CU-Boulder Plots To Extend Life of Al Bartlett's Famous Lecture on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “CU-Boulder Plots To Extend Life of Al Bartlett's Famous Lecture on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy” [Hake (2013)]. The abstract reads:

ABSTRACT: A report “CU-Boulder plots to extend life of Al Bartlett's famous lecture” [Anas (2013)] at http://bit.ly/16Cxvw1 describes a program of CU’s Environmental Center to train people to give Bartlett’s talk “Arithmetic, Population, and Energy” http://bit.ly/1e6wXiy.

As I stated in my post “A Global Tribute to Al Bartlett” [Hake 2013)] at http://yhoo.it/15N8pfj: “I realize that some overpopulation deniers mistakenly claim that exponential growth is not relevant because the human population of developed countries is no longer increasing exponentially and is even starting to level out. But exponential growth is still present in many parts of the world and is responsible for the initiation of the World’s present human overpopulation . . . . . .”

A typical overpopulation denier is one “dancing badger” who commented as follows on Anas’ report: “[Bartlett’s] arguments regarding overpopulation have proven to be flawed. Once a country reaches maturity in terms of its economy and technological advancement its fertility rate plummets. We have seen this in Europe, Asia and the United States where populations are actually shrinking. The United Nations’ own projections show total global population reaching a maximum of around 11 billion and then declining after that. As a threat the population bomb has proven to be a complete bust.”

A cogent response to “dancing badger” is provided by Bartlett himself in one of his latest essays “Close the Fire Department,” now online at http://bit.ly/13wgHCI, thanks to Marilyn Hempel, (2013), editor of the Population Press. In that essay Al describes his experience at a recent AAAS symposium on sustainability where a panelist, in answer to Al’s question as to why the obvious benefits of reducing our present overpopulation were never mentioned, explained that “United Nations figures show that the growth rate of world population is declining and world population growth is expected to stop on its own later in the century. So the population is under control and there is no need to worry ourselves about it at this time.” Al responded by inviting the panelist to come with him to City Hall and seek to convince city government that it doesn't need a Fire Department since it's an established fact that all fires will eventually go out!
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Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
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"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."
- Al Bartlett

REFERENCES [URL's shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 13 Aug 2013.]
Hake, R.R. 2013. “CU-Boulder Plots To Extend Life of Al Bartlett's Famous Lecture on Arithmetic, Population, and Energy,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/17nOP6b. Post of 13 Aug 2013 20:03:46-0400 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being distributed to various discussion lists.

A Global Tribute to Al Bartlett

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “A Global Tribute to Al Bartlett” [Hake (2013)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: On 23 July 2013 Al Bartlett, in a post “My Cancer,” to the discussion list Physoc wrote that his non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, previously dormant, has returned such that doctors had given him “30 days, plus or minus.”

A discussion list subscriber “S” suggested to me that:

(a) as a global tribute to Bartlett, people be invited to view his famous 8 part You Tube lecture series “Arithmetic, Population, and Energy” at http://bit.ly/1e6wXiy (aptly tabbed “The Most Important Video You'll Ever See”; and

(b) the goal should be to increase the total number of views for the series from its present 9.19 million to at least 10 million.

For information on Al Bartlett and his work see (a) Bartlett’s website http://www.AlBartlett.ORG/ with its extensive collection of his articles, presentations, and interviews; and (b) the Wikipedia entry http://bit.ly/19jfGEU.

Congratulations to Al Bartlett for his indefatigable concentration on human overpopulation http://bit.ly/193LdIx, the overriding threat to life on Planet Earth.

I hope that many of you will now click on http://bit.ly/1e6wXiy so at to view Part 1 of Al’s masterful explanation of exponential growth.

PLEASE PASS THIS MESSAGE ON.
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To access the complete 6 kB post please click on http://yhoo.it/15N8pfj.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Twitter: http://bit.ly/juvd52

“The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand
the exponential function.”
- Al Bartlett

REFERENCES [URL shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 07 August 2013.]
Hake, R.R. 2013. “A Global Tribute to Al Bartlett” online on the OPEN! Net-Gold archives at http://yhoo.it/15N8pfj. Post of 07 Aug 2013 13:34:10-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being distributed to various discussion lists.

