This is the nature of population growth, it is an exponential rate of change. So while it may not look like much at first and for a long time nothing much seems to be happening, if you let it go until the change is half way, you may not have as much time left as think you do.

The answers to both questions are here.

Perhaps also it is in the inherent difficulty of being able to easily predict exponential rates of change as easily as we do simple arithmetic rates of change. Remember that problem about the nasty creature in the bucket? The scary part of exponential growth is that for most of the time you can’t even see much going on. let alone easily predict that it will mushroom into a major problem. For almost the whole 100 days, the nasty creature will just be a smear on the bottom of the bucket. Well, human population growth is also an exponential problem, so while we may not see the problem as dangerous yet (just a smear on the bottom of the bucket), and we at our present state of knowledge cannot accurately predict when the population of the world is so much too much that it will collapse (a bit like when the bucket is full), we do know that if it is left until the problem is really obvious (bucket half full), it will likely be too late.

The human population is not quite as simple as the story about the nasty beast in the bucket. For example people don’t split in half to reproduce, they have babies. Some women have none in their lifetime, some a few, some quite a few babies. The total fertility rate (TFR) is the average number of babies women have in their lifetimes. Theoretically, when the TFR = 2, the babies replace both the father and mother in the population. In fact, of course, some babies die before they grow up to have children so the TFR needs to be just a bit more than 2.0 to replace everyone who dies (a TFR of 2.1 to 2.3 depending on the death rates of the children in any given country). The actual TFR needed to maintain a constant population in any given country or area, is call the replacement rate. At the present time the TFR of the world is more than enough to keep the population growing for sometime to come, even though the replacement rate in some countries is at 2.0 or below. If it remains constant at its current value of 2.06, the human population will reach 9.5 billion by 2040, and peak at about 11.5 billion. Considering the difficulty of feeding even the 7 billion people we have today it is hard to imagine a world with over 11 billion people. Suppose the people get frightened and decide to have more babies to ensure that their children have the best chance of at least some surviving. If the TFR rises by only 5% (2.17), the population will exceed 20 billion. Of course long before that happened, total chaos and disaster would overtake the human condition and massive die-offs would happen due to wars, disease, starvation, and territorial disputes. We surely do not want that. But remember in an situation of exponential growth it is not easy to see the problem until it is really too late. However, a 5% drop in TFR to about 1.96 would eventually result in a world population of about 6.1 billion. That is a much more reasonable figure, although even that is too high according to many experts in ecology and agriculture.

Given all the factors, the current most accepted prediction is that the population will peak at about 9.5 billion people. That requires a continuing reduction in the TFR which may or may not occur. We certainly don`t have a lot of time to figure it out and make the adjustments.

Here is what the recent history of the world`s human population has been doing.

As you can see, after the entire history of human kind (over ten thousand years), only about 1.5 billion people were here in 1900. In the next 1% of human existence however (100 years), the population increased by almost 5 billion people. Now that reminds us of the bucket question.

One in seven people in the world is hungry today. But paradoxically, most hungry people live in countries where there is more than enough food. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), world production already is about one and a half times the amount of food needed to provide everyone in the world with an adequate and nutritious diet. So why is it that one in seven people is suffering from hunger? Instead of healthy, diverse food for local communities, industrial agriculture produces crops to sell on world markets, not local markets. In fact, many of these crops are not even intended for people (animal feed), or even for food (bio-fuels). World crop production has more than tripled since 1950 and that is encouraging.

The current projection for world population growth is a simple projection based on the trends of population growth rates (a combination of birth and death rates). Although the data is not specific, I presume the census bureau also assumes that people all over the world will change their habits and vastly reduce the number of children they produce. Let’s just hope they are not assuming that the death rate will rise dramatically — the only other mechanism to keep the population growth rate low. For sure they cannot actually know the future, but this is their best estimate. Here is a projection based on work by the US Census Bureau.

In this graph, the population growth rate (not the growth itself, just the rate) is assumed to have peaked about 1963. This means the number of children per adult is fewer than previously, but still producing children. Let’s hope it is not a projected increase in deaths due to who knows what…

In 1963, the peak rate of population growth was 2.19%. By today (2012), the rate has fallen to about 1.07% (so population is still climbing but half as fast). The projection estimates that by 2050, our population will still be rising but at less than .5% per year (population still climbing but less than 1/4 as fast as in 1963). One prediction is that by 2100, the world will still be adding more people but at the hopefully low rate of 0.5% per year with a population of over 10 billion people. This means people will still be producing more babies than just the number to replace themselves (currently a TFR of 2.06). These population estimates peak out at about 11.5 billion people on the planet. To make this work, we will need to increase the agricultural production and distribution efficiency by another 2.7 times what it is today with less space to grow things, a changing climate, and increasing industrialization of agriculture.

Interesting times ahead, and hard to predict what will happen.

The Answer

Question #1) 99 days. You have one day left to solve the problem of the escaping creature!

Question #2) If you really do have to be away for 5 days and can return before the 6th day you will need to have provided a bucket that is 32 times as big as the first bucket just to contain all the creatures that might get away. If you happen to be a week late, the bucket will need to be 64 times as big. Don’t even think about being a month late, because then you would need well over two billion buckets (2,147,483,648 buckets).

Return to where you were.

Belief systems have no theories, no hypotheses, no fact-checking, no experiments, and no system to test the accuracy of the beliefs contained in the belief system. Science on the other hand has no beliefs, no absolute truths, and no faith. A person can have moral values, understand the concept of fairness, natural justice, and empathy, all independent of either science or a belief system. In fact, for most people, theories, hypotheses, facts, experiments, testing accuracy, beliefs, absolute truths, faith, moral values, fairness, natural justice, and empathy are all mixed up together. Add to that our many other physical abilities, experiences, learned information, and cultural attitudes or behaviour patterns and that is the incredible porridge of what makes us who we are and shapes what we believe and think to be true.

