New threat to Earth-based astronomy

On Fri, 17 Nov 2006 20:49:02 GMT, Chris L Peterson
wrote:

On Fri, 17 Nov 2006 15:27:14 -0500, Michael McCulloch
wrote:

The Earth's weather is too complex to respond to such
simple-minded actions.

Nonsense. It will certainly respond. The question is do we know enough
about climate to know with any real certainty that it will respond the
way we want. There is a real chance here that the law of unintended
consequences will kick in ...

Whatever... Filling the air with more and different pollutants is no
real solution that will help anyone's quality of life. It is just a
stupid news story.

---
Michael McCulloch

On Fri, 17 Nov 2006 21:12:30 GMT, Jim Klein
wrote:

We are pumping out 1,000,000 new humans every 4 days. Do the math.

We are? I can't find one woman in 10 that wants to have a child in the
US. ;-)

Overpopulation in educated western societies is a myth. Go preach to
the Asians please:

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/.../pop/pop_6.htm

---
Michael McCulloch

For what it's worth, I've never been impressed with "Whatever" as a
logical rejoinder. I guess I'm just funny that way.

Michael McCulloch wrote:
Whatever... Filling the air with more and different pollutants is no
real solution that will help anyone's quality of life. It is just a
stupid news story.

Filling the body with more and different microorganisms is no real
solution that will help anyone's quality of--oh wait, it did. And does.
Every day.

Pollutant in this context just means something that wouldn't have been
there if we didn't take such and such an action. It doesn't mean it's
worse or better, except as we measure it. I certainly think that the
global climate is worth affecting for the better, and if adding a bit of
this and that happens to make it "better," then it's worth looking into.
It sounds counter-intuitive, to be sure, but vitamins and antibiotics
were counter-intuitive, even cockamamie-sounding, in their day.

I agree that the news story is, if not quite stupid, at least premature.
But the activity, if there's some actual reason--not intuition--to
believe it might work, is neither.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
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Michael McCulloch wrote:
Overpopulation in educated western societies is a myth. Go preach to
the Asians please:

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/.../pop/pop_6.htm

Sampling every 50 to 100 years can be pretty misleading, huh?

China is the right country to look at, because it is very populous, and
a small percentage increase there is worth a sizable percentage increase
elsewhere. According to the 2006 CIA World Fact Book, China ranks 200th
(out of 235) in 2006 population percentage growth, at 0.02 percent.
That works out to about 200,000 to 250,000 extra Chinese in 2006. By
comparison, the United States is 132nd, at 0.91 percent, which was worth
an extra 2.5 million Americans, give or take.

So I'm not sure preaching to the Asians is such a great idea, since they
at least seem to have taken the overpopulation problem seriously. Over
here in the advanced and socially enlightened U.S., a common response is
"We'll never run out of room." It's depressing, I tell you.

China's population growth *rate* was in large part a temporary problem.
stimulated by Mao's mistaken notion that China's strength relative to
other countries could be increased simply by out-breeding other peoples.
(That's a mistake, incidentally, that Pat Robertson supports for us U.S.
folks.) By the 1970s, the experiment was a disaster. Widespread famine
had resulted. China had not increased its strength as a result; it had
manifestly weakened--though not solely for that reason, of course.

When Deng took over in the late 1970s, one of his measures was to take
the population problem seriously. He instituted the so-called "one
child per family" policy, which even in its most draconian days was not
quite as severe as its name, but which has nonetheless worked to lower
China's population growth rate considerably. That rate will likely be
negative within a decade, basically invalidating the graph you cite.

The problem is that China's actual population size is not a temporary
problem, it is a permanent problem. As I said, China's huge population
means that even a small growth rate means quite a few extra people each
year. On the other hand, it also means that a small negative growth
rate means a considerable decrease in the actual number of people. So
China stands to help the world population problem quite a bit in the
coming years.

