"Global-warming scares me stiff!!!
A risk factor of “super-mega-colossal” proportions
Submitted to the BMJ November 2003, to be followed by an immediate electronic rejection!
Maurice King
So said Richard Smith, Editor of this journal - in an unguarded moment! It scares me too! Why? The IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change) has no doubt that the Earth’s climate is changing, 1 and that “... taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warning over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to greenhouse gas concentrations...”. 1 Nine of the 10 warmest years on record occurred between 1990 and 2001,2 with 2003 likely to break the temperature record in the US. 3 Predictions suggest that a warming of 1.4 to 5.8 °C is likely over the next 100 years.1 But no-one knows how accurate these predictions are. 4 Moreover, “...the range of the IPCC’s projections has widened over the last five years with rising uncertainties... the uncertainties are large and have grown...” 5
Wherever one looks, from pole to pole, there are signs of climate change - glaciers are melting, the sea level is rising, rainfall patterns are changing. Computer models indicate that many diseases will surge as the Earth’s atmosphere heats up. 6 Malaria may have already started to do so. 7 Although some climate changes could be beneficial, for example the improvement of British wine, most are harmful.
For the moment these are only small changes. However, the danger is that there will be irreversible “non-linear” changes, and particularly a positive feed-back loop, in which more warming causes yet more warming. One risk is the progressive release of methane, which is twenty times more efficient than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas. There is much methane trapped in the arctic permafrost and frozen into ocean ice as methane hydrates (clathrates). If the permafrost starts thawing, or methane is released from the oceans, its runaway escape could result in a situation in which, in Stephen Hawking’s words “Earth ends up boiling like Venus” - fanciful perhaps, but it makes the point. 8 Unfortunately, “...the prediction of future [methane] concentrations is problematic” 1 The really scary thing about all this is that several studies “...further conform that the permafrost has significantly warmed and that much of this warming has been very recent...”. 9
What then do the experts say about the chances of disaster? They say that : "...The likelihood of many of these [catastrophic] changes in earth systems is not well-known, but is probably [my italics] very low, however, their likelihood is expected to increase with the rate, magnitude, and duration of climate change...". 10 "It is precisely because the responsible scientific community cannot rule out such catastrophic outcomes at a high level of confidence, that climate mitigation policies are seriously proposed." 11
So where does this leave us? The world’s greatest living scientist is alarmist, the international committee on climate change is cagey, and the facts speak for themselves. The inescapable conclusion has to be that the absolute priority in public health is to reduce fossil fuel consumption by every means in our power as fast as possible - it means pulling out every conceivable stop! With immediate effect, a healthy lifestyle has now to become a sustainable lifestyle, 12 and especially a low fossil- fuel lifestyle, both for our own good, and especially that of our children.
What then does this require? An end to the routine use of the car, which has now to become an occasional luxury for special purposes only. It requires taxing fuel, not vehicles, and a heavy tax on aviation fuel. It means the minimum of central heating and the maximum of thick clothing - those thrifty Chinese use almost no central heating!
So what about the United States, which has yet even to sign the Tokyo protocol on global warming? In the US 4.6 per cent of the world’s people are responsible for 24.5 per cent of its energy consumption, mostly as fossil fuel. 13 The average US citizen lives at the rate of 12 kilowatts - the equivalent of six domestic ovens burning continuously. 14
If influencing all this seems hopeless, there is one particular ‘stop’ which urgently needs pulling out. It is this: - if the South has to reduce its fertility to avoid the starvation and violence of demographic entrapment, the North will be expected to reduce its resource consumption, and live sustainable lifestyles. In the jargon of demographic entrapment, this argument is Demon 3, and almost everyone seems to agree with it. 15 Entrapment is a condition in which a community exceeds the carrying capacity of its local ecosystem, has nowhere to migrate to, and has insufficient exports to exchange for food and other essentials, as in Rwanda, Malawi, and, probably also in much of Africa. The end result of this is the direst poverty, starvation, and violence. 15 Demographic entrapment is tightly taboo, the factors responsible for keeping it taboo are its “Demons” - a Demon being anything that will have to change - with heated argument - as the taboo on entrapment lifts.
Since Demon 3 is such a powerful argument, it would make good political sense for the US (Demon 21) to try to keep entrapment taboo for as long as it can. Since the US dominates demography globally, and has the UN agencies in the palm of its hand, it would be remarkable if it were not doing this. Since demographers never discuss demographic entrapment - openly - the maintenance of the taboo on entrapment requires that demography be kept corrupt. Unsurprisingly, there is now massive evidence that United States is doing its best to keep entrapment taboo and demography corrupt. Since the detailed evidence for this is both far too long, and far too sick-making for a Christmas edition of this journal, you will have to go to the website and look for Demon 21 - The corruption of demography as an instrument of US policy.
(http://www.leeds.ac.uk/demographic.disentrapment)
The task therefore is to try to lift the taboo on demographic entrapment and to get it widely discussed - so that the argument of Demon 3 - “If the South has to reduce its fertility... the North has to reduce its resource consumption” - operates as widely as possible. This is not easy, since the taboo is guarded by so many other Demons, particularly “political correctness” (Demon 16), the many problems of 1-child families (Demon 6 Are they better or worse than starvation and violence ?), and the objections of the Holy See (Demon 10) to most methods of family planning.
