IT’S NOT CLIMATE CHANGE IT’S THE POPULATION EXPLOSION STUPID!
SOME GLOOMY THOUGHTS…
Heraclitus (535BC-475BC) the Greek natural philosopher from Ephesus (in modern-day Turkey) was the author of: “On Nature”. In this work Heraclitus presages modern scientific thought when he claims that all of nature is ever changing and in constant flux. He wrote: “the only constant is change” and “no man can step in the same river twice…for it is not the same river, and he is not the same man .” Modern science agrees with Heraclitus.
Sadly, today non-scientist radical, ideologues who obsess over climate-change ignore this 2500 year old tenet of the Earth. They lack the concept of “deep time” and see the earth as a static unchanging rock-body, rather than a constantly evolving “living” planet, undergoing for the last 4.5 billion years of its history—constant change.
Earth Natural Warming Process.
The earth’s atmosphere is in constant flux, its oceans in constant motion. Even the Atlantic ocean has not always existed. It is just over 100 million years old and continues to widen. One hundred million years ago it looked like the Red Sea which is a new new expanding “ocean”. The continents themselves are not fixed in place, but are sliding around over the earth’s surface at the rate at which your fingernails grow. And as for the climate—the earth’s temperature regime is not constant either. Presently we are in an “interglacial” or a warming period —between glacial advances…when glaciers retreat. This process of advance and retreat has happened several times over in the last 2.5 million years at least. We can term this process the earth’s natural warming process.
The human genus itself (Homo) evolved over two million years ago during the beginning of the recent Pleistocene glacial epoch..And our own species, Homo sapiens, emerged only 200,000 years ago during the most recent glacial warming period, which saw the slow retreat of massive ice sheets which covered vast areas of the earth. That process of natural warming facilitated human expansion and has continued to this day.
Seventeen thousand years ago the very place where I am writing this piece was at that time covered by a 500 meter thick slab of glacial ice. This ancient global warming —simply more evidence of Heraclitus’ change—is only the earth’s response to the ending of last glacial epoch.
Human Generated Global Warming
In truth the human hordes which now populate the planet —a single species and their domestic animals— now far outnumber any wild animal species. Human behavior of altering their environment has added to the warming process. Humans unearth carbon, sequestered underground for tens or hundreds of millions of years. They bring this substance to the surface, and burn it to generate cheap energy. The oxidation products of that burning process are dumped as a waste gas into the air. It accumulates and warms the atmosphere, altering the composition and temperature of the very air we breathe. This we term human generated global warming.
Today’s humans tend to downplay or ignore the fact of the earth’s natural geologic warming and are obsessed only with human generated warming (it is considerable). But this is wasted effort. Our puny actions will not and can not return an earth in natural temperature flux, to the levels of the 1950s, or to some level we humans have decided on as “normal” and which some claim to be its “correct level”. Those erroneous ideas are the result of holding to out-dated humano-centric 18th century concepts of nature as existing only to serve human needs and is unchanging and static.
In fact, if we were to immediately stop the burning all fossil fuels today and revert to rubbing sticks together to cook our food and stave off winter chill, the earth continuing in its interglacial warming processes and global temperatures will continue to rise, glaciers retreat, and ocean-levles rise (perhaps at a slower rate) but in accordance with its own time scale.
Human population explosion.
The real problem we face is not “the climate”, but our massive human population explosion. Like the pedestrian who jumps aside to avoid the sidewalk bicyclist, but stumbles out into the deadly path of a bus—- population explosion is our immediate, ultimate and existential problem.
In 2022, the world’s humans —in pursuit of a modern comfortable life— emitted more than 36.8 billion tonnes (metric tons) of energy-related carbon dioxide. The source of this pollution was the mining and production of fossil fuels, and of ubiquitous concrete. The fossil fuels are burned for industrial use, for sprawling urbanization, home construction, transportation, industrial agriculture, domestic heating and cooling. And that amount of annual carbon release grows by about 1% annually. (The USA alone released 5 billion tonnes of energy related carbon dioxide based on 2019 data).
In 2022 the world population was estimated to have reached the 8 billion mark and continues to grow at about 1.1% annually, or at present, at about 83 million more people per year.
Thus the 36.8 billion tonnes of energy-related carbon which was added to the atmosphere each year is a direct result of the activities of the 8 billion humans who live on this planet. We calculate that each one of us is responsible for 4.6 tonnes of carbon per person/year (36.8 billion tonnes/ 8 billion people = 4.6 billion tonnes/billion people, or 4.6 tonnes per person/ per year. That is: each human on this planet is responsible for nearly 5 metric tons of carbon per year. ( Note that one tonne =1000 kg or about 2200 lbs)
For the USA, our own 325 million inhabitants contribute about 5 billion tonnes of carbon annually or (5,000 million tonnes/325 million US population =15 tonnes per person/year ) or 3.2 times the global average, or 320% above the global average. We are indeed exceptional!
Since the world population is growing by about 83 million per year (or 1.1% per year) that means that each year —were we to stabilize our carbon usage and release no more than was released in 2022–the carbon load in the atmosphere per year would increase by about 381 million tonnes per year. (83 million people added per year x 4.6 tonnes per person = 381). That is an increase of about @ 5% annually. (381 million tonnes /8,000 million tonnes = 0.047 or 4.7 % or @5%).
So just by simple population growth alone we are increasing our earth warming carbon load in the atmosphere by almost 5% annually.
But carbon reduction goals (as per recent published criteria for carbon reduction) have been set at the Paris accords at 2.5% per year. That is only half of what simple population growth is causing. Any changes in our global footprint would have to be greater than that amount (5%) to have any impact on the total carbon.
With natural global warming (the earth is now in an interglacial warming period) , plus human generated warming, plus population growth (which each year adds an additional 5% more carbon)—-meeting the 2.5% goal of seem far beyond the realm of possibility. We need a pragmatic approach.
Reforestation, deurbanization, decapitalization, deindistrialization and depopulation? CAN WE GO THERE?
Addressing climate change is not simple. The five processes above would be difficult to introduce and maintain in the present global social and political climate. Present efforts seem to be more religious obsession and ideology rather than pragmatic. It is apparent that with populations expanding explosively, meaningful reduction in fossil fuel use will not have time to have significant effects on global warming. Without massive and immediate alterations in the global economy and structure of society—such as: reforestation, deurbanization, decapitalization, deindistrialization and depopulation meaningful change is not likely to be globally instituted. But are we ready for these radical alterations. I think not.
Since we will require adequate, affordable energy resources to refit and adapt to a less carbon dependent and warmer global climate we should be moving to maintain present fossil fuel production levels, rather than undermining them.
But our most pressing threat is over-population. That decision can be made individually.
A return of the glacial age?
But the earth has its own time scale and changes in store …Perhaps as some glaciologists predict…rather than a warmer earth in our future —a conflation of natural processes, such earth-orbital variations, combined with increases in felsic volcanism (ash causing a higher earth albedo), as well as melting of the Arctic ice cap which will open of the Arctic Ocean to warming Gulf Stream current's may all contribute to a cooling planet (as they did in the past) —-and the growth and expansion anew of the continental glaciers.
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