Climate Change Kills the Mood: Economists Warn of Less Sex on a Warmer Planet

 

An extra “hot day” (the economists use quotation marks with the phrase) leads to a 0.4 percent drop in birth rates nine months later, or  1,165 fewer deliveries across the U.S. A rebound in subsequent months makes up just 32 percent of the gap.

The researchers, who hail from Tulane University, the University of California-Santa Barbara, and the University of Central Florida, believe that their findings give policymakers three major things to think about.

1. Birth rates do not bounce back completely after heat waves.

That’s a problem. As summers heat up, developed countries may see already low birth rates sink even lower. Plunging birth rates can play havoc with an economy. China’s leaders recently acknowledged this by ditching the longtime one-child policy and doubling the number of children couples are allowed to have. A sub-replacement U.S. birthrate means fewer workers to pay Social Security benefits for retirees, among other consequences.

2. More autumn conceptions means more more deliveries in summer.

Infants experience a higher rate of poor health with summer births, “though the reasons for worse health in the summer are not well-established,” the authors write. One possibility may be “third-trimester exposure to high temperatures.”

3. Air conditioning might prove to be an aphrodisiac.

Control over the climate at home might make a difference. The researchers suggest that the rise of air conditioning may have helped offset some heat-related fertility losses in the U.S. since the 1970s.

The paper’s title is about as lascivious as the National Bureau of Economic Research gets: “Maybe Next Month? Temperature Shocks, Climate Change, and Dynamic Adjustments in Birth Rates.” The researchers assume that climate change will proceed according to the most severe scenarios, with no substantial efforts to reduce emissions. The scenario they use projects that from 2070 to 2099, the U.S. may have 64 more days above 80F than in the baseline period from 1990 to 2002, which had 31. The result? The U.S. may see a 2.6 percent decline in its birth rate, or 107,000 fewer deliveries a year.

Just when you thought climate change policy couldn’t get any less sexy (PDF).…

NYT mocks Paul Ehrlich’s Overpopulation Fears: ‘Apocalyptic predictions fell as flat as ancient theories about shape of the Earth’

The Second half of the 1960s was a boom time for nightmarish visions of what lay ahead for humankind. In 1966, for example, a writer named Harry Harrison came out with a science fiction novel titled “Make Room! Make Room!” Sketching a dystopian world in which too many people scrambled for too few resources, the book became the basis for a 1973 film about a hellish future, “Soylent Green.” In 1969, the pop duo Zager and Evans reached the top of the charts with a number called “In the Year 2525,” which postulated that humans were on a clear path to doom.

No one was more influential — or more terrifying, some would say — than Paul R. Ehrlich, a Stanford University biologist. His 1968 book, “The Population Bomb,” sold in the millions with a jeremiad that humankind stood on the brink of apocalypse because there were simply too many of us. Dr. Ehrlich’s opening statement was the verbal equivalent of a punch to the gut: “The battle to feed all of humanity is over.” He later went on to forecast that hundreds of millions would starve to death in the 1970s, that 65 million of them would be Americans, that crowded India was essentially doomed, that odds were fair “England will not exist in the year 2000.” Dr. Ehrlich was so sure of himself that he warned in 1970 that “sometime in the next 15 years, the end will come.” By “the end,” he meant “an utter breakdown of the capacity of the planet to support humanity.”

As you may have noticed, England is still with us. So is India. Hundreds of millions did not die of starvation in the ’70s. Humanity has managed to hang on, even though the planet’s population now exceeds seven billion, double what it was when “The Population Bomb” became a best-seller and its author a frequent guest of Johnny Carson’s on “The Tonight Show.”

Dr. Ehrlich’s ominous declarations cause head-shaking among some who were once his allies, people who four decades ago shared his fears about overpopulation. One of them is Stewart Brand, founding editor of the Whole Earth Catalog.

After the passage of 47 years, Dr. Ehrlich offers little in the way of a mea culpa. Quite the contrary. Timetables for disaster like those he once offered have no significance, he told Retro Report, because to someone in his field …

Gloria Steinem: Pope Causing Global Warming by ‘Forcing Women to Have Children’

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/katie-yoder/2015/10/22/gloria-steinem-pope-causing-global-warming-forcing-women-have

Steinem’s quote:

“I had this thought that we should have this massive education campaign pointing out that the Pope and all of the other patriarchal religions that dictate to women in this way, accusing them of global warming. Because the human load on this earth is the biggest cause of global warming, and that is because of forcing women to have children they would not on their own choose to have … I’m glad the Pope spoke out about global warming and it was very helpful, but does he know he’s causing it?”

– See more at: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/culture/katie-yoder/2015/10/22/gloria-steinem-pope-causing-global-warming-forcing-women-have#sthash.it7DzyG1.dpuf…

Pope’s climate push is ‘raving nonsense’ without population control, says Paul Ehrlich

Those thrilled by the pope’s intervention on climate change – and Ehrlich counts himself among them – were troubled by Francis’s refusal to countenance the need to limit population, the scientist said. “It is crystal clear. No one concerned with the state of the planet and the state of the global economy can avoid dealing with population. It is the elephant in the room,” he said.