If the argument of Demon 3 is sufficiently powerful to make it worth the political effort of the United States to keep demographic entrapment taboo, Demon 21 is a “risk factor” of “super-mega-colossal” proportions (no adjective can be great enough and it needs a special label), not only directly, for its effect on starvation, and the direst poverty in the trapped communities of the South, but also indirectly for silencing the most powerful argument that might to prevent runaway global warming in the world as whole, as a result of the luxurious lifestyles of the North.
Note: in the argument here it is not the global warming itself that is the “super-mega-colossal” risk factor, but the attempt to silence the argument of Demon 3 that would mitigate it. Note also that: as long as the taboo remains intact, Demon 3 remains Demonic, but that as the taboo starts lifting, Demon 3 becomes a beneficial agent of change - angelic - an Angel!
Since this is Christ’s birthday, what should be the message from the pulpits - especially US pulpits where so many of the population are churchgoers? It is that the most urgent way to ‘love one’s neighbour’ is the sustainable lifestyle that will not eventually boil him and his children alive. In trapped communities in the South it is much smaller families, so that there are not too many ‘neighbours’ for the land to support.
I recently had an opportunity to put this message to a huge congregation in the Baptist Mission Church at Vanga in the Congo Democratic Republic. (See website) To hear their chorales you would never think they are almost certainly trapped! The Pastor then asked me: “ What right have you, as an expatriate, to advise us on the size of our families?” I replied that, since I had long been interested in the health of Africa, and that since this requires food, I have to be interested in population, family size, and the size of individual ‘gardens’. I then asked the congregation if I was correct in this? Everybody raised their hands in agreement - except for one old man who was worried because he only had a single daughter - he had misunderstood the question! When I returned to London the demographers were amazed that I had not been lynched! It could happen.
Another Christmas message is, of course, “... for Thou hast made us for Thyself...” - hopefully without boiling water bubbling about our ears!
Reference List
1. IPCC the International Panel on Climate Change. Climate Change 2001. Third Assessment Report. Technical Summary by Working Group 1. IPCC Geneva.
2. Global atmosphere research programme. 2003. DEFRA, Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Global atmosphere research programme. 2000-2002.
3. Climate Change News - 12/25-1/2. 2003. The Environmental and Energy Study Institute .
4. Distributed climate model aims for errors. New Scientist News Service 2003; Sept 12.
5. Kerr, Richard A. Rising global-warming, rising uncertainty. Science 2001; 292: 192-194.
6. Epstein Paul R. Is global warming harmful to health? Scientific American 2000:50-57.
7. Epstein Paul R. Biological and physical signs of climate change: focus on mosquito borne diseases. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society 2003;79:409-17.
8. Hawking, Stephen. 2001. BBC Radio 4.
9. Permafrost in a dynamic environment. Permafrost and periglacial processes 2003;14:89-91.
10. Intergovernmental Panel on Global Climate Change. Climate Change 2001, Impacts, adaptation and vulnerability. Summary for Policy-makers Report of Working Group II. IPCC. Geneva.
11. Schneider, Stephen. Global warming, neglecting the complexities. Scientific American January 2001.
12. King MH. Health is a sustainable state. Lancet 1990;336: 664-667.
13. BP Statistical Review of World energy 2003.
14. US Bureau of Census. 2003.
15. Mola G, Thornton J, Bullough C, Breen M, Guillebaud G, Addo F. Primary Mother Care and Population. Leeds: Maurice King, Knowledge Engineer; 2003. Available from sales@spiegl.co.uk.
An abstract for: "Global warming me stiff !!!"
There is no doubt that the world is warming. There is almost no doubt that this is due to the greenhouse gases. The great risk is that of a positive feedback loop in which the methane trapped in the Arctic permafrost progressively increases global warming, so that it becomes catastrophic. The temperature of the Arctic permafrost has already started rising.
If demographically trapped communities in the South have to reduce their fertility to avoid starvation, the North will be expected to reduce its resource consumption, and live sustainable lifestyles - and thus most usefully minimise global-warming. In entrapment jargon this is the argument of Demon 3.
Since Demon 3 is such a powerful argument, it would make good political sense for the US (Demon 21) to try to keep entrapment taboo. There is abundant evidence that it is doing this.
If the argument of Demon 3 is sufficiently powerful to make it worth the political effort of the United States to keep entrapment taboo, the activity of Demon 21 in keeping entrapment taboo is a risk factor of "super - mega - colossal" proportions, not only directly for its effect on starvation and the direst poverty in the demographically trapped communities of the South, but also indirectly for its effect in silencing the most powerful argument that might prevent runaway global warming in the world as a whole.
Box
A community is demographically trapped, if it exceeds the carrying capacity of its local ecosystem, and it has nowhere to migrate to, and it has too few exports which it can exchange for food and other essentials. The end result of entrapment is the direst poverty, starvation, and violence.
Demographic entrapment is tightly taboo.
There are at least 25 reasons for this taboo - its 25 Demons. A Demon is anything which keeps the taboo in place, and has to change as it is lifted, so that disentrapment can take place. Demon 10, for example, is the attitude of the Holy See to most methods of family planning.