Sad News About Al Bartlett

ABSTRACT: In a disturbing discussion-list post, Al Bartlett http://bit.ly/19jfGEU wrote that his non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, previously dormant, has returned such that doctors give him “30 days, plus or minus.” As a tribute, it may be appropriate to publicize one of Al’s latest attempts to emphasize the crucial but under-appreciated importance of overpopulation.

In his pungent Population Press letter “Close the Fire Department!” soon to be online at http://populationpress.org/, Al describes his experience at a recent AAAS symposium on sustainability where a panelist, in answer to his question as to why the obvious benefits of reducing our present overpopulation were never mentioned, explained that “United Nations figures show that the growth rate of world population is declining and world population growth is expected to stop on its own later in the century. So the population is under control and there is no need to worry ourselves about it at this time.”

Al responded by inviting the panelist to come with him to City Hall and seek to convince city government that it doesn’t need a Fire Department since it's an established fact that all fires will eventually go out!
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To access the complete 14 kB post please click on http://yhoo.it/12mMNFH.

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Academia: http://bit.ly/a8ixxm
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
Google Scholar: http://bit.ly/Wz2FP3
Twitter: http://bit.ly/juvd52
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/XI7EKm
LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/14uycpW


REFERENCES [URL shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 25 July 2013.]
Hake, R.R. 2013. “Sad News About Al Bartlett,” online on the OPEN! Net-Gold archives at http://yhoo.it/12mMNFH. Post of 25 Jul 2013 10:56:39-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being distributed to various discussion lists.

Would a Carbon Tax Alone Save Life on Planet Earth? Probably Not: Overpopulation Must Also Be Addressed

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “Would a Carbon Tax Alone Save Life on Planet Earth? Probably Not: Overpopulation Must Also Be Addressed” [Hake (2013)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT (CAPS in quotes are mine): As I pointed out in a post “Would a Carbon Tax Save Life on Planet Earth?” [Hake (2013a)] at http://yhoo.it/16ECfUn, Hansen & Romm (2013) at http://bit.ly/12djtSf wrote:

“We must have a simple, honest, across-the-board carbon fee COLLECTED FROM THE FOSSIL FUEL COMPANIES AT THE SMALL NUMBER OF DOMESTIC MINES AND PORTS OF ENTRY. All of that money should be distributed to the public -100 percent of it - with equal amounts going to all legal residents.”

Art Hobson (2013a) in an OpEd “Our planet passes a climate benchmark” at http://bit.ly/19tBwGD made a similar point but did not indicate, as did Hansen & Romm, that the carbon fee should be “collected from the fossil fuel companies at the small number of domestic mines and ports of entry.”

Al Bartlett (2013a) responded at http://bit.ly/10loNjf to Hobson's OpEd thusly:

“Here I want to comment on the FIRST OF TWO OMISSIONS in your otherwise excellent and comprehensive presentation. . . . . The ‘stop emissions’ is right on but unrealistic. As long as there are humans on earth, emissions of CO2 will continue at some level. It seems to me to be more realistic to say that: ‘We must embark on a long-term program of continually reducing the annual number of tons per year of greenhouse gases that are released world-wide into the Earth's atmosphere.’ . . . . [To do this] we have to STOP GLOBAL POPULATION GROWTH AND THEN REDUCE THE SIZE OF THE GLOBAL POPULATION TO SOME "SUSTAINABLE" LEVEL. And in a later post Bartlett (2013b) at http://bit.ly/11Og32G stated: “You did state that the solution is to put a tax on carbon. . . . . . The next question that needs to be addressed is: Given the real world in which we live, WHAT IS THE PROBABILITY THAT ON ANY USEFUL TIME SCALE WE CAN ACHIEVE THE GOAL . . . .. OF STOPPING CARBON EMISSIONS BY MEANS OF . . . . . . .PUTTING A TAX ON CARBON?”

