Sometime in the latter half of this century, human population will peak. Having swelled to a bit over nine billion people, our numbers will begin to drop as people age and women worldwide pass through the urban transition, gain control over their own life-choices and have fewer children.
After that, population will proceed to decline by the middle of the 22nd century to a number somewhere between 8.5 billion and 5.6 billion (depending it seems largely on whose assumptions about longevity growth you find most credible).
That’s pretty much the consensus position among demographers (though there is a range of belief about when the peak will happen and whether we can expect to more or less plateau at 8.5 billion or experience a long bumpy slope to a stable-state population of about 6 billion). Note that we don’t need to assume any sort of apocalypse here: this is the orderly progression of human beings passing through a post-industrial demographic threshold you can already see in cultures from Japan to Italy to Finland.
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The standard response to these facts is that some new technology will “save” us, and make limits irrelevant. But I am consistently impressed, when I speak with folks who are hard at work in the fields of biotechnology, molecular engineering and software design, at how real a sense of limits actually exists among the smarter ones. There are things we don’t know how to do now and may never (in any foreseeable time span) know how to do; there are others that seem like good ideas until you start doing them and encounter the unintended consequences; there are still others that work, but work in ways that mean something different than we expected. Where in the 90s we expected emerging technologies to unleash the boundless, more contemporary thinking about these technologies seems to me to be all about seeing them not as magic but as tools: profoundly useful, if used right, but perhaps far less transformative than once we hoped. They may greatly extend the range of actions we can take within the fundamental limits we face, but they most likely won’t change the limits themselves.
Tagapocalypse
“The builders of the world’s biggest particle collider are being sued in federal court over fears that the experiment might create globe-gobbling black holes or never-before-seen strains of matter that would destroy the planet.
Representatives at Fermilab in Illinois and at Europe’s CERN laboratory, two of the defendants in the case, say there’s no chance that the Large Hadron Collider would cause such cosmic catastrophes. Nevertheless, they’re bracing to defend themselves in the courtroom as well as the court of public opinion.
The Large Hadron Collider, or LHC, is due for startup later this year at CERN’s headquarters on the French-Swiss border. It’s expected to tackle some of the deepest questions in science: Is the foundation of modern physics right or wrong? What existed during the very first moment of the universe’s existence? Why do some particles have mass while others don’t? What is the nature of dark matter? Are there extra dimensions of space out there that we haven’t yet detected?
Some folks outside the scientific mainstream have asked darker questions as well: Could the collider create mini-black holes that last long enough and get big enough to turn into a matter-sucking maelstrom? Could exotic particles known as magnetic monopoles throw atomic nuclei out of whack? Could quarks recombine into “strangelets” that would turn the whole Earth into one big lump of exotic matter?”
(via Cosmic Log- MSNBC)
(Related: Virtual tour of LHC via Popular Science Blog)
Today sees the inauguration of the Svalbard global seed vault, a top-security repository that will house batches of seeds from nearly every variety of food crop on the planet, such as wheat, rice or maize. The aim is to protect them in case of a global catastrophe. “It is the last line of defence against the extinction of our agricultural diversity,” says Cary Fowler, executive director of the Global Diversity Crop Trust (GDCT), the brain behind the project. “People are aware of the extinction of the dinosaurs, but they don’t know that we are currently experiencing a mass extinction of our crop diversity.”
According to Fowler, maintaining agricultural diversity is essential to protect our food supply. “We need [it] to help farmers and to help agriculture adapt to climate change, pests and diseases, droughts, and whatever demands we’re going to have make of agriculture, including feeding more people.”
Alexander Cockburn has recently published an article called “I am an intellectual blasphemer,” about the treatment he has received as a global warming doubter. Full Article: Spiked.
I’m not a scientist, much less a climate scientist. So as a concerned citizen it’s up to me to look to scientists and science journalists to form an educated opinion about human-centric global warming. My conclusion: it appears that the scientific consensus is that global warming is occurring and that it is at least partially caused by human activities. It also appears that global warming doubters have been defecting at a greater rate than global warming believers.
