101 replies to this topic

[mag1]

I have let the statistics for global total fertility rate drift forward a few years. When I checked recently I realized that we

have already reached global demographic collapse. Why wasn't I told? As a service to others who might be in a cave or something

(and to humanity itself),

 

Please be advised that humanity is now in its extinction phase. 

 

I repeat   さようなら   人類

 

This is not a drill.

 

The global total fertility rate of 2.4 is hovering only slightly above the global total replacement rate

of 2.3. Without some notably extreme outliers, human population decline began many years ago.

 

As the attached files show, almost the entire world is colored in dark blue which indicates below replacement fertility for the 2020 time frame.

This figure also suggests that over the years to come we should expect the instability that has been experienced of late to dissipate.

Possibly the wisest policy choice at this time would be to simply let the strong demographic tide resolve our current difficulties for us.

 

The current generation of troublemakers are mostly from the 1985 figure. As can be seen by comparing the 1985 and 2020 figures,

there has been a dramatic shift in fertility patterns in many of the nations that have been at the center of recent world frictions.

 

Clearly this demographic shift will have profound geo-socio-politico ... consequences in the years ahead and has already without question

played a substantial force in shaping our current global circumstance.

 

Anyone who might be interested in the extinction of humanity and its possible relevance would be kindly invited to post to this thread. 

 

Attached Files

•  Fertility Rates 1985.PNG   396.33KB   2 downloads
•  Fertility Rates 2000.PNG   843.21KB   2 downloads
•  Fertility Rates 2020.PNG   368.7KB   2 downloads
•  Fertility Rates 2030.PNG   371.55KB   2 downloads

Edited by mag1, 28 June 2017 - 07:54 PM.

[Mind]

Generally speaking, I am glad to hear the population growth is slowing or that absolute population might even decline in the near future. The world is crowded enough, IMO. 

 

With life extension therapies potentially coming on to the scene in the near future, I think "extinction" is a rather strong term. We would more likely go extinct due to some existential "event", than a decrease in reproduction.

Edited by Mind, 28 June 2017 - 11:42 PM.

[mag1]

Thank you for your response Mind.

 

Yes, I, in fact, agree with that assessment, though if you want to move the people to one's thread it is always best to start off with

a dramatic headline. (Clarifications can always be added in the fine print.)

 

We have been stuck in a Malthusian population trap for over one hundred years. Some nations have used

any and all scientific achievement to single mindedly increase population growth to the maximum. Such a strategy brought humanity

to the brink of catastrophe. It is not entirely a surprise that there is a global populist movement that is opposing the effects of such behavior.

Demographics is the one subject that is even more dismal than the so called dismal science, economics.

 

With this "breeding as central objective of existence", there has been a race to the minimum possible standards of human rights, income, educational

achievement etc.. I will feel so much better when poor people have a better bargaining position in labor markets. As it is now global labor rates can sink to

nearly incomprehensible levels. If garments workers develop the economic power to demand higher wages, then I'll be more than happy to pay more (all the more so if

such wealth is simply not cycled back into even higher fertility rates). 

 

When you look at the 2020 figure above, you can glimpse a world where the race to the bottom is no longer a certainty. The idea that developed nations will need

to construct elaborate physical barriers to obstruct mass migrations into their territories is not plausible on a time horizon of a decade or two. In fact with the almost

total presence of the deep blue shading, we are now set for a time of extreme competition for such migrants. Those nations without strong pro market economic

systems might have no long term future. This possibly is now true for Russia.

 

In terms of the security implications, I am jubilant! Party for one, yeah! The figures that I posted clearly show that the abysmal strategy of dominance through fertility

is no longer viable. We could all save ourselves a whole lot of stress if we could just get the troublemakers to take a look at these figures. The change from the 2000

to the 2020 time frame is highly instructive. There is a strong relationship between those areas on the map which are non-blue shaded and the global insecurity that has

been present over the last number of years. I would concede that the 2000 figure does indicate that fertility power had a certain force at that time, though

this is no longer evident when advancing 2 decades. Hopefully the underlying logic of the situation will convince those parties involved to adjust their behavior

to fit the current reality.

 

Basically, what I am seeing here is peace, human rights, prosperity, higher intelligence.

Celebration!

Edited by mag1, 29 June 2017 - 01:35 AM.

[mag1]

Wow! Just look at how the fertility patterns changed from 1985 (far left above) to 2020 (second from right above).

Draw a curvy line in the 1985 figure underneath the US, Europe, Russia. Almost everything to the south of that line

(exceptions Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand), the so-called "South", were areas of substantial

instability/extreme fertility.

 

Now fast forward to today: the 2020 Figure. It's nearly all blue! About the only question marks are Bolivia, the Stans, Iraq/Syria, the Philippines

and sub-Saharan Africa. This is our future and it is already baked in. The cake has been baked! This is our future! The momentum of the demographic

iceberg is on our side. Life will only get even better from here!

