Archive for the ‘Alarmism’ Category

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By 2100 a world population decline and a shortage of a “productive population” will be the problem

November 3, 2012

There are still alarmists and Malthusians who believe that the world will face catastrophe due to overpopulation. They believe that the carrying capacity of the earth has been exceeded, that there will be food shortages, energy shortages and resource shortages in every field; that – in short – the population will not be able to sustain itself let alone to maintain growth.

But like so many alarmist theories (be it global warming or peak oil or peak gas or GM crops) the overpopulation meme builds on beliefs and ignores evidence. The environmentalists are increasingly taking faith-based and anti-science positions. Alarmism invokes political correctness and “consensus beliefs” rather than evidence to silence criticism . Even hard-core environmentalists are beginning to question this myopic adhesion to ideology (Environment360).

Just taking the overpopulation myth as an example, the data and projections in the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (2011): World Population Prospects: The 2010 Revision. New York (Updated: 15 April 2011) are pretty unambiguous and revealing. Within 100 years world population will be declining. The majority of children being born today in the developed world will live to be over 100 years old. There will begin to be a shortage of  the required “productive population” relative to the “supported populations of the young and the retired” – a problem already evident in Japan and other developed countries. In Sweden (and some other European countries) for example, this proportion is being maintained only by means of immigration and the slight consequent increase in average fertility rates. The “productive population” in Germany would be below the required level were it not for the “guest workers”. The 11 million or so “illegal immigrants” who are nearly all part of the “productive population” in the US  are a vital part of maintaining this balance.

The challenge in 2100 will be to maintain the balance between those “producing” to those “supported” in a declining and aging population. Perhaps immigration or population migrations or  productivity increases by the use of robots and an increase in the age one joins the “supported” population will be parts of the solution. I have no doubt that solutions will be found, but the “overpopulation problem” would have left the stage.

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Posted in Aging, Alarmism, Demographics | 4 Comments »

Cut out one hour of watching TV and you can smoke two extra cigarettes!

November 2, 2012

An Australian group of scientists have published the results of a new study in the October issue of The British Journal of Sports Medicine.

This then passes for “scientific research”!!!

From the New York Times:

…. Every single hour of television watched after the age of 25 reduces the viewer’s life expectancy by 21.8 minutes.

By comparison, smoking a single cigarette reduces life expectancy by about 11 minutes, the authors said. ……

Ah well! They are scientists, probably wear white coats and could not possibly be idiots.

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Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Trivia | Comments Off on Cut out one hour of watching TV and you can smoke two extra cigarettes!

Superstorm Sandy fizzles to a tropical storm

October 30, 2012

Are US politics and media channels driven by fear-mongering and alarmism?

By the time it hit the US coast, the storm system Sandy which had been hyped by an alarmist media, irresponsible insurance companies and  a frightened set of politicians into the “worst storm ever to hit the US” had fizzled to be a tropical storm.

The National Hurricane Center has downgraded Sandy to a “post-tropical cyclone,” as it approaches the New Jersey coast.

It was no hurricane which hit the US coast.

It was no doubt a severe storm but was it really worth cancelling 8,000 flights for?

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Posted in Alarmism, US, Weather | Comments Off on Superstorm Sandy fizzles to a tropical storm

The Nobel prize that wasn’t: A self proclaimed scientist with a self proclaimed Nobel prize

October 28, 2012

Michael Mann is no scientist – but he likes to claim he is one.

Michael Mann is no Nobel laureate – but he likes to claim he is one.

Climate “science” is no science – but Michael Mann likes to claim it is.

Time for the so-called “climate scientists” to be held accountable for their alarmism and waste.

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Posted in Academic misconduct, Alarmism, Fraud | Comments Off on The Nobel prize that wasn’t: A self proclaimed scientist with a self proclaimed Nobel prize

120 years on and Chekhov’s depressive alarmism has not changed

October 13, 2012

I was listening to BBC radio this morning where somebody was talking about a new production of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. The play was written in 1896 and the speaker quoted this line from the play:

“There are fewer and fewer forests, rivers are drying up, wildlife has become extinct, the climate is ruined, and the earth is becoming ever poorer and uglier.”

“Prescient” commented the speaker.

Prescient? I wondered. There is no shortage of forests, climate continues its normal cycles, some species have died and new ones found and the world has become richer and cleaner. No, just a depressed Russian of the 1890’s, and one without hope or any belief in the ingenuity of humans. Not prescient, just another alarmist now proven wrong.  And his kind of Malthusianism is alive and well even today – and is just as wrong.

In 1897 the world population was 1.5 billion with about 60% living in poverty. Life expectancy was about 32 years (average). At that time some 600 million people were being fed clothed and supported in a reasonably satisfactory way. In 2012 the world population has grown to 7 billion with about 25% still living in poverty (and the threshold for poverty has changed drastically). Average life expectancy is now 67 years. Today some 5 billion people are fed and clothed and supported in a reasonably satisfactory way. Almost 10 times as many as in 1896.

