footprint.
“If we figure that today, in 2025, each person has less than half an acre of arable land, counting forests, we see that we have a problem. And when we see that the US and Europe have much more than the average arable land per person, we can understand that the people in the Mideast, Pakistan, Africa, and China have less.”
”Commander, you should probably also point out that many of the people making the decisions about population, warming, and poverty live in the areas where arable land and water supplies are not so pressing. Northern Europe and northern America will be much less concerned because they haven't suffered from the famines and diseases that have afflicted those in most other parts of the world.
”True Chet. But I think they have to be convinced just as the Third World countries need to be. As we said earlier, the skeptics must be pushed to define their positions, such as how many people per arable acre of land is minimal or maximal. They need to define how much freshwater is needed per person. They need to be pushed to evaluate scientifically the issues related to overpopulation.
“Poverty, immigration, famines, disease and so forth are real. They may say that
the problem with famine is that the food producing countries will not supply the poor
countries or that it is transportation that is the problem in getting food to the hungry. They
may say that ocean water can be desalinized but they neglect to say how it will be paid for. With the exception of Norway and one or two other countries, every country has a national debt. Which of the so-called rich countries are willing to go more into debt to
pay for the desalinization of water for poorer countries? And where is that money going to come from? There is no great banker in the sky ready to loan every country what it needs at interest they can pay while servicing their existing national debts.
“If there were unlimited money, unlimited arable land, unlimited freshwater, and unlimited pollution free energy, maybe there wouldn't be the real problem that exists. I have yet to see any skeptics proposing real solutions to the problems of warming, poverty, illegal immigration and so forth. They may say that everyone in the world can fit
comfortably into Texas, but they neglect to say that there isn't enough arable land or
water in Texas to support them. If we gave one acre of land to everyone we could fit a
little over one billion people into Texas. That would be about 14% of the world’s population. But the arable land in Texas is only about 20% of the total land, so if we divided the arable land among the total population of the world each person would have about 125 square meters of land for their home, their farms, the land necessary to graze their cattle, and forests to convert their carbon dioxide back to oxygen. Then, of course,
you would need roads, business buildings, and many other land using structures necessary
for a civilization. Most people in the West have homes that are over 125 square meters, that’s 1250 square feet. Additionally Texas has water problems so there wouldn’t be nearly enough water to support the world’s population.
“Then we might ask at what level of income should everyone live. If we all live at the level of the citizens of Mali we can support more people than if everyone lives at the
level of Luxembourg.”
”From what I’ve read the skeptics either just deny overpopulation without any evidence or they criticize people who in the past said that we were going to have overpopulation, like Thomas Malthus and Paul Ehrlich. We might as well criticize
Aristotle for not having the knowledge of today’s physicists when he suggested that a heavy object falls faster than lighter object. The theory of Malthus made great sense when it was proposed, his idea that humans grow exponentially while food production grows arithmetically seems to be only half true today. Genetically modified food, pesticides, fertilizers and academic knowledge about how to grow plants more effectively were not available to Malthus. Of course today we have other problems relative to growing food. Freshwater for irrigation is reducing considerably. The available arable
land is decreasing as erosion and building eliminate over 200,000 square miles per year. Fertilizer components are reducing as they become more expensive. Mass production requires more oil, as does the transportation of the food.
“Skeptics may say that there is extensive literature critiquing the concept of human overpopulation. But they don’t list the literature or any scientific studies and projections that might aid them in demolishing what they call the overpopulation myth. One writer that I read backed up his statement there was massive literature on his side gave as his evidence a science f
iction story that he thought was poorly done. He did address an article by Russell Hopfenberg that postulated that population is limited when food is limited. But then the critic jumps to comparing the Western developed world with its reducing population to their availability to adequate food. Of course it wasn’t Hopfenberg’s thesis, in fact it was just the opposite. Obviously more than food can limit population. The ability of people in the developed world to choose whether or not to have children based on their self-centered interests is an entirely different matter. What Hopfenberg had written was that when food is not available people cannot survive. He was not talking about voluntary family planning.
“Rather than criticizing the idea that there are too many people in the world and that the overpopulation problem is getting worse, the skeptic criticized the idea that food relates to fertility. If you remember the logical fallacies from your university classes on logic, you can understand that this critic was setting up a ‘straw man’ and attacking an area which is not germinal to the proposition. He said he was arguing against the idea that there were too many people in the world.
“The skeptic never did attack the idea that there were too many people in the
world, that they contribute to climate change, that they contribute to legal and illegal
immigration to find jobs, that there is a major problem with supplying water, and so forth.
Other skeptics merely quoted Genesis, which said that we must ‘be fruitful and multiply.’ And the pro-business critics usually don’t offer any scientific arguments--just that it is bad for the economy to limit population and that technology will save us.”
“I remember reading a blog on Earth Day about 15 years ago.(28) It seemed that the writer took the familiar approach that people’s freedom is being threatened when overpopulation is addressed. I couldn’t help thinking that if famine and global warming
threaten large numbers of the population, that dead people are not going to profit very much from freedom. I think most of us would prefer life. Maybe Patrick Henry was an exception. Without citing any evidence, the blogger declared the concern with overpopulation was merely ‘poppycock.’
“He used a common argument that I just mentioned that all the people in the
world could fit into the state of Texas and have 100 square meters for themselves. Assuming they build a 1000 square foot house, which is not all that big, they would have no more room to grow the food they need, to park their cars, or any room to drive them. He didn’t mention the fact that today the average person only has about a half an acre of arable land as his share of the world’s arable land. As is common, these critics never
think out the total problems of the world. They merely offer simplistic solutions that any
unthinking person might accept.
“Then he criticized Paul Ehrlich’s prediction in his book ‘The Population Bomb’ of 40 years earlier in which Ehrlich had predicted that people would starve en masse by the 1980s. The blogger either didn’t know about, or was hiding the fact that, Ethiopia had huge famines in the 70s and 80s, as did the African Sahel, the area just south of the Sahara that extends all the away across Africa. You probably know that the Sahara is
extending southward at up to 30 miles per year so the once arable land is becoming desert fast. Mr. Schiff may not consider it a famine when only a quarter of a million people die, as happened in the 80s in Ethiopia. As you remember, Wreck, that the Institute for Natural Resources in Africa predicted about that time that by today Africa would only be able to produce enough food for a quarter of its population. Schiff should have known
about the 1980s famine in Karamoia, Uganda that killed over 20% of the population and
60% of the babies. In terms of mortality it was one of the worst famines in history. Nearly a million people died, but 6 million were saved by massive food donations from the West. Then in 2009 and 2010 a huge water related problem affected Niger, Chad, Nigeria and other areas. The international community was again called in to try to avert another famine. And of course there was the North Korean famine of the mid-90s that
may have killed up to 3 million people. But naturally when you have an opinion that you
want others to believe, you should not let facts stand in the way of your propaganda!
“Then he went on to criticize the legal battles of people trying to save different species of animals. Of course this has nothing to do with human overpopulation. It’s a whole different issue. But I would agree that people should come before other animals. Still the point is that so often people who are trying to make one point cloud it with another—here again we have the ‘straw man‘ fallacy we talked about earlier.
CHALLENGING THE MYTH OF OVERPOPULATION