 

At this omniscient perspective we can see the hopes and dreams, struggles and conflicts, and social trajectory of all of humanity.

The future appears bright!

 

Feeling mighty nice about all of this.

 

Time for a huddle.

 

We need a mass consciousness exercise to move our mental realities to the reality as it is present at ground level.

 

From our current demographic state, there is no possible route back to the nasty experiences of our recent past. It will be important

for us to move our minds to what is already true, instead of manifesting our existing interior worlds that are based on programming from

past times that are no longer congruent with life as it is. 

Edited by mag1, 29 June 2017 - 03:12 AM.

[mag1]

For those who are not longecity members and want to see the global total fertility rate figures that I have attached go to

https://en.wikipedia..._fertility_rate

 

The only problem is that they have them in slide show mode which makes it difficult to carefully contemplate each of the individual 

frames. I snipped and pasted the frames from wiki and attached them.

Edited by mag1, 29 June 2017 - 04:31 PM.

[mag1]

                                                                                                                                      N

∑ IQ_i

                                                                                                                                      i=1

What I am worried about is what will happen to the expression above, the sum of all human potential.

Attached Files

•  Total Potential.PNG   1.06KB   1 downloads

Edited by mag1, 29 June 2017 - 04:59 PM.

[aribadabar]

The thread title is indeed unnecessarily dramatic.

 

Stable and even slightly declining world population is a GOOD thing both for the planet/environment and for the humankind.

The social and alimentary repercussions are positive albeit some social constructs such as pension systems which rely on ever-increasing young population to support these set-ups could be in trouble.

The trend of escalating retirement age both due to the increasing average life expectancy and this new lower global fertility rate will probably mitigate the pressure on these social transfers for some time.

At some point, the decreased demand from less souls would dampen the world economy and then we can have some more perceptible troubles. It looks like that this is at least 30-50 years out, if the current trend is to continue.

Edited by aribadabar, 29 June 2017 - 06:10 PM.

[mag1]

Yes, this is very good news!

Why read the newspaper to find out what has happened when you can look at the figures above and see what will happen?

 

It is such a relief to know that those nations that are not capable of providing their citizens with a high quality of life will vanish in the 21st Century.

Finally, Failure has consequences!

 

Up till this point, no matter how terrible a nation might be, this in no way implied that it could not plumb the depths of even greater horribleness.

With the extreme levels of fertility decline seen in the figures, the possibility of shuttering entire nations as failed societies is finally plausible.

Now we can start being dragged upwards and not downwards.

 

Further, this now applies more broadly across all scales of observation.

Communities, schools, work places etc. in developed nations that do not intend on embracing a higher standard of service no longer have a future.

I have tried online learning and this form of education clearly outcompetes a traditional classroom setting.

Given the severe demographic stress that our school system is currently under, it is going to make me so happy

to watch students use their new baby bust power to make a better life for themselves.

 

 

 

 

[mag1]

The decline in the numbers of youth in developed nations is concerning.

Where will the cures and technologies that we need to solve our problems be invented?

 

The headline numbers do not peer deeply into such questions.

Many developed nations have been below replacement total fertility for over fifty years now.

The numbers of births in these nations have been in exponential decline for many years.

 

http://www.un.org/es...ts/YouthPOP.pdf

Edited by mag1, 29 June 2017 - 11:00 PM.

[mag1]

Pointless?

Timewasting?

 

Actually creating consequences for failure will be one of the most powerful forces shaping 21st Century life.

The current demographic reality offers citizens and others an overwhelming advantage in advancing their

self-interests against bureaucratic structures that have up till now not been overly responsive to such overtures.

 

Socialist societies and government sectors within free market economies have been able to

carry on exactly as they have always carried on without any concern that their lack of customer service

might in some way jeopardize their future. Failure was never an option for them, largely because they were

grading their own papers.

 

Given the extreme demographic force that is already present in our communities such indifference no longer

seems sustainable. In my community many of the schools are already nearly empty. Any organized effort to

boycott these schools (by say, choosing a homeschooling route) would have immediate implications.

 

Our schools have the typical problems of modern urban life: armed police presence, violence, bullying ... .

People tolerate it because solutions are usually not self-apparent. Demographic collapse is omnipresent

and self-apparent.

 

When I was going through I never had any idea of how one could actually effectively instigate needed social changes.

In the current circumstances it is now obvious how social pressure could be exerted in order to greatly change the social

experience of school. If I had such an opportunity now, then I would actively pursue what I felt would be in my self-interest.

Considering how much benefit can be derived from home schooling online, if there were not immediate attention to my concerns,

then I would leave and the next time my family would ever encounter a physical school would be in a museum.

