Climate Change Research

Adair Turner – a senior fellow at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, the chair of the Energy Transitions Commission, and former chairman of the U.K. Financial Services Authority – has penned a ripping article explaining why a growing population no longer has any benefit and how falling fertility rates and population decline are the mark of “rich, successful human societies“. Turner also explains why economies experiencing rapid population growth will never achieve full employment:

Every two years, the United Nations issues its latest estimate of future population trends. Its 2019 projection reveals a stark divide. Across all of Asia, Europe, and the Americas, population stability has already been achieved or soon will be, with the median projection suggesting an increase from 6.4 billion today to 6.5 billion in 2100, a rise of just 2%…

In all countries that have achieved middle-income status, and where women are well educated and have reproductive freedom, fertility rates are at or below replacement levels…

Rich, successful human societies choose fertility rates that imply gradual population decline.

Much conventional commentary laments the inevitable consequence that the “working age” population, often rigidly defined as people aged 15 to 64, must decline as a ratio to those aged 65 and above. If fertility rates cannot be coaxed higher, it is often argued, immigration must be embraced as the only answer to impending labor shortages.

But in a world of rapidly expanding automation potential, demographic shrinkage is largely a boon, not a threat. Our expanding ability to automate human work across all sectors — agriculture, industry, and services — makes an ever-growing workforce increasingly irrelevant to improvements in human welfare.

Conversely, automation makes it impossible to achieve full employment in countries still facing rapid population growth… we should at least recognize that this is where the real demographic threat lies. Automation has turned conventional economic wisdom on its head: there is greater prosperity in fewer numbers.

Do you have a link to that? Lord Turner of Ecchinswell does have some interesting things to say.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-growing-population-no-longer-has-any...

Nice one freeride...

Some hard truths in there re. the impotence of 'the greens', and the bullshit being peddled by certain cohorts.

"...This idea that we can somehow maintain massive population increases and standards of living while reducing emissions or somehow ameliorating the extinction crisis is a pernicious fiction. Quite literally one of the most insane self deceptions humanity has ever told itself.

Either population growth is rapidly stabilised or the western standard of living with all that entails is hugely curtailed or transferred to the developing world.

This idea we can have both: the evidence of the insanity of that intellectual position is stark and growing by the hour."

I particularly like that last paragragh. The ruse is up. People are smarter now and all the information is out there for all to see.

Its even un the ipcc reports, ...if one reads them without blinkers on.

explain away zealots...

Nah, the article is basically a restatement of standard demographic opinion with a bit thrown in on automation to account for the ability of developed economies to maintain growth as their populations age. Sorry, but the word "immigration" doesn't seem to appear except in reference to the fact that immigrants' rates of reproduction quickly fall towards the average in their host countries. Extrapolating from an article concerned mainly with the problems of natural population growth in Africa to the impact of immigration in Australia is nothing more than guesswork. But nice try!

Of course if we drill down into his arguments a bit further we come across a problem. The distinguished Baron of Ecchinswell seems to have overlooked Japan which should be the perfect example of his hypothesis; aging population, highly automated production systems and a world leader in robotics. The problem is that Japan has an extremely high proportion of elderly workers and significant labor shortages in many areas which they have recently started to address by importing workers from places like Indonesia. Could it be that, despite his impressive title and CV, the Baron is being less than competent in his analysis?

Immigrant labour constitutes 1 percent of the Japanese population and is not a pathway to permanent residency.

Australia’s immigrant workforce is 10 percent of our population.....and our population is 40 percent immigrants.

Then there is our illegal immigrant workforce which is alleged to be 1.5 million strong....or 7 percent of our entire population again.

Laurie - Remember your despair at the way people weren’t respectful of the opinions of experts because they weren’t correspondent to their beliefs ? Yep , that’s exactly what you’re doing in this instance.

Well actually it is 2% and has doubled in the last 5 years, which should give you an idea of the trend line. Legislation planned for April will also create a pathway to permanency.
https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/Japan-immigration/Foreign-workers-in-J...

As for the opinions of experts, the plural is important. If the majority of genuine experts in a field agree then yes it is disrespectful to disregard their opinion ......... without substantial evidence. In this case you have quoted a single "expert" whose views are not those of the majority. Combine that with the weakness of his failure to address Japan and, sorry but I feel it is legitimate to disagree when sufficient evidence is available. As it is here.

Good post Free ride agree with pretty much everything written.

BTW. Laurie in regard to the transport thing.

The uptake of hybrid cars etc has been slow because it's only starting to hit that stage of technology where its truly becoming a decent alternative.

I had friends who are very well off and had a top of the line hybrid car a few years back and it was a lemon, all they had was issues, they were so proud off it at first then they eventually got rid of it and went back to petrol driven car.

