A friend of mine, who has a pretty well-exercised brain, tried to get under my skin the other day by invoking the specter of climate change "alarmists," suggesting that we've been there before and should reserve a fair bit of skepticism for anyone who says the sky is falling. Which is true, to a point. No one wants to be dismissed as an alarmist. But then he brought up Paul Ehrlich and the famous "population bomb" as a classic example of alarmism that amounted to nothing. I fear my friend has bought into one of those fables that continues to dog the environmental movement. This post is an attempt to set him straight.
Here's the relevant section of my friend's email:
I think climate change alarmists have a point, but ought to be ready to get real and put more than a little water in their whine. I'm old enough to have seen a number of doomsday scenarios come and go ("Population Bomb", anyone?), and judging by what I've read about climate change, most scientists seem to have only a passing understanding of economics, politics, and the human condition.
I doubt that if we got together for a beer and hashed it out, we would be able to collectively conjure up more than a couple of "doomsday scenarios" but for the sake the argument let's just stick to the Population Bomb, which was a book by population ecologist Paul Ehrlich that came out back in 1968. The world was headed for a catastrophic crunch of resources thanks to rapid population growth back then, and Ehrlich was one of the most eloquent of those warning us about what lay ahead.
Of course, between now and then the developed world stopped having babies, and the population growth rate slowed. Most predictions by those who know how to play with such numbers anticipate a continued deceleration, followed by a topping off of the world's population at about 9 or 10 billion around 2045, far shy of the Ehrlich's nightmare visions.
So was Ehrlich wrong? The short answer is no. First of all, he predicted very little in the book. Instead, he wrote,
The possibilities are infinite; the single course of events that will be realized is unguessable. We can, however, look at a few possibilities as an aid to our thinking, using a device known as a 'scenario'.
Among those scenarios was
The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate...
Many tens of millions have died from malnutrition and starvation, though the time frame would have to be expanded to include the following couple of decades, largely in Africa. And things are going to get a lot worse, thanks to the fact that the Green Revolution, which was the most important factor in ensuring the bomb didn't go off, is maxxed out (we're talking about new fertilization and irrigation technologies, essentially) and yet much of Africa continues to experience frighteningly high birth rates.
I could write more, but historian/journalist Gwynne Dyer recently wrote a great little overview of the problem. Here's a worthwhile few paragraphs:
You look at the numbers and you think: "That's impossible." Uganda had about seven million people at independence in 1962, and in only 45 years it has grown to 30 million. By 2050, just over four more decades, there will be 130 million Ugandans, and it will be the twelfth biggest country in the world, with more people than Russia or Japan. Its population will have increased eighteen-fold in less than ninety years.
Sometimes the steadily worsening ratio of people to resources just causes deepening poverty, as in the case of Nigeria, whose population by 2050 will reach 300 million. That is the same as the current population of the United States, but Nigeria, apart from being virtually without industry, does not have one-tenth of the natural resources of the US. If those 300 million people live at all, they will live very badly.
Often, however, the growing pressure of people on the land leads indirectly to catastrophic wars: Sierra Leone, Liberia, Uganda, Somalia, Congo, Angola and Burundi have all been devastated by chronic, many-sided civil wars, and all seven appear in the top ten birth-rate list. Rwanda, Ethiopia and Mozambique, which have suffered similar ordeals, are just out of the top ten. Africa, which accounted for only eight percent of the world's population when most of its countries got their independence in the 1960s, will contain almost a quarter of the world's (much larger) population in 2050.
Uganda's birth-rate is seven children per woman, little changed from thirty years ago. Uganda's president, Yoweri Museveni, believes that his country is under-populated, and told parliament last July: "I am not one of those worried about the population explosion. It is a great resource." He has done many good things for his country, but this one blind spot could undo them all. And he is far from alone.
This, as they say, is not good.
Paul Ehrlich may not have foreseen the Green Revolution, but he could do the math. Was he an alarmist? Yes. But was his alarmism warranted? Yes, again.
I almost forgot to point out that 9 billion people is almost certainly far more than the planet can support for any length of time. So even if the bomb is taking a lot longer to go off than Ehrlich wrote 40 years ago, it's still going to do a lot of damage.
I'd rather go with such an "alarmist" than assume that everything's going to be fine. And I will take that philosophy to the climate change arena. I mean, let's face it, do we really want to gamble that the worst-case scenarios (or even the mid-case scenarios) won't come to pass?
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Is there no middle ground between being an alarmist and assuming that everything's going to be fine? A pox on both houses!
BTW, do you really believe the "green revolution" was a matter of "new fertilization and irrigation technologies, essentially?" Have you ever heard of Norman Borlaug?
Some alarmists are snake oil peddlers. Am I the only one who remembers The Coming Ice Age?
"I doubt that if we got together for a beer and hashed it out, we would be able to collectively conjure up more than a couple of "doomsday scenarios" "
James, there have been so many science-based doomsday scenarios that they have devoted conferences to the phenomenon:
http://wwwuser.gwdg.de/~uhwg/doomsday-conference.html
And then there's Sir Martin Rees, the ultimate prophet of doom:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/uk/2000/newsmakers/2976279.stm
I think the real problem is how certain people respond to these doomsday scenarios that we often encounter. Judging from your nice leather hat and writing style you probably would not get too worked up over these predictions.
I take these scenarios with a big grain of salt because everything we ever hear about is always overly hyped, but some people will literally lose sleep over these claims. I think it has something to do with a hyper-sensitivity to self preservation or something.
What I mean is the response to these claims is nowhere near appropriate, think of the various sugestions that you've probably heard that don't even make sense. Many of the responses I have seen from people are in league with religious fundamentalists.
I am almost alarmed at how alarmed other people will get over AGW.
To be more precise, what I should have said is that I will take alarmism based on science over stick-one's-head-in-the-sand denialism anyday. Sure there have been lots of doomsday scenarios, but not many from people who know what they're talking about. Rees is one of them, but there aren't too many others.
As for the Coming Ice Age: please. There was not prediction of such coming from the scientific community. Others have debunked that canard so often I won't even bother.
"As for the Coming Ice Age: please. There was not prediction of such coming from the scientific community."
Depends on what you mean by "coming from the scientific community." There was no IPCC at the time to give it's stamp of approval and declare a consensus, but there certainly were climatologists in the 70s who predicted an imminent ice age.
As for "arlarmism based on science," which scenario(s) do you think provide a proper scientific warrant for alarm?
bob koepp,
Truth of the matter is, you can find a scientist somewhere who will say just about anything. There wasn't anything even close to a consensus on the ice age business, it was merely a few folks who thought it was possible and needed further examination (and got picked up by the popular media). As it turns out, they were wrong.
Science functions by testing and retesting. You put forth an idea, you test it. If fails the test, you were wrong. If it passes the test, you test it again in a different manner. The coming Ice Age hypothesis didn't pass many tests. Anthropogenic global warming has passed many, many, many tests.
"Anthropogenic global warming has passed many, many, many tests."
Leaving aside the hyperbole of "many, many, many," which of the various hypotheses sheltering under the umbrella term 'global warming' have passed actual tests (as opposed to simply being compatible with existing data they were constructed to model)? And, assuming you can cite such well-tested hypotheses, do they provide proper warrant for alarm?
Relax everybody! Experts agree....everything is fine. :)
Besides, there's Soilent Green to be made...
I have to say something about the Ice Age stuff. I was at the University of Arizona in the mid-late 80s. My husband had a job at the Dendrochronology lab as a research assistant and so I become familiar with some of the climate modeling being done then.
Yes, some of them said their models predicted an Ice Age. As far as I am aware, they were interested, excited, had fun with programming PCs (fairly recent addition to the lab), and were not concerned about an Ice Age actually happening. There were about 9 different models floating around that lab at that time and the predictions were pretty evenly divided between an Ice Age, Global Warming and No Change. So none of the climatologists were predicting any thing but more research. It was the ever so helpful media that blew up the alarmism.
The difference now is that it is the scientists that are concerned and some of them are seriously alarmed. I don't know about you, but when the experts get alarmed, I figure it is time for me to pay attention.
What I've never understood about the standard republican position is that I would have that if I was 'conservative' I would error on the side of caution.
I hate it when I catch a typo after I post.
Please change to 'I would have thought that if I was' ....
"Coming Ice Age" was a speculative projection based on past patterns observed at the time. Some 850K years of ice cores weren't available either. The Bristlecone correction and the Turkish dendrochronology hadn't happened to C-14 basic assumptions. A Copernican shift of consciousness is under way with the reality of the ancient 'carbon sequestered' accounts compared with the available Oxygen account. The Ehrlich projection was delayed by the 'fertilizer & irrigation' accomplishments which were made with those fossil (Carbon) fuels. The ratios change. Nature, it is said, always tends to balance. There is no assurance that the new 'balance' will include your species. We have ample evidence of that.
