Al Gore – “An Inconvenient Truth” ignored the real problems.

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Al Gore, disaster, Environment, future, global warming, greenhouse gases, Health, pollution, population, solutions

Last night I watched Al Gore’s movie “An Inconvenient Truth” about global warming. In it he claims global warming is caused by human created greenhouse gases. But then the movie shows him flying all over the planet looking out the window of his private jet at the problems below, such as melting glaciers, forests being harvested, deserts etc.. It never seems to cross his mind that all of his unnecessary flying about is setting a really bad example for the public. His behavior is promoting tourism which is probably the most optional of all of the major sources of pollution.

There isn’t any real complaint with his facts about global warming or the science behind his facts, but there is a very real complaint at the solutions which he proposes at the end of the movie. The movie was presented well enough with innumerable whiny complaints about the very real problems, but the solutions at the end were all lame patches couched in a truly weird crossword puzzle game. These “solutions” were stirred into the usual fast moving credits scrolls typically seen at the end of movies, but they were all but impossible to read let alone think about. Why did he choose to do the solutions in such a stupid way? Because, the solutions are stupid, and they won’t solve the problem – and he knows it. And everyone else knows it.

The real problem which I mentioned a couple of days ago is simply that there are far too many human beings on planet Earth. But, that simple truth is about as unpleasant and unpopular a statement as can be made – I agree, I agree wholeheartedly, but it is still true.

There are quite a few ways to look at humans, and their place on this earth and a variety of these are sketched out on the Probaway – Happiness chart. Number twelve of the fourteen presented is Utilitarian; which is defined as – the maximum happiness for the maximum number of people for the maximum amount of time based on utilizing all available resources to maximize humanity’s survival and population vigor. That’s a bit long but it is useful definition because you can measure each of the various factors and come up with numbers which can be compared in various ways. This numerical method must always be considered as a hypothetical guide as it is only a way of looking at problems for purposes of relative comparison.

As individuals we all want to maximize the attainment of our goals and minimize our struggles getting to these goals. But when looking at all humanity’s needs and its health we must abstract ourselves from our personal considerations and look at the problems globally. Is it better for the human species to have 6.8 billion people for one year or 6.8 million people for a thousand years or 6.8 thousand people for a million years? Most species of our approximate physical size have been closer to the six thousand population size and have existed roughly in the million year range. Natural selection seems to like a population size of about that number, because it is large enough to be stable, but small enough to adapt to its environment with adequate quickness to maintain itself for a long time. Humans of course are a special case, a very special case, but all the same, even with our species special abilities there is some sort of balance between our population numbers, and our overall sustainability. Obviously, if our numbers grow to such huge size that in a few generations we pollute our environment so badly that it cannot sustain our presence, then there will be a catastrophic event and our population will collapse. When other species have had these uncontrolled population explosions they tend to have very precipitous collapses and sometimes go all the way to zero. This is of course a condition from which they never recover, and we humans appear to be on this path to self induced oblivion. Humans are presently said to be destroying species at a rate of a thousand per year, and humans would be only one more species, so what’s the problem? It’s us – that’s the problem!

The question becomes – is there a type of human society where the population can be sustained permanently in a living condition which they could accept. Is that number six thousand wild people living a similar existence to apes, or six million people living on a high tech but sparsely populated planet or six billion living briefly until any of innumerable problems finally triggers a catastrophic collapse into oblivion.

Population is the real problem and until it is brought to a sustainable number and some method is found for maintaining that population at that much smaller but sustainable level then, because there are no natural constraints on humans, there will be population explosions and collapses. We have a choice, but the choice is to limit our population to a vastly smaller number than what the Earth is presently enduring on a temporary basis.

—- A Sonnet —-

All panting desperation man would be,
If with but modest courage he was filled;
For then into the future he would see,
With clear, unshifting eye and will.

But courage was bred out so long ago
That now we have but vestige of that trait.
The bounty of fore-sight we now forego;
And blindly stumbling forward is our fate.

Perhaps we should not look beyond our nose,
For then despair would overwhelm our soul.
For what’s to see but loss of all we know
And love. We know clear vision takes its toll.

God’s plan for man is plain enough to see.
It’s simply death for all eternity.
—-

Global warming melts polar ice which floods Holland and California.