Bartlett (2013c) discussed the SECOND OMISSION in a post “Exporting U.S. Fossil Fuels” at http://bit.ly/14sPuBM, stating: “Art and most of the environmentalists who strongly advocate the reduction of U.S. carbon emissions omit one important point. The U.S. exports a significant fraction of the coal that it mines. Thus U.S. coal is burned in other countries where it makes about the same contribution to global warming as it would have if it had been burned in the U.S.”

Hobson (2013a) may have “missed a point,” but Hansen & Romm (2013) did not!

As indicated above they, unlike Hobson, specified that “the carbon fee should be collected from the fossil fuel companies AT THE SMALL NUMBER OF DOMESTIC MINES and ports of entry.” Thus Hansen & Romm's carbon tax would discourage coal mining in the U.S. regardless of whether or not U.S. coal is shipped out of the U.S.

Hobson, in a response at http://bit.ly/124gGEU appeared to be unaware of Hansen & Romm (2013) and failed to make the above argument. But Hobson agreed with Bartlett that THE OVERPOPULATION PROBLEM NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED SIMULTANEOUSLY WITH THE IMPOSITION OF A CARBON TAX. I also agree with Bartlett - see e.g. “L.A. Times Population Report: Beyond 7 Billion - Fighting the Last War?” [Hake (2012)] online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/TeOpJj.
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To access the complete 27 kB post please click on http://yhoo.it/1aRLIqF .

Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Academia: http://bit.ly/a8ixxm
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
Google Scholar: http://bit.ly/Wz2FP3
Twitter: http://bit.ly/juvd52
Facebook: http://on.fb.me/XI7EKm
LinkedIn: http://linkd.in/14uycpW

“If any fraction, large or small, of the observed global warming
Can be attributed to the actions of humans,
Then this is positive proof that the human population,
Living as we do,
Has exceeded the carrying capacity of the Earth.”
- Al Bartlett (2013a)


REFERENCES [URLs shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 27 June 2013.]
Hake, R.R. 2013. “Would a Carbon Tax Alone Save Life on Planet Earth? Probably Not: Overpopulation Must Also Be Addressed.” Online on the OPEN! Net-Gold archives at http://yhoo.it/1aRLIqF. Post of 27 Jun 2013 14:55:33-0700 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being distributed to various discussion lists.

The Second Greatest Shortcoming of the Human Race

Some blog followers might be interested in a recent post “The Second Greatest Shortcoming of the Human Race” [Hake (2012c)]. The abstract reads:

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ABSTRACT: Among the “Twenty-eight Quotes Relevant to Overpopulation” in my post “L.A. Times Population Report: Beyond 7 Billion - Fighting the Last War?” [Hake (2012b)] at http://bit.ly/TeOpJj is one by biologist Joel Cohen from his NYT piece “Seven Billion” [Cohen (2011)] at http://nyti.ms/SU6gFM.

Cohen, in a masterful online talk “You are 25 100-Watt Light Bulbs, Burning All Day” at http://bit.ly/VI86rj stated that: “If you have 3 people in a room and it gets warm, it’s because they’re generating 300 watts of heat – it’s like having a 300 watt light bulb going on. If you multiply 100 watts by 6.8 billion, the number of people on the planet, you find that the whole power generation of the human species is about 0.68 terawatts - a terawatt is a lot of watts: there's kilowatts, megawatts, gigawatts, and terawatts - so that's a lot!" . . . . .[[i.e., it's 10^3, 10^6, 10^9, and 10^12 watts]]. . . . .

