Is Jared Diamond, the Malthusian alarmist about our future prospects, arithmetically challenged or economically challenged? That’s the first question I asked when I read his op ed in January 2’s New York Times.
“The average rates at which people consume resources like oil and metals, and produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases, are about 32 times higher in North America, Western Europe, Japan and Australia than they are in the developing world,” says Diamond. Based on this, he calculates that, if everyone in the world consumed as much as we do, “It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72 billion people.”
Of course, it is perfectly obvious — to Diamond — that the world cannot support this. So he “is certain that within most of our lifetimes we’ll be consuming less than we do now.”
We may be 32 times wealthier than developing nations, but it is a sophomoric mistake to assume that this means we consume 32 times more raw materials. Most of our wealth comes from value added. Manipulate a few grains of sand the right way and you get computer processors. Manipulate a few iron filings the right way and you get hard drives for your ipods. Our computers and iPods may be more expensive (and contribute more to our wealth) than the tinworks made by people in developing nations, but they don’t consume more resources.
So how much more raw materials do we consume? For the “developed world,” Diamond includes North America, western Europe, Japan, and Australia. For the “developing world,” Diamond mentions only China and India. So let’s compare how much we Americans consume of various things compared with China and India. For good measure, let’s throw in Brazil, Indonesia, and Turkey.
. Per-Capita Consumption as Multiple of U.S.
. China India Indo. Brazil Turkey Average
. Aluminum 15.8 47.3 38.2 7.6 11.5 29.0
. Cement 0.9 3.8 4.1 4.1 0.8 2.5
. Copper 6.7 28.1 37.5 5.0 4.3 17.2
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. Oil 14.0 31.3 13.8 6.2 6.9 20.0
. Steel 3.6 10.1 14.7 3.9 1.1 6.9
Sources: Aluminum, cement, copper, electricity, oil, steel. Steel data for a few countries are from other sources.
As the table above shows, we do consume more than developing countries — but not 32 times more. Instead, for many vital resources, it is only 7 to 20 times as much. Aluminum is the only one the comes close to 32, but the latest data I could find for aluminum are for 1995; the multiple is probably much smaller today. And since much of the aluminum and steel we use is recycled, our per-capita consumption of iron and bauxite may be much lower still.
Our consumption multiples of other resources are even smaller. Because undeveloped and developing countries consume lots of wood for fuel, they may actually consume more total wood per capita than we do. Due to industrial forest production, we use less land for wood per capita and, for similar reasons, probably use less land for food production. Mechanization of our farms mean we consume relatively tiny amounts of land for pasture for horses and other beasts of burden.
Moreover, for many of these resources, including wood and steel, our per-capita consumption is declining, while it is increasing in developing nations. So even if consumption in developing nations was not growing, our multiples would be falling.
Can Diamond possibly be unaware that his numbers are wrong? Did he just use GDP or some other measure of wealth and assume that consumption of raw materials was perfectly proportional to that measure? Or is he deliberately exaggerating the problem so as to promote his alarmist prescription?
Diamond’s prescription is, of course, government planning and control, such as what would be required by the Kyoto protocol. A better prescription would be to let markets work: if we really run short of anything, the price will go up, and people will consume less. That way, we won’t have to worry about the arithmetic skills and hidden agendas of the government planners who Diamond wants to empower.
AntiPlanner: Can Diamond possibly be unaware that his numbers are wrong? Did he just use GDP or some other measure of wealth and assume that consumption of raw materials was perfectly proportional to that measure?
JK: Without following your links, this appears to be just another chicken little in along line of such fools. One basic mistake they make is assuming exponential consumption and linear supply. Their thinking is too shallow to realize that population increases are showing a decrease in rate of increase as the world industrializes and supply is exponential as we 1) expand our area of explorations and 2) go deeper into the earth’s crust.
They are merely shallow thinking, alarmist fools. Like Al Gore and his climate garbage that he is making $$million$ off of. Criminal if you ask me.
AntiPlanner: Or is he deliberately exaggerating the problem so as to promote his alarmist prescription?
JK: Simple question: Is he making money off of spreading panic like Al Gore is? The answer follows.
Of course as the global warming fraud unravels, the conspirators need a new excuse to enrich themselves by stealing from everyone else in the name of a noble cause. Perhaps this is one of their options. Maybe a test to see what they can do as warming turns into cooling.
The world has been cooling since 1998 (no longer the warmest year, but merely tied with 1934.) So, unlike Gore’s lies, 1998 is not the warmest year in a 1000 years – it is officially tied with 1934. What an embarrassment – but the bigger embarrassment will be when it is revealed that the best quality climate date is overstating warming and 1934 was much warmer than 1998 and the 1930s were much warmer than the 1990s. Since CO2 has been increasing between these two dates, this provides yet another proof that CO2 DOES NOT CAUSE warming.
When one looks at the long term CO2 levels over millions, not thousands, of years, CO2 has decreased by a factor of 20. This raises the possibility that we are, in fact, in a run away CO2 sequestration problem that can only be cured by releasing CO2 at a rate that overcomes natures rate of locking up Carbon in coal, oil, coral etc. in order to maintain life on earth. After all, as CO2 falls, do plant’s, the foundation of all life on earth.
Thanks
JK
Most of our wealth comes from value added. Manipulate a few grains of sand the right way and you get computer processors
But raw materials don’t convert to goods by magic: there is a significant amount of energy, water, etc. involved in extracting, shipping, processing, packaging, marketing, and consuming that is not reflected in your line of thinking.
produce wastes like plastics and greenhouse gases
Your table does not appear to address waste and pollution.
we do consume more than developing countries  but not 32 times more. Instead, for many vital resources, it is only 7 to 20 times as much
Does 7 to 20 really warrant use of the word “onlyâ€Â…? 7 to 20 might be less than 32, but 7 to 20 seems like “a lot†to me.
Due to industrial forest production, we use less land for wood per capita
Does this include trees that are removed for residential, commercial, etc. development?
A better prescription would be to let markets work: if we really run short of anything, the price will go up, and people will consume less
This logic rests on (at least) the following assumptions:
1. Prices reflect all (i.e. private and external) costs and benefits
2. Demand for “anything†is not perfectly inelastic
Regarding #1, any self-respecting economist can tell you that this is rarely if ever the case. Prices don’t reflect all costs and benefits, and unless the effects of external benefits perfectly cancel out the effects of external costs, prices send the “wrong†message to consumers regarding how much should be consumed. In some (probably many) cases, prices are too low and we consume too much too quickly. For example, does anyone here want to argue that gas prices perfectly reflect costs associated with pollution, having to bomb Iraq every 10 years, etc.? I suppose you could argue that such costs don’t exist, but you can’t really argue that if they do exist, they’re necessarily reflected in gas prices.
Regarding #2, there are probably very few goods (e.g. food, water, air, (or cars, in the case of Antiplanners)) for which demand approaches perfect inelasticity. That being said, however, some goods have very inelastic demands/intrinsic value/no substitutes. In such cases, technology and prices can’t necessarily save us.
I’ve lived in China and I’ve traveled to both India and Brazil. Trust me. None of the people in these countries are imposing externality costs on their energy consumption, nor for anything else they do either. In November 2006, I was in Kuala Lumpur. While there, the city was covered in a haze resulting from forest burning that was going on in Indonesia, over 1,000 miles away.
As far as government planning of resources, we can look to the former Soviet Union for inspiration. The Soviets used to produce some 15 times per capita of iron and steel as the United States did. Those are the kinds of decisions you make when you divert 20-30 percent of your GDP measured social resources for military expenditures. Needless to say, few of those resources were ever put to productive use because the planned overrun of Western Europe never took place.
Are we facing energy collapse? I would suggest that cellulose ethanol production is not too far away, which would greatly increase the renewable liquid energy resource base and would probably be superior to using corn as a fuel stock. Another hinderance that needs to be solved for cellulose ethanol is producing it such that it can compete price wise with good ol’ fashioned petroleum, but that doesn’t mean that cellulose ethanol will never be achieved.
We can produce wind energy 24×7. Has anyone ever thought of designing a 15,000 – 30,000 foot tall tower (where winds blow constantly) and using it as a wind turbine? The Algerians have already formed an agency for harnessing their solar energy that falls on their vast nation and sending it to Western Europe via undersea cables. Again, the main issues here are whether it is cheaper to produce energy via digging up fossil fuels or whether we can figure out the trick to produce energy from renewables that can compete with fossil fuels.