In another 120 years the current sayings of the Malthusians, the climate alarmists, the energy alarmists, the food alarmists, the resource alarmists and the bio-diversity alarmists will seem equally ridiculous. World population will probably stabilise at about 10 billion (at the current rate at which fertility rates are reducing) in the next 50 years or so. The challenges then will be the complete eradication of poverty and the biggest barrier may then be a shortage of “working” population.

By 2140 we will be close to 2.1 children per woman, studying longer (say till 27), working  for 45 years (till say 72) and living much longer – say 85 years (on average). Maybe less than 5% of 10 billion people will be living in poverty. Hunger and malnourishment will have almost disappeared. It may well be that it is the proportion of “working population”  which becomes the limiting factor in satisfactorily maintaining the young and the elderly.

But there will  still be no Malthusian resource crunch.

 

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Posted in Alarmism, Demographics | Comments Off on 120 years on and Chekhov’s depressive alarmism has not changed

The demise of coal has been greatly exaggerated

October 11, 2012

Reality Check.

The death of coal utilisation or the exhaustion of coal reserves is not even a glimmer on the world’s energy horizon — thank goodness.

Add to this the fact that carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere (and man made CO2 emissions are a minor contribution to this concentration) simply have no significant effect on climate. Trying to control climate by reducing man-made carbon dioxide emissions must rank as one of the world’s most useless and wasteful efforts in the last 30 years.

Terence Corcoran writes in the Financial Post:

….. The idea that coal is dying seems to be mostly wishful thinking on the part of green activists, as well as some politicians and regulators in the United States and parts of Canada. Ontario aims to end dirty coal-fired power generation, at great cost to consumers who are now paying high prices for the putative clean alternatives, wind and solar. The United States, via regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency, has established rules that are said to present the coal-power industry with a “dead end.”

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Coal, Energy | Comments Off on The demise of coal has been greatly exaggerated

Climate control – no less!! “A world you like – with the climate you like”

October 9, 2012

Even if anthropogenic effects on climate were significant – which they are not – the arrogance  of politicians and bureaucrats is astounding when they believe they can

  1. control the climate, and
  2. achieve this control by a “rebranding exercise”

The sun will continue on its merry way and our climate will perforce follow willy-nilly, even if our politicians and bureaucrats and so-called climate scientists think that modern day “rain dances” will give them climate control.

Perhaps they truly believe that man can control climate – and then it would not be arrogance – just gullibility or just plain stupidity! The modern-day King Canute syndrome.

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Posted in Alarmism, Behaviour, Politics | Comments Off on Climate control – no less!! “A world you like – with the climate you like”

CO2 concentration is not a major driver of earth’s temperature – may not even be a minor driver.

October 6, 2012

This paper is about the Warm Period in the Late Bronze Age (3100-3300 Years Before Present), which preceded the Roman Warm Period, the Medieval Warm Period and the current Warm Period.

Journal of Archaeological Science Volume 39, Issue 6, June 2012, Pages 1862–1870

The influence of climatic change on the Late Bronze Age Collapse and the Greek Dark Ages by Brandon L. Drake, Department of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, History | Comments Off on CO2 concentration is not a major driver of earth’s temperature – may not even be a minor driver.

Hard times forces a measure of realism into the mirage that is renewable energy

September 30, 2012

As the financial crisis continues, countries – one after another – are finding that the cost of pandering to environmental correctness is unacceptable. Renewable energy is proving to be unsustainable.

  1. Poland: The government moves to overhaul its system of support for green energy by effectively cutting funding for onshore wind.
  2. Greece: Greece has slashed the guaranteed feed-in prices it pays to some solar operators and is no longer approving permits for their installation.
  3. Switzerland: Switzerland plans for using more gas until 2050 and “energy needs can be completely covered by renewable energy”.
  4. Spain: Government has introduced a new tax on electricity production revenues to try and curb Spain’s current energy sector deficit caused mainly by the government’s renewable subsidy program.
  5. UK: UK cuts feed-in tariffs for Solar panels.
  6. Germany: Germany to press on with energy changes to the renewable subsidy system and with the easing of environmental over-regulation to rein-in renewable energy costs.
  7. Australia: Victoria cuts solar subsidies as the amount paid to new solar customers for power sold to the grid will be reduced from 25 cents to eight cents per kilowatt-hour.
  8. US: Tax breaks for wind energy to be curbed. Hopes that wind power could be competitive without any subsidy have been dashed by the plunge in North American natural gas prices.

Subsidies for what are essentially inferior products for electricity generation are ineffective.  Subsidies for what are misguided objectives are just not sustainable.

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Posted in Alarmism, Energy, Renewable Energy | Comments Off on Hard times forces a measure of realism into the mirage that is renewable energy

Tornadoes and forest fires drastically down – It must be global warming

September 27, 2012

The orthodoxy of the Temple of Climate Science have been busy this summer trying to link every “unusual” weather event to global warming. But every time I see a headline that some weather event has been the worst for 30 or 40 or 100 years, it only serves to  illustrate that the same weather events also occurred 30 or 40 or 100 years ago. And when weather events today are similar to events before 1950 then they can only be further indicators that they are not linked to carbon dioxide emissions.

Even the IPCC realises that weather is not climate.

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Posted in Alarmism, Climate, Weather | Comments Off on Tornadoes and forest fires drastically down – It must be global warming

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