It will all happen and once the ball starts rolling like roof top solar it will happen quickly, but it's just something that needs to evolve naturally, you would expect Europe will be the leader in this area with short driving distances etc and then other countries will follow suit.

IMHO the typical public transport whinge is just that a whinge about nothing...we actually have a great pubic transport system in Australia, even regional areas have great bus and rail services (our local busses must run at a loss as they are almost always empty for much of the journey)

Problem with public transport is it only really works when going to central cities areas, or works well in areas that are set out in strips, but generally it's rare for trains and busses to go where people need to go, hence most people drive.

And everyone wants the bus running a few hundred metres from their place, but don't want it stopping every minute along the route, its a no win situation.

Other issue is with train stations, people first need to drive to the station, then get a carpark and then they are magnets for theft and vandalism.

People will continue to bang on about lack of public transport forever, nobody will ever be happy and off course nobody wants a new rail line in their backyard.

We do have a problem with our mentality of needing big cars though, especially this SUV trend.

"Problem with public transport is it only really works when going to central cities areas....."
The problem in most cities is that this doesn't work well enough and the causes have been political influence on planning particularly the over emphasis on road building and widening to satisfy the car makers as well as the fossil fuel and construction industries. It is only in the last decade that I have seen any serious attempts in Sydney to get people out of their cars by providing express bus lanes. Urban sprawl has also been a problem and a lot of this comes back to nimbyism, people opposing medium density development in areas well suited to it close to the CBD and on existing transport corridors. Politicians have taken the easy way out over decades resulting in large numbers of people commuting long distances on seruiously congested roads. The consequences of their political expediency were always obvious.

People opposing high density living is nimbyism.....

How dare people not want their habitat turned into ghettoised shitholes purely in order to accommodate people that invited themselves to our country ?

How dare they would rather have a semblance of the standards of living they SHOULD maintain except for the flooding of unrequited masses of humanity ?

People used to defend their homelands to the death .....now they’re not even allowed to semi- quietly acquiesce to being colonised without raising the ire of those who encourage their eviction.

Meanwhile reality keeps knocking at the door with ever worsening news.
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v41/n15/francis-gooding/all-the-news-is-bad

Reality ?

That’s the most overblown, overly dramatic bullshit I’ve read since someone claimed that Trump had us at Two Minutes to midnight on the Doomsday clock.

How about this line as a nice little indicator of the farcical levels of bullshit involved:

“The Chinese government is responding to the anticipated loss of military and naval bases in the rising Pacific by creating militarised artificial islands in the South China Sea, ‘a dry run, so to speak, for life as a superpower in a flooded world’. “

So , according to the author of your link , Laurie, the Chinese have reclaimed sunken atolls, which are still only inches above sea level , in anticipation of rising sea levels. And not purely due to their military expediency . Apparently, these sunken atolls have been turned into military bases because the Chinese fear that their pacific bases - which don’t actually exist- are threatened by rising sea levels. That’s the only reason for their construction.

Even you couldn’t back that claim with a straight face , Laurie.

We can't all live in high rises in the city,

1. Because many of us don't have employment that suits living in these areas.
2. Because most of us could never afford to live in these areas even if we wanted to.
3. Some of us want a decent quality of life, a jungle of concrete is not my idea of a place to live.

Even you Loz have to admit that, unless you are prepared to over-ride democracy completely , the wishes of local residents to have some agency in how their suburb is developed must be respected.

Australia has no history of high population density, unlike Europe and Asia. Not during the millennia of aboriginal sovereignty and not in the 200 years of European settlement.
To impose it against the express wishes of current residents is profoundly un-democratic.

Or do you see it another way?

...speaking of bullshit...

sorry, totally unrelated, but no one's gonna read it behind the censorship wall...so...

old mate tawhidi has a large apparatus working against him as his influence grows.

I found this most interesting following the little ON aljazeera scandal (...scandal to some anyway)...

https://m.facebook.com/theimamofpeace/photos/a.1526441740934842/24566626...

Ha ha freeride, I used to joke about The People's Republic Of Pittwater when people became outraged at the thought of apartment blocks in Newport. The residents of an area do not form a detached political unit. They are part of several larger polities, in the case of the now abolished council area of Pittwater, the state of NSW and the nation of Australia. As such they gain numerous benefits but at the cost of having less control over their area. So no, it is not undemocratic to impose change on the present inhabitants of an area. The reality is that the country would be absolutely ungovernable if local residents had a veto on local development.

having seen how that works over the years I'd much rather have more democracy at the local level and not less.

decisions imposed about developments from bureaucrats in Sydney or Canberra rarely pass any kind of utilitarian philosophical test.

they most privilege developers and a nexus of lobbyists/politicians and big money.

You have more faith in that system than I do.

