Al Gore branches out into population control theory

I for one am extremely disappointed- isn’t it usual to have singing and tap dancing in a show like this?

Nashville had a 1000 year flood? That’s long. I think that qualifies as climate.

Shocking. Well just like the fact he lives in a mansion and flies around on private jets yet talks about reducing fuel consumption – he has 4 children.

Black is slimming…………

Never trust a man who wears brown shoes…..

Poor people aren’t idiots. They have more kids because it increases their chance of producing successful offspring.
Rich people aren’t idiots, either. They have fewer kids – because it increases their chances of producing successful offspring.
The difference is that there are more risks involved in a poor person’s life. Reduce those risks (by making them richer, by increasing their access to energy, water, health care, etc) and they will have fewer kids. Increase those risks by making energy more expensive only increases their biological need to produce more kids.
Increasing their capability to do something that isn’t in their best interest will achieve absolutely nothing.

He is joining Bill Gates with this population reduction ideas, except that Gates wants to do it with vaccines.

Seems we have been told that a warmer world would lead to increased likelihood of major floods and draughts and we are now experiencing more of these in a warmer world. Climate effects weather events.

Zowie. So we should educate women and try and prevent childhood deaths because we need to reduce CO2 emissions, not because those are intrinsically good goals. So if we’re entering a Maunder minimum and need to further increase CO2 to compensate, will Gore recommend eliminating women’s education and killing children by the millions so parents will pump up the output of new babies?

Harold Lewis, emeritus professor of physics at the University of California-Santa Barbara, who resigned this month from the American Physical Society after 67 years of loyal membership. His resignation letter said this:
“It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist.” http://bit.ly/h2XnZ8
“Creating an ideology pegged to carbon dioxide is a dangerous nonsense…The present alarm on climate change is an instrument of social control, a pretext for major businesses and political battle. It became an ideology, which is concerning.” – Environmental Scientist Professor Delgado Domingos of Portugal
“Gore prompted me to start delving into the science again and I quickly found myself solidly in the skeptic camp…Climate models can at best be useful for explaining climate changes after the fact.” – Meteorologist Hajo Smit of Holland
“I have yet to see credible proof of carbon dioxide driving climate change, yet alone man-made CO2 driving it. The atmospheric hot-spot is missing and the ice core data refute this. When will we collectively awake from this deceptive delusion?” – Dr. Gn LeBlanc Smith, a retired Principal Research Scientist with Australia’s CSIRO.
Warming fears are the “worst scientific scandal in history . . .When people come to know what the truth is, they will feel deceived by science and scientists.” – UN IPCC Japanese Scientist Dr. Kiminori Itoh, and award-winning PhD environmental physical chemist.
“The IPCC has actually become a closed circuit; it doesn’t listen to others. It doesn’t have open minds. . . I am really amazed that the Nobel Peace Prize has been given on scientifically incorrect conclusions by people who are not geologists.” – Indian Geologist Dr. Arun D. Ahluwalia at Punjab University and a board member of the UN-supported International Year of the Planet.
“It is a blatant lie put forth in the media that makes it seem there is only a fringe of scientists who don’t buy into anthropogenic global warming.” – U.S. Government Atmospheric Scientist Stanley B. Goldenberg of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA
“After reading [UN IPCC chairman] Pachauri’s asinine comment [comparing skeptics to] Flat Earthers, it’s hard to remain quiet.” – Climate statistician Dr. William M. Briggs, who specializes in the statistics of forecast evaluation, serves on the American Meteorological Society’s Probability and Statistics Committee and is an Associate Editor of Monthly Weather Review.
“The Kyoto theorists have put the cart before the horse. It is global warming that triggers higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not the other way around. . . A large number of critical documents at the 1995 U.N. conference in Madrid vanished without a trace. As a result, the discussion was one-sided and heavily biased, and the U.N. declared global warming to be a scientific fact.” Andrei Kapista, a Russian geographer and Antarctic ice core researcher
“For how many years must the planet cool before we begin to understand that the planet is not warming? For how many years must cooling go on?” – Geologist Dr. David Gee the chairman of the science committee of the 2008 International Geological Congress who has authored 130 plus peer-reviewed papers, and is currently at Uppsala University in Sweden.

alGore has become a cleric. His version of religion fits his regime.
How was the sex poodle with givving his meseeuse intelligent choice?

