Global Warming – a personal view

For many years I have been uneasy about “the way things are”. I have recently been bombarded with all sorts of information about global warming. Some claim it is a hoax, others say that it isn’t as bad as we are led to believe and still more are claiming that the “end is nigh!”

So, what do I believe myself?

I’m not sure. There always seems to be someone willing to produce a convincing counter argument about why it isn’t happening or why we can’t do anything about it.

When I am given so much conflicting information on a subject I tend to turn off. I know they can’t all be true and I have no way of determining which is. I am susceptible to a good argument even when I don’t like the conclusion. I have a nasty tendency to believe what I am told and I am always surprised when I find out someone has intentionaly lied to me. I think I am not unusual in this.

Complex systems such as the environment and world economics seem to be very easy subjects to mislead people with, perhaps this is because they are very complex and we really don’t understand them that well. It seems that although the problems we see and experience are complex, they are very easy to misuse and confuse!

For me, this recently changed.

I was introduced to a video of a lecture by Dr. Albert A Bartlett titled “Arithmetic, Population, and Energy”.

Below are links to the 8 parts of this approx. 1 hour lecture hosted on youtube. It is well worth an hour of your life to sit and listen to Dr Bartlett present his analysis of our future. The little bit of math is very easy to follow and the concepts presented are powerful and convincing. Of course the fate of the world can’t be captured in a simple bit of math. Growth rates change as people are educated, resources exhausted, wars fought and diseases spread. The final outcome is not going to be like the jar of bacteria growing from half full to full in the last minute before twelve but a doctrine claiming growth is good in a finite world is not going to have a happy ending.

I have often observed that the religion of growth that seems to be the basis of the modern world’s politics, religion and economics looked a bit like a diagnosis of cancer. Now I have the simple mathematics that quantifies why we are headed for disaster if we don’t change how we live in this finite world.

Feathers and I have set up this blog for personal reasons. It is here so we can write what we learn about where we are going as residents of this planet and what we can do to change the direction in which we are headed.

I hope that as it develops it will also serve as a useful concentrated resource of links and references for others.

Please make the effort to at least watch the videos.