 

Demographic changes are offering us a unique opportunity to reorganize our social structures at all scales from local to global

to be more responsive to the needs of the people they are nominally charged with serving. If this is not managed carefully, then

much of the social world that has been present for the last many centuries will soon disappear.

 

 

 

Edited by mag1, 30 June 2017 - 01:57 AM.

[mag1]

Impressive science! 

The dysgenic countertrend can now be established scientifically.

I suspect that this will not be enough to end the arugments.

 

This quote was disturbing:

 

"It is remarkable to report changes in POLYEDU that are measurable

across the several decades covered by this study. In evolutionary time,

this is a blink of an eye. However, if this trend persists over many centuries,

the impact could be profound."

 

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.../?term=28096410

Edited by mag1, 30 June 2017 - 09:22 PM.

[mag1]

Hmm, I just realized the pickle that we are in.

Researchers at a scientific conference in Oslo have announced the discovery of a substantial portion of the genetics of educational attainment (we can use this as a proxy for intelligence). With CRISPR this should mean that the genetic engineering of extreme intellectual accomplishment is now at least somewhere on the horizon.

The snag that has occurred to me is that optimizing intelligence might minimize fertility. We are already smart enough to have extremely low total fertility rates. Would genetically engineered genius level intelligence push total fertility rates to zero? Human extinction could be achieved in a single generation.

The ole chicken and egg dilemma, this time there is no egg.

Might there need to be some social division of reproduction? Perhaps we can build incubators or something, the geniuses would not have to worry about any of that and humanity could have stable demographics.


I am sure a sci-fi writer has conceived of such a story line before.

It might be useful to think about the reported decline in genetic IQ noted above as a stabilizing mechanism for human population levels. Population IQ levels could decline until total fertility increased to move back towards replacement levels and a new more sustainable demographic equilibrium could emerge. Attempting to thwart this built in stabilization feature through a counteracting infusion of higher intelligence variants might further intensify our current demographic predicament as suggested above.

Edited by mag1, 01 July 2017 - 02:10 AM.

[mag1]

Yes, I suppose the above comments might be somewhat ill informed. Anyone who might have comments to elevate the conversation are strongly encouraged to participate.

Edited by mag1, 01 July 2017 - 06:01 PM.

[YOLF]

Obesity lowers fertility in men and obesity has been out of control for decades. They need safe weight loss drugs.

[mag1]

Yolf, are you on the right thread?
Not sure how obesity directly relates to global demographic collapse.
People can't be bothered any more to get off the sofa?

Edited by mag1, 03 July 2017 - 03:53 PM.

[YOLF]

Yeah basically, being overweight creates motivational barriers and gets you fatter in a vicious cycle. So it reduces the number of children you are likely to be motivated to care for. In some cases, people fail to take relationships past being platonic because they simply aren't attracted to obese people. In other cases, people would rather revel in their health than have children b/c they are afraid it will take a toll on their spouse's health (mainly men). Birth control changed the game, but other factors have slipt in and now their is a very significant rate of decline, mostly among families that were not historically overweight. Those whose families have historically been overweight and don't mind being so or don't find it unattractive, don't seem to care and may not see the same decline. But those not in that pool are the ones who will likely breed the least or not at all. So in a sense, we're seeing a polarized population. One thing is for certain though, shorter lifespans and motivational decline will slowly erode any population of obese persons over time, not to mention obese people are more likely to be seen as less important for receiving medical care.

 

Japan is an exception, but everywhere else, it seems that population growth and waist growth are inversely proportioned. In my observation, there are more physically fit people working in hospice care than elsewhere, probably due to lifting requirements. But they are less likely to have developed a high degree of empathy or understand the complexity of care that an obese person needs as their own needs, or those needs from their families have proven to be much more simple. It just takes more to take care of an obese patient as opposed a thin one in most cases.

 

[mag1]

Yolf, the figures that I attached above are making me feel GREAT!

 

We are now in a demographic collapse which will have enormous benefits.

The abysmal treatment of those at the bottom of our society with respect to income,

human rights and self empowerment etc. will finally be reversed. Those who do not

believe this only have to look to the central role that demographics now plays in

Russian politics. In Russia, demographics is topic 1, 2 and 3.

 

All we need to do now is: Wait.

 

[YOLF]

I'm not sure that I follow... I don't see how demographic collapse is good...

 

It's all about the carrying capacity of the earth, which keeps improving. We need to meet replacement levels, and the lower the replacement level the better.

 

The best thing we can do is to cure diseases and aging at the genetic level.

 

Though from the pictures, it looks more like birth control in the developing world is the key to success. There will certainly be an improvement domestically as developing economies offer less and less competition and working conditions improve across the board. Is that what you're getting at?