We all know the real aim is to reduce human population. So show us the way Al baby, make yourself a good example of what “responsible people ” should do. It would be a better legacy than you have now.

“Dr. Dave says:
June 21, 2011 at 2:51 pm
The best way to control population is to decrease poverty, provide abundant, affordable electricity and enhance education. It works like a charm everywhere it has been tried…”
I agree,
but having a well educated population would not be in the self serving interest of Al Gore and the rest of these popularized modern megalomaniacs because very fue educated people would believe a word they uttered.
There are too many political figures, royalty etc.. on the world stage who are qualified in anthropology who love nothing more than to push their misanthropic Ideological beliefs on the uneducated, trusting and gullible public.
Last week I read about plans to reduce world population through vaccines, How does that work? are they actually calling the sterilization of millions of woman and children “a vaccine”? does this mean these nut jobs see babies as a disease or some kind of virus??
People should be allowed to control their own destiny and have the same freedoms and opportunities that has allowed this modern band or merry grim reapers to become wealthy and look down on the rest of mankind with utter contempt and disgust.

“Fertility management”….whaddayasuppose he meant by that?

Does he think he is the new ‘Johnny Cash’? What’s with the Frankenstein wardrobe? ‘Puttin on the Ritz!’

Sceptical, read……..

“Fluctuations in some climate parameters”
“Here we report results on those parameters of which we have had experience during the last few years: Global surface temperature, Cloud Cover and the MODIS Liquid Cloud Fraction. In no case we have found indications that fluctuations of these parameters have increased with time.”
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jastp.2011.01.021

I assume you agree that we have had around 30 years of global warming. The hottest decade on the record.

Gore has 4 kids, but Suzuki has 5. Nyah, Nyah!

Henry chance says:
June 21, 2011 at 3:27 pm
alGore has become a cleric.
He thinks he is a messiah.

Now that Al is worried about excessive population, I wonder if he would reconsider building the fence along the Mexican border. After all, the USA has done its (Liberal? Modern?) duty and reduced its birthrate to below replacement. That happened more than forty years ago. Except for emigration, the population of the US would be roughly where it was in 1970.

What would Al Gore say if everyone had 4 kids like him? The Duke of Edinburgh goes on and on about overpopulation yet ignores the fact that he also has 4 kids who consume the world’s resources like there’s no tomorrow. Take Prince Charles who is very concerned about global warming. Now see how he lives with less: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riXrqyGrnCc

Sssshhhh! Don’t stop him! Think about it: the more people are exposed to Gramscian indoctrination (ie college) the less they reproduce.
We should encourage this self-selection. We should be happy to see the Gaian secular aristocrats reproducing less. This will leave the rational and civilized people (ie serious Christians and Muslims) reproducing more.

What a shock, who would have thunk Albert Gore was a Neo Malthusian?

Earlier, the Millenium Bug Hoax …
Then, the Global Warming Hoax …
And now, Birth Control … What’s he up to now then? (Bilderberg?)
Something more …?
Isn’t fraud illegal anymore?

Not interested in Al Gore enough to watch the videos. These people have fallen so hard so fast.

I find myself not entirely unsympathetic to Gore’s arguments. As Dr. Dave says, ” decrease poverty, provide abundant, affordable electricity and enhance education”. These are the drivers for population control. Not quite what Gore said, but something of the ilk.
Gore has, I think, good anecdotal arguments for a changed climate. However, these are short term events–more weather than climate. But at least he has some arguments.

What scares me is the number of people that actually voted for this twit.
Mark

There is something wrong with most any woman that listens to Al “touch my chakra” Gore.
But what is it with it women looking to be empowered, flocking to listen to an obvious manBearPig?