@Sypkan,

How much of Tawhidi's schtick do you believe?

I do freeride. It is not the basic system that is the problem, it is the collapse of integrity in public life. We desperately need new laws to prevent politicians simply lying and to prevent "lobbyists" essentially bribing politicians to support their interests. Not to mention the broader need to prevent Google, Facebook etc using sophisticated techniques to influence public opinion and voting intentions. So yeh, I'm a crotchety old bastard who will get around to waving his walking stick at young hooligans at some point in the not too distant future ......

I agree with you FR. My point was that bulldozers clearing habitat in foreign lands impacts the climate crisis just the same. It’s the expanding world population total that is the problem. The fact that some people can move here actually helps maintain the natural habitat from where the immigrants came from.
I’m just speaking from a one world viewpoint.
I hate the idea of more people as much as anyone. This planet is heading for population correction and it can’t possibly be pretty

Depends where they are from most peoples carbon footprint etc is much smaller in developing countries than developed countries.

3.3% of the worlds population are living in a country they weren’t born in. Their carbon footprint may increase or decrease depending on which countries they move between and the lifestyle choices they are afforded. If you stretch it way, way in your favour then you could argue that comes to a grand total of 1% influence. Like I said, immigration is not the problem that’s causing climate change. Know your enemy.
I acknowledge it’s a valid argument, just for a different thread

I don't agree a large number of people move from developing countries to developed countries, going from average low carbon footprints to ones that are much much higher..

Even if half of that 3.3% move from developing to developed countries the increase in carbon foot print from that could be quite large.(impossible to say how much)

We know one of Australia's greatest influence on increasing our carbon footprint is population growth, you only have to look at Lauries article he posted that shows while electricity use emissions dropped all other areas transport, industry, agriculture increased, much of this increase was caused by population increases from immigration.

If we cut immigration to very low levels with our low birth rate it would be much much easier to deal with this issue, our emissions from energy would fall greatly and other areas could flat line and in time we could work at reducing emissions in these areas..

Problem with this is, as much as id love to greatly cut immigration rates for all the reasons Blowin always points out, reality is it totally screw our economy over and we would all suffer financially.

IMHO the smart way to do things is, slowly cut immigration to as low as possible during good times and only increase immigration when we are in a recession.

Yes there are some sound arguments for moving the deckchairs on the sun deck closer to the bulkheads. Icebergs? The captain has just reassured me there are none at all in this area.

Climate change is not affected by political borders

ha ha yeah right.

So if we took away borders and just let who ever wanted to move to developing countries move it wouldn't affect carbon emissions?

Sorry it would be like pouring petrol on a fire.

By your logic if the entire Australian population moved out of the country, then the country would be saved from climate change because of its zero human carbon footprint.
There are islands without human inhabitants that are beginning to feel the weight of other nations habits.
The whole reason we are going down is because of this blame shifting mentality. The day we start actually fixing this problem will be the day after we can admit that it is our problem. Shoredump and IndoDreaming are to blame for this imminent threat. When you, and the other deniers can confront that reality then we have hope. I stand by my original point, that the biggestl threat and the best way to actually solve the problem, along with the tech, is to put a halt on world population growth

We are currently taking a huge risk that we will lose control of emissions. Major feedbacks which increase emissions from non-human sources are already occurring. Right now there are wildfires across the Arctic putting huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere which will only be reabsorbed slowly, if at all, by regrowth. These fires also deposit soot on ice sheets increasing the amount of heat they absorb from sunlight. We also now regularly have huge fires in California and Southern Europe. These fires are already starting to exceed human emissions from the regions they occur. There is also massive deforestation occurring in the Amazon and emissions from that could add the equivalent of a year's emissions from China and America. More and more dead zones are occurring in the ocean. Off the coast of Namibia hydrogen sulfide, another greenhouse gas, is being produced from a dead zone a thousand miles long. Permafrost in the Arctic stores huge amounts of methane which will be released as they melt and there are also methane hydrate deposits on the ocean floor which will melt and release their methane if water temperatures rise sufficiently.

But what the hell, let's make sure all those deckchairs are properly organised.

Govt will buy into Climate Change once they set-up donation rort to Liberal Party.

We've seen it with the Water Buy back & Indue Liberal Party Cash Deposit Cards.
Cheaper per year to keep an ex PM than orbit a $600K Refugee Stasis Pod ...Wot!
Today's media savvy voters demand nothing less than the high level #1 rorting!

"Miasma" means foreboding atmosphere & is driving a Seachange Rortback
T.D.R Transferable Development Rights or Liberal Party (Titanic Donor Rort)
Liberals need only set up TDR 's for Seachange CEO's to cash in while donating.
Hey presto each & every ratepayer is bribed to move the Mobster outta town.

A Wