Summary
While informative, William Calvin's compendium of would-be cures for global warming, "Turning Around by 2020," (SKETIC Vol 14, No. 1)ignores the most obvious and most effective means of them all: stopping population growth. If global warming is anthropogenic, the most straightforward method of arresting it is to reduce, or at least stabilize, the number of humans on the planet. At the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1700s, there were fewer than 1 billion people. World population reached 1 billion about 1820, hit 1.6 billion in 1900, and is more than four times that (6.6 billion and rising) today. At the current rate of growth, world population is predicted to be nearly 9 billion by the year 2050. There is a correlation between the exponential increase in world population in the last century and ever-greater concentrations of greenhouse gases. Further, we can speculate that, all technology remaining equal, each time world population doubled, emission of greenhouse gases would also double. So any technological innovation that reduces greenhouse-gas emissions is negated by population growth.
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Global Warming Forum
While informative, William Calvin's compendium of would-be cures for global warming, "Turning Around by 2020," (SKETIC Vol 14, No. 1)ignores the most obvious and most effective means of them all: stopping population growth. If global warming is anthropogenic, the most straightforward method of arresting it is to reduce, or at least stabilize, the number of humans on the planet. At the onset of the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1700s, ...
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