[mag1]

Yolf, it's probably best to rewind history to about 1700 right before the industrial revolution.

Up to this point in human history there had never been strong and consistent population growth.

Things always popped up that kept human numbers largely flat for centuries on end.

 

With the industrial revolution, greater scientific control was achieved.

More could be produced, illnesses could be controlled.

 

Human numbers began a multi-century exponential growth.

This had never happened before.

 

Thus, there was no innate mechanism to forewarn people that large population increases would 

create devastating consequences. The same technological advances that allowed for the production of

enormous material wealth would also be used for the destruction of enormous numbers of human lives.

 

All the cultural and biological cues motivated people to breed up maximally.

Malthus was highly perceptive in recognizing how extremely destructive this behavior would be.

 

Interestingly around the early part of the 19th Century those in the upper segment of the intelligence distribution

began to have relatively reduced fertility. Recent research has definitively established that this continued through

the 20th Century. Those with higher intelligence foresaw the negative implications of high fertility and modified their

behavior accordingly.

 

Yet, the bulk of humanity continued a relentless mass breeding program in spite of the self-evidently destructive 

consequences. Even into the mid-1970s the world hit an all time global growth rate which would cause population

to double in slightly more than 30 years. Very rightly some sounded the alarm about an impending human rights' and

economic catastrophe. Fortunately, the message was finally received globally that maximal fertility would ruin humanity.

The extraordinary economic success that has been achieved in several notable nations is in no small attributable to

their adoption of a low fertility strategy.

 

Those in developed nations have had time to contemplate the possible future of mass labor in light of the Great Depression.

More people are not a blessing when the technological advances could mean other industries at the center of our labor economy

could be automated. Other societies without such a memory might have a conception of a future in which every marginal person

could make some marginal contribution to the economy.

 

In a modern economy this assumption is clearly not plausible. The Great Depression dramatically illustrated

how an entire primary industry such as agriculture could be quickly mechanized leaving few remaining jobs.

We are now seeing youth unemployment rates in some European nations at levels that could be scarcely imagined

a decade or two ago. The implications of the next wave of technology (e.g., robobuggies) likely will intensify 

such unemployment. Yet, this is still in the early pre-singularity time frame. What will happen when technology begins

an exponential feed back cycle of continuous improvement?

 

In the thread Robotics employment ..., we have discussed the now imminent collapse of the retail economy by robobuggies.

These robobuggies are now rolling out. The stated mission is to allow for free delivery of purchases within a 3 mile radius.

My concern is that our urban landscape could soon be economic moonscape. With robobuggies, there would not seem to be

a compelling economic rationale to have more than a few megaboxes within an entire city. Considering that the retail

trade / distribution system is now the central spoke of a modern society, it might not be entirely unexpected that those with

greater than average insight could hedge their bets and reduce their fertility yet more. 

 

At least we are grappling with these questions with the knowledge (gained from the Great Depression) that wide scale and prolonged

mass unemployment is entirely consistent with a modern capitalistic system. Other developing nations that have not encountered such

a change might not be well prepared for such a possibility, especially if they trust that their high fertility behavior will necessarily imply

that productive employment would still be available in such an environment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[mag1]

Getting back to your initial question more directly:

 

Demographic collapse is good because it will help to balance available resources with the number of people.

Malthus believed that the geometric growth of the human population would overtake the linear growth in food supply.

 

This did not occur.

 

The very same industrial revolution that increased our productive capacity also greatly increased our agricultural capacity.

It would not be entirely surprising to me that our globe could feed many tens of billions of people with appropriate investment in agro R and D 

 

What I see as the more relevant limit to population growth is the near unlimited input needed to raise the next generation.

In developed societies, a near endless investment in education and guidance is required to nurture our young people.

One does not need to look far to see what results in developing nations when these resources are not provided.  

 

Once a balance is restored regarding human rights and more favorable supply/demand dynamics in labor markets,

at some point we could contemplate a world that stepped back from the brink of demographic collapse.

As of now, it would be best for humanity to allow the current demographic forces to move us to a higher

standard, just as these same forces in the past have moved us to very unacceptable minimal standards.

 

 

     

[mag1]

I have been reading up on the nature of warfare before the industrial revolution.

My hunch was that a pre-industrialized/ pre-high fertility world would be much less prone to mass violence.

From what I have read this appears to be mostly accurate.

 

It surprised me the extent to which conflict was typically low intensity pre-circa 1700.

One example that I read of was the uprising in Virginia in the 1680s.

 

Bacon's Rebellion as it was known was fought with known combatants almost as a grudge match. 

Notably the scale of the casualties was on the order of hundreds.

In the 20th Century, warfare would inflict casualties in excess of a hundred million.

