An even more inconvenient truth...

[jtaylor]

I watched "An Inconvenient Truth" at the weekend.

A number of observations/questions:-

Does the additional evaporation balance or exceed the additional melt-water from the land-based ice-shelfs etc, or vice-versa?

Does the addition of 4+ billion extra people, all consuming oxygen and breathing out carbon dioxide, contribute to global warming?

Are the new viruses simply nature's way of controlling the population?

We have artificially placed ourselves at the top of the food chain - ideally should we not be re-establishing those animals above us?

Which brings me to the "even more inconvenient truth" - the world cannot sustain this level of population, and we should do something to reduce it.
e.g. by stopping trying to cure every disease out there, dis-incentivising having children, following in China's line and limiting child-allowances?

Now that really WOULD be a brave message to give....

I view this as a little like making redundancies in a company - it's often a very good thing on a macro level (protecting the remaining work-force), but horrible on the micro level, making each individual redundant....

Effrectively we're trying to artificially control the world population to cope with the number of people we have...........

Thoughts?

J

[J.R.]

Some interesting questions, Julian.

I remember an elderley relative who was a machine gunner in the trenches during WW1, telling me as a child, that war 'was natures way of controlling the worlds population !'

I see we made our excuses for the slave trade yesterday. I found this rather sick, given that parents here spend millions of pounds every year, to buy designer trainers and the like for their little cherubs, these goods being produced by other children in other countries for a pittance !

Surely, this is the modern day slave trade ??

[jtaylor]

I feel that if you WANT to believe in global warming caused by man's emissions (no jokes JR!) then you'll find lots of evidence to support.
But if you WANT to believe that it isn't, you'll also find lots of evidence to bring the theory into question.

What is missing is a dispartial balanced view.

It is often said that science can DISPROVE things, but it can't PROVE things.....All you can do is gain confidence that it's likely to be true....

A bit like religion really - depends on what you WANT to believe, or not!

J

[Great Plum]

I remember JDS talking about population growths etc in Geography.

I can't remember who it was, but there was a learned vicar in the 18th century (I think) who stated that the world had a finite food source and when the population got above that level, there would be a crash.

However, since then,, we have had the agrarian revolution, Industrial Revolution and the Green Revolution, all of which have created more effecient way of harvesting food... will there be another 'revolution' or a population crash?