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California Delta, global warming, Netherlands, sea level

This afternoon I attended a lecture by the Ambassador to the United States from the Netherlands, Mr. Christiaan Mark Johan Kröner, at the University of California, Berkeley. He lectured on the subject of global warming, melting icecaps, flooding lowlands and what needs to be done to cope with the ensuing problems.

He compared our local California Delta area to his home country and my ancestral homeland, the Netherlands, because both locations have large areas that are close to sea level. Even a small rise in sea level will have profound effects on both of them. Our audience seemed to be composed of professorial types from the Berkeley hills. These hills rise abruptly from the San Francisco Bay to those finer homes these professorial types tend to occupy some hundreds of feet above the sea. These hill people will not be having to cope with the possibility of permanent inundation. Certainly not in the same devastating way as all of the Dutch people will. The audience seemed to be responding to his very well presented, but ominous message in a quiet, academic, non-emotional, and abstract way.

The post lecture questions were mostly academic; either totally off-subject overly verbose political screeds, or totally within the topic details about how the Dutch are putting their fingers into the various dikes. There are quite a few interesting things the Dutch are doing, but all of it will be a very expensive waste of time, and money when the sea level rises very much, say anything over a meter.

CO2 seems to be the accepted cause of global warming and CO2 is quite high, and rising, and more is being pumped into the atmosphere at an increasing rate every day, and the increased temperature melts not only the floating polar ice packs, but more importantly the Greenland, Antarctic, and other glacial ice. The only reasonable conclusion is that the sea level will shoot right on past that one meter level. Then what?

The various international political solutions which are being implemented are aimed solely at reducing CO2. Most of these have a nice ten year time-line goal of reducing CO2 by some probably unattainable level, say reducing to 30% of the 1990 level by the year 2020. But even if that is attained it very likely won’t stop the ice caps melting, and may not even slow it down any appreciable amount by that time. Also, the efforts have been aimed, so far, at the current polluters such as the United States, but the real threat on the horizon is China, and India, and they will be very hesitant to stop their growth until they attain parity with the developed countries. There is a big brouhaha over the new Tata Nano car because it is so cheap, and fuel efficient that more people will be driving. It is virtually impossible that those countries will stop polluting. Even today, China has pollution problems so severe that people have trouble breathing, and yet they don’t seem to be able to bring even that obvious, and severe a problem under control. What is the chance of modifying their behavior for such an abstract long term threat as the sea level rising 3mm per year? Forget it – it won’t happen. We must find other solutions which will actually work, and which can be implemented. We must think outside of the box of solutions which obviously haven’t been working, and which won’t work in a twenty year time projection, and which can’t be implemented even with the best of intentions by authoritarian governments.

I asked Ambassador Kröner the question, “Is anybody trying to refreeze the ice caps? Is there any consideration of how to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere? Who should I talk to about these kinds of technical questions? etc.” Although the questions seemed a bit outrageous at first, it did seem on his consideration that there ought to be some research into those subjects. So far as he knew and anyone in the audience of about forty people knew there was not the slightest effort along those lines.

Soon the lecture and questions were over, and an after lecture reception was mentioned. I went to it, and I am very glad that I did, because I was able to talk to Ambassador Kröner personally for a good half hour. We discussed quite a few subjects in some depth because there was no quibbling over various non-essentials. We spoke together on an abstract level without need for much background fill in, just the mention of knowing certain details, and then moving to the analysis and possible solutions.

I asked at one point who I should turn to for help with actually getting my solutions into action. He mentioned Governor Schwarzenegger, the UN, and the US State Department, but, when I mentioned the Sand Hill Road investors he seemed to like that idea best, because if there was a way to turn a profit out of preventing global warming that would be the best way to ramp up the massive development, and construction of the necessary technology.

The various solutions which I have been mulling over for years are really fairly simple and once the investors have these solutions presented to them, in a workable way, things will go swiftly, I suspect. With new ideas there is usually a great lag between conception and implementation, but I don’t think that will be the case this time because there is so much latent interest, ready money, and public worry and this method which I want to propose is so obviously the right solution and an easy solution which will fix so many different problems, that progress will be rapid.