Canadian Musings

Global Warming is an "accepted truth" among many scientists. And even I will readily admit that anthropomorphic (i.e. caused by man-made factors) influences are non-negligible, and need to be addressed.

But the pseudo-science being expressed by many needs to be cleaned up, and fast. Some claim that population growth follows an exponential growth curve: it does not. Rather, it follows an S-curve. Or, more correctly, it follows one of many S-curves.

Population growth studies will predict an S-curve fit under a given set of conditions. If conditions change, a different S-curve might be adopted. But populations do not generally follow exponential growth (and cataclysmic drop-off). Changing conditions might include improved life expectancies, or industrialization of the food supply, which might lengthen the interval of highest growth rates.

But under today's world conditions, the period of most rapid population growth (in percentages) probably occurred in the 1960s or 1970s, and rates of growth are now slowing. Most credible estimates suggest world population will cap-out around 9 or 10 billion, sometime between the year 2050 and 2300.

But this isn't the most grave flaw of these political scientists cum environmentalists. They tend to fail to espouse basic economic principles. Some predict the end of modern economies as current oil supplies "run out", completely ignoring the economic facts that (a) oil is not going to "run out" anytime soon, (b) the only thing in short supply is "conventional" oil, and new and long-lasting sources are viable as the price of oil rises, (c) there are many, many potential sources of energy, the choice of which is first and foremost an economic one.

For example, solar power is available today. But it is more expensive, per unit of energy, to produce the solar panels than they produce in their current lifespan. Generally, the same applies to wind energy: these alternative sources are only viable with government policies to subsidize these sources of energy. If conventional energy prices continue to rise, they will become more attractive and will be more widely adopted. Until then, they are a waste of energy and a pollutant (as they, too, must be discarded at the end of their useful life).

All of this masks a highly dubious model claiming to understand causes of observed effects. We can see the temperature of the earth's surface rising by fractions of a degree over decades. We can blame Carbon Dioxide (CO2) as a greenhouse gas (GHG). We know there are other pollutants which also contribute, such as methane (CH4). And we know that certain sources contribute CO2 and other GHGs to the atmosphere. But while we have a temperature model, we do not have an inventory model of the GHGs in the atmosphere: we do not have a catalog of the sources and sinks of GHGs, which we can test against measured GHGs in the atmosphere. We do not know how much is being released by automobiles, by bacteria, by cows, by decaying leaves and tree trunks in forests.

We find instead a few political science grads with coal-fired energy plants in their sights, simply because they represent large single-entity sources of GHGs. We don't even know how great a percentage they represent on a per-capita basis, of all the anthropomorphic GHGs released. We don't even know how great a percentage anthropomorphic GHGs represent to the overall total (although "they" will point to graphs correlating the growth in overall GHGs and temperature to population growth).

Until we focus on the science and abandon the useless rhetoric we will not be able to achieve any positive results for the future.