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110620094555.htm

So, this seminary dropout is proposing eugenics? VERY Christian. One of the interesting side stories to me about this whole environmental cause is that although many Christian groups are getting involved in the whole “save the Earth” campaign (rather than save your soul!- imagine that! Christianity without personal overhaul – VERY interesting!) – but the thing is that the Save the Earth ideology invariably involves population control, which invariably involves eugenics. Eugenics has a lot of great references as a practice, let’s see – Nazi Germany, Chinese Communism, Some really wackadoo groups in the USA, and any other group that has either tried to create a master race or to breed infirmity or inferiority out of the Human species. And AGW walks with this idea hand-in-hand. The more I read and research this topic, the more I see how dangerous it is on social and religious levels. I am not trying to proselytize here, but if you happen to be a Christian believer, eugenics is historically verboten! (That’s forbidden, for those who don’t know German) – and this whole save the earth campaign is a massively powerful and insidious attack against the Church. Try that on for size, if no one has thought about that….

I did a quick calculation to see how much space the world’s population would take up if they all stood side-by-side. Take a population of 6 billion, multiply by 3sq ft (space for them to stand) divide by 43560 (# of sq ft in an acre) then divide by 640 (number of acres in a sq mile) and it would only take 646 sq miles to hold the earth’s population.
Makes the over population argument seem a little silly.

In Western countries, girls and women have as much access to education as men. Admittedly, the quality of this education is often more than dubious — the very idea of “education” has been subverted by the wannabe bismarcks of Al Gore’s totalitarian persuasion — but boys and men are no less suffering from public education and tenured professors than girls and women. No discrimination there.
Why, then, ex-vice-president Gore thinks women would need an extra help? Because he thinks women are stupid? His former boss, Bill Clinton, was of the same opinion. Almost got him impeached, if I recall correctly.

sceptical, no one around here disagrees with the simple platitudes involving “empowering and educating women”. So is Gore addressing the more radical Islamic Nations? [apologies, I’m having trouble copying and pasting with this computer, and with some other things.]

His algorerhythm is a bit wonky
There, but for a few hanging chads, goes a President. Thank gawd for hanging chads.

I cant believe that this guy earn millions with such of ignorance !
—————-
This man is a brilliant marketing specialist!

To think that fool came within a whisker of being President. Thank God for major mercies!

It should be clear by now that to the insane CAGW maniacs like Al Gore (and Jim Hansen), “climate change” (and its scientific underpinnings) is just an excuse for demanding more control over our lives. If it weren’t climate change, it would be something else. Their aims are entirely political…

@richard S Courtney
I am from Holland (although the country is known as the Netherlands but the part where i live has been named Holland for quite a while know, the word is btw derived from Houtland because it was once covered in dense forrests.)
And yes there are also Beavers here, but they don’t have to build dams, there is enough deep water for them, They are moving out from an area called the Biesbosch where there are so many of them that you can talk about an overpopulation in that area, beavers have now been seen building burroughs near towns like Barendrecht and Dordrecht.
So not only we Dutchies are happy, the beavers are happy campers to 🙂
As for over population, especially in the west, just press the red button, no not that one, the one marked M.A.D.

btw, It is all very interesting as it comes on the day that the WSJ ran a story about settlements to the people who were subject to compulsory sterilization in the eugenics ratmanure of the 1920s. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304887904576395753841468000.html

On the theme of warmism-religion, there’s a nice opinion-piece in today’s National Post (Financial Post) in which author Peter Foster discusses how corporations have been co-opted by ENGOs, It’s titled “Milton’s Loophole”:
In fact, a new “iron fist” has emerged in the intervening period to “curb the market.” It belongs not to bureaucrats but to radical environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs), who have achieved a stunning amount of boardroom influence. They have done this, paradoxically, by learning from Prof. Friedman, and in particular by exploiting what might be called “Milton’s loophole.”
Prof. Friedman said that part of an executive’s role, beyond his primary task of serving shareholders, was to conform to “the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical customs.”
What ENGOs learned was this: If you want to bring corporations to heel, work on those “ethical customs,” which is precisely what they have done by helping make the environment a “moral issue.”
Foster likens ENGOs such as Greenpeace to the Mafia because of their ability to shake down corporations and make them toe the line on issues such as rejecting oil from Canada’s ‘environmentally destructive’ tar sands.
http://opinion.financialpost.com/2011/06/21/peter-foster-miltons-loophole/

Population naturally controls itself, there is no need to force controls on it. When handled correctly (as by a truly free market- and I do mean free market, not this crap that the confused masses call “capitalism”), increasing population leads to increased prosperity. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s there were many calls by people such as John Holdren to control the population by whatever means necessary, or we would run out of food by the year 2000. Well, it is 2011, and we are nowhere near running out of food. Agricultural yields are at record levels. In fact, the greatest threat to agricultural yields would be a prolonged period of global COOLING.
The “left” always desires control through force. It is how you recognize a bad idea when you see one. Resorting to methods of force (as opposed to finding non-violent solutions) is the hallmark of people who only want power and control for the sake of power and control. The use of force to control something which is beyond your control (such as weather or climate or population) is the hallmark of foolishness.