I saw Dr. Diamond speak a year or two ago. He is a bright man, but I do tend to think he underestimates how resourceful people really are when put to the test.
A few points:
* Diamond also includes Kenyans in the article, who I am sure are much closer to the 32 mark than the other countries you compare with. He even mentions that China and India use about 11 times less than we do (not 32).
* Especially in China, how much of the raw materials being used are exported to the developing world? How much of the oil and coal is being used to power factories and create plastics for export? (I don’t know my point here, other than saying that these simple 32x or 11x numbers are almost meaningless because of our connectedness.)
* Diamond is a cultural anthropologist. The book Collapse is one of the best books I have read in many years. In it, he has compared our current (global) civilization to other historical ones. Most of these have collapsed by overusing their resources as they became more powerful. The best examples are the Mayans and the Easter Islanders. Had drastic social and economic changes been made earlier, these civilizations could likely have avoided collapsing. If Diamond is crying chicken little, then he is doing so from very solid ground.
* Diamond would argue that by the time we see the effects of overreaching our environment, it may already be too late to do something about it. For this reason, waiting for markets to regulate prices and deal with a declining, vital resource such as oil may not work. There may not be a replacement for oil that we can find fast enough to fill in the gap if it declines.
Now.
Manipulate a few grains of sand the right way and you get computer processors. Manipulate a few iron filings the right way and you get hard drives for your ipods.
Manipulate enough iron to pollute the water to make it too expensive to drink and what do you substitute it with? Manipulate enough coal to make some value-added trinket and add enough CO2 to cause drought, and what do you replace rainfall with (ask the Australians)? Fish down the food chain what do you replace it with?**
The myth of infinite subtitutions falls short when one understands the finiteness of ecosystem services. Those who understand them all sound the same note. Those who don’t or won’t understand them all sound their similar discordant notes of marginalization and fear phrases (alarmist, government planning and control, Kyoto protocol, hidden agendas of government planners) to pooh-pooh the questioning of their ideologies or fetishes.
Diamond’s prescription is, of course, government planning and control, such as what would be required by the Kyoto protocol. That way, we won’t have to worry about the arithmetic skills and hidden agendas of the government planners who Diamond wants to empower.
Ooooh. Sounds like someone is writing out and practicing their fear phrases. Now th’ readers are all a-skeered and nodding their heads yes.
Too bad Diamond doesn’t really feel that way or want to “prescribe” whatever it is we want the reader to fear. Instead, he offers context for societal discussion. Of course, some small groups are compelled to fling FUD – out of fear or resistance or whatever.
Diamond writes from sociology and anthropology, which does not rely on binary logic (if x then y: if this effect then this cause – “if someone writes about the virnmint bein’ bad, then then they must prescribe gummint command ‘n control!!”). He writes systemically and takes systemic, wholistic approaches to causality – not binary logic. So using simplistic binary logic to critique Diamond is a problem in itself.
And so we come back to the familiar refrain: gosh, what a surprise: another false premise upon which to base the simplistic argument.
DS
** I’ve chosen this on purpose, as “other-regarding” people are implementing market-based resource management approaches to save what fisheries are left. And freshwater fisheries are commonly used as models to test these approaches.
The first problem I have with the opinion piece under discussion is the lack of references. Okay, it’s not a piece of academic research, but it would be nice if it wasn’t picked out of thin air. I want some way of going further, and trying to understand what the case is built upon.
Worse…
Every so often, one of the two dead cats is dragged out of the cupboard in order to give a patina of intellectual respectibility to an otherwise ridiculous argument.
The first dead cat is the Munich Agreement. It is put forwards as evidence of what happens if you appease a dictator, and is used as such evidence during an effort by one or more disreputable politicians to incite violence in another country. Please note that it they, or we, incited violence in that way within their/our own country, they/we would be arrested. But as long as it happens in another country altogether, it’s okay, even enjoyable. Also, Hitler believed that he had been stitched up by the agreement, which hardly counts as appeasement.