Gravity – Fact and Theory

It is no wonder that some subjects are controversial. However, when belief and observation in the physical world coincide, there is no controversy. For example, If we throw a ball up in the air, it will always fall down unless something else gets in the way. We recognize that there is a force that pulls everything down to the earth. If we exert a force in the opposite direction, things go up. If the force is temporary, like tossing a ball up in the air, the things will come down again. If we continue to exert force long enough, like in a rocket ship, the rocket ship can go so high that the force of gravity is not enough to pull it down again. So, gravity is an observable phenomenon that everyone can test everyday and expect to get the same results under the same conditions all the time. In everyday life, that makes it a “fact”. We can also think of gravity as the force that gives things weight.

How gravity works is another matter. Can we explain gravitational force? Guess what gravity is a fact, but there are also theories of gravity! Here are a few:

#1) Aristotle “believed” that gravity acted more on heavy objects than on light objects. Drop a ball and a feather together and the ball gets to the ground first.

#2) Galileo tested this and found that gravity acts equally on all objects heavy or light — it is air resistance that slows the feather down.

#3) Later Isaac Newton described what he called the inverse square law of universal gravitational that said all bodies attract each other according to the inverse square to the distance from their centres. This means no objects can move unless another is exerting a force on it.

#4) Einstein suggested still another theory of gravity to explain why in fact bodies in space to move in a different manner. He said gravity is not a force at all. Instead it is an effect. In general relativity, he said that the effects of gravitation are due to spacetime curvature instead of a force. His theory of general relativity includes the equivalence principle in which free fall is equated to inertial motion, and at the same time describes free-falling inertial objects as being accelerated relative to non-inertial observers on the ground, that is to say it is a relative effect.

#5) It turns out that Einstein’s theory of general relativity is not compatible with quantum mechanics. Quantum effects are all based on particles. You may know the term “photon” used in quantum mechanics to describe light. In gravity, quantum mechanics suggests there are “gravitons.” The attractive force of gravity arises due to exchange of “virtual” gravitons.

So we have all kinds of competing theories of gravity. The most recent two (relativity and the space time continuum vs quantum mechanics) work equally well over large distances, but not smaller ones. So a new theory of gravity is needed in quantum mechanics — and we don’t have one yet!

Science is still debating the theory of gravity even though we know gravity is a fact.

What We Know and What We Think We Know

Well that’s interesting for several reasons. Gravity, the fact we observe, is not in question, it is only how it works that remains in question. And this is for something that is not in the least controversial. Imagine the problems when the observations do not match an important belief.

The usual controversy between belief systems and observations is when the belief is based on a concept from the non-physical realm which is then applied to a physical fact or event or process without thoroughly checking the accuracy of the belief in the physical realm.

We all know the sun comes up every day, right? Do we really know that? The words imply that the earth is standing still and the sun moves relative to the earth, so we see the sun come up. According to the ancient observer and mathematician Ptolemy, the Earth was the centre (well slightly off-centre) of the universe. After Ptolemy and until Galileo, the “belief” was that the earth was the centre of the universe and everything revolved around the earth (the sun comes up). This was the “Christian” belief at that time as well. Much later, when Galileo made observations that indicated that the earth in fact revolved around the sun, the church of the time threw him in jail. Today, of course, we have many ways of demonstrating that Galileo, not the church, was correct. While there may be a few people left who still think the earth is the centre of the universe and that the sun revolves around the earth, most everyone “knows” that the earth is moving relative to the sun. The subject is not controversial today – but it sure was for Galileo. Here is an example when a belief system rejected a “fact-checking” system as unnecessary to test the accuracy of a belief.

Predicting the Unknowable

What about controversial subjects that posit quasi-physical things such as the colour of angel hair, whether fairies can fly, the location of heaven, and others that do not impinge on the everyday physical realm? Predicting the unknowable is safe. While there are great debates over subjects like these, they in general do not have an impact on the choices that people can make in everyday life. Because they do not have an impact on everyday choices, they do not have any impact on people who ignore the debates.

Predicting the Knowable

Predicting the knowable from an unfounded belief or opinion is not safe, especially with controversial subjects where they do have an impact on everyday choices, and where they do have an impact even on people who ignore the debates. That is when the controversy becomes important to people in everyday life. In most cases, the controversy pits the laws or policies of a government that were derived from a belief system against the observed facts of the natural world. Typical modern examples of this include evolution, climate change, limits to population growth, environmental stewardship, sexual orientation, abortion policies, and many more.

Recall that there can be fact and theory together. The theory does not alter the fact, only how we perceive it to operate. Gravity is a fact, and we know a huge amount about it, how to measure it, how to use its effects with high accuracy, but we aren’t yet completely able to explain how it works in modern science. Is that a problem? Not with gravity because at least so far, no one has attempted to pass political laws that contravene the natural reality of gravity.

Here is where belief and observation can part ways in a pretty spectacular manner. Recall that belief systems have no theories, no hypotheses, no fact-checking, no experiments, and no system to test the accuracy of the beliefs contained in the belief system. The belief system has a code and a set of dogmatic statements that represent the “truth.” There is no need to have a theory, because the answer is known. In most belief systems there is a book of rules by which people govern their behaviour. The rule book is based on a set of principles laid out by the supernatural power and become the moral code.

Science on the other hand has no beliefs, no absolute truths, and no faith. There is no moral code contained in science. Science does have a rule book, developed over centuries to ensure a rigorous attention to detail and to the interpretation of observations made. Science does have observations, hypotheses, theories, fact-checking, experiments, and systems to test the accuracy of measurements and interpretations. Science also creates predictive models (best estimates of how things work), but science does not “prove” things to be absolute truths. Science does not demand faith or belief, instead the science rule book calls for skepticism and searching for accurate and repeatable observations that don’t fit the predictive models or theories. In fact, the basic requirement is for a description of a process (hypothesis) that can be falsified by a test. If it cannot be falsified by test, it is not a good enough hypothesis. So for example, science has no test for the existence of God because that is not a testable hypothesis. If I look for a God and don’t find one, that has no validity as a scientific test. “Science,” therefore has no opinion on God.

Scientists, on the other hand, as people, can have beliefs and opinions, just like anyone can. Many scientists adhere to belief systems, many do not have a formal allegiance but may have beliefs, many are not sure, and many are active non-believers. Science and scientists are not the same thing.