According to Al Bartlett (2004): “The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.” I would propose a corollary: The second greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the meaning of large numbers. See e.g. the You Tube video “Powers of Ten” at http://bit.ly/T0UyKM from the Eames Office.
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Richard Hake, Emeritus Professor of Physics, Indiana University
Links to Articles: http://bit.ly/a6M5y0
Links to Socratic Dialogue Inducing (SDI) Labs: http://bit.ly/9nGd3M
Academia: http://bit.ly/a8ixxm
Blog: http://bit.ly/9yGsXh
GooglePlus: http://bit.ly/KwZ6mE
Twitter: http://bit.ly/juvd52

REFERENCES [URL's shortened by http://bit.ly/ and accessed on 16 Dec 2012.
Hake, R.R. 2012a. “L.A. Times Population Report: Beyond 7 Billion,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/Ufro6y. Post of 5 Dec 2012 14:23:20-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists and are also on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/YBNFUU with a provision for comments.

Hake, R.R. 2012b. “L.A. Times Population Report: Beyond 7 Billion - Fighting the Last War?” online on the OPEN! online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/TeOpJj. Post of 13 Dec 2012 16:14:29-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists and are also on my blog “Hake'sEdStuff” at http://bit.ly/W2EV8u with a provision for comments.

Hake, R.R. 2012c. “The Second Greatest Shortcoming of the Human Race,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://bit.ly/T0nCk6. Post of 15 Dec 2012 16:53:57-0800 to AERA-L and Net-Gold. The abstract and link to the complete post are being transmitted to several discussion lists. See also the precursors Hake (2012a,b).

The Elephant in the Room- Overpopulation

Some blog followers may be interested in a recent discussion-list post of the above title [Hake (2009). The abstract reads:

ABSTRACT: A recent LA Times report "Tackling the elephant in the room: overpopulation" calls attentions to a study "Reproduction and the carbon legacies of individuals" by Paul Murtaugh and Michael Schlax of Oregon State University. Their abstract reads:

"Much attention has been paid to the ways that people's home energy use, travel, food choices and other routine activities affect their emissions of carbon dioxide and, ultimately, their contributions to global warming. However, the reproductive choices of an individual are rarely incorporated into calculations of his personal impact on the environment. Here we estimate the extra emissions of fossil carbon dioxide that an average individual causes when he or she chooses to have children. The summed emissions of a person's descendants, weighted by their relatedness to him, may far exceed the lifetime emissions produced by the original parent. Under current conditions in the United States, for example, each child adds about 9441 metric tons of carbon dioxide to the carbon legacy of an average female, which is 5.7 times her lifetime emissions. A person's reproductive choices must be considered along with his day-today activities when assessing his ultimate impact on the global environment."

To access the complete 7 kB post please click on http://tinyurl.com/krfmw9.

REFERENCES

Hake, R.R. 2009. “The Elephant in the Room: Overpopulation,” online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://tinyurl.com/krfmw9. Post of 8 Aug 2009 20:09:31-0700 to AERA-L, Net-Gold, and Physoc.

Is Global Warming a Point of View or a Scientific Fact?

Some blog readers might be interested in a recent post "Is Global Warming really a one-sided point of view or a scientific fact? #2" [Hake (2009)]. The abstract reads:

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Bob Fuller, in his PHYSOC post of 11 March 2009, asked: "Is Global Warming really a one-sided point of view or a scientific fact?" I doubt that any scientifically literate person would call global warming a scientific "fact," but the scientific research consensus is that anthropogenic global warming: (a) does indeed exist [IPCC (2007a)], and (b) poses a threat to life on planet Earth [IPCC (2007b)]. Rick Tarara responded that " 'Global Warming' has become a semi-religious doctrine with all kinds of 'facts' of which only some are scientific." Can Tarara pinpoint any "non-scientific facts" in the IPCC reports? In any case, the generally ignored gorilla in the living room is GLOBAL OVERPOPULATION as pointed out by e.g., Al Bartlett (2008), Elmer Eisner (1999, 2009), and Chris Hedges (2009).
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To access the complete post please click on http://tinyurl.com/aj2fcg

REFERENCES
Hake, R.R. 2009. "Re: Is Global Warming really a one-sided point of view or a scientific fact? #2," AERA-L post of 14 March 2009 09:33:00-0700, online on the OPEN! AERA-L archives at http://tinyurl.com/aj2fcg