The second dead cat is Easter Island, here used by Dr. Diamond. According to Wikipedia – “When the Europeans arrived in the eighteenth century, the worst was over and they only found one or two living souls per statue”. This is drivel. The people on Easter Island regrouped and rebuilt their civilisation. They were doing very well in fact, until the slave ships turned up. Of the large number of slaves removed from the island, very few made it home again. Still, I suppose it makes for a good moral fable.
http://www.sacredsites.com/americas/chile/easter_island.html
Antiplanners comments about the market resolving the matter are spot on. Bjorn Lomborg has already pointed this out. In 1980, Julian Simon made a wager that any given raw material (picked by his opponents) would have fallen in price. He won, by a large margin. (The Skeptical Environmentalist, ISBN 0 521 01068 3, pp 137).
In fact the only two useful purposes of planning are 1) to ensure that things like roads, schools and hospitals arrive on time and to budget, and 2) to prevent the actions of one party from damaging the interests of another party, where a cost cannot be put on the damage (cost to cause, cost to prevent).
If each nation were an island forbidding imports and exports but with the more powerful nations somehow raking, sucking, cutting and blasting raw materials from other nations, Diamond’s figures would be alarming, a causis belli instead of the basis for cries of “economic justice†or conservation. Two facts make his figures meaningless.
The first was cited by werdnagreb: “how much of the raw materials being used are exported to the developing world? How much of the oil and coal is being used to power factories and create plastics for export?†Werdnagreb asks this about China, but it’s the most relevant question about any country’s “consumptionâ€Â. How much of the aluminum, iron, copper, etc. used in the West or the US ends up going to another country?
The second relevant fact is that the countries supplying raw materials and components to the West are getting paid for the materials and labor. Materials don’t depart a country stealthily nor are they ripped out and stolen by force. They are exchanged. The country and its people who provide the resources get money to buy food, finished products, housing, health services, etc. In many undeveloped country the problem is not the lack of resources, but a government kleptocracy that neither invests in infrastructure nor creates business.
Finally, very few of the resources in question, with the exception of fuels, are “consumedâ€Â. As Randal notes, they are transformed into value added products. Copper, iron and aluminum are often recycled. India itself recycles obsolete products bought as scrap. We do not know if Diamond counts recycled materials in his figures.
Antiplanners comments about the market resolving the matter are spot on. Bjorn Lomborg has already pointed this out.
They may be spot on to reinforce an ideology, but as I’ve already pointed out, they don’t actually work yet in reality, save for a few situations**. This is because we don’t know how to overcome emergent properties due to asymmetric information and differential Pareto optima*.
Second, I’ve met Ehrlich a number of times (my grad advisor was a postdoc in his lab) and the telling of the “bet” tale sounds better when both sides are heard; the admittedly ill-advised first bet was followed up with an offer for another bet with different indicators but was declined (alas, we cannot ask why). I daresay the popularity of Ecological Economics arose out of the continuing malinformation coming out of the circumstances of this bet.
BTW, the bolded portion of the bquote above about ideology is a direct address of the Simonian/Cornucopian fallacy; the trotting out of which is part of the standard template.
DS
* http://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=2478270
** Let us note the ineffective quibbling at the margins did nothing to address the actual topic or argument & therefore the argument has not been refuted.
I’ve met Ehrlich a number of times
Evidently what he’s got is contagious.
add enough CO2 to cause drought
And mutagenic.
[Diamond] writes systemically and takes systemic, wholistic approaches to causality – not binary logic. So using simplistic binary logic to critique Diamond is a problem in itself.
Yes, logic is an obstacle. A simple unsound premise (behaviour will not adapt *favorably* to changing conditions) brings down the whole system.
Fish down the food chain what do you replace it with?
Soylent Green. Duh.
I’ll pause from boxing the clown for a moment…
Mineral resources like steel, aluminum and copper are not destroyed with use. If they’re not destroyed, they can’t be exhausted. Convenient energy resources can be depleted, but energy is one of the most easily substituted resources. The amount of energy used by all of civilization (2005 data) represents 1/10,000th of the solar energy striking earth. It’s not a resource problem; it’s a technology problem.
And you can’t really count on soylent green as a substitute for depleted (wild) fisheries. Unless humanity takes a 180 and we see population growth rates increase with wealth, we’ll run out of the raw material for soylent green. Unless the Erlich disease becomes pandemic and humanity works to destroy wealth rather than create it.
Dan said: Manipulate enough iron to pollute the water to make it too expensive to drink and what do you substitute it with?
JK: That is why we have laws against pollution.