Is science mysterious? Not particularly. Anyone who is an experimental cook is very similar to a scientist. For example a cook who has a good cake recipe, but wants to change it has a predictive model for the cake (the recipe). To make a change, the cook sets up an hypothesis about what would happen if whole wheat flour were substituted for cake flour. Perhaps a little extra leavening will be needed, so add some baking powder and an maybe an extra egg. Prediction of hypothesis is that the cake will rise just as high as before and will both taste better and be healthier because of the extra egg and whole wheat flour. This is the testable hypothesis. Put it all together and bake it in the oven. Cut a piece and taste it (testing the hypothesis). If it works, we have a theory that the new recipe will work . We retest several times and modify slightly to continue to improve the result until we are satisfied. Now we have a predictive model (the revised recipe). So, no science is not mysterious in principle. Adding more and more detail as well as technology can make it look mysterious, but at the root, science is just like cooking. The process of making a new recipe does not entail any beliefs, faith, or moral values. It is just chemistry. How you interpret the results and what you do with the new cake recipe is not a part of the science you used to create it.

If you decide to share it with your pals or you decide to keep the recipe a secret is your choice and depends on your own personal set of values. If you try to feed it to your kids and handily forget to mention it is healthy, that is another decision you make based on your values, not the science of making the cake. Maybe the idea for the modification came from a magazine. Do you acknowledge the source in the recipe or not — again that is your choice. In the rule book of science, you need to acknowledge the source, but in home cooking, there is no rule book.

Age of the Earth as an Example

Many belief systems consider the world to be only a few thousand years old, others posit that there has always been an Earth in existence. Many people are curious. Some of those curious people wondered just how old the world really might be. It is not easy to figure this out because of course, new rocks are made from volcanic and other geological processes all the time. Over millenia, the newer rocks eroded to cover the older rocks. So it can be difficult to find old rocks and even more difficult to find the oldest rocks. The oldest rocks which have been found so far (on the Earth) are about 3.8 to 3.9 billion years old. The age of these ancient rocks is determined using radiometric techniques (the decay rate of isotopes). Some of these rocks are sedimentary, so they are the result of erosion and deposition. So while this doesn’t establish the age of the earth, it at least gives us a minimum age. These ancient rocks have been found in North America, Greenland, Australia, Africa, and Asia. Using the remains of meteorites, the best estimate of the earth’s age is about 4.55 billion years, but it is only a best guess based on as much direct and indirect evidence as we have been able to gather so far.

Evolution as an Example

The fact that the characteristics of organisms have changed over generations is observable and testable. People routinely use fact that the characteristics of organisms change over generations to produce many different kinds of goldfish, dogs, pigs, horses, cows, pigeons, flowers, grains, and ornamental shrubs. The fact that organisms have changed characteristics over very long periods of time is also observable – but not directly for most organisms because we don’t live long enough. For organisms that live for short periods of time, we can watch the change. We can watch viruses and bacteria change characteristics over many of their generations. We may not be able to watch large organisms change over generations, but we can observe evidence of the changes in characteristics of large animals over very long periods of time by digging up fossils and measuring their age using radioactive decay rates. By lining up similar fossils in a time sequence we can observe and describe the changes in their characteristics over time. So it is an observable and verifiable fact that organisms change their characteristics over generations. We can also measure the amount of change over time.

How this change of characteristics over generations works is another matter. In science, both the fact and the process of change in organisms over generations is called evolution. The word “evolution” has a long history beginning in 1622. It originally meant “unrolling of a book.” The next use of the word was by Bonnet, 1762 who was proposing the term to describe the progression of homunculus in the then theory of embryological development. In 1832, it was used by Charles Lyell the geologist. In actual fact Charles Darwin didn’t particularly like the word, and preferred “descent with modification.” He used the term only once in the closing paragraph of “The Origin of Species” (1859). Darwin did not consider his concept to be a progression, but only a series of modifications acquired by descendants. However, the belief in the ascendancy of people over animals won the day and the term evolution with its implication of progression became the popular term and remains the one used today.

Science has an explanation for how evolution works. Currently that explanation explains most, but not quite all of the observable and testable aspects of evolution. There are so many aspects to how organisms change characteristics over generations, and why they do so, that the explanation of every aspect has not yet been completed. The process of evolution is mostly known but not all of it. So it is called a theory. This means the theory of evolution as a process and the fact of evolution as observable events, can exist at the same time. The fact is what we observe, and the theory is an attempt to figure out how and why the characteristics of organisms change over generations.

When you toss a ball in the air and it falls down to the earth, you call that the effect of gravity and you know it will happen every time, but we are not completely certain how or why it does that. When animals reproduce over and over again, the young are not exactly the same as their parents. We see that happen every time – even twins are slightly different one from each other. We know that is going to happen every time, but we may not be completely certain of how or why that happens, and what the consequences are over very long periods of time when different youngsters grow up and have babies with others of their generation that are not exactly the same as they are. But over time the differences add up – that’s how we develop special flowers, pets, and crops.

Evolution is more complicated than gravity. Not only do organisms change over generations, but if the same kind of organism separates into two groups that don’t get back together again, they continue to change over generations, but not necessarily in exactly parallel ways. Given enough time the two groups start to look different, like trying to develop a rose that looks different – it takes time and many generations. Given enough time (and the Earth is certainly old enough to provide a long time period) the two groups that were similar may eventually look so different you would never call them the same thing. If the new rose breeds true to its form, it is given a different name from the original. The same is true in nature. If the two groups are different enough, and breed true over time, we give them different names.

All of these aspects of change over generation are facts, completely observable and testable.