Sleptic8
One recent estimate says that the Earth can provide sustained support about a billion people.
Here's irony. A substantial decrease in birth rate could improve the survival chances of the species.
The parts of the AGW problem that look damned near insoluble to me are
1)no politician in her/his right mind will do very much that hurts constituents. It's just political suicide in the US to impose taxation at the level that might slow emissions.
2)The gulf between proposed 'feel good' measures (I'd include Kyoto) and something that will help are immense. People will consequently confuse rhetoric for action for a long time. Europe is deeply in the throes of this now- they have a relatively aware and concerned populace, their politicians make the right noises, and their emissions, for the most part, rise unabashedly.
3) There is no good way to get anyone in the developed world to stop. The US is deeply in denial, and the Chinese and Indians are saying that they essentially are not going to forgo the goodies that development gives them, so count them out. The result is that the balance of the umpteen bazillion deaths that may occur will occur in places that developed countries are expert at ignoring.
4)The timescales involved (unless major acceleration of effects occur) are prime for putting off doing anything. After all, what have my great-great-grandchildren done for me lately, and besides, they are projected to be a lot richer than I am. I'm being sarcastic, but how much will people forgo, really, if effects are offset by 20 years? 50 years? Remembering that people don't, in general, save money for retirement, something they know is inevitable, something deeply of concern to them, and that discipline and compound interest will provide for, how can anyone expect something as abstract as AGW to hold anyone's attention for the long haul necessary?
"Alarmism" is a multifaceted beast- even accepting that things are going in a dangerous direction, tarted up disaster documentaries have the unintended consequence of providing relief when really bad things don't happen "the day after tomorrow"...
The technical problems are nothing compared to the educational and political problems. This needs to be handled delicately, because paradoxically, if things don't get really bad quickly, and the climate evolves over decades, having scientists out front not being sober, serious, but not "alarmist" could discredit scientific contributions to policy for a generation, time enough for things to get far, far worse in the future.
James, and Bob-
One problem, perhaps illustrated here by your exchange, is that the general public doesn't see the distinction between the pronouncements of the IPCC and a page in Newsweek from nineteen seventy something. In both cases, the scientist/public interface is the media. Many reporters would be hard pressed to calculate their own BMI, let alone evaluate what a 'consensus' of experts say. Further, a big part of their training is balancing opposing narratives. In business, art, politics, sports etc., this makes all the sense in the world, but science is not all that well-served by it. The public is not able to see, or appreciate, the error bars, or the difference between areas of legitimate scientific debate vs pseudoscience struggling against well-established mainstream science.
A lot of lamentation is made about the state of scientific literacy in the US. The problem is not just that Joe Sixpack doesn't know about evolution, or thinks vaccines cause two-headed babies- the far more insidious problem is that 'educated' people, some of which become lawyers, politicians, journalists, and other drivers of policy and opinion- get through college with little more than "intro to rocks" to satisfy science requirements and remedial mathematics. Many wouldn't know a scientific argument, or a valid quantification of uncertainty, were either to bite them on the rear-end.
The journalistic profession is certainly populated with counter-examples (one being right at hand) but nevertheless, the rule seems to be a cocktail of misunderstanding or ignorance of science and journalistic 'balance' of quotations on both sides of issues. In a perfect world, I think AGW mitigation would be a hard sell, because it could inflict pain on people who are too rich to have to put up with it. It just gets harder as we diverge from perfect communication of the science, economics, engineering, biology, politics, psychology and other stuff necessary to deal with a global problem that, as yet, isn't obvious to most people.
Good article. I write often about population and so am more than familiar with how people try to paint Ehrlich as an alarmist who's been shown to be all wrong. Nice to see someone point out that he was merely offering a variety of possible scenarios, and that his basic argument was correct: The earth is finite, and population growth cannot, therefore, continue as it has without reaching limits and causing serious problems. Clearly that has happened. And there is fairly strong agreement about it in the scientific community.
Here are some links to statements (and more extensive resources) on population from a variety of scientific organizations:
http://growthmadness.org/2007/05/23/powerful-population-links/
Unfortunately, despite much agreement, there seems to be little initiative currently to publicize the importance of the population issue. My sense, though, is that awareness is once again growing. That seems a good sign.