That doesn't help China itself a whole lot, because it is still rather
overpopulated. Increasing technological advance will help to smooth
matters out somewhat, but the largely rural inland areas can't support
even the population it's expected to now. Still, that means that China
is doing a heck of a lot better than it would have with the 300 million
or so estimated *extra* people it would have had without Deng's policy.

By the way, the countries at both the top and bottom of the growth rate
list are small ones, which stands to reason, since the same actual
increase in population translates to a much larger growth rate (or
decrease rate) than it does for large countries. Unfortunately, topping
the list is Liberia, which is not a particularly small country: It
sports about 3.3 million people and at its current annual rate of a bit
less than 5 percent, it is set to double its population in less than
two decades. (But any increase in population, no matter how small, is a
problem.)

I await your devastating "Whatever" riposte with trepidation.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
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In article om,
wrote:

If the sun warms the Earth too dangerously, the time may come to
draw the shade. The "shade" would be a layer of pollution
deliberately spewed into the atmosphere to help cool the
planet.

That's already happening - ever heard about global dimming?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming


This over-the-top idea comes from prominent scientists,
among them a Nobel laureate.

This weekend, NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field,
Calif., hosts a closed-door, high-level workshop on the global
haze proposal and other "geoengineering" ideas for fending off
climate change.

Complete article he

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/11/16/international/i112951S42.DTL
--
----------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Schlyter, Grev Turegatan 40, SE-114 38 Stockholm, SWEDEN
e-mail: pausch at stockholm dot bostream dot se
WWW: http://stjarnhimlen.se/

Unfortunately, we've allowed things to get so out of hand that drastic
measures are probably going to be required. There might still be time to
reverse things without such measures, but I just don't think the
political will is there to really try. So that leaves "geoengineering"
in another 20 or 30 years.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com


Do *you* have the will? Are you off the grid yet? Is your electricity
green? Have you given up driving a car with an internal combustion
engine? Are you prepared to give up *your* lifestyle living in the
sticks to accomplish the goal of reducing CO2?

Political will comes from individual leadership. In this country, you
*are* a leader. Aside from castigating others for their indolence, how
are you leading?

Brian Tung wrote:
Michael McCulloch wrote:

Overpopulation in educated western societies is a myth. Go preach to
the Asians please:

http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/LUC/.../pop/pop_6.htm


Sampling every 50 to 100 years can be pretty misleading, huh?

China is the right country to look at, because it is very populous, and
a small percentage increase there is worth a sizable percentage increase
elsewhere. According to the 2006 CIA World Fact Book, China ranks 200th
(out of 235) in 2006 population percentage growth, at 0.02 percent.
That works out to about 200,000 to 250,000 extra Chinese in 2006. By
comparison, the United States is 132nd, at 0.91 percent, which was worth
an extra 2.5 million Americans, give or take.



I await your devastating "Whatever" riposte with trepidation.


I'll give you one, Brian. The US population is increasing only because
of, and I repeat this, *only* because of immigration, and part of that
is from East Asia, including China. Native born US citizens have not
been reproducing at the replacement rate in two or three decades. So
sampling only at the moment and not looking at underlying factors is
pretty misleading, too, huh?

China has a special problem with population because its culture
encourages large families. (So does Catholicism, for that matter, but
Catholics in developed countries tend to ignore the religious
restrictions placed on contraception.) The Chinese population explosion
of the 1960s and 70s was not simply Maoism at work.

Population growth seems inversely proportional to host of factors,
including education (especially among women), economic growth, and
political liberalization. If we want to discourage population growth
overseas, we should be fostering regulated but market-driven economies,
education, and women's suffrage. Which means that China is probably on
the right path, but it's not there yet.

If we want to ease population growth in this country we should adopt
sane immigration targets, roughly 10% of the million or so legal
immigrants into the US each year, and develop a reasonable guest-worker
program.

