Bill Gates is heading a $1 billion venture fund to combat climate change

[choff]

There is no debate about whether they farmed or not, they did, self sufficiently. They had a second farming community 300 miles up the western coast from the southern settlement. How else could they feed themselves, importation by longboat before 14th century? A population of 6000 people, dozens of churches with a bishop, plus tax records from Vinland as well as Greenland back in Norway. Stop trying to fudge the facts, because it's not just Greenland. The Chinese had orchards in the MWP farther north than at any time since.

[NotAPhysicist]

My understanding is that the farming is still in doubt. I could be wrong, I've not spent a huge amount of time reading Greenland Viking settlement literature, I have other things to do. And doubt is not saying it is impossible or unlikely, it is quite possible they were farming - I'm not dealing in absolutes.

Assuming they were farming then it wasn't all their diet, there would have been much fishing or some such. Again, my understanding is that this provided a significant portion of the diet and essentially all the diet as the LIA took hold and conditions became intolerable.

I'm also not saying there wasn't an effect anywhere else, I've specifically said that there was. I have however, been clear to point out this effect wasn't only warming. There was increased and decreased rainfall and (probably) cooling as well. And, again, the global average temperature wasn't effected to anywhere near the extent we are seeing now.

Again, climate scientists know about all this. They brought it to our attention. Seeing how the MWP fits in with global trends and what we are seeing now is part of what they do. It is possible they are wrong about AGW, but that seems increasingly unlikely. If you are willing to trust them on the MWP data perhaps you should consider trusting them on the whole AGW thing...

[choff]

The new ice age and global warming were invented at the Club of Rome late 60's early 70's. When one gets debunked after a few years, they gradually switch to the other one. Here's a convincing looking tv documentary from the 70's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_861us8D9M

[NotAPhysicist]

Well yes...
This was more or less a media extrapolation based on the brief period of cooling that occurred around the 1940s.
Climate science was relatively young, finding its feet and already had indicators of more general warming trends. There was not a belief in an imminent ice age and if some believed that was a possibility there certainly was nothing like the current consensus.

Here is a summary paper about it: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10. ... BAMS2370.1

[charliem]

Overpopulation, drinking water shortages, food shortages, energy shortages, global warming, superbugs, terrorism, war, etc. All these problems, and more, are bound to cause some (worldwide?) suffering in the coming decades. That suffering can be ameliorated greatly if we behave intelligently, the catch is that behaving intelligently is not one of our strengths.

Case in point. The Gates foundation is promoting the use of science to look for solutions ... but there are people trying to fight them !!

I wonder, are we intelligent enough to keep advancing as a civilization, or are we bound for another dark age?

[pbelter]

The new ice age and global warming were invented at the Club of Rome late 60's early 70's. When one gets debunked after a few years, they gradually switch to the other one. Here's a convincing looking tv documentary from the 70's.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_861us8D9M

Very interesting. The Club of Rome, the 0 growth luddities...
Looking at the current economic growth they are achieving their goals.

Here is their flagship publication:
https://www.clubofrome.org/report/the-limits-to-growth/

Man can create a society in which he can live indefinitely on earth if he imposes limits on himself and his production of material goods to achieve a state of global equilibrium with population and production in carefully selected balance.

I see how the alleged AGW plays into their agenda.

[Diogenes]

Judith Curry wrote:

Effective January 1, I have resigned my tenured faculty position at Georgia Tech.

A deciding factor was that I no longer know what to say to students and postdocs regarding how to navigate the CRAZINESS in the field of climate science. Research and other professional activities are professionally rewarded only if they are channeled in certain directions approved by a politicized academic establishment — funding, ease of getting your papers published, getting hired in prestigious positions, appointments to prestigious committees and boards, professional recognition, etc.

How young scientists are to navigate all this is beyond me, and it often becomes a battle of scientific integrity versus career suicide (I have worked through these issues with a number of skeptical young scientists).

Link to her resignation letter.





I said "intellectual phase lock" but others like to use the "C" word.

[hanelyp]

Overpopulation? Much of the developed world is facing below replacement level birth rate.
Drinking water shortages, food shortages, energy shortages? All symptomatic of a shortage of private property rights and rule of law.
Global warming? Projections based on falsified models, supported by altered data.
Superbugs? A lot of press relative to the number of deaths. Note that the last Ebola outbreak was contained and squashed before the vaccine was developed.

[pbelter]

Overpopulation, drinking water shortages, food shortages, energy shortages, global warming, superbugs, terrorism, war, etc. All these problems, and more, are bound to cause some (worldwide?) suffering in the coming decades. That suffering can be ameliorated greatly if we behave intelligently, the catch is that behaving intelligently is not one of our strengths.

Case in point. The Gates foundation is promoting the use of science to look for solutions ... but there are people trying to fight them !!

I wonder, are we intelligent enough to keep advancing as a civilization, or are we bound for another dark age?

We got ourselves a true Malthusian here. I thought after getting debunked throughout the centuries Malthusians were extinct species.
Apparently not. Reborn like Phoenix form the ashes, regardless of empirical evidence to the contrary that each century we are better off than in the previous.