The next aspect of evolution is where science interprets from the observable facts to attempt to figure out how evolution works. The theory of evolution is not about the fact of evolution, it is about how the changes accumulate over time to change existing species and to create new species. The theory of evolution has complex history, but the first person to really pull the whole idea together with lots of evidence was of course, Charles Darwin. The concept is simple: organisms reproduce with minor variations from parents to offspring. If the minor variation of one offspring breeds true and makes it easier for that individual to compete for resources more successfully, or to adapt to the biological and environmental conditions more successfully, or to generate more successful offspring themselves, then that characteristic will be carried on until a new one is even more successful. This process of selecting the better adapted form is called natural selection. We routinely use the same principle in artificially selecting the best from breeds in pets and crops. To create two species from one, the population needs to be split into two or more sub-groups that don’t get back together for a long time if at all. This can happen in many ways, and the subgroups will drift apart in characteristics until they are so different they are not able to reproduce together in a natural environment. The concept has been applied to all living organism as the best guess on how all the amazing variation in living things came to be. Everything from viruses and bacteria, to plants and animals of all kinds including human beings have been and are today subject to these physical variations and forces of selection.

Controversy Over Evolution

If people were not animals, it is unlikely any important controversy would have developed about “evolution.” In many belief systems, humans are in some way superior to the other animals, or in extreme cases, not really animals but something different. The theory of evolution — that the human species is really just another animal with different characteristics — undermines the belief that human beings are something unique within the animal kingdom. It may well be that humans are something unique, and that they have characteristics that science has not yet found or that science does not look for — characteristics that are in some way transcendent to the physical or animal realms. Science cannot carry out those types of tests and there is no way of discovering whether such characteristics can or do exist by using science.

But from a biological and evolutionary perspective people are animals. We all are made of flesh and blood, nerves and bone, with organ systems, and the means to reproduce that are repeated literally millions of times in other animals. You don’t need to be a scientist to see that other animals have eyes, brains, heads, livers, stomachs, muscles, and in most cases limbs. You don’t have to be a genius or to carry out complicated research to see that many animals learn from experience just like we do. The question of what separates people from the rest of the animal world is really the crux of the matter. Is there a uniqueness to humans clearly separates humans from what science demonstrates so far is a continuum with other species of animals? In modern evolutionary parlance, science theorizes that human beings have a common ancestor with other primates. Recent discoveries of fossils in Africa suggest that the details of that set of relationships still need significant clarification, but nothing suggests that the basic premise of a common ancestor with other animals is incorrect.

In many indigenous belief systems, this continuum between animal and human is assumed. In fact, in some indigenous belief systems, it is possible for humans to move back and forth between animal and human form in real time. In several modern belief systems, people are merely one stage in the cycle of animals in the world and can be reborn into any animal form. In the Christian and related belief systems, humans and animals alike were formed from the dust of the ground, so there is no intrinsic difference in their origins.

Much of the debate about evolution many countries centres on the idea that humans are unique; uniquely capable of understanding their world and of placing themselves in it. This is a concept derived from a non-physical realm of the superiority of people cast into the physical realm and manifested as qualitatively, not just quantitatively mentally superior. That the mental capability is not just superior by degree, but is of a different type.

Science is also interested in the human mental and emotional capabilities, specifically to measure the actual difference between humans and other animals to determine where our “human” capacities come from. The premise has been that humans are self aware in a way that no other animal shares, thus it is a unique characteristic. The idea of self aware is that people are uniquely empathetic, have a unique sense of fair play, and are uniquely able to understand the concept of justice and morality. A person can have moral values, understand the concept of fairness, natural justice, and empathy, all independent of either science or a belief system. None of these features were, until relatively recently, thought to be part of the repertoire of other animals. Within the last decade however, a wide range of animals including primates, elephants, some dolphins and whales, some birds such as ravens and parrots have been shown to possess, in a greater or lesser amount, all of these characteristics. So at least in-so-far as the existence of all of these characteristics in other animals is concerned, there is nothing unique about humans. On the other hand, no other animal has all of these characteristics developed as much as is found in humans. This does not mean that either humans or other animals always display fair play, empathic behaviour, or altruistic and moral intentions. Far from it. Humans are less monogamous than many animals, more capable of cheating, and gruesomely capable of intentional manipulation of the empathy of other people. Fortunately this is not true of most people, and nor is it true of most animals. In fact the heights of artistic expression and empathic behaviour as well as the sometimes astounding mental abilities of humans certainly places them in a class by themselves. Thus, while the elementary aspects of all of these characteristics are found in animals other than humans, no scientist has suggested that the animal expression of empathy or fairness or the sense of natural justice is the same as humans, it is nonetheless clear that the roots of all the “human characteristics” are present in other animals.

The controversy about evolution settles on the idea that a human is unique and different from the other animals. No scientist would dispute that claim, but would argue the difference is one of degree. Why does this matter? Once a non-natural entity is invoked, science has no further role or ability to participate in the conversation, other than to point out the consequences of using concepts derived in the non-physical realm to create rules of behaviour in the physical realm. Sometimes these consequences are grave indeed.

The Consequences of Controversy

The concept of evolution undermines the “permission” some people believe they have from the supernatural being to be exempt from the rules of the natural world. The science fact is that all natural things — even if there is a supernatural link — ultimately must obey the laws of nature. We cannot develop scientific theories that contravene this simple fact. We create belief systems that contravene this simple fact at our peril. Unfortunately if the policies derived from the belief systems actually contravene the rules of nature are implemented on a broad enough scale, human kind will not survive.

Let’s take the idea that evolution is disregarded in favour of humans being granted a divine right to exploit the earth, as opposed to having only the same natural “rights” as other animals.

In all countries where this is the dominant concept (and unfortunately just now that is most of them) there is an assumption that there need be no limit on population growth, no reason to artificially terminate unwanted or problematic births, no reason to limit access to finite resources, no reason to think that our collective pollution will overwhelm the earth’s ability to cleanse itself, no reason not to extend agriculture to handle all the new people even if it means cutting down a bunch of trees in some distant jungle or laying bare thousands of kilometers of tundra to extract oil, searching for new species of fish to exploit even if they are very vulnerable to over-exploitation, and so on. The current reliance on these basic assumptions is what fuels the world’s energy supplies, provides ample food for people (although over a billion people don’t actually receive the food that is available), drives the ever increasing wealth of nations (however badly distributed that wealth may be), and creates the many technological miracles that are so important to us all today.