@GregS,
“…I feel very uneasy about the continual push for growth and I can’t help wonder whether we should in fact be doing something to reduce population. So, I’m glad he is discussing this….”
You really need to study up on population trends. Yes, global population continues to rise mainly due to increased life spans. But if you look at either stats from the CIA Factbook or the UN population studies, you will find that since 1970 global birh rates have dropped. Currently, birthrates are in free-fall. The world population is growing, but it is also getting older. The TFRs (Total Fertility Rate) in almost all G-20 nations are below replacement levels (2.1 live births per female); most are in the 1.2-1.5 range. In Japan, Russia, Italy, Greece, and Spain TFRs have been below 1.5 for decades. Japan is now losing population. China has had a one male child policy for 30 years. Its ratio of females to males is below 1.0 . That is, if trends continue China will be producing fewer and fewer children due to the simple fact that there are not enough women. China’s TFR is below 1.5 and it will soon have over 300 million eldery on its hands. Even in the more fecund Muslim North Africa, TFRs have dropped from over 4.5 births per female in the 1970s to below 2.1 . Ditto for Turkey and Iran. Indonesia, the most populace Muslim nation has a TFR beow 2.0 . The Americas are not much better. Birthrates have fallen in Canada, Mexico, and Central and South America. Only portions of Africa and East Asia have birth rates in the 4s or higher.
If trends continue, the global population will peak out somewhere around 2040. It will begin to fall after 2050. And the fall will be swift. Many nations are set to see thier populations halved every generation (Japan, Russia, China, Italy, and Spain).

“Brian Hall says:
June 22, 2011 at 4:42 am
Cold Englishman;
Yes, but they DID eventually elect Obama. The English elected Cameron, and the Aussies have Gillard. WC’s wry description of democracy as the worst of all systems except for all the others which have been tried from time to time sure has some bite! Fortunately, Canada elected Harper, who isn’t having any of this AGW crap, notwithstanding a few temporizing comments and some photo ops with Suzuki (who, if Gore is “Barking”, is surely “Howling Mad”). I hope we serve as a beacon to draw the rest of you benighted and careless voters out of the darkness!”
I stand corrected! You’re right, most of the world’s leaders have become certifiable! Want proof? Read this and weep: http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/finance/2011/0620/1224299223415.html
Not only do we build our own stupid windmills, but we’re going to build them in Ireland too, all care of the UK taxpayer of course.

GregS, re: your worry concerning doing something about Overpopulation, think about it: what-the-hell can we do about “overpopulation” in other areas of the World, except to show by example how the Constitution and Constitutional Capitalism is able to handle increasing populations via individual freedom and wealth creation? If we here in the U.S. focus on taking care of our own system and the integrity of our country, that’s certainly the first and probably the best overall thing we can do.

Right, Lichanos, Gore just wants to “help” us, just like he did in being integral to the disasterous, except to people like him, CO2 = CAGW Climate Science Propaganda Operation. Snap out of it! please

As I have said the great Greenie fear is healthy, happy and prosperous dark skinned children.
Al has some issues in that area -look at Daddy..

Texas is getting some serious rain. Keep talking Al.

Clearly female education is doing fairly well,…..his wife was smart enough to divorce him after all.
I am just grateful that Pres. Clinton remained safe and alive through his terms. The thought of this twit being a heartbeat away from the most powerful job in the world is quite paralyzing. Let him eat cake, uh, streak, his life and his “message” are completely disconnected. Which one is real ?…. No, no, don’t tell me…..I have this one figured out.