-Chris

On Sat, 18 Nov 2006 09:38:27 -0500, starburst wrote:

Do *you* have the will? Are you off the grid yet? Is your electricity
green? Have you given up driving a car with an internal combustion
engine? Are you prepared to give up *your* lifestyle living in the
sticks to accomplish the goal of reducing CO2?

Political will comes from individual leadership. In this country, you
*are* a leader. Aside from castigating others for their indolence, how
are you leading?

I do what I can. I minimize driving (and travel in general). If it were
possible to drive an electric car, I would. I heat with wood, from my
own land (which is carbon neutral). I'm designing, and in the next few
years will build, a very efficient, off-grid home. I'm careful what I
buy, and what I throw away. I'm sure my energy and environmental
footprint could be smaller, but I'm also sure it's quite a bit less than
the national average. Politically, I consider this a high priority
issue. That means that I vote for people who I think are most likely to
have a positive effect.

I absolutely think I am on solid moral ground pointing out the failures
of society (and its leaders) in dealing with what I see as a critical
problem. Discussion and education are part of leadership, too. We don't
all have to run for office if we want to see a problem addressed.

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com

starburst wrote:
I'll give you one, Brian. The US population is increasing only because
of, and I repeat this, *only* because of immigration, and part of that
is from East Asia, including China. Native born US citizens have not
been reproducing at the replacement rate in two or three decades. So
sampling only at the moment and not looking at underlying factors is
pretty misleading, too, huh?

No, I looked at that, too. Admittedly, all I have to go on is what the
country reports, and there are obvious reasons to skew results, but at
any rate, China *reports* about 1.7 children per family; the U.S. about
2.1 children per family (just about at replacement rate). I still don't
think China's population growth *rate* is the problem anymore. And from
the precision of the data, it's not clear that the U.S.'s problem is
only immigration. But I can tell you that attitudes about population
control are troubling (not just in the U.S., but nearly anywhere).
People just don't apprehend the magnitude of the problem.

China has a special problem with population because its culture
encourages large families. (So does Catholicism, for that matter, but
Catholics in developed countries tend to ignore the religious
restrictions placed on contraception.) The Chinese population explosion
of the 1960s and 70s was not simply Maoism at work.

No, but it obviously exacerbated an already tenuous situation.

Population growth seems inversely proportional to host of factors,
including education (especially among women), economic growth, and
political liberalization. If we want to discourage population growth
overseas, we should be fostering regulated but market-driven economies,
education, and women's suffrage. Which means that China is probably on
the right path, but it's not there yet.

Oh, obviously. I don't mean to suggest that its problems have been
solved. There's still a lot about China's social and political workings
that upsets me.

One problem they have to overcome over the next couple of decades is a
steadily aging population, since the "peak" of the distribution is about
50 years old now. Their situation might improve considerably after
perhaps 30 or so years.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.html

starburst wrote:
I'll give you one, Brian. The US population is increasing only because
of, and I repeat this, *only* because of immigration, and part of that
is from East Asia, including China. Native born US citizens have not
been reproducing at the replacement rate in two or three decades. So
sampling only at the moment and not looking at underlying factors is
pretty misleading, too, huh?

Ahh, I see, you think I want to deflect attention away from China toward
the U.S. No, if I had wanted to do that, I'd have spent the rest of my
post on the U.S. I want to emphasize, in case it wasn't clear, that I
do *not* think the U.S. population statistics are the problem. I think
*attitudes* toward population control are the problem. I think one
place where that attitude has been corrected, to a large extent, is
China, and furthermore, I don't think their growth rate is a problem, as
Michael suggested.

My sarcasm may have obscured that.

--
Brian Tung
The Astronomy Corner at http://astro.isi.edu/
Unofficial C5+ Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/c5plus/
The PleiadAtlas Home Page at http://astro.isi.edu/pleiadatlas/
My Own Personal FAQ (SAA) at http://astro.isi.edu/reference/faq.html