Science predicts that the implacable laws of nature which govern all life within the confines of this planet will ultimately place limits on the use of a critical resource. The way nature places limits is not always a fun game. On rare occasions, organisms adjust their reproduction to the resource levels, but mostly organisms maximize their individual and therefore collective resources until the most successful competitors or the most successful at adapting win out and everyone else dies by disease or starvation. In human societies, people also die by internal warfare waged over resource allocation (a common occurrence already today).

In the case of humans, we are uniquely capable of rendering the entire planet unfit for our own continued existence. No other animal is capable of this action. One of the current controversies that is potentially capable of making the world unfit for human habitation (although we are a long way from that just now) is global warming due to burning fossil fuels which returns CO2 back to the atmosphere that was trapped there during much warmer periods in Earth’s geological past. This excess CO2, if allowed to build up with no attempt to control it, will eventually reach the point where very drastic changes to our temperature regime can occur. Large temperature increases would be accompanied by many adverse effects including rising sea levels sufficient to drown most coastal infrastructure and force the migration of millions of people, ocean acidification sufficient to interfere with productive ecosystems, and loss of or contamination of fresh water sources affecting nearly a billion people, to name but a few.

I have treated global warming in some detail in other blogs (here and here and here), so I won’t repeat it here, but this is another area of controversy in which many people do not believe the effect is occurring, or if it is occurring that people are not to blame, so there is nothing we can do about it. As in all controversy, people are entitled to their opinions, but nature doesn’t really care about your opinions if they are incorrect. Many who are not trained as scientists see fit to argue that the science is not correct or that the scientists are are all dishonest people and involved in a huge hoax.

The interesting point of discussing gravity, evolution, and global warming, is that all are facts, and all have theories. Gravitational theory so far does not interfere with belief systems, so is not controversial. By contrast, evolution, fact and theory, undermines the concept of human uniqueness, and is controversial because it directly interferes with the consequences of the belief system. Global warming flies in the face of the belief in many regions of the world that people have the right to dominate nature and use natural resources as they see fit to support as many people as are present in the world or who come unchecked in the future. Thus global warming as fact and theory is also controversial.

Transcending Controversy

If there is a unique aspect to humankind, it may be that they are uniquely capable of knowing the limits of nature. Controversy carried out in a manner that understands the limits of nature is good. Controversy carried out in a manner that ignores or denies the limits of nature is not good. The choice to ignore or respect nature’s limits is also uniquely human. If the limits of nature are ignored, humankind will likely also be unique in having modified the planet to exclude themselves from it, and knowingly drive themselves to extinction. On the other hand, I like to think that everyone will ultimately choose to acknowledge the limits of nature and bring the belief systems into synch in time to be the good stewards of earth that humans should be.

And of course, there are many other similar questions. I could offer my own opinion, but it is probably more interesting to see how the world views anthropogenic global warming.

This map depicts the distribution around the world of opinions about anthropogenic global warming. The data for this map comes from the World Bank and from Gallup. The index used indicates the percentage of people who know something about global warming and who also think global warming is due to anthropogenic causes. Countries illustrated in shades of red reflect informed people who for the most part do not believe in anthropogenic global warming. Clearly most of the world does not yet accept the idea that global warming is caused by people. The countries coloured in shades of green represent countries whose informed citizens for the most part accept the hypothesis that global warming is caused by people. Click the down arrow by the “Key” and the legend will collapse revealing the rest of the map. You can read the actual value for each country by hovering your cursor over the country on the map.

via chartsbin.com

As you can see most of the countries where less than half of the people think global warming is caused by people are in Africa, the Middle East, China, Russia, Indonesia, and somewhat surprisingly, the United States is aligned with these countries in thinking anthropogenic global warming is not real. Canada, most of Europe, and Australia are more than 50% convinced that AGW is real. Only Japan and Korea are more than 75% convinced with Japan 90% convinced people cause global warming.

I wondered (and still do!) what the link is amongst these countries. My first thought was that perhaps literacy could play a role. The data for this chart is a combination of the data from the World Bank and from the website Geography IQ. These have been combined to see if there is a relationship between the level of literacy and the acceptance of anthropogenic global warming. The chart is called a scatter diagram. If there is a relationship, the dots will form a line. If there is no relationship, they will be spread all over the chart. Well, guess what! They are all over the chart. Clearly there is no relationship obvious between opinions about anthropogenic global warming and literacy rate.

Next I wondered if people in countries that use increasing amounts fossil fuels might be increasingly disposed to deny anthropogenic global warming. If so there could be any number of reasons, but I just wondered if there was a relationship. The data in this chart are from a combination of Gallup and the World Bank. Once again, the dots are all over the chart. Clearly there is no relationship between the percentage of fossil fuels used in a country and the opinion of the people abut anthropogenic global warming.

While religion is primarily based on beliefs that do not originate from physical or observational evidence, nonetheless, religion often pronounces on physical reality from a base of a non-physical evidence. Perhaps for this reason, religious beliefs often figure strongly in controversial subjects where science suggests something in the physical realm, based on evidence from the physical realm, that contravenes the physical manifestation of a religious belief founded on a non-physical principle. While the science of climate change does not in any way address religious beliefs, scientific findings suggest we should be more circumspect in our use of the natural resources and their disposal. By contrast, some people believe that we were given dominion over nature so we can use it to our benefit. Other religious people argue that global patterns are the will of God so it would contravene the will of God to attempt to change those global patterns artificially. These and other areas of overlap in the physical realm have given rise to some of the controversy over global warming and any suggestion that people are responsible for the warming trend. So I tried to check it out. Is there a relationship between acceptance of AGW and religiosity in countries?

While the data are spotty, nonetheless there are some data that can be used to see if religion creates a bias. These data come from a combination of Gallup and the PEW Foundation. As can be seen in the chart, there may be a very slight relationship, but the data in this graph are too few to be certain. In any case the relationship is not strong, so even if there is a relationship, it is too weak to explain much of the variation in world opinion on whether people are the cause of global warming.

So we have arrived back where we started. Perhaps the reason there remains doubt is not so much the scientific evidence, nor the belief systems, and nor is it the ability to read the information. Instead it may be quite simply that it is very difficult for human beings to accept that there is a problem until it confronts them directly, rather than using the indirect evidence of science.