 

http://www.militaryh...srebellion.aspx

"This ended one of the strangest chapters of colonial American history. Latter-day interpretations call Bacon’s Rebellion the first cry of independence against British authority. Certainly, Virginia’s laws weren’t effective in dealing with economic or civil problems. At its heart, however, the rebellion may best be called a power struggle between two very strong personalities that resulted in the destruction of Jamestown and the death of hundreds of colonial rebels, Indians, military forces and colonists."

 

 

Another conflict of this era occurred during the English Civil War,

Here again the scale of the conflict is vastly less than what became common in the era of total warfare of the 20th Century.

It is also interesting how many of these conflicts in the pre-industrial era were often more similar to a siege than a constant battlefield.

 

Many times those attacking a castle would simply give up after months or sometimes years.

Notably in the description of the Battle of Dunbar, it appears that the Scottish could have won by simply out waiting the English forces.

 

In a subsistence era economy, merely feeding these troops for a prolonged period became a serious logistical problem.

Furthermore, without a consumer economy, monarchs were chronically short of hard currency to actually finance their conquests. 

 

http://www.militaryh...war/dunbar.aspx

"While Dunbar was commemorated as a glorious victory, the fate of the Scottish prisoners was one of the less glorious episodes in English military history. Of the 10,000 captured, half were released immediately due to their wounds or sickness."

 

 

These examples have provided me with a clearer understanding of how industrialization along with massive increases in human populations from extremely high fertility rates

moved us along the apocalyptic war/destruction path that we have been on over the last few centuries. The url below gives detailed info on the catastrophe that we have endured.

I am not fully versed on European military history before the 18th Century ( say from 500-1500 AD), though from a fast glance at the url for most of western Europe over that time interval

mass conflict appears to have been mostly absent. Given the factors that have been mentioned, subsistence economy, low net fertility, lack of an industrial base, weak central power structures etc., such a context would be expected to result in a low potential for widescale conflict.  

 

 

   

https://en.wikipedia...s_by_death_toll

 

The one bright spot that I can see is that by removing the demographic impulse, we could move back towards a global security environment more similar to that existed before the

industrial revolution. An era of peace on the time scale of centuries might be on the horizon. 

Edited by mag1, 09 July 2017 - 06:52 PM.

[Advocatus Diaboli]

Information at the following links may be of interest to you, et alia.

 

http://today.uconn.e...ict-the-future/

http://www.herts.ac....liodynamics-lab
https://en.wikipedia...ollapse_in_2010

 

Panarin is off in his timing, but he makes interesting points.

 

China's one-child policy ended in 2015. It is thought that the policy had prevented 400 million births:

 

https://www.theguard...ne-child-policy

 

Pollution of the seas, air, and land will have dramatic effects on the quantity and the esculent quality of foodstuff available to humans. The same pollution effects will ramify all along the food chains/webs for all biota. Increasing demand for food caused by population increases will diminish the availability and quality of certain sources of food (over-fishing, lack of suitable land for raising livestock, mineral depletion in soils used for growing food crops, etc.). War is not an unlikely consequent.

 

http://below2c.org/2...re-hunger-wars/

 

There will be increasing competition for the "cleaner" foods--richer nations will prevail over poorer nations in obtaining less polluted foods--there is likely to be a concomitant increase in both nutritional deficit and in increased levels of toxic contaminants in the foodstuff available to poorer nations.

 

Farmlands are being being replaced by development in the US. This is probably true in other countries as well.

 

http://www.nytimes.c...ys.html?mcubz=0

 

The lungs of the Earth are rapidly being eroded by deforestation:

 

http://www.nationalg...deforestation/

 

There are numerous other factors, such as global warming, disease, etc., that might adversely affect the sustainability of human life at the current levels. Then there are the possibilities of extinction-level events--some of which are more likely to occur than others. 

 

Sea-level rise is likely to have massive demographic impact both in the US as well as in other countries.

 

http://webcache.goog...1&hl=en&ct=clnk

 

I've only scratched the surface here. I suspect that those living in the current era will be remembered as having lived at the acme of human habitation of Earth.

 

Edited by hypnos, 09 July 2017 - 10:01 PM.

[mag1]

Hypnos, thank you for joining the conversation.

 

Our planet has been dying for the past few decades.

No effective organized response has yet emerged to counter this ecocide.

If one does not soon materialize, there might not be much left to salvage.

 

It does not appear to be fully understood that some of the environmental

disruptions that humans are causing are essentially permanent. For example,

once genetic diversity is lost in wild populations of animals, it should be realized

that a meaningful recovery is no longer possible. 

 

Further, when reading some of the environmental science, I am often concerned

how something unexpected happens that was not part of the traditional climate model

etc. . Recently it was noted that an unexpectedly large production of methane was 

noted off the Soviet Union. We could easily reach a tipping point in carbon dioxide

or oxygen levels that we are entirely unprepared for. Sure, everything probably will work

out just fine, though the risk environment is shifting: hedging one's position seems wise.

