Scientific American And The Silent Lie - Albert Bartlett

The September 2006 issue of Scientific American(SA) is a "Special Issue" devoted to "Energy’s Future Beyond Carbon" with the subtitle "How to Power the Economy and Still Fight Global Warming." As I read the issue I thought of Captain Renault, the Chief of Police in the movie "Casablanca" who says to an assistant, "Major Strasser has been shot. Round up the usual suspects." The implication of the Chief’s order is clear. Never mind finding the culprit, just "round up the usual suspects." The main body of this special issue consists of nine articles relating to global warming, each dealing with one or more of the usual suspects. These are summarized in the first article, "A Climate Repair Manual." There we read that global warming is a major problem: "Preventing the transformation of the earth’s atmosphere from greenhouse to unconstrained hothouse represents arguably the most imposing scientific and technical challenge that humanity has ever faced. Climate change compels a massive restructuring of the world’s energy economy. The slim hope for keeping atmospheric carbon below 500 ppm hinges on aggressive programs of energy efficiency instituted by national governments." The culprit is world population growth, but SA is just rounding up the usual suspects.

Some fraction of the observed global warming most certainly is caused by the release of greenhouse gases from the burning of fossil fuels. As the size of the world population increases, the rate of burning of fossil fuels increases and this can be expected to increase the rate of rise of global average temperatures. The authors of these nine articles have to know that the size of the global population is a major factor in determining the rate of release of greenhouse gases. Yet in a special issue devoted to reducing global warming, SA almost completely ignores population size and growth and instead "rounds up the usual suspects" -- things we can do to reduce the human contributions to global warming such as the increased use of nuclear power and improving efficiency.

The special issue contains no serious evaluation of the problems of peak production of global oil, which could happen any year now.(1, 2) There is even a hint of denial: "Even if oil production peaks soon -- a debatable contention given Canada’s oil sands" (emphasis added). When one looks at the facts, one can see that production of gasoline from the oil sands won’t have much effect on the peaking of world oil production. There is no serious discussion of the net energy in the production from oil sands, or in the production of ethanol from corn. It is just noted that we will have to be more efficient in these endeavors.

Growth remains sacred. "But holding CO2 emissions in 2056 to their present rate, without choking off economic growth, is a desirable outcome within our grasp." To meet the growing global demand for energy, "thousands of new power plants must be built." "If the fleet of nuclear power plants were to expand by a factor of five by 2056, displacing conventional coal plants," what will we do after 2056? None of the authors expresses any recognition of Eric Sevareid’s law, "The chief cause of problems is solutions."(3) Example: Nuclear power is a solution to the problem of CO2 emissions from coal burning, but nuclear power comes with its own new problems. There is a lonely isolated touch of reality in the opening sentence of the article on renewable energy: "No plan to substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions can succeed through increases in energy efficiency alone." The reason behind this reality is that continuing population growth, even at the level of approximately 1% per year, will likely overwhelm the annual savings that can be achieved nationally or globally through improved efficiencies.

EDIT

http://www.culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=85&Itemid=1

for more than twenty years. He has a very effective presentation that he's been giving to students and civic groups and any one else who will listen, a presentation that simply and devestatingly lays out the dangers of growth.

In a nutshell, he lays out the simple arithmetic of exponential growth, and then shows how the sort of population growth (and use of renewable and non-renewable resources) are killing the planet.

Check out his website at http://jclahr.com/bartlett/ .

nt

And so many people owe Paul Erdman an apology!

I happened to read that one while on a transcontinental flight. To say that I was unimpressed would be an understatement. Part & parcel to the dumbing down of America is what it said to me.

Contrasted with the usual issues, it's plain to see the audience that they're trying to reach. Reminds me by analogy of the CNN/Fox "news" dynamic.

They used to be the place where the world's top scientists wrote college-level summaries of their discoveries. Now, they're a pop culture mag somewhere in between National Geographic and Discover. It's unfortunate that they found their political voice only after they watered down their content.

The tradition does continue, interestingly enough, in American Scientist. It sounds like a knock off, but in fact it's the journal of Sigma Xi, a large research foundation, and it's been published since 1913.

and make certain that all women have access to a job and health care, and world population will drop like a stone.

It actually isn't rocket science - it is psychology & sociology.

IndyOp has eloquently described the recommendations and objectives of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Population_Fund#Criticism_of_the_UNFPA">United Nations Population Fund.

Naturally, the Bush Administration, as the incarnation of all that is ignorant and evil in the world, has denied funding already allocated by Congress to UNFPA every year running since FY 2002.

We will see more of these of different degrees as Asian cities get flooded and American regions expire economically due to fallout from the energy crisis.

