No Global warming in Israel

A Haifa University study found that local rainfall stats in Israel defy global warming fears. Local rainfall statistics have remained essentially unchanged in the 60 years they have been tracked. The researcher, Noam Halfon, concludes: "The common belief that weather events are becoming more extreme can therefore be attributed to greater press coverage of weather events, in particular extreme events, and not to an increase in these events"

Can the world support 72 billion people ?

Professor Jared Diamond publishes an essay on the NY Times op-ed page summing up the current view about excess consumerism.
He says

The estimated one billion people who live in developed countries have a relative per capita consumption rate of 32. Most of the world’s other 5.5 billion people constitute the developing world, with relative per capita consumption rates below 32, mostly down toward 1....
China’s catching up alone would roughly double world consumption rates. Oil consumption would increase by 106 percent, for instance, and world metal consumption by 94 percent. If India as well as China were to catch up, world consumption rates would triple. If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates). Some optimists claim that we could support a world with nine billion people. But I haven’t met anyone crazy enough to claim that we could support 72 billion. Yet we often promise developing countries that if they will only adopt good policies — for example, institute honest government and a free-market economy — they, too, will be able to enjoy a first-world lifestyle. This promise is impossible, a cruel hoax: we are having difficulty supporting a first-world lifestyle even now for only one billion people.

Sounds convincing, doesn't it ? Can the earth support 72 billion people ?

The answer is - we don't know. The earth and mankind are too huge for us to fully grasp and predict their development over time.

Doomsday predictions are not new. The most famous is perhaps Thomas Robert Malthus, who published An Essay on the Principle of Population, in 1798 and predicted the world will not be able to support much more than the about 1 billion people alive then (at a infinitely lower level of consumption). Other such publications include Paul Ehrlich's "The Populations Bomb" published in 1968 predicted "in the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death".
The Club of Rome raised much attention with its report Limits to Growth, which has sold 30 million copies, it predicted that economic growth could not continue indefinitely because of the limited availability of natural resources, particularly oil.

The one who best refuted these doomsday scenarios was economist Julian Simon. "His 1981 book The Ultimate Resource is a criticism of the conventional wisdom on population growth, raw-material scarcity and resource consumption. Simon argues that our notions of increasing resource-scarcity ignore the long-term declines in wage-adjusted raw material prices. Viewed economically, he argues, increasing wealth and technology make more resources available; although supplies may be limited physically they may be viewed as economically indefinite as old resources are recycled and new alternatives are developed by the market."

The fact is that, so far, the doomsday prophets have been proven terribly wrong. The world is too big and complicated, by far, for us to make predictions.

Jared Diamond concludes his essay with the weasel words:

The world has serious consumption problems, but we can solve them if we choose to do so.

They are weasel words because he refrains from stating his recommendation for the "we can solve" part. What he means is that government must impose consumption limits by mandate on people. Lefties have a universal solution to all problems - government forcing people to do as they, the lefties, think advisable. Because all people are dumb and greedy, and don't know what is good for them, only the lefties know, and their superior wisdom must be imposed by force, else the world ends.

Let the world and it's people develop in a natural, free way. No one is wise enough to impose his views on all people by force. Attempts at totalitarian rule have proven catastrophic, on a gigantic scale. Let's not try it again.

To the question "can the world support 72 billion people" - my answer is - I don't know. It is possible that it can't. In this case people will not reach these levels of population and consumption. They will not consume what isn't available, of this I'm sure. In the natural course of development some equilibrium will emerge between the number of people, their consumption and the resources available. No one can predict what it will be, and no one can manage world growth by decree. We don't need any totalitarian "solutions". Just let things run their natural, free, course. We can't improve on that.

Contrarians vs. Bali

John Tierney writes a nice piece in the NY Times about a group of 100 scientists who express their opposition to the idea that is being promoted at the Global Warming conference in Bali.
The scientists say: "don't fight, adapt".

Both pieces are worth reading.

Don't miss the over one hundred comments at the end of Tierney's article. They cover the issue really nice. The encouraging thing is that even at the NY Times, more than 2/3 of the commenters express skepticism about AGW.

Auto X Prize definition

The Wired site writes about the auto X prize competition to be defined and started in 2008. basically it's about a car that gets a 100 MPG (miles per gallon) "efficiency".

That's a strange definition of "efficiency". Seems it's the standard definition in the press. This "Efficiency" is just about "how many mpg", for example: a 100 mpg car would be considered more efficient than a 80 mpg car.

That's not how an engineer would define "efficiency". An engineering (and logical, and correct) definition is: how much resources you use to do a given amount of work. In our example that means: how many mpg for a given car weight. It goes without saying that a 1000 kg. car will do more mpg that a 2000 kg. car. A 2000 kg car that makes 80 mpg is probably more efficient than a 1000kg car that makes 100 mpg. You have to state the weight of the car together with the mpg rating to get an efficiency rating.

So, the Auto X Prize people need to specify the minimum weight for the car, to qualify for the competition.

The Gulag Testimonial

A new book appeared, based on NKVD files from the Ukraine, from the years 1938-39.
Shows how "normal" life was there, how people were routinely tortured and murdered for no reason at all. 700,000 of them in those two years alone...

Read the short review

Quote of the day

Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.

Mark Twain

Burning our food.