The real problem we are facing are population shortage, as people decide to spend money on other things than children.

[charliem]

You piqued my curiosity. If I understand you correctly, you say that if the world has a problem it is that we are too few.

OK. So the 7 and something billion humans that we are now is not enough.

What about the 11-12 billion we are going to be, according to the projections I've seen, before the end of this century. Is that number enough or still low?

Have you ever made, or heard of a calculation about what's the maximum number of people the world can sustain? Do you think there is no limit?

I'm really curious of your reasoning.

[Diogenes]

You piqued my curiosity. If I understand you correctly, you say that if the world has a problem it is that we are too few.

OK. So the 7 and something billion humans that we are now is not enough.

You are speaking of the world, he I presume is speaking of the United States. Yes, the other parts of the world over which we have no control are having scads of babies. Often these are the areas least capable of supporting a larger population in a manner to allow a decent standard of living.


What do you propose to do about it? Short of killing them, or imposing birth control on them at the point of a gun, I don't see a viable solution.

If we go for the "killing them" plan, I suppose biological agents are probably the most cost effective.

What about the 11-12 billion we are going to be, according to the projections I've seen, before the end of this century. Is that number enough or still low?

Have you ever made, or heard of a calculation about what's the maximum number of people the world can sustain? Do you think there is no limit?

I'm really curious of your reasoning.

People talking about "too many people" make me nervous. This sounds ominously similar to "Lebensraum" to my ears.

I'm really curious of your reasoning.

[pbelter]

You piqued my curiosity. If I understand you correctly, you say that if the world has a problem it is that we are too few.

OK. So the 7 and something billion humans that we are now is not enough.

What about the 11-12 billion we are going to be, according to the projections I've seen, before the end of this century. Is that number enough or still low?

Have you ever made, or heard of a calculation about what's the maximum number of people the world can sustain? Do you think there is no limit?

I'm really curious of your reasoning.

You are making wrong assumptions by assuming the technology stays constant then deriving form it that with the current level of technology there is an absolute limit the "world can sustain". That limit was very different 1,000 years ago and will be very different 1,000 years form now.

The thing is that as population grows the technical progress speeds up as more people have more ideas. The limits to population growth are primarily driven by technology limitations. Some technologies like fusion or food synthesizers are big deal. Woodward believes that the same theory behind the Mach Effect leads to traversable and potentially portable wormholes. When asked what is needed to build them his estimate was $10 billion and 10 years. He may be right or wrong but there can and will be other developments.

So let's shed the wrong assumptions and attempt to calculate the limits to growth.

According to current estimates
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/152 ... e-universe
there are 50,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (5×10^22) habitable planets in the Universe. This is roughly 10^11 planets per person.
If we restrict ourselves to Milky Way alone we still get a few dozens habitable planets per person.

Of course we don't have the technology to get to them yet but technology growth accelerates with the number of people that came up with ideas. Contrary to malthusian theories this has always been true throughout centuries and the current progress is faster than ever.

By the time we populate the low hanging fruit then we should have the technology to terraform other worlds, maybe upload our minds into virtual reality or move to or even build new universes. The question of what is a person may become more difficult than how many people can fit on a planet today. How much room do you think there is for people in virtual reality with computers build with matter available across 500 billion galaxies?

So in short, no, there are no conceivable limits to growth.
And wrong assumptions give wrong results no matter how good the in-between is.

[charliem]

Thanks for the answer Diogenes.

So, if I understand your correctly, you say that we are going to have an overpopulation problem in the world, just not in the US, is that right?

Sorry pbelter, but I'm not sure I follow you. Are you suggesting to send the excess of population to another planet, or just to trust that during this century our technology is going to invent something that is going to solve what from our present point in time seems a problem of overpopulation?

[NotAPhysicist]

Can I restate this video link please: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsBT5EQt348
This is, an admittedly cutely animated, short video on over population sponsored by the Gates Foundation who, I assume, are pretty intimately aware of population issues around the globe.
I'd suggest watching that, you are certainly free to disagree with what it is saying but I'll assume for the moment it is reasonable well researched and not trying to horribly misrepresent what appears to be happening.
The short version is that we haven't hit peak population yet but are likely too relatively soon as living conditions gradually improve around the world - so far there is a very strong inverse correlation between living conditions and birth rates everywhere an upswing in living conditions has been seen. That is, the better conditions the less kids you tend to have. You get some lag with older generations coming through from worse conditions but eventually this stabilises.
Hopefully we can achieve a fairly stable population that is sustainable in good conditions - seems at least possible if we don't mess things up.

[pbelter]

Sorry pbelter, but I'm not sure I follow you. Are you suggesting to send the excess of population to another planet, or just to trust that during this century our technology is going to invent something that is going to solve what from our present point in time seems a problem of overpopulation?

Why would you confine your thinking to a single planet? Why not a country, state, county or a house?
What is a sustainable population that can live in a house?

We need to state problems in a way that make sense to get useful answers. You may calculate the number of people that can "sustainably live in a house" but what for?
If/when technology advances to the point that I live on Earth but work on Mars and spend weekends on Alpha Centauri II, which place am I overpopulating?