@ferd berple,
Outside of China, almost all nations with falling birthrates are doing so voluntarily. But, I do get your point. It is one thing for a generation to consume all of its wealth; it is something quite different to also consume the wealth of the next 2 generations as well.
@Pamela Gray,
To even use the phrase “family planning” evokes images of faceless bureaucrats sticking thier nose in one’s own bedroom. But on a more serious side, I think it is safe to say that secular organizations have been most successsful in changing the brithrates of both developing and developed nations. Artiifical birth control, and not abortion have caused birth rates to fall regardless of a nation’s religion, race, or politics. The birthrates in what were once traditionally Catholic nations are amazing (look at Poland, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and Mexico). Even Muslim nations like Indonesia, Algerial Turkey, and Iran have birthrates that are rapidly declining.
Whether both sides of the “Family Planning” debate have valid points is immaterial. Family Planning is a reality. I made this point at CA some years ago when the last IPCC SPM and TAR were published. I had a bone to pick with the IPCC population and GDP projections. If population trends continue, then the Alarmists have little to worry about. Industrial capacity of the globe will most certainly go down. Even if the Alarmists are right about CO2, thier projections are wrong. The only shortages to come in the future will be shortages of people.

Personally, I think that the size of the population on earth is creating some stress, it’s just that I think it is more likely that natural processes have a better chance of creating a better world than have Algore and his ilk. By “natural processes” I mean the familiar – war, famine, pestilence, and disease.
Please understand, I do not long for these, I just fear the hand of man more. When totalitarians find that their schemes do not produce the paradise they intend they never doubt the validity of their schemes, they seek to destroy those who are “thwarting” the scheme, which is invariably people, lots and lots of people. Those who die quickly in such times are often to be envied.
To quote Peter Weiss (Marat/De Sade)
“Fight on land and sea.
All men want to be free.
If they don’t, never mind,
we’ll abolish all mankind.”

Folks should click the link provided by Constitution First: June 22, 2011 at 6:54 am.
http://www.freedom.org/board/articles/mims-506.html.
It is the opinion of experts in the field that man is only about a decade from being able to create the type of weapon mentioned in the article. If (when, IMO) these weapons are used, cities will be morgues. Whether they are used as a weapon of war or a tool for population control will not matter to the dead.
Of course, if used for population control one may rest assured that there will be a select vaccinated group.

As every red-blooded Ultra-Progressive Liberal knows, the best way to control things is to control the cause of things, ergo –as they used to say in the good ol’ Soviet Union– control the population and you control everything (and everyone;-). Climate Control is just a little red stepping stone to the New World Order! AGW is an excuse that millions and millions are buying. Would you like to invest in the future too? (SarcOff)

@Deborah says:
June 22, 2011 at 10:59 am
“katlab says:
June 21, 2011 at 8:28 pm
I did a quick calculation to see how much space the world’s population would take up if they all stood side-by-side. Take a population of 6 billion, multiply by 3sq ft (space for them to stand) divide by 43560 (# of sq ft in an acre) then divide by 640 (number of acres in a sq mile) and it would only take 646 sq miles to hold the earth’s population.
—–
REPLY Thank you, Deborah, that was a useful and illustrative exercise!
There are vast tracts of land available, but many of them lack even the most basic resources to sustain a civilization.
For example, China….if you look at a map, it appears vast. However, the central and western regions of China are very mountainous, arid and unsuitable for much of anything, so the great majority of 1.3 billion Chinese live in cities and regions fairly close to the Pacific coast. Shanghai, the largest city in the world, has about 20 million souls.
Same for Canada….If I were Canadian, I wouldn’t be very anxious to live in Nunavut! However, the land area is vast.
People like Gore tick me off…..there are numerous technical fixes to all of these problems, including carbon emissions. Government just needs to provide a very small incentive to allow entrepreneurs to develop such technologies. Same for food supplies…..I see that Chicago has a burgeoning business for home-grown vegetables, tilapia and other boutique crops grown in abandoned city warehouses, using hydroponics.
What we don’t need are nattering, hectoring know-it-all hypocrites like Gore, Mann, Gavin, Holdren, Hansen etc.etc. imposing their brilliance upon the rest of us. Like nagging parents to unruly teenagers, they don’t understand when they are shut out & ignored.

Family planning is what two people do, not some faceless organization. It’s another phrase taken from old common language and given some new fangled “modern” definition.
You can plan poorly or you can plan wisely. But trust me, men don’t have to worry too much about the planning part, or the 9 months part, or the child care part, or the call from the school part, or the home sick part. Some rare individual men do all that. Which is amazing.

Lichanos comment above at 11:27 notwithstanding, I think one can get a better grasp of what Gore means if one substitutes the word “indoctrinated” every time Gore says “educated”.

Al gore got it right on educating girls.
In the late 1970’s/early 80’s the US Government extracted universal education of woman from the Saudi Government in exchange for some tanks and the Saudi fertility rate has since declined rapidly…still higher then the world average…but considerably lower then the ‘uneducated Muslim world’ average.

“Aunty Freeze says: June 22, 2011 at 1:06 pm
The best way to control birth rates is to have a picture of Al gore on your bedroom ceiling.”
Good for weight loss too……. bleh!

“Artiifical birth control, and not abortion have caused birth rates to fall regardless of a nation’s religion, race, or politics.”
I guess there is a first time for everything. I can’t think of a single country where the introduction of condoms has resulted in a drop in birth rate.

Well it sure seems that neo-malthusian or simply being a malthusian is making a comeback from the days of the 60’s and 70’s and well the 1770’s. I’m sure sure what bothers me more, that ideas like this are being entertained, or that people still blindly refuse that there is no shortage of agricultural land to support another 2-3B with current farming methods. If anything people like Norman Borlaug have proven that given the ability, time, and forethought you can solve food issues.

Huh, population control for Gore, recently divorced, well, that’s a hard nut to crack, I mean I would suggest a condom, but then again it has a 50% failure chance for certain types of people.

Chaiten volcano blew in May, 2008 and the south central U.S. including Texas got a LOT of rain that summer. Now that Puyehue-Cordón Caull blew it appears that is going to happen again.

Video was taken down. Does anyone have a copy?

Many time in politics when an agenda, campaign etc. flames out you have moments like this. AGW is on death watch already, the stars will liklely never line up again certainly in the Teams or Captain Al’s lifetime. Likely this is going to sink back to the university crank levels with the Population Bomb and the diehard Zero Growth crowd.
So this is part of the struggle to stay relevant and allow the usual suspects to make supportive claims and blame others for the failure to reach the goal line. Then another obscure period will begin and the MSM will put in life support but second and third shelf as the election will be operative priority #1. AGW is a clear loser for democrats so it will go silent or backshelf at least until 2013. As Kyoto washes out and ar5 ramps up they will try hard again but it will likely start to look like Peter, Paul and Mary Revival Concert with pathetic looking boomers trying to be hip. The cool of agw is gone and the lame name calling thrill is a dog that doesn’t so well. All the energy is going to go into saving the Messiah and he will repackaged for the duration like Ronald Reagan’s lost twin brother if required.
Like all bad ideas it will return. Hopefully the IPCC and investigations will be further developed in the mean time. The crushing burden of wild claims and phony doctrine aren’t going to age like fine wine either. Here are some wise words on PRIDE from Marsellus Wallace for the Team and Chairman Gore;

The morf from AGW to some new bogus regulatory agenda is well underway. For some of course they will never let go, consider the old women walking around Red Square carrying pictures of Stalin;

How”s that for rationalizing your politics?

Sorry the link to what gore said or didn’t say is dead.

This is one of my favorite websites, and it’s really disappointing to see how crazy many of the commentators are here. What in heck was Anthony thinking in joining the crazy-conservative bandwagon on this meaninglessly harmless quote from Gore? I mean, honestly, Gore has said many stupid things in his life, but this isn’t one of them. Parents being able to decide what size family to have and when – this is what we should all be afraid of? Tall about baseless alarmism…