Dan said: Manipulate enough coal to make some value-added trinket and add enough CO2 to cause drought,
JK: The more I look at the climate fraud, the more I get totally disgusted by the idiots that keep repeating Al Gore’s lies, without ever bothering to look at the science.
Lets review:
The “hockey stick†temperature chart Al Gore made famous was proven wrong by a guy in Canada and his analysis was verified by the National Academy of Sciences. If fact, it is probably a fraud.
1998 is NOT the warmest year in the last 400 years. It is tied with 1934. (NASA corrected a data error in Aug & Sept 07)
The cluster of warmest years is not in the 1990s, they are spread all over, with some concentration in the 30s & 90s (Same NASA correction)
The earth has been on a cooling trend since 1998.
Your global warming excuse for shoving your crummy plans on the rest of us has evaporated. You are just in denial.
BTW, something important happened yesterday: The New York Times ran a skeptical piece in their science section:
Slow warming doesn’t make for memorable images on television or in people’s minds, so activists, journalists and scientists have looked to hurricanes, wild fires and starving polar bears instead. They have used these images to start an “availability cascade,†a term coined by Timur Kuran, a professor of economics and law at the University of Southern California, and Cass R. Sunstein, a law professor at the University of Chicago.
The availability cascade is a self-perpetuating process: the more attention a danger gets, the more worried people become, leading to more news coverage and more fear
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/01/science/01tier.html?_r=1&ex=1356930000&en=852a381c6d1a9297&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin
Dan said: The myth of infinite subtitutions falls short when one understands the finiteness of ecosystem services.
JK: Oh, really? You understand the “finiteness†of ecosystem? Shall I nominate you for the next Nobel?
Chicken littles have been predicting doom for ages. The classic, being the Club Of Rome’s crap from 40 years ago and they were wrong about just about everything.
Then the was the population bomb, written by another idiot. The rate of population increase has been falling for quite some time and any idiot who really looked would have found the relationship between industrialization and falling population growth rates.
These “experts†are too shallow to realize that all of the earth’s riches are not on the surface and in fact can be found at various depths. As technology (Dan, you really need to admit that technology exists) improves we are expanding the depths at which we extract minerals. The planner’s assumption of a two dimensional potential source is simply wrong. We can explore for materials in three dimensions. To admit so, would shoot down a bunch of people making a good living scaring people.
Dan said: Those who understand them all sound the same note.
JK: Usually in Environmental organization’s solicitation letters.
Dan said: Diamond’s prescription is, of course, government planning and control, such as what would be required by the Kyoto protocol. That way, we won’t have to worry about the arithmetic skills and hidden agendas of the government planners who Diamond wants to empower.
JK: Instant job security and more power for planners. What a strange idea coming from a planner.
Dan said: Diamond writes from sociology and anthropology, which does not rely on binary logic (if x then y: if this effect then this cause –
JK: Too bad he hasn’t a clue about binary logic and neither do you.
Thanks
JK
San Jose/Silicon Valley
The main problem in the valley is housing costs. A second problem is the gap in San Jose City budget.
How about selling some zoning. Adjacent to the city Urban Growth Boundary are land owners who want to sell to builders who want to build and sell to awaiting buyers. It is very possible the land owners would pay $500,000 an acre for the right to annex into the city. One hundred acres would equal fifty million. Secondly, we have industrial property owners who for 20 years have not been unable to find an industrial user who would probably pay one million acre to change the zoning to residential which is in high demand. One hundred acres would equal one hundred million. San Jose housing costs, average $800,000 are directly effected by the limited amount of land planned for developed greatly raising land costs and home prices. How about the city making some deals to acquire some funds to balance their budget and also provide some most needed housing. We are not running out of land.
logic is an obstacle. A simple unsound premise (behaviour will not adapt *favorably* to changing conditions) brings down the whole system.
And your false premise that Diamond thinks the opposite of this parenthetical brings down your whole argument.
In fact, the basis of the systems approach (as opposed to facile binary logic) of Collapse is the illumination of why some societies do and some don’t collapse:
Gee.
G-g-golly! Who is feeding some rubes pre-chewed disinformation about Diamond, one wonders? And why, as they cause some to make unsupportable assertions?
Mineral resources like steel, aluminum and copper are not destroyed with use.
We’re not talking about mineral limits.