 

Those were great references that you provided.

I read as many of the Foundation series that I could.

I really loved the idea that there might exist a mathematically definable behavior of human behavior:

psychohistory.

 

However, the url about how China decided on their low fertility strategy is more how I have always

experienced other people. In that url, a Chinese government worker read about some of the abundant

literature that circulated in the 1970s about the population bomb and then convinced the government to

pursue a low fertility policy.This has almost certainly been a large contributor to the economic success of

China over the last 30 or so years. While I would tend to think that drawing on the wisdom of the crowd   

usually is the more effective strategy, there can be cultural and other factors that prevent the best result

from emerging within in a reasonable time frame.

 

What was very striking to me about the above anecdote from the psychohistorical perspective is that

it would seem almost a random event. There are quite a few factors that one might suggest after the fact

why this happened, yet it would be a substantial feat if one were to have been able predict this would happen

before the fact. 

 

Removing people from their own parochial thought bubble, surely can result in such transformations. I am

thinking of all those people who migrate to a low fertility nation from a high fertility one and a generation

or two later their children/grandchildren have adopted a low fertility lifestyle as well.

 

The power of literacy/culture certainly should not be underestimated; for the reading of one book by a government

worker from China resulted in 400 million people not being born.

 

Perhaps our forum/thread can also provoke people to question assumptions about their behavior and help them to

choose a better life for themselves and their families. It is entirely possible that this thread's interpretation of the demographic

evidence is incorrect. What I find especially disturbing is that in some places of the world a discussion about the wisdom of

a high fertility lifestyle might never be thought worthy of consideration.

 

Edited by mag1, 10 July 2017 - 10:38 PM.

[mag1]

I wanted to educate myself about the climate change issue, so I have been prowling around the net.

 

This is scary!

Oftentimes people can become blinded by short term thinking.

This is very clear when you look through the climate research.

Where exactly do people think that they will be able to live at the start of the 21st Century?

 

The first Figure below shows an 800 ppm CO2 projection to 2100.

800 ppm is a very aggressive CO2 forecast.

However, as can be seen most of North America would be uninhabitable under such conditions.

 

I did not realize that the heat would move down from the Arctic.

Basically what will happen is that there will be a scorching heat wave centred on Hudson's Bay that will

bake most of North America east of the Rockies. Another figure in this series shows that drought will

move upward from Mexico to much of the South West of the US.  Take your pick heat wave or drough or both.

 

I also projected out the long term CO2 dataset to 2100 in the second attached figure. The purple line is an eye balled

linear extrapolation which brings us to 550. Though this is almost certainly an underestimate. The long term CO2 figures

show more of an exponential growth rate in carbon dioxide levels. The latest numbers are showing an increase up to 3 ppm

per year which has been steadily inching up over the last few decades. If we just use this 3 ppm then a linear projection

brings us to 640 in 2100. Considering that the global economy is still amping up and the population might grow 50% by 2100,

these projections would need to be interpreted cautiously. When I projected with an eye balled exponential fit (See the second

projected Figure), through the dataset, the year 2100 projection did approach 800. If true that would be apocalyptically bad.

The black line fits the data points from 1960-2017 very well especially the years after 1990. Fortunately, if this black line is a true

carbon dioxide projection then in about 10 years the data would clearly indicate that we were on this trajectory. If we were, then

a certain level of global panic would then be quite appropriate. 

 

The level of environmental crisis would perhaps intensify quadratically when moving from

600 to 800 ppm and beyond.

 

As with all extrapolations (especially long term and exponential), there can be a wide margin of error. A linear extrapolation does not

seem plausible, while just staying on our exponential trend line would result in an environmental disaster. Will have to wait and see. 

 

 

The rosy and fairly unrealistic projection presented of only hitting 500 ppm is also shown on

http://spaceref.com/...ng-century.html

This would be the scenario if the crisis were to be averted.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Attached Files

•  Climate change 2100 Temperature 2 800 ppm Co2.PNG   521.59KB   0 downloads
•  CO2 Long Term Projected.png   222.89KB   0 downloads
•  CO2 Long Term Projected 3.png   144.04KB   0 downloads

Edited by mag1, 12 July 2017 - 01:32 AM.

[mag1]

I want to address the contention that I have encountered a few times online, namely that Malthus was wrong.

 

On first impression, the figures below of world population growth would surely seem to contradict his model.

There has appeared to have been nearly vertical growth in human population since Malthus published his famous

book near the start of the 19th Century. Were his intellectual rivals the cornucopians the victors of the argument?

Have our baskets overflowed with prosperity over the last number of centuries?

