‘Condoms & Climate’: UC Berkeley Professor: A Condom Per Day Keeps Climate Change Away – ‘Humans have become more numerous than nature intended’
http://ecowatch.com/2014/02/28/condom-climate-change/
Excerpt:
Weisman noted every 4.5 days a million people are added to the planet, saying “there is no question humans have become more numerous than nature intended.”
In Potts’ opinion, family planning is the most cost-effective way to reduce carbon and that voluntary family planning services are in demand.
There are 222 million women around the world who want to plan their families, but have an unmet need for modern contraception, he said. Making it available to women and men is estimated to cost $8 billion a year—about a billion dollars more than what Americans spent on Halloween in 2013.
Potts said “when you respect women and give them choices, fertility goes down” and that the world has been “blind and stupid” about not offering family planning to those who want it.
He pointed to Thailand’s success in lowering its total fertility rate in the 1970s. One such effort to reduce it was the innovative Cabbages and Condoms restaurant in Bangkok, started by a man who believed birth control should be as easy as buying cabbage from the market. The restaurant also promotes safe-sex education.
Weisman, who brought the discussion back toward climate change and population growth, stated the problem is simply that we have more people demanding more stuff, resulting in more carbon dioxide.
Last year, carbon dioxide levels hit 400 parts per million. “There hasn’t been this much carbon in the atmosphere in 3 million years,” he said. And with projections that world population will be 9.6 billion by 2050, with more middle and upper class people consuming more stuff, temperatures and carbon levels will continue to rise, according to Population Growth.
Potts believes by heavily investing in family planning, the population could decline to 6 billion by 2099.
In the meantime, addressing the needs of the planet’s 7 billion-plus is a daunting task, especially in terms of food. And even though Norman Borlaug’s Green Revolution averted mass famine in the 1970’s, people can’t solely rely on technology to rectify the problem. In fact, Weisman said Borlaug warned this would only buy humanity a little time and that it would have to eventually confront burgeoning population growth.
Weisman, saying a warming world is only going to exacerbate food security, cited a National Academy of Science report statistic that for every one degree of Celsius warming, crop yields drop 10 percent.
Reducing consumption also proves critical, according to …
Globalist eco-progressives getting pretty excited about their prospects for that 2015 global climate treaty
Pielke Jr. Fires Back at Holdren: ‘When a political appointee uses his position not just to disagree on science or policy but to seek to delegitimize a colleague, he has gone too far.’
…Abuse of Power: ‘Roger Pielke Jr. slams John Holdren for his incompetence and abuse of power at the White House’
…Michael Mann ADMITS: Climate-extreme weather link ‘is a SPECULATIVE & GENUINELY CONTROVERSIAL area of science.’
More here: http://news.discovery.com/earth/global-warming/this-wicked-winter-and-climate-change-140301.htm
“This is a speculative and genuinely controversial area of the science,” said climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University. “There are some leading climate scientists who have provided evidence that climate change may be leading toward more persistent weather anomalies which can, for example, give the sort of extended periods of cold seen in the eastern and central U.S. this year, but at the expense in this case of a very warm western U.S. and unprecedented winter warmth in Alaska, and record warmth in many parts of Europe.”…
Pielke Jr. Re-tweets: ‘I probably would also get a good tax lawyer’
…Pielke Jr.: ‘When the White House publishes an error-strewn 6-pg attack on you, should you feel (a) flattered, (b) intimidated, (c) happy to have tenure?’
…Holdren’s ‘epic fail’ on extreme weather claims: Hurricanes, tornadoes, at or near record lows
Via Real Science:
The Past Five Years Have Been The Quietest On Record For US Hurricane Strikes
The 2013 Atlantic Hurricane Season Was The Quietest In Decades
US Tornadoes Well Below Normal, After The Two Quietest Years On Record
…
George Will: ‘Climate alarmism validates the progressive impulse to micromanage others’ lives’
…Dissent Will Not Be Tolerated: Obama Science Czar John Holdren Smears Prof. Pielke Jr. For Daring to Challenge Extreme Weather Claims – Pielke Accuses Holdren of ‘seeking to delegitimize a colleague’
Pielke Jr. To Holdren: ‘Your characterization of my views as lying “outside the scientific mainstream” is odd because the views that I expressed in my testimony are entirely consonant with those of the IPCC (2012, 2013) and those of the US government’s USGCRP. Indeed, much of my testimony involved reviewing the recent findings of IPCC SREX and AR5 WG1. My scientific views are also supported by dozens of peer reviewed papers which I have authored and which have been cited thousands of times, including by all three working groups of the IPCC. My views are thus nothing if not at the center of the “scientific mainstream.”
Full Report Here: http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2014/03/john-holdrens-epic-fail.html
Pielke Jr. is a professor of environmental studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I also have appointments as a Research Fellow, Risk Frontiers, Macquarie University; Visiting Senior Fellow,Mackinder Programme, London School of Economics; and Senior Visiting Fellow at theConsortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes of Arizona State University.…