It all starts at home. Whatever is done, consumption is limited by production.

It's all a matter of what the consumer will bear.

of critical threats to survival has been ignored by many who should know better, almost ever since Paul Ehrlich's book The Population Bomb gained such attention back in the early 70's.

It seemed for a while back then that everyone intuitively understood and accepted the fundamental idea that the planet could not sustain unchecked population growth, so there was wide acceptance of the danger at the time and lots of talk about achieving ZPG or Zero Population Growth.

I do not think that Ehrlich's mistaken predictions about food scarcity failing to materialize was why folks in general stopped thinking and talking about the risks of unrestrained population growth. Most people never even paid attention long enough to find out that his foolishly dated prophecies were incorrect.

No, I believe people stopped thinking about what will happen in the future if the planet's population isn't brought to a sustainable steady-state because they simply don't want to think about it.

It's scary and unpleasant to ponder; it would compel them to change lifestyles they don't wish to change; it demands sacrifice if we're to avoid catastrophe. None of that sits well with "modern" humans -- especially those in well-off cultures which should have taken responsibility first and set a good example. Why not? Because too many are intent on living selfish, short-sighted lives, not unselfish, considerate ones.

"I'll get mine," seems to be the plan of those highest up on the food chain, "and live well before the sh*t hits the fan."

What I wonder most is this: Don't those in positions to influence everyone else -- the most wealthy and powerful, the most brilliant -- have any concern even for their own progeny?

Massive global disasters from overpopulation resulting in the depletion of critical resources, pollution of skies, seas, and land, and rapid climate change will affect EVERYONE, after all, not just the poor huddled masses!

Boggles my mind that so many apparently find it so easy to live in denial....

We are all descended from 4.5 billion years of successful breeders. That might be the only thing that all organisms have in common -- we're programmed to reproduce. As much as possible.

What we're not programmed to do is intuitively understand that this desire is going to kill us.

There is even a continuing sort of ... admiration ... by most people of those who give birth to multiple children, like the increase (often due to fertility drugs) of quads, quints, and more in one birthing.

And the medical advances which, at enormous expense and sometimes a lifetime of impairment for those born early, enable very premature children to be saved seem to indicate that such extreme measures should be taken no matter what.

Now don't anyone get mad at me -- I'm using these examples to illustrate our cultural attitudes about lots of successful human births, not to reveal some nasty prejudice I have! I LOVE those adorable Dilley sextuplets just like everyone else, and I married a guy who was a premie.

But don't these tendencies to honor and nurture ever MORE live births under any and all circumstances show a lack of concern about the very real problem of population growth?

So yep, you're surely right, Phantom ... there IS a deep psychology and biology at play here. I remember as a psych major reading about a study that indicated African adults choose to have as many children as they can because they KNOW so few of them survive to adulthood -- and that's what parents need so that they'll be taken care of in their old age.

We definitely have a lot of factors working against us when it comes to overpopulations, no doubt about it. Little wonder we find ourselves as a species facing the fate we are facing....

There's the root of the problem, and why Derrick Jensen has it right in his books "Endgame": industrial civilization is not and can never be sustainable. While we can quibble over the details, the embedded thirst for MORE, MORE is our undoing.

If we're not already past the point of no return on greenhouse gas emissions, there is and will be no resolve to change our ways to avert that inevitability.

>> While we can quibble over the details, the embedded thirst for MORE, MORE is our undoing. <<

All the arguments detailing how we as a species can avoid crashing against the walls of a finite earth are based on what we "should" do as rational thinkers, rather than on what we will do as a primate species. Our underlying animal psychology and the structure of our societal institutions is completely ignored or vastly underestimated for its influence on decision making.

We don't have enough time left to raise everyone's standard of living and literacy to the point where individuals choose to curtail their number of children. This approach also assumes that there is a will and a mechanism for that level of effort in eradicating poverty. The reality is that in the short term very few of the "haves" are motivated to help the "have-nots", even if it will benefit everyone in the long-term. Long-term gain of a perceived benefit that will not accrue for a few decades can't overcome short-term greed or disinterest.

Given our current population numbers, there aren't enough resources to go around without signficant wealth redistribution, which means taking stuff from the "haves" and giving it to the "have-nots". Hah! Good luck with that project. Human history shows that strong individuals or groups will form to accumulate as much wealth as possible, and they will happily take it from those who are unable to protect themselves. Altruism is a hard sell, and the wonder is that we have as many altruistic individuals as we do. But a prudent species will always strike a balance in this regard, keeping enough non-altruistic behavior in its repertoire to moderate the desire to help others before helping oneself (and one's genes).