Scientific consensus has been wrong before, and will be wrong again. The case of Galileo is often brought up by those who wish to challenge the authority of the scientific community. And indeed scientific opinion can at times be as ridged as any religion. But history provides us with far more discredited cranks than vindicated Galileos. So if the fate of the planet is at stake, I’ll bet with the scientific community even if I’m rooting for the dark horse (really, it would be nice if there were no such thing as global warming).
But that isn’t really the point of Cockburn’s article. He seems mostly to be miffed at the treatment he’s received for having taken such a politically incorrect view. But how would Cockburn expect people to react if he suddenly took up the creationism, phrenology, radionics, or some other discredited theory? Would he really expect people to take his arguments seriously then?
This experience has given me an understanding of what it must have been like in darker periods to be accused of being a blasphemer; of the summary and unpleasant consequences that can bring. There is a witch-hunting element in climate catastrophism.
Yeah, I’m sure we’ll be seeing Cockburn burned at the stake any day now, along with all the conservative politicians and business people whose careers have been ruined by powerful church of global warming.
Cockburn does make some valid points about modern environmentalists:
The left has bought into environmental catastrophism because it thinks that if it can persuade the world that there is indeed a catastrophe, then somehow the emergency response will lead to positive developments in terms of social and environmental justice.
This is a fantasy. In truth, environmental catastrophism will, in fact it already has, play into the hands of sinister-as-always corporate interests. The nuclear industry is benefiting immeasurably from the current catastrophism. Last year, for example, the American nuclear regulatory commission speeded up its process of licensing; there is an imminent wave of nuclear plant building. Many in the nuclear industry see in the story about CO2 causing climate change an opportunity to recover from the adverse publicity of Chernobyl.
Indeed. And even on the side of the environmentalists are a number of unsavory political agendas – there’s no shortage of sociopathic cryptofascists in the environmental movement (particularly in the “green anarchism” movement). People who believe that the very existence of humans is an unspeakable injustice, and that we must all suffer for it. Misanthropes who are convinced that mass human extinction would be a good thing. People who believe that it’s worth bombing innocent people to stop technological progress.
Cockburn goes on to equate global warming fears with religious apocalyptic views, which Trevor Blake expands upon:
I have a suggestion as to why large groups of people are supporting the athropogenic global warming theory, but it is one I read long ago by an author I sadly cannot remember and credit. Ask yourself where the largest environmental movements are, and where the most radical / violent environmentalists are. The answer is, roughly, the USA, Canada, England and Germany. All of these countries are, among other things, largely Protestant countries. Compare the environmental movement in these Protestant countries with the environmental movements in largely Catholic countries, such as Italy or Mexico. Compare it also with the environmental movements in Islamic countries. It seems that Christianity co-occurs with environmentalism more than with Islam, and more with Protestant Christianity than Catholicism. Protestant Christianity is heavy with stories of the original purity of humanity and our harmony with the Earth, but through our wickedness in taking on the powers of God we have brought about great suffering and destruction – including the any-day-now destruction of the entire Earth. Compare this to environmentalism, which is heavy with stories of the original purity of humanity and our harmony with the Earth, but through our wickedness in taking on the powers of God we have brought about great suffering and destruction – including the any-day-now destruction of the entire Earth. Environmentalism is in part an echo of Protestant Christianity, which was relegated to ceremonial reverence as the West adopted secular values.
It’s interesting to note the similarities between various apocaphiles. The narratives spun by economic collapse, peak oil, and global warming fear mongers, for example, sound a lot like stories of the rapture. A day of judgment will come, and those who took the righteous (those who bought vaults, stocked up on food, or prepared to live in Bronze Age conditions) will be rewarded and the wicked will be punished. It’s telling that the answer to our problems is always the same: buy the right stuff.
There will always be tyrants and hucksters trying to exploit fear and misfortune. This does not discredit the body of science that tells us what we must do in order to avert catastrophe. The most important thing we must do, ween ourselves from fossil fuels, is a generally positive thing in and of itself. Regardless of its global impact, air pollution caused by cars, power plants, factories, etc. is real. And the US’s addiction to oil has caused numerous geopolitical nightmares. We shouldn’t need global warming or peak oil to motivate us to make these changes. Nor should we allow fearmongors and hucksters to hoodwink us into adopting solutions that do not solve our problems, put an undue burden on the under privileged, or cause unnecessary loss of liberty.