We’re talking about the biophyscial resource limits of source and sink, which Simon & Ehrlich couldn’t agree upon for a second wager, likely due to their being better indicators of ecosystem health (and thus better indicators of continuing human well-being).
‘Ehrich disease’. Pffft.
DS
*https://ideotrope.org/index.pl?node_id=63348
**http://osdir.com/ml/science.economics.progressive-economists/2005-08/msg00136.html
Resources are not a problem, period. A single large asteroid can supply the entire earth at US levels of metals consumption for decades, assuming we never recycled anything. There are hundreds of thousands of them in the belt. Volatile organics are similarly available. I’d bet that plenty of uranium could be mined as an energy source. That’s just the asteroid belt. What’s on Mars? Turn the entire planet into resources for Earth.
Fear of collapse, and its related scarcity mentality, is a failure of imagination. Treating resources as if they were scarce is a game for self-flagellating idiots and rapacious socialists. Resources (including energy) are not scarce. I welcome our high-energy future.
Off topic, but to add future fodder to the highly uneven, often silly arguments on this blog (gratuitous insults ON>I mean YOU, Gridlock Karlock, at the top of the moronic, stupid arguments heap(/gratuitous insults OFF):
http://www.governmentisgood.com. Link obtained from the silly comments section of austrianeconomists.typepad.com, of all bizarre sources.
msetty said: I mean YOU, Gridlock Karlock, at the top of the moronic, stupid arguments heap
JK: You are such a fool.
I’ll bet you even believe in global warming, peak oil and think that the “limits to Growth†was spot on.
Thanks
JK
Resources (including energy) are not scarce
If that were true, prices would be zero.
Resources are not a problem, period.
Did you know, almost annually, a large number of military leaders, MNCs, and NGOs – separately and sometimes together – run scenario analyses on how to address various societal reactions to resource scarcity? That’s right: MNCs craft strategies for unrest in resource scarcity.
Too bad they don’t ask adherents of a small minority ideology. They’d save a lot of time and money, since resources are not a problem, period.
DS
Forget about oil. Could you imagine what would happen if we run out of Camphor? (pg. 126).
BTW, some stats on Aluminum production/consumption
“Resources (including energy) are not scarce
If that were true, prices would be zero.”
Baked beans are not scarce (except in my local supermarket :), but they are not free – apart from anything else, the wages of the sales chain, and the costs of the infrastructure, have to be supported, even if the raw materials are free (e.g. water supply companies). The person selling will charge whatever the market can support, and hopefully make a profit.
Dan said: Did you know, almost annually, a large number of military leaders, MNCs, and NGOs – separately and sometimes together – run scenario analyses on how to address various societal reactions to resource scarcity? That’s right: MNCs craft strategies for unrest in resource scarcity.
JK: What’s you point – they run scenarios on just about everything. Also some raw materials are only available from countries that are not our best friends, so that would be a proper concern in time of stress.
As usual, you alleged fact does not prove your point.
Thanks
JK
We’re not talking about mineral limits.
I guess, then, your computer must display different words in AP’s post.
Resources do seem to be a problem to short-term thinkers. And that’s not intended to be an insult. Military planners are short- and mid-term thinkers. Any sudden significant change in the flow of resources tends to make people unsettled and violent. That the flow of resources is changed is not proof that those resources are scarce (unobtainable or unsubstitutable) in the mid- to long-term.
Who gives a crap about *source and sink* if humans are living longer, healthier and happier? Take that as my paraphrase of Simon’s dismissal of the ludicrous 2nd wager.
If Diamond is not a vector for Erlich Disease, if he truly recognizes that coordinated human action can overcome seemingly intractable problems, why the f*ck is he extrapolating consumption rates with a tone of paternal worry? Why not be optimistic about the next amazing solution which will offer better living through more efficient use of the global resource array?
Is it more satisfying to be a scold? From the article, “Much American consumption is wasteful and contributes little or nothing to quality of life.” Says who? If the goal was to maximize each person’s area of action, freedom of movement, personal space and sphere of cooperation, the current USA lifestyle is aces. If the Chinese and Indians want similar, let’s figure out how to help them get it.