 

My thinking is that Malthus was correct at the margin and this is enough to win the argument. The fact that there

has been such an overwhelming amount of misery caused by aggressively high fertility in certain places and at certain

times over the last few centuries is sufficient to select Malthus as the winner of the debate. The figures below appear to

show nearly continuous and smooth exponential growth in human populations. Yet, it is well known from even a skimming of

human history since the industrial revolution that there has been anything but a smooth ride. Even with all of our advanced

technologies, Malthus' checks on population growth have been active, when a harvest was not as successful as expected

etc. .

 

Moving back from this limit of the risk frontier gives me a good feeling. In the future there will be some slack present to help

us avoid calamity. For example, as the figure below shows, the global population rate has declined from 2.2 per cent in the 1970s

to about 1 per cent today and might decline to 0 percent by 2100. With long term increases in food production capability of 1-2 per cent

we will develop an increasing spare capacity for food production that will gradually reduce our risk exposure.

 

 

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Edited by mag1, 13 July 2017 - 03:04 AM.

[mag1]

After thinking about how people will actually respond to climate change, one scenario is that we simply kick it down the road for another 

2 or 3 decades. We are still somewhat off a total global environmental catastrophe caused by carbon dioxide. This would be consistent with

the global response over the last few decades. A rough estimate is environmental collapse is about a century away. I would not want to

time it to the minute because turning this global warming iceberg around could take centuries even if carbon dioxide production were

to stop immediately. There is a significant amount of uncertainty about exactly how much abuse our planet can withstand before

the entire biosphere fails.

 

Even still we would probably have at least 30 or 40 years warning for an imminent disaster.

Anything close to 700 ppm would represent a critical threshold for action.

At such a point we would be finally highly motivated to quickly develop and deploy massive technological resources

to reverse the carbon surplus.

 

Possibly what we could also see at 650 ppm would be government policy that by today's standards might seem draconian.

For example, internal combustion engines becoming illegal, perhaps a deliberate de-industrialization.

 

It would not seem unlikely that an entire lifestyle might emerge in which people of conscience pursued a zero or even a negative

carbon footprint as a central measure of success instead of income.

 

Procrastination really never has been a particularly effective strategy for me.

I am sure that my term papers would have been of much higher quality if I had started earlier.

For whatever reason the entire planet seems to be using this same strategy in managing global warming.

The consequences of inaction will greatly increase the costs and risks to our planet.

 

Edited by mag1, 13 July 2017 - 03:36 AM.

[mag1]

Hmm, I am wondering about the space umbrella idea.

Putting a large umbrella in space could result in immediate reduction in global temperatures.

We could thermostat our global temperature to whatever we chose.

If desired, such an umbrella if launched right now would cause our planet's temperature to plummet

into another ice age within minutes of deployment.

 

I suppose that there would have to be a fairly strict binding international agreement not to use such a

technology in a punitive way (namely shutting off the heat and light energy of the sun of those nations

that wanted to go their own way so to speak).

 

However, going through carbon dioxide could take centuries (probably longer) to turn around global warming.

With a CO₂ strategy, even in the most optimistic implementation it is not considered likely that our

biosphere will survive. With a space umbrella, 800 ppm atmospheric carbon dioxide would not

guarantee environmental collapse. With a space umbrella, 800 ppm would be consistent with

much lower global temperatures.

 

Admittedly a space umbrella would allow people to continue with a maladaptive high carbon lifestyle,

though ethically allowing the destruction of our global environment as yet further delay and destruction

occurs is also not palatable. An immediate fix to our global warming problem could greatly help some

of the animals and ecosystems that are currently struggling with climate change. I am not sure that I would want

the polar bears to give me a bear hug or even a high five if this idea could help them out, though I would be

happy to see them avoid their near certain medium term extinction.

 

With a space umbrella, it would be like a cloud on a hot day.

Cooling would probably happen within seconds.

It would take carbon dioxide out of the equation.

 

Each square meter receives a kilowatt of heat when the sun is shining.

That is simply a massive amount of heat energy.

A 1 kilometer by 1 kilometer space umbrella would remove 1 million kilowatts of heat.

A 1000 kilometer by 1000 kilometer umbrella would remove 1 million million kilowatts of heat.

{Perhaps someone could help out and tell me how many kilowatts of heat would be needed to reduce

the globe's atmospheric temperature by 1 degree centigrade?}

It is somewhat surprising that a city has not developed an artificial cloud technology to protect themselves 

from excessive heat.

 

Trying to control the carbon production of billions of people who have various economic, political, and social perspectives

has not been found to be achievable. To control global carbon production people will have to agree to behave in a socially

constructive manner. However, people often do not cooperate even when it is in their best interests to do so. Endless debate

is only intensifying the severity of the problem. Further, carbon dioxide per se is not the problem; global warming is.