Ehrlich became a household name in the US nearly 50 years ago for warning of a global catastrophe because of population growth – a scenario he later conceded did not entirely materialise.…

WSJ: The End of Doom: Despite an explosion in population greater than Malthus could have ever imagined, global living standards are higher than ever

WSJ: The End of Doom: Despite an explosion in population greater than Malthus could have ever imagined, global living standards are higher than ever

http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.com/2015/08/wsj-end-of-doom-despite-explosion-in.html

Apocalypse Later Despite an explosion in population greater than Malthus could have ever imagined, global living standards are higher than ever. By NIGEL LAWSON July 27, 2015 7:22 p.m. ET THE WALL STREET JOURNAL 69 COMMENTS We live in an age of all-pervasive cultural pessimism. In one sense, this is understandable. The 18th century, the Age of Enlightenment, produced an explosion of scientific discovery as men’s minds escaped from the shackles of subservience to authority, both political and ecclesiastical. The 19th century was the great age of optimism, as technological development exploited the achievements of science, bringing inventions like the locomotive, the electric light and the telephone. That optimism dissipated in the 20th century, when two disastrous world wars exposed the dark side of mankind. Far from recovering a sense of hopefulness during the relative peace of the 21st century, gloominess has become the default position of the intellectual classes in the Western world. As Pope Francis’ recent encyclical, “Laudato Si’,” puts it: “We may be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation and filth.” Ronald Bailey begs to differ. As his book demonstrates, a careful examination of the evidence shows that, at least in material terms (which is not unimportant, particularly for the world’s poor), life is getting better. The overriding reason for this, according to Mr. Bailey, is continuing technological progress, facilitated—and this is crucial—by the global triumph of market capitalism.

ENLARGE

THE END OF DOOM By Ronald BaileyThomas Dunne, 345 pages, $27.99 Among the scares examined by Mr. Bailey in “The End of Doom: Environmental Renewal in the Twenty-First Century” are overpopulation, the exhaustion of natural resources (particularly oil), the perils of biotechnology and genetic modification, and global warming. Mr. Bailey has little difficulty demonstrating that, despite an explosion in world population greater than Thomas Malthus could possibly have envisaged in the 18th century, global living standards are higher than ever. “Food,” he writes, citing statistics from the World Bank and other organizations, “is more abundant today than ever before in history.” In the past 50 years alone, global food production has more than tripled. It is also more than likely, in the opinion of most demographers, that world population will peak in the relatively near future and then start to decline. Mr. …

Flashback: Vatican Climate Advisor ‘proposed creation of a CO2 budget for every person on planet!’

By: Climate Depot – September 6, 2009 6:56 AM

Excerpted From a September 4, 2009 article in The German Newspaper Der Spiegel. The interview was conducted by Christian Schwägerl and the article was titled: ‘Industrialized Nations Are Facing CO2 Insolvency’

Der Spiegel Excerpts: Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, the German government’s climate protection adviser, argues that drastic measures must be taken in order to prevent a catastrophe. Schellnhuber is proposing the creation of a CO2 budget for every person on the planet, regardless whether they live in Berlin or Beijing. […]

Schellnhuber: Humankind has to limit itself to emit only fixed amount of carbon into the atmosphere until 2050. […] Because the industrialized nations have already exceeded their quotas if you take into account past emissions. […] With the current output you see that Germany, the US and other industrialized nations have either already used up their permissible quota, or will do so within the next few years. […] The industrialized nations are facing CO2 insolvency. This means that they have to notch up their efforts to reduce climate change, otherwise they will use up the CO2 budget actually designated to poorer countries and future generations.

Question: So industrialized nations would have to pay massive sums of money? – Schellnhuber: Yes. Up to €100 billion ($142 billion) annually. If the richest sixth of the world’s population were to pay this amount, each person would have to pay €100 per year. The West would give back part of the wealth it has taken from the South in the past centuries and be indebted to countries that are now amongst the poorest in the world. It would, however, have to be ensured that the poorer nations use the money for the proposes it is intended — namely to help them to develop a greener economy. [End article excerpt]

Czech physicist Dr. Lubos Motl, formerly of Harvard University, reacted to Schellnhuber’s Co2 personal “budget” proposal by citing tyrannical movements of the past. “What Schellnhuber’s has just said in the interview with Der Spiegel, is just breathtaking and it helps me to understand how crazy political movements such as the Nazis or communists could have so easily taken over a nation that is as sensible as Germany,” Motl wrote on

VATICAN ADVISOR ON CLIMATE THINKS THERE ARE 6 BILLION TOO MANY OF US

The choice of Professor John Schnellnhuber, founding director of the Postdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, as one of three presenters may be giving the left added hope and giving giving skeptics severe heartburn. He has been described as one of the more aggressive scientists on the question of man-made global warming.

In a talk given to what’s described as the “failed” 2009 Copenhagen climate conference,reported in the New York Times, Schnellnhuber, who has advised German President Angela Merkel and is a visiting professor at Oxford, said of global warming: “In a very cynical way, it’s a triumph for science because at last we have stabilized something –- namely the estimates for the carrying capacity of the planet, namely below 1 billion people.”

Schnellnhuber is also author of what’s called the “two-degree target” that says governments must not allow the temperature to rise more than 2 degrees higher than at the start of the industrial revolution. Any higher, the theory holds, and much life on earth would either perish or be gravely harmed.

To deal with climate issues, he has also called for an “Earth Constitution that would transcend the UN Charter” along with the creation of a “Global Council…elected by all the people on Earth” and a “Planetary Court..a transnational legal body open to appeals from everybody, especially with respect to violations of the Earth Constitution.”…