Now here is someting to worry about:
(Any comments from the climate “scientists” in the planning “profession”?) Thanks JK
In advance of a press conference for later this month, the first press release for 2008 is issued today:
PRESS RELEASE: SSRC 1-2008
Changes in the Sun’s Surface to Bring Next Climate Change
January 2, 2008
Today, the Space and Science Research Center, (SSRC) in Orlando, Florida announces that it has confirmed the recent web announcement of NASA solar physicists that there are substantial changes occurring in the sun’s surface. The SSRC has further researched these changes and has concluded they will bring about the next climate change to one of a long lasting cold era.
Today, Director of the SSRC, John Casey has reaffirmed earlier research he led that independently discovered the sun’s changes are the result of a family of cycles that bring about climate shifts from cold climate to warm and back again.
“We today confirm the recent announcement by NASA that there are historic and important changes taking place on the sun’s surface. This will have only one outcome – a new climate change is coming that will bring an extended period of deep cold to the planet. This is not however a unique event for the planet although it is critically important news to this and the next generations. It is but the normal sequence of alternating climate changes that has been going on for thousands of years. Further according to our research, this series of solar cycles are so predictable that they can be used to roughly forecast the next series of climate changes many decades in advance. I have verified the accuracy of these cycles’ behavior over the last 1,100 years relative to temperatures on Earth, to well over 90%.â€Â
As to what these changes are Casey says, “The sun’s surface flows have slowed dramatically as NASA has indicated. This process of surface movement, what NASA calls the “conveyor belt†essentially sweeps up old sunspots and deposits new ones. NASA’s studies have found that when the surface movement slows down, sunspot counts drop significantly. All records of sunspot counts and other proxies of solar activity going back 6,000 years clearly validates our own findings that when we have sunspot counts lower then 50 it means only one thing – an intense cold climate, globally. NASA says the solar cycle 25, the one after the next that starts this spring will be at 50 or lower. The general opinion of the SSRC scientists is that it could begin even sooner within 3 years with the next solar cycle 24. What we are saying today is that my own research and that of the other scientists at the SSRC verifies that NASA is right about one thing – a solar cycle of 50 or lower is headed our way. With this next solar minimum predicted by NASA, what I call a “solar hibernation,†the SSRC forecasts a much colder Earth just as it has transpired before for thousands of years. If NASA is the more accurate on the schedule, then we may see even warmer temperatures before the bottom falls out. If the SSRC and other scientists around the world are correct then we have only a few years to prepare before 20-30 years of lasting and possibly dangerous cold arrive.â€Â
When asked about what this will mean to the average person on the street, Casey was firm. “The last time this particular cycle regenerated was over 200 years ago. I call it the “Bi-Centennial Cycle†solar cycle. It took place between 1793 and 1830, the so-called Dalton Minimum, a period of extreme cold that resulted in what historian John D. Post called the ‘last great subsistence crisis.’ With that cold came massive crops losses, food riots, famine and disease. I believe this next climate change will be much stronger and has the potential to once more cause widespread crop losses globally with the resultant ill effects. The key difference for this next Bi-Centennial Cycle’s impact versus the last is that we will have over 8 billion mouths to feed in the next coldest years where as we had only 1 billion the last time. Among other effects like social and economic disruption, we are facing the real prospect of the ‘perfect storm of global food shortages’ in the next climate change. In answer to the question, everyone on the street will be affected.â€Â
Given the importance of the next climate change Casey was asked whether the government has been notified. “Yes, as soon as my research revealed these solar cycles and the prediction of the coming cold era with the next climate change, I notified all the key offices in the Bush administration including both parties in the Senate and House science committees as well as most of the nation’s media outlets. Unfortunately, because of the intensity of coverage of the UN IPCC and man made global warming during 2007, the full story about climate change is very slow in getting told. These changes in the sun have begun. They are unstoppable. With the word finally starting to get out about the next climate change, hopefully we will have time to prepare. Right now, the newly organized SSRC is the leading independent research center in the US and possibly worldwide, that is focused on the next climate change. Some of the world’s brightest scientists, also experts in solar physics and the next climate change have joined with me. In the meantime we will do our best to spread the word along with NASA and others who can see what is about to take place for the Earth’s climate. Soon, I believe this will be recognized as the most important climate story of this century.â€Â
More information on the Space and Science Research Center is available at: http://www.spaceandscience.net
The previous NASA announcement was made at:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/10may_longrange.htm
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