Pres. Bush has mandated that by 2030, 15% of vehicle fuel used in the USA must be biofuel - i.e. ethanol. In the EU there is a mandate for 5% biofuel.

This is crazy, totally crazy. The idea that we have surplus arable land and agricultural resources, and can permit ourselves to burn our corn or sugar cane is insane.

This article in The Guardian explains it well. Here is an excerpt:

It doesn't get madder than this. Swaziland is in the grip of a famine and receiving emergency food aid. Forty per cent of its people are facing acute food shortages. So what has the government decided to export? Biofuel made from one of its staple crops, cassava. The government has allocated several thousand hectares of farmland to ethanol production in the district of Lavumisa, which happens to be the place worst hit by drought.

This combines the two themes: government intervention, and
green intervention. Madness squared.

Sea level rise

The IPCC report says sea level may rise 30-90 cm in the next 100 years because of AGW.
Al Gore says in may rise 6-7 meters, but he is cautious enough not to name a date.

The sea has risen considerably in the past.

In the first century BCE, Herod the Great built the city of Caesarea, with a magnificent harbor.
Today the Herodian breakwaters are submerged 5m below the water surface.
(Same is true of the ancient harbor of Alexandria, Egypt).

Was it sea level rise proper, or was it a sinking of earth crust (acompanied by rising elsewhere) ? I don't know, I don't think anybody knows.

One thing is certain: it wasn't AGW, it wasn't CO2.

Blackouts.

A big headline in the NYT proclaims: California heat wave causes blackouts.
That is as usual partly correct and part spin. What is correct is that there are blackouts.
What causes the blackouts is NOT the heat wave, but the lack of sufficient power, or a sufficient reserve of power, to take care of the peak demand during hot days.
Why is there a dearth of power ? Because the greens oppose to the building of new power stations.
For example: "We should ban the construction of any new conventional coal power plant, period. "
That's standard green policy, adopted by California's "green" Governor, the power terminator.

No new power plants mean blackouts as sure as 2+2=4.

I'm afraid that blackouts is something we need to adapt to, and live with, as they will become more and more frequent. They are the real world consequences of unrealistic agitation and green propaganda. There is no "green" energy there are only green blackouts.

Joseph Romm, modern scientist

Joseph Romm is a Ph.D in physics from M.I.T. "Dr. Joseph Romm is a leading expert on hydrogen, fuel cells, and advanced transportation technologies."

Here is a link to Joseph Romm's bio. Here is a link to his blog.

Read the bio and you will see a frequent theme: Joseph Romm has made a big career in ideologically motivated activism, has written tons of words (for the environment), has published tons of books and articles.

Has he invented any useful device ? Is he doing any scientific work ? Any tangible, physical gadget? Any real solution ? Has he worked in some team that produced tangible solutions? Has he advanced theoretical knowledge ?
Nope, just public relations and ideological advocacy. (Also government administration jobs). He has produced words, words, words.

Words matter, writing is a respectable profession. But for a scientist, for a Ph.D. holder in physics from M.I.T. this is disappointing. But this is typical of today's "scientists".

The truth is - real scientists, real, ground breaking, scientists and engineers are a very rare breed. Most of the people calling themselves "scientists" and parading impressive titles are nothing of the sort.

(If he has produced something useful besides words I apologize. It wasn't mentioned in his bio.)

Cap and trade five year plan

1. The “cap and trade” scheme is just like the old Soviet five year economic plan.

   Greens (aka lefties) have a firm belief that is government applies just enough coercive power, anything can be made to work. But in the real world, some things work, and some don’t. The five year plan didn’t.

   The cap-and-trade scheme adopted by Europe is a scam, has produced exactly zero reduction in CO2, and just hampers the economy for no benefit at all.

   When will they learn the futility of “good intentioned” giant social engineering schemes, backed up by force ? They are blinded by ideology, in real life it won’t work.

   Besides, when blackouts become frequent because greens are hindering the building of new power plants that really supply power (not renewable green feel-good), the public, the voters will kick them out. There is no way you can make people suffer blackouts just for “the future generations” (false) meme.

2. Greens hate oil, and coal, and and hinder the production of it, and building of new power plants or refineries. (it’s for the planet and the grandchildren).

   They believe in some mysterious notion of “green energy” that just does not exist. They believe that if people are forced to sit in the dark (because of blackouts) they’ll go out and invent green energy. They believe that by using brute force you can make people invent anything.

3. Stop believing in fairies. There is no green energy. And there is no life without energy.

A complete list of things caused by global warming

Here is a complete list of things caused by global warming

This AGW thing is a very interesting phenomenon: mass madness on a gigantic scale. A madness not unheard of in human history - maybe like witch hunting.

A moderately rational person who studies the matter finds out very fast that:
1. AGW, while possible, is far from being highly probable. That 90% probability assigned to it in the IPCC is nonsense. Even if it exists it's probably not big quantitatively.
2. The doomsday predictions are based on absolutely nothing. Just hunches, irrational fears and sensationalism.
3. There is nothing that can be done to reduce CO2 emissions short of killing off a few billion people. That is: nothing beyond what will happen naturally - let human ingenuity find solutions and adapt.

After reading some stuff I was mainly impressed by the unscientific approach of many alarmist scientists. They write like people on a crusade, not like scientists.