This original graph is courtesy of Vostok-ice-core-petit.png: NOAA, and is a derivative work: Autopilot, to which I added the warm cold text and graphic. The original data sets are available from: Noaa set #1, Noaa set #2, and Noaa set #3

The last warm period has been with us for only a very short period of time (relatively speaking). At the end of the last ice age, the temperature was about 8C or 9C lower on average than it is today. At the same time CO2 level was at about 180ppm. After the coldest period, temperature and CO2 appear to rise more-or-less together. As CO2 rose to 260ppm, the temperature of the Earth rose as well to about the same temperature as it is today, and has remained more or less steady for the last 10,000 to 12,000 years. Perhaps not coincidentally, this was the same period when humans made use of the now steady and warm conditions to become agricultural and to leave behind the nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle. The consistent climate of about the same temperature has been with us with variations up and down, spiking to 3C above present temperature to spikes as low as 2C below our current temperature. Each of these spikes lasted between 100 and 1,000 years. Using indirect measures, the CO2 has been relatively constant until recent historical times. The industrial age began in the 1700s and was a major activity by 1850. Since then CO2 has been rising very steadily from about 280ppm to nearly 400ppm today, much higher than it has been for the past 800,000 years. From indirect evidence it appears that CO2 has been a great deal higher in the far distant past, but in the last half million years it has remained between about 150ppm and 300ppm.

Temperature began a steady rise beginning about 1910. The temperature records are very good for these recent periods because they are direct measurements made in numerous places over the earth. Over that period of time measurements taken over the land and the ocean suggest that there has been an upward trend that averages out to a little more than a degree Celsius increase in average temperature.

In very recent years, from 1970 to the present, the rise in temperature has been pretty steady, but still showing considerable variation.

Land and ocean data from NOAA NCDC showing the 42-year warming trend (Jan ’70 to Dec ’11; red).

Often people are tempted to think about the weather (rather than the climate) and to recall what has happened in the last 10 or 15 years. Because weather has so much variation from year to year, it is difficult to see climate trends accurately when you only look back 10 to 15 years. It is always best to use all the good data that you have over the longest period possible. This next graph illustrates the risk of using only a few years to judge long-term temperature trends. The blue lines depict some 10 year trends that really don’t look much like global warming until you look at the entire graph.

Land and ocean data from NOAA NCDC. The short-term cooling trends shown are from Jan ’70 to Nov ’77, Nov ’77 to Nov ’86, Sep ’87 to Nov ’96, Mar ’97 to Oct ’02, and Oct ’02 to Dec ’11 (blue).

Very accurate records of CO2 are available from the observatory at Mauna Loa in Hawaii since about 1955. They show a consistent rise in CO2 in that period from about 310ppm to nearly 400ppm. This is a smooth curve, whereas the weather shows marked variation, so temperature fluctuation in the short term is influenced by more than just CO2. Overall, however, the relationship is a pretty good fit.

The ocean is the main carbon sink in the CO2 cycle. The ocean absorbs an enormous amount of CO2. As it absorbs CO2, the ocean becomes more acidic. The optimum ocean pH for the calcium carbonate based organisms like shrimps, crabs, corals, clams, mussels etc, is about pH8.2. Much below that level and their survival rates diminish. Since pre-industrial times, the ocean pH has dropped from 8.20 to about 8.05. It is predicted that by 2081, the pH will be down to about 7.97. This represents about 100% more hydrogen ions than in pre-industrial times. Various predictions have been made about these animals. All such predictions are useful to test the hypothesis.

In one of the most definitive early papers on climate change, James Hansen (Science 28 August 1981, Volume 213, Number 4511) described his view of how history would play out during the 100 years to follow (from 1981 to 2081). Here is what he said:

Political and economic forces affecting energy use and fuel choice make it unlikely that the CO2 issue will have a major impact on energy policies until convincing observations of the global warming are in hand. In light of historical evidence that it takes several decades to complete a major change in fuel use, this makes large climate change almost inevitable. However, the degree of warming will depend strongly on the energy growth rate and choice of fuels for the next century.

The climate change induced by anthropogenic release of CO2 is likely to be the most fascinating global geophysical experiment that man will ever conduct. The scientific task is to help determine the nature of future climatic effects as early as possible. The required efforts in global observations and climate analysis are challenging, but the benefits from improved understanding of climate will surely warrant the work invested.

We have travelled about 1/3rd of the way along James Hansen’s century prediction. Already the interplay of political, scientific, and environmental forces that he predicted is beginning to unfold. If he was also correct that it will take the full century to see enough change due to global warming to make a big impact on energy policies, then that shift from fossil fuels to something else will only really take hold after another 70 years.

There are many predictions for what will occur by 2081. There are those that suggest nothing much will have changed. However, they do not present different evidence to support that contention. They use the same data, but interpret it differently. This is also an hypothesis — a prediction of no global warming. Still others suggest that science is a hoax. Being a scientist myself, I must say I find that unlikely, especially as it seems only to be climate change scientists who are in on the hoax. In some cases, the scientists or advocates have other agendas and are funded by industries that might suffer if global warming were accepted by politicians as a real and present threat. The important fall-out of these no change predictions is to decide not to take any action at the present time to adapt or mitigate climate change. If the people who argue that global warming is not occurring are correct, by 2081 their prediction will have played out and all will be well.

Then there is everybody else. The rest agree that global warming is occurring, but disagree on whether it is due to anthropogenic activities. If James Hansen is correct about human nature as well as about global warming, it won’t really matter what people believe until the changes are so obvious, and presumably so expensive, that they will be forced to pay attention to the facts.

What will the world be like if global warming does occur? The most important factor in making that type of prediction is “how much warming” will occur. The most widely accepted changes likely to occur by 2081 are as follows:
1) Temperature rise to 3C above 2000 levels on average (higher at poles)
2) Sea level rise to 1.4m above 2000 levels
3) CO2 levels rise to 500ppm
4) Ocean pH falls from 8.2 to 7.9 (Hydrogen ion levels 100% higher than 2000).

