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Comment by darksaga | Hacker News Reader

I actually have two points about this.

First of all, I still remember reading articles from the 1970's from scientists who were convinced we were headed for another ice age. That's right, another ice age. The exact opposite of the what climate experts are telling us now - less than 40 years ago.

My other point is this - let's just assume all these scientists are right. Wouldn't it be better if we just did what they suggest and reduce our impact on the planet? If they're wrong, we help the planet. If they're right, we're still ok. I would prefer this outcome to not doing anything then finding out they're right and then we're really screwed.

For reference, here's the Time Magazine 1974 article about the coming Ice Age - http://bit.ly/zNZfI8

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""For reference, here's the Time Magazine 1974 article about the coming Ice Age - http://bit.ly/zNZfI8

1. Time Magazine isn't a science journal, and that they did a story doesn't mean there was anything resembling consensus at the time among scientists. Magazines like Time regularly do stories based on 'intriguing' claims by a few scientists, that never actually pan out.

2. We have 40 years more data now, and better data, than they had in 1974. You might consider how the 'ice age' thing was an early 70s blip, but the data supporting warming has only been increasing for DECADES.

If Time magazine had run a story in 1974 about "Life in 2012", with flying cars and jetpacks, and it was wildly wrong, would you use that to dismiss or question the work of today's scientists and technologists?

And I remember reading book from 1906 (not when the books were first published, obviously) from scientists who were convinced that the unavoidable warming due to enhanced industrial carbon dioxide emissions would actually be beneficial, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svante_Arrhenius#Greenhouse_eff...

And the trend in global temperatures has changed quite dramatically since the mid-70ies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Global_Temperature_Anomaly...

So in 1974 there were reasons to suspect that some powerful effect might have reversed the expected human driven rise in global temperatures typical for the first half of the century in spite of continuing strong carbon dioxide emissions. Today we see that these decades were just a temporary deviation from the expected trend, caused mostly by vulcanic ashes and soot in the atmosphere.

The popular press greatly exaggerated concerns of an ice age. Wikipedia has a pretty good discussion of this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_cooling

One magazine article is not the same thing as the mountains of evidence for climate change.

Unfortunately - reducing our impact in the way many advocate has serious consequences on the poor and impoverished. In fact the best way to lower humanity's impact on the environment is to reduce third world poverty and thus reduce population growth. Many scientists advocate a mixed approach - where we work on improving crops so that they'll grow in warmer climates, improve water processing, and in general improve humanity's ability to handle climate change all the while allowing developing countries to use fossil fuels to improve their standard of living. As technology advances they'll move to other means of energy.

"In fact the best way to lower humanity's impact on the environment is to reduce third world poverty and thus reduce population growth."

False. When you reduce poverty in a third world population, they simply breed more. This has repeatedly been observed. If you want to loosely throw around words such as "fact" and "best", then I submit that the following, although potentially unpleasant to you, is closer to the correct usage: "In fact the best way to lower humanity's impact on the environment is to eliminate third world population."

Gapminder has some good data on this, and it doesn't support your claim. It shows that population growth decreases slightly as income per person increases.

Gapminder link: www.bit.ly/AiTWsG

Animated, colored bubbles aside, history supports my claim. Gapminder's data is flawed because it mixes Whites with unwhites. For example, when Whites arrived in South Africa, there were so few blacks that the place was pretty much empty. Whites proceeded to create a first world country, resulting in the best economy in sub-Saharan Africa. This drew a large number of blacks, from other countries, despite apartheid. Segregation was just fine with them because their lives were otherwise much better in SA. This led to a rampant increase in breeding, which continued in post-apartheid SA due to the momentum imparted by foreign aid (which wasn't necessary when Whites were in control). Now, the total population of SA is more than 50M, with Whites accounting for less than 5M.

Increase income per person in the third world as much as you want, but there will be no permanent, negative effect on population growth for as long as the population is mostly unwhite because income has nothing to do with character, culture, IQ, and all of the other factors at play.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa

That someone was wrong in the past does not mean someone else is wrong in the present-day.

Actually, a few prominent scientists still argue that we are still headed towards another "Little Ice Age." I'm not saying they are right, do your own research, but if you look at the graph of past temperatures (the Medieval Warm period and the last Little Ice Age, it does not seem completely unreasonable).

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