While this is an interesting and short read, worth its perusal, I found this little snippet quite interesting about possible solutions to help the U.S. out of its sinking situation. I’m interested in the first point, but like I said, the whole thing is worth reading:
We might possibly be saved, he explains, if the nation engages in massive, radical reform in three areas: 1) Eliminating the current income tax system and moving to a national retail sales tax of 33 percent. 2) Privatizing social security so that workers own their savings accounts and the federal government can no longer swipe funds from Social Security. 3) Launching a national health insurance program that covers everyone and relies on a system of government-issued vouchers that citizens can spend with health insurance companies.
Full article via NewsTarget, by Mike Adams
I’ve spent a lot of time ragging on Ron Paul, so for some balance here’s a frightening article about the race’s other theocrat, Mike Huckabee:
Huckabee routinely warns of the threat of “Islamofascism” at campaign rallies and is perhaps the first major presidential candidate in American history to essentially call for the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Huckabee declared during a New Hampshire fundraiser in October that a Palestinian state should only be established outside of biblical Israel, possibly in Egypt or Saudi Arabia, according to the Jewish Russian Telegraph. He reiterated this position during an appearance on Face the Nation in November.
Huckabee’s advocacy of forcibly transferring the Palestinians to other Arab nations reflects his close association with some of America’s most prominent End Times theological proponents. Among Huckabee’s leading evangelical backers is Pastor John Hagee, head of a Pentecostal congregation in San Antonio, Texas, with 18,000 members and the executive director of Christians United for Israel, a national lobbying group that organizes against a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine crisis and in favor of a military strike on Iran.
Hagee’s zealous support for Israel is kindled by his belief that Jesus will one day return to “biblical Israel” to usher in a kingdom of Heaven on Earth. “As soon as Jesus sits on his throne he’s gonna rule the world with a rod of iron,” Hagee told his congregation in a sermon this December. “That means he’s gonna make the ACLU do what he wants them to. That means you’re not gonna have to ask if you can pray in public school…. We will live by the law of God and no other law.”
This confirms for me that the worst possible outcome of this year’s election would be a Huckabee presidency.
“The beast of the Book of Revelation intruded into the banter of the House of Commons on Thursday when a motion calling for the disestablishment of the Church of England was numbered 666. The last book of the Bible says 666 is the number of a beast that “had two horns like a lamb, and … spake as a dragon,” and that “doeth great wonders, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men.”
“It is incredible that a motion like this should have, by chance, acquired this significant number,” said Bob Russell, a Liberal Democrat lawmaker.”
(via Salon)
At least 30 members of a Russian doomsday cult have barricaded themselves in a remote cave to await the end of the world and are threatening to commit suicide if police intervene, officials and media said Thursday.
“They have covered the entrance and refuse to come out and are threatening to blow themselves up,” an official in the local prosecutor’s office told Reuters by telephone. “They threaten to detonate a gas tank and blow themselves up.”
(via Irreality News Wire).
Just at the time the threat of a nuclear apocalypse was lifting, ecologists evolved their own expression of end times. Awareness of a looming disaster was triggered by Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring. This focussed on the threats from non-degrading biocides such as DDT. Popular opinion has caused this threat to be reduced. However other threats have been recognised – such as global warming, damage to the ozone layer, and exhaustion of fossil fuels. These threats are real, yet the ‘messages’ are built on foundations that owe everything to myths of the apocalypse.
If the interests of ecologists are largely at the expense of big business, then big business created an apocalyptic scare of its own, truly millennial in nature, when in the late 1990s the risk of widespread computer problems were envisaged if ‘bugs’ caused critical systems to fail in the first few hours of 1st January 2000. The ‘Y2K bug’ proved to be inconsequential. Some might say this was because of the vast sums of money spent to upgrade software and hardware, others that the risks were in many instances greatly exaggerated.
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