There are other direct effects that are currently predicted but the scientific hypotheses are clearly set out above and will easily be tested and modified as time proceeds. And as is usual in science, increased data improves the predictions. So this is a falsifiable hypothesis (basic science) with a number of inherently easy tests to carry out (see if the above estimates match reality).

The next part of what may be the world’s greatest “experiment” in terraforming is to suggest to the politicians and the public what the consequences of the grand experiment might be, if in fact the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming turns out to be correct.
1) a. There will no longer be permanent ice in the Arctic Ocean and the North West passage will be open to navigation.
b. Desertification will intensify in sub-Saharan Africa and begin in mid-USA as well as many other areas.
c. Deaths from extreme heat in tropical areas will increase.
d. Distribution of many species including pests and disease organism will move northward and southward away from the equator.
e. Former agricultural areas will decline and new agricultural areas will need to be opened.
2) a. By 2081, a sea level rise of 1.4m will be enough to seriously damage a huge amount of global infrastructure and force inward migration of millions of people in anticipation of continued rises in the sea level, or alternatively massive efforts to build some form of retaining walls to protect major investments in coastal infrastructure.
b. Several island nations will have been evacuated.
c. Thousands of people will refuse to move or will not be able to afford to move and will die in storm surges.
d. Fresh water supplies will be severely damaged in many coastal areas from sea water contamination
e. Infrastructure protection costs will become quite high and insurance will not be available for coastal regions.
3) a. CO2 has an inertial effect because it takes a long time to remove it from the atmosphere, thus the effects will last over 1,000 years.
b. Methane gas will be added to the greenhouse gas effect as the permanent land ice melts in the north releasing the trapped animals and plants to decompose. This methane will accelerate the temperature rise.
4) a. Ocean acidification will reduce survival rates of many organisms that have calcium carbonate exoskeletons.
b. Ocean fisheries will decline as prey organisms decline.
c. Coral reef structures will decline causing coral island erosion making it more difficult to adapt to the sea level rise.

There are lots more potential consequences to consider, but that is enough to illustrate the gravity of the consequences if the predicted global warming continues as the hypothesis suggests it will. Because of the potentially grave effects on the world, politicians, and presumably everyone who thinks this might happen are trying to figure out what to do. Fossil fuels are both the single most important source of energy for the economy and the single most important source of CO2 and other greenhouse gasses being added in a “non-natural” fashion to the atmosphere. So the world is dependent on fossil fuels just now.

Calculations of the cost to adapt to the levels of change predicted above are seen by politicians as relatively trivial compared to the cost of having to give up fossil fuels at this time. Most estimates of costs to adapt to changes even up to 2100 are in the range of 1% of GDP. To manage world budgets to a 1% level is difficult in any case, so the basic governmental assumption is to just accept the small extra cost and see what happens.

There is one final prediction that is difficult to test within a time frame that would allow humankind to do much about it before it is “too late.” This is the concept of tipping point. In this concept, a process gathers speed and strength until it reaches the point where it is in a runaway condition and will not on its own reverse itself until the entire course of events is played out. Applied to global warming, it suggests that at some point the CO2 will be sufficient that it triggers many other actions to release more greenhouse gasses (from the ocean and from the permafrost) that will force temperature to rise to some undefined maximum. It is not well-established when that tipping point would be reached. In the geological past, the most recent time when all the ice melted was about 3 million years ago, long before humans existed, but certainly when lots of other animals and plants existed.

So while life can certainly exist on earth at much higher temperatures and with much less land area as the sea levels rise, it is anyone’s guess whether people will actually be able to survive. We have never had to endure temperatures more than about 3C on average warmer than at present. And we have certainly never faced super crowded conditions with 9+ billion people depending on a reduced agricultural area to feed 50% more people than we currently have.

In summary, we have known about the effects of greenhouse gasses for more than a century and have had solid scientific predictions for 30 years. Nonetheless, because there are few really obvious signs yet except in the North where ice melt is really obvious, but where too few people live to easily have an affect on global opinion. Ice melting int he far north is a “remote” effect for most people.

Given that there is very little currently affecting everyone, we collectively hesitate to spend huge amounts of money and to compromise current economic well-being on the chance that a disaster may be around the corner, not for us, but for our grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

As a scientist, I tend to follow evidence-based logic, so my opinions as a human being are pulled to the scientific predictions. I also am a realist, however, and know that most people don’t react until it hurts not to react. So my professional reaction is to attempt to place the evidence where any one can see it in relatively simple terms. My personal reaction is to understand human behaviour and to make adaptive preparations that I think will give my grandchildren and great-grandchildren some slight advantage in the coming century.

Capitalism is an economic system, not a social system. Capitalism regards an employee as a cost, an expensive package of skills and energy, not a person. The cost of employees needs to be reduced as much as possible to increase profits. Capitalist owners monitor profits, and expectations of profits in the stock market based on their investments. Capitalist strategies control production and distribution to dominate the market. This domination trends to mega-corporations eliminating smaller businesses and corporations while reducing employee numbers or their wage levels as much as possible. The end-point has the unintended consequence of reducing the financially capable consumer base to just those who own capital, or who manage to maintain an entrepreneurial business against the competitive pressures of capitalist giants. Everyone else is a low-paid employee or unemployed and not able to purchase many products or services. On a world scale capitalism has not reached this point yet, so has not yet had to adapt to the end point of the trend. Instead it has moved to global markets and employee bases to delay that inevitable end point of capitalist strategies that necessarily omit people from the equation.

The Ecosystem Metaphor

In an ecosystem, individuals compete successfully, adapt successfully, or die. In an econosystem, an individual entrepreneur, or a capitalist corporation competes successfully, adapts successfully, or the business dies. The key difference as far as human society is concerned is that in an ecosystem, the failed individual dies, in an econosystem, the failed business dies, not the individual. In a capitalist system (as opposed to a simple entrepreneurial system), capitalists may own parts of several or even many capitalist corporations. Thus an individual capitalist does not necessarily lose all his business options when a single capitalist corporation dies, even if it is a very large corporation.