 

With a space umbrella, there would be no need for dialogue or even global agreement. It would end run all the international

dialogues that have not effectively dealt with this even after decades of discussions. A space umbrella would be one highly

effective and immediate technology that could stop the endless speeches and actually solve the problem. It would be a big

science project, though there would not need to be any especially difficult technical problems to solve and the cost would 

likely be much more modest than that proposed to reduce carbon dioxide directly. Some of these CO₂  proposals mention

spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually to cope with climate change.

 

If such a space umbrella were done to plan, the effects would be immediate, affordable and could be adjustable to

our needs. For example, we could control heat waves that have occurred even without global warming. Probably need

a massive supercomputer to fine tune everything properly.

 

There are some private companies that are now developing relatively inexpensive space lift technologies. Perhaps use this

lift capability and put up a global thermal protector?

 

 

 

Edited by mag1, 14 July 2017 - 03:28 AM.

[mag1]

OK, the mass of the earth's atmosphere is 5 * 10^^18 g (=m).

The specific heat we'll call 1 for air (=c).

 

1 kwh per square meter = 4 *10^^6 joules.

For a 1000 km by 1000 km space umbrella, this is 4 * 10^^18 joules of heat energy removed from the earth in one hour (=Q).

 

Q= cm deltaT

 

delta T= Q/(cm)

delta T= (4 * 10^^18 joules)/(4.2 joules/gmoC * 5 * 10^^18 g)

           = 0.2 oC

 

Wow! Shutting off the sun for 1 hour over 1 million square kilometers would reduce atmospheric temperature somewhere very approximately

equal to a quarter of a degree Celsius.

 

Over a ten hour period reduction of 2 Centigrade might be achieved.

Obviously, the real calculation would be much more complicated than that, though it would seem that a 1000 km by 1000 km umbrella

would at least be in the right ball park.

 

There has been talk of spending perhaps trillions of dollars on a Mars mission.

Saving our planet with a mission that blocked out harmful solar thermal energy with probably a much smaller price tag and less 

required hi-tech innovation would seem much better value for the money.

 

 

Looks like others have also thought along these lines.

http://www.bbc.com/f...-global-warming

 

 

 

 

Edited by mag1, 14 July 2017 - 04:09 AM.

[mag1]

The weird conspiracy notion that I am now contemplating seems far fetched to me, though it does appear to fit the facts as they are known to me.

 

What if the major climate players have latched onto the slogan "Carbon is bad" more as a cynical anti-development / anti-economic stance than

as a rational response to our emerging climate crisis?

 

It is widely understood that even if atmospheric carbon could be immediately stabilized thermal momentum would continue probably for at least centuries. 

Focusing attention on carbon means that our ecosphere does not have a long term future. Solar clouds would immediately reverse our

global warming problem. How is fixating on carbon rational?

 

The figure above shows that even after spending trillions of dollars to slow atmospheric carbon accumulation, CO₂  is heading up nearly vertically.

Some of the commentators are moving the goal posts for how high temperature could increase during this century: some are even suggesting 8 degrees

centigrade. Yet, as has been noted above carbon dioxide is secondary to actual global warming. One could have much higher carbon dioxide levels

with much lower global temperatures.

 

What is especially puzzling to me is: Why have there been no small scale projects trying the solar cloud approach?

Most of the online discussion centers around a 1000 km by 1000 km scale solar umbrella that would cost perhaps

$5 trillion. It could be put at an L1 orbit and the umbrella might block 1% of the sun's thermal energy from passing through it.

 

 

Instead a micro scale demonstration could be done with a 1 km by 1 km umbrella with 100% blocking of solar thermal energy.

If cost were to scale to size, then such a project might only cost in the millions. However, it could powerfully highlight

how such a solution could rapidly alter our planet's overheating. It is possible that even with this small umbrella that

one might be able to measure a cooling effect especially directly underneath (on a global scale the calculation above suggests

that a 1 km by 1 km umbrella would cool global temperature by about 1 millionth of a degree one hour after deployment).

 

If governments and others are sincerely interested in helping cool our planet, then they could move the focus away from carbon 

and more to short term solutions to global warming. To start the ball rolling a $10 billion X-type prize might be offered to any group

that could achieve something similar to the 1x1 km² umbrella outlined above.    

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by mag1, 15 July 2017 - 12:48 AM.

[jack black]

I'm not sure what the big deal is. Japan's population has been shrinking for decades and they are managing fine. sure there would be unrest and other adjustments, but if we manage to avoid another world war, we should be fine.

 

as for the global warming, sure it's a problem alright and i'm not one of the anti-science deniers, but if you study vostok ice core patterns, we were due for the next ice age and that maybe even started in mid 1000's, but the anthropogenic global warming reversed that. next ice age would be a greater disaster for humanity than global warming in this overpopulated earth. think about it.