The introduction of women’s education, combined with birth control, world-wide, has consistently led to a drop in birth rates. A *VOLUNTARY* drop in birth rates.
Why? Because the primary reason folks choose to have large families in the undeveloped world is: INFANT MORTALITY.
Why? Because when people have larger families, they are doing so in order that more children will survive. When three or four out of your seven children die before the age of twelve, you will want to have more children, thus maximizing the chance that you’ll come out ahead.
Why? Because in the undeveloped world, where most people are living on subsistence farming, people cannot afford even the cost of labor, and children are free labor. They also cannot afford nursing homes and/or in-home care when they become infirm. So, they have more children. More children = insurance.
*Consistently*, folks, when a combination of A) easy access to birth control, B) better education and C) have been introduced into poorer countries, the birth rate drops, because people’s children aren’t dying left and right anymore; they become less worried about their childrens’ survival; they have fewer children to begin with.
This is what Gore is saying. This is ALL he is saying. He is not talking about forced sterilization, or abortion, [snip]. It happens to be a goddam fact. Man-made global warming also happens to be a very true thing, according to 90% of respondents in a very large survey of around 11,000 of the world’s actual climate scientists. Reducing the population would reduce global carbon emissions.
But HEY! YOU know better, don’t you? YOU know more about this whole “agenda” Al Gore and those eeevil scientists have, don’t you? YOU [snip] know more than *all those scientists*! Wow! I’m impressed, and I think you should be too. How many of you are PhD’s who publish in peer-reviewed papers? What’s that? Sorry I couldn’t hear you over the sound of that pin dropping.
[snip]
[Reply: Many gratuitous insults snipped. Strike one. ~dbs, mod.]

RR,
That 90% survey figure is in relation to two extremely softball questions, such as “is the earth warming?” and “Have human beings had a significant contribution to that warming?” Most of the skeptics here would probably answer yes to those questions as well. What’s fascinating, is that 10% of surveyed scientists don’t even agree with this. Are you saying that those 10% are not real scientists, and that their opinion doesn’t matter? If the survey were worded more decisively as to their being an urgent problem that human beings must dramatically change their CO2 output to stave off, the numbers might even be reversed.
So yes, a lot of people here are indeed saying that they are smarter, at least on the evidence concerning this issue, than the people who are sounding the alarm. It happens, you know. Even scientists get a lot of things wrong, even for decades, before the “consensus” dissolves and reconstitutes itself on the other side. The key is the evidence, not who declares what to be true. IF you can argue the actual evidence, you might be able to sustain a conversation here. Most likely you can’t, however, and will just call everyone here “deniers”. That’s politics, not science.

Let us know when he decides which two of his four children to send prematurely to the Soylent Green factory. Geez what an incredible hypocrite.

Brian H is quite right. As people become better educated and economically freer to make their own choices, they have fewer children, as is evidenced not just in every western industrialized nation, but in almost all developing nations, where birthrates decline as their economies improve, contrary to malthusian theory. This is in part due to an emphasis on raising fewer but more productive offspring, which is also a darwinian adaptation to changing environmental pressures and competition. It’s not going against darwinian principles, but adapting them to a very new cultural climate.

RE: Brian H: (June 29, 2011 at 5:38 am)
“… A completely non-functional hockey stick, believe me. You’d be laughed off the ice if you attempted to use it.
So far, like the CO2 concentration curve, the global human population curve has a basic hockey stick shape. The ‘S’ or ramp shapes you mention include estimated *future* projections.

Spector,
You’re making things up. The population curve in most countries, and the world at large, is already an “S” curve. It was a hockey stick at one point, but that’s changed, and now it’s a very pronounced “S”. No infinite exponential growth, but logarithmic growth set to actually decline before the end of the century. Every growth curve looks like a hockey stick at some point, before it slows and crests.

RE: Conradg: (July 1, 2011 at 2:28 pm )
“Spector, You’re making things up.
The Wikipedia site curve for World (Global) Population including estimated and actual data from 1800 to about 2004 does have that (“Hockey Stick”) shape. This is the only basis for the descriptive claim that I made.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World-Population-1800-2100.png

RE: Conradg: (July 3, 2011 at 2:07 pm)
” Endless population growth on an exponential hockey stick is a myth that only the hard core fanatics still hold onto.”
I have made no claim of “endless exponential population growth.” My description was limited to the appearance of the graphic on the Wikipedia World Population Page and intended to apply only over the specific time period of 1800 to 2004. I assumed this would be obvious to anyone who viewed that graphic.
Endless exponential population growth at a forty-year doubling rate will, in a relatively short time, require the conversion of the entire mass of the known universe to human beings.

