What's New 2 October 2009

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park    Friday, 02 Oct 09   Washington, DC

1.  POPULATION: WHERE IS MALTHUS WHEN WE NEED HIM?
Even as Nature featured the problem of "planetary boundaries” (WN 25 Sep 
09), a special issue of New Scientist asked, why isn't population control a 
key priority.  Paul and Anne Ehrlich, clearly thought it should be.  They 
note, as Malthus did 200 years earlier, that we have a choice between a 
falling birth rate and a rising death rate.  Jesse Ausubel, however, argued 
that technology will save us.  Where has he been?  We already have the 
technology to save us; the pill has no side effects, is 100% effective, and 
is cheap as aspirin.  Reiner Klingholz worried that problems in Europe will 
grow as the European population shrinks.  It's been shrinking for years, 
and the last time I checked Europe was doing great.  Fred Pearce blamed 
overconsumption. The poor half of the world’s population, he says, is 
responsible for just 7% of the world's emissions.  Perhaps he's suggesting 
that we should make sure they remain poor lest they exacerbate warming.

2.  CLIMATE CHANGE:  WHAT HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING?
My e-mail is stuffed with blogs and articles from libertarian magazines 
saying the climate isn’t warming, it's cooling.  And it's been doing it for 
almost 10 years.  But how unusual is that?  Not very.  But, as today’s 
Science put it, "climate researchers are responding in their preferred 
venue, the peer-reviewed literature."  Which leads me right into my almost-
weekly rant: where were these people when the Bush administration canceled 
the DSCOVR project?  By now we would know whether the warming is 
anthropogenic.

3.  ARDI:  FOSSIL SKELETON FROM AFRICA PREDATES LUCY.
Yet another hominid find in Africa, Ardipithecus ramidus, appears to 
resolve many uncertainties about the initial stage of evolutionary 
adaptation after the hominid lineage split from that of the chimpanzees. 
The fossil skeleton has been dated at 4.4 million years and was much more 
primitive than the famous 3.2 million-year-old Lucy of the species 
Australopithecus afarensis.   The team that found Ardi was led by Tim 
White, UC California paleontologist, who in 2003 found the oldest fossil of 
Homo sapiens, a mere 160,000 years.

4. CO2 IS GREEN: VOODOO SCIENCE RECYCLES EVERY DECADE.
The Environmental Protection Agency recently ruled that CO2 should be 
classified as a pollutant because rising levels “endanger public health or 
welfare.”  The counterattack came from oil and coal producers with an ad 
declaring that CO2 results in a greener Earth.  We are reminded that a 
decade ago scientists received petition cards from the late physicist Fred 
Seitz urging the US government to reject the Kyoto global-warming accord. 
The mailing included a 6 Dec 97 op-ed from the Wall Street Journal 
explaining how we can all make this a better world: burn more 
hydrocarbons.  It described increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere as "a 
wonderful and unexpected gift of the Industrial Revolution." 

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
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