In an ecosystem, the beginning stage of the system is primary production, combining energy and raw materials to create a living organism that may be eaten or die to be decomposed thereby returning the materials to the system. If the organism is eaten, by a primary consumer (herbivore), much of the energy and materials are transferred to the primary consumer. If the primary consumer in turn is consumed by a secondary consumer (predator), the energy and materials are mostly incorporated into the secondary consumer all at the complete expense of the primary consumer. In the end, no matter how many levels of predator there may be, every individual dies and is decomposed to be returned to the system. Because the energy in ecosystems is derived either from the sun, or in the case of black smokers in the deep sea, from the energy bound up in chemical bonds, energy is always available unless the sun stops or the chemical supply in the deep sea stops.

So far the sun has not stopped, but in the deep sea, the black smokers do stop producing heat and sulfur chemicals. When that happens, despite the intricately developed and marvellous ecosystem that exists around the black smoker, the entire ecosystem comes to a screeching halt and almost everything dies or moves away.

The Place of People in Capitalism

Ecosystems model econosystems extremely well because there is an exact parallel between the individuals of a biological species and the individual business in an econosystem. The fact of humans is ignored in business and especially so in capitalism. Obviously humans are part of any business system, but the system itself does not view them as people. The capitalist in a capitalist corporation, as far as the system is concerned, is not a person, the capitalist is a package of assets, strategy, and a proportion of wealth that is developed and distributed within the capitalist corporation. In the same way as far as the capitalist system is concerned, an employee is just a resource, a package of energy and skills, not a person. Furthermore the employee does not really have to be a person, it can be a machine just as easily. In either case, the employee represents a cost, so the less the corporation needs to pay for the skills and energy the less expensive is the process of production so the more profit can be made. As far as the system is concerned it doesn’t matter whose name is on the share certificate just so long as the money from the sale of the certificate is invested in the corporation. It doesn’t even really matter if the name on the share certificate is even a person, it could be another company.

Ecosystems and econosystems are very similar in the way they operate. However, unlike an ecosystem which is completely self-contained, the econosystem is contained in and dependent on the human society that can and to a large degree does operate entirely independently of the econosystem. The econosystem is a construct of the human society on which it depends. In an econosystem, money is a rough equivalent to a package of energy and materials in an ecosystem. Money is a proxy for the equivalent of all or a part of a finished product in an econosystem or a living organism in an ecosystem. Both money and the living organism are consumed and for the most part the materials and energy they contain are transferred to the consumer. There is always some inefficiency in the transfer of both biological and monetary transfers.

People as Entrepreneurs or Capitalists

A subsistence (and/or barter) economy and society in human terms is most like an ecosystem in biology. In a subsistence economy people, actual people live or die depending on the success or failure of their ability to produce food and resource. In an entrepreneurial economy and society people exchange money as a proxy for materials and energy, but they do not distribute the capital amongst owners. Most entrepreneurs believe in the product or service they offer. In this sense the owner and the business are tied together. If the business dies, the owner does not die, but does break the tie to his product. He can still make a living by starting a new business or becoming an employee of another business. In a capitalist economy and society, the owners of the corporation are not closely tied to the business, but instead are tied to the strategy of controlling the production and distribution and ultimately to the apportionment of money within the corporation.

In effect, the owners of a capitalist organization are not in business for the sake of product or service, they are in business to make money. The stock exchange is an excellent demonstration of how the capitalist owners of stocks are monitoring a proxy demonstration of the proxy for materials and energy as a proxy for the expectation of profit. The stock exchange is only vaguely aware of actual products and sales. The stock owners often have parts of many businesses and are rarely aware of the products or services they “partially” offer, except in the way the business is doing at the bottom line. Being this far removed from the people aspect of the econosystem in society means the transactions on the stock exchange are insensitive to the human results. This is good for business in the short run, but can be disastrous for people in the system.

In the long run, a capitalist economy ultimately relies on a financially healthy consumer base to sell its products. But in a capitalist system, only the capitalists share wealth from the business. Employees represent a cost so are reduced in number or cost as much as possible. So left to its own devices, the system will gain a few very wealthy capitalists as small capitalist and entrepreneurial business are out-competed, assimilated, or dominated in the marketplace. The only other “people” in the capitalist system are employees who the system eliminates or reduces salaries if possible. So the overall society ends up with many unemployed or underemployed people with a few very wealthy people. Over time, in a local market only, consumers disappear or are not able to purchase quality products. Low purchasing power drives lower prices which in turn drives lower wages or fewer employees. If the population of people is constantly rising as it is today, the situation gets worse much faster. This is internally and locally unsustainable.

In most developed countries, the capitalist survival mechanism has been to hire offshore employees or switch to robots and to sell internationally so the market size is much bigger and can support the more hugely wealthy capitalists. With global marketing, local populations feel the employment crunch earlier because the available employment moves offshore, but the price of goods fall because of low offshore wages, so the shortage of goods is somewhat delayed from the employment crunch.

The End-Point of Capitalism

When the entire market is involved in capitalism, the bottom line is that ultimately capitalists can only sell to capitalists – everyone else is unemployed or in exploited positions. Even the small business owners will for the most part have been swallowed by the capitalist giants. We are certainly not there yet, but the early signs are readily visible. The call on the parts of free market capitalist enthusiasts to open the markets more than they currently are by reducing regulations and taxes will exacerbate, not ameliorate the situation. Tax reduction tends to raise profits and increase unemployment. Loose legislative and regulatory control increases exploitative employment practices, allows fewer environmental and health restrictions of products and services, and encourages gouging practices by unscrupulous capitalist owners to maximize profits.

Although it is impossible to predict what the end result might be of allowing the capitalist system to ride all the way to the end of this trajectory, the system would either adapt or fail, to be replaced by something more sustainable, something that accounts for the fact that physically and financially healthy people, other than just other capitalists, are needed to act as consumers to keep the system going.

In the meantime, an artificial check on the unwelcome, if unintended consequences, of an unfettered free market rests with central governments as they attempt to use legislation, regulation, and taxation to add a measure of humanity to a system otherwise ignorant of the existence of human needs, while at the same time allowing a degree of freedom in the marketplace. It is an uncomfortable balancing act because the success and failure of politicians is largely dependent on funding from mega-corporations.