Overpolulation is part of the problem. Overconsumption is the main problem.

Yale360 takes up the debate.

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2140

“Temperatures in the Arctic have climbed by 1.5C since the 1970s – far exceeding the modest 0.35C increase in the Antarctic, where aerosols play a much smaller role, Nasa claims.”

And “Climate scientist Drew Shindell of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York found that declines in solid ‘aerosol’ particles brought in under laws to improve air quality likely triggered 45 per cent of temperature rises.

“Aerosols – including the man-made particles sulfates and soot – have a direct impact on climate change by reflecting and absorbing the sun’s radiation, Nasa explains.

“But laws brought in by the U.S. and European countries over the past three decades have slashed emissions of sulfates, and with them atmospheric cooling.”

In other words, black carbon is good for offsetting CO2 warming, instead of being an aggravating factor. Amazing how pro-polluter spin gets spread.

“[..Deniers sites are anti-scientific and thus unimportant in understanding what is happening, what will happen, and what we must do. The study won't "undermine efforts to reduce CO2 altogether" -- since, uhh, we don't have any such efforts. More to the point, you parenthetical statement "still a very serious concern" -- is the understatement of the year. The NASA study has no bearing whatsoever on the catastrophic warming we face on business as usual emissions.]”

My purpose was not to understate the seriousness of CO2 but rather to 1) get credible scientific information on whether the NASA study on BC could have any bearing on future emissions scenarios (such as your “Hell and High Water” scenario which, apparently, the study does not; yet, is a legitimate concern to express by an intelligent layperson) and to 2) get credible scientific information on “what the science says” in response to those skeptics who are writing to me and citing this NASA study on BC to argue against CO2 emissions standards and climate legislation.

You are correct to point out that denier sites and deniers are unimportant in understanding what is happening from a scientific standpoint. However, it is also true that denialists and skeptics pose the single greatest threat toward policy action by continuously raising doubts by citing the “latest scientific studies” (most of them irrelevant and already thoroughly discredited and/or misunderstood) to undermine the collective political willpower to do anything about it. It is therefore critically important for an intelligent layperson to know how to respond to such skeptic and denier questions or claims in a timely fashion when a new study comes out and they use it to try to refute the scientific consensus.

That’s why they rise and fall on a cyclic schedule dependent on resource and energy availability.

This is how social security works: many people put in money that few get out. Some people know this only works with a growing population, and it is one of the reasons people are saying social security will go bankupt in a couple of decades is because the American population is no longer growing as fast as it once was.

So as the demographic pyramid beomes a column one either has to give more money to support the recivers of social security or their benefits have to be cut or the system goes belly up.

No school teacher is happy with the idea of teaching fewer students, because she knows soon they will need fewer teachers. Just like those rich folks that make diapers, and houses, and cars and virtually everything else in this GROWING economy.

Birth control in the long run means fewer customers, that means EVERYONE gets poorer, (in the short run) but of course the CEOs lose the most because their job depends on the customer base.

As for Crime Please read Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner the part on abortion making the crime wave go down.

The fact that birth control would cure all these problems, I believe is fairly common knowledge, but when the reason for most people’s existance is to make money, and not to actually solve problems you get ‘do gooders’ like Bill Gates who literally gave billions for birth control in other countries, but said very little about it in the USA.

Why? in the USA where birth control would do the most good where you won’t need as many SUVs if you had fewer kids, is where all of Bill’s customers are. Also Americans have this weird idea that since they own the world anyway, and all the oil in it, they should get their way. Obama and the recession are changing this idea but it takes time….

Being told they are the most overpopulated country on the planet doesn’t make them feel good. At least the USA is overpopulated to me how else to explain we have 5% of the world’s population use 25% of the world’s energy, and take 50% of it’s illegal drugs? [I need a reference on this, but knowing we were founded by religious fanatics, it sounds right to me]

Poor prognosis for our planet
http://www.smh.com.au/ environment/ global-warming/ poor-prognosis-for-our-planet-20090411-a3jx.html?page=3
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Climate change is often described as linear decline followed by some kind of distant “tipping point”. But consider these statistics: in 1979 Arctic sea ice cover remained above 7 million square kilometres all summer; from 1989 it was consistently above 6 million; in 2002 above 5 million; since 2007 above 4 million. I read recently we may have reached a tipping point and the ice will be gone in 20 years. But there is no tipping point – a curve is always tipping, and each new finding redraws the curve. If this year’s figure comes in under 4 million square kilometres the patient could be dead inside five years, and ships will be crossing the North Pole in September 2014.
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The rest of us are less evolved; my suspicion is that most of us still don’t get it. Because here’s the paradox: wherever you look in the natural world the message of exponential change is reinforced, yet humans have a weird predisposition to see change as linear. I’m guessing this is a throwback to the caveman days when, if someone threw a rock or a spear at you, it was sensible to assume that the missile would keep coming at a constant speed. Strangely, we unconsciously apply the same neanderthal logic to our understanding of ageing, birth and climate change.

Of course you’re not “really” a Climate Change Advocate — anymore than Marc Morano is really a “Climate Change Dissenter” as reported in a puff-piece in the Business Section of the NYTimes.com on April 9 (see http://www.nytimes.com/ 2009/ 04/ 10/ us/ politics/ 10morano.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=marc%20morano&st=cse for the disgusting details). I was just trying to phrase my example of disinformation the way they would. Not very funny, I admit, but then neither are they.

And naturally I’m not suggesting you self-censor because of how they might twist your words, but only perhaps consider certain phrasing as just too inflammatory or confusing to the general public/media which is still making the mistake of listening to the dissenters and giving their deliberate lies some credence. Not to play at Editor, but perhaps phasing the concept another way (as indeed you have done in other posts) like “climate change accelerating faster than predicted” would serve the cause better than using words which cast doubt on the fundamental concept of scientific consensus being wrong or suspect (that is, after all, the big hammer the deniers have been using from the beginning).