One factor exacerbating the potential population collapse is the infamous Chinese ‘one boy/no girls’ de facto policy. Aside from the extreme inconvenience to the surplus boys, there are simply far fewer wombs available than would otherwise have been the case. Let’s just do a quick back-of-envelope here: Assume 50% of the population is still young enough to breed (generous, I think). Composed, IIRC, of about 28% males, 22% females. By the time they reach menopause, say 40 years, almost all the non-breeding 50% will be dead, and the next generation (assuming 1 child each) will comprise 22% + 50% of the current population, or a drop of 28%, plus their grandchildren, who will be about 44% of the 22%, or about another 10% of the starting level.
So 40 yrs from now China can expect to have 78% + 10% = 88% of its current population, of whom about 44% of 10% will be fertile females. 4.4%.
Again, Stein’s Law will have kicked in: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.” Clearly, things won’t progress that far before some kind of revolution occurs. But China has a demographic dragon or two by the tail, and is going to suffer the consequences.
As usual, the Green position is 180° wrong; we are going to be desperately short of both CO2 and people if their dominance and nonsense continues.

It has occurred to me that one interim pseudo-solution for the Chinese would be legalized polyandry, with the 1-child licensed issued to the husbands. Attractive fertile women could have quite a prominent role in such a society …
😉

RE: Conradg says: (July 4, 2011 at 12:15 am)
“Your claim is that population growth is a hockey stick, …”
Once again, I have made no such claim! That description only applies to the graphic depiction of world population from 1800 to 2004 on the Wikipedia World Population Page. I believe this curve depicts a response to a net increase of abundance in modern times due to scientific advances and the tapping of stored energy resources.
Eventually, the per capita abundance will decrease with increasing population and expiring resources. This will force a population decrease or stabilization by *non-voluntary* population pressure effects. Some new technical advance, such as the development of a cheap, safe fusion power technology may delay, but not prevent this issue.
I believe that individual voluntary birth limitation drives will only result in the increased propagation of those less altruistic individuals not disposed to volunteer in the succeeding generations.
Government population control is the likely unacceptable and dangerous dark elephant in the room.

Resource depletion will not happen, either. Recovery and re-use technology will complement discovery and extraction, and substitution with new substances will occur. There are graphene structures now coming out of the lab which are more rigid and lighter than any metal. For one of them, a stretched sheet would support the weight of an elephant on the point of a pencil without serious deformation, much less penetration.
Made from coal, long before iron and aluminum, which are major fractions of the Earth’s crust, “run out”.
And so it goes.

What you “suspect” is your own concern, and not evidence of anything.
You evidence zero comprehension of the economics or physics or history of the evolution of resource needs and fulfillment thereof.
Here’s the simple version for energy: frak gas is sufficient for centuries, and fusion and other plentiful sources are much closer in the pipeline than most think — certainly much closer than exhaustion of conventional sources.

There are so many things in error in that last post that I’ll just leave you with this: as the percentage of proven reserves of non-renewables as of a given date are used, the net remaining proven reserves rises by about that same percentage. From discoveries to improved extraction tech, the resource increase forces have about double the strength of the depletion ones.
Peak resource arguments are failing everywhere. As for those “environmental reasons”, they are mainly rationalizations for policies aimed at hobbling growth. The current US Administration is providing an almost caricaturish demonstration of that.

Uh-huh. So at some unknown time in the future your model (assumptions with no arithmetic) says we might run out of X before we don’t need it any more because we’ve switched to Y, so we should slow down our use of X so that unknown possibly but not necessarily problematic eventuality will occur somewhat later.
Good luck with that.

Again, insistently assuming facts not in evidence. Never in history has mankind failed to find a new source of energy, at lower cost. Horsepower, wind, water wheels, steam, coal gas, kerosene, gasoline, nuclear, etc.
So your claim is simply a silly tautology. “If we run out of cheap energy, we’ll be sorry!” Uh, yeah. But no sign of that happening yet. Or ever. Once we break Obama’s and the EPA’s fingers, and thus their grip on the throats of finders and users of energy, frak gas and oil will be available for centuries. And fusion will be in place within a decade or two, anyway.
So, “NO”, we will not cripple our present to avoid an implausible imagined boogie-man in the future. Your request is denied.

There is a first time for everything.

Nope, no first time for things that never happen. Like unicorns, free lunches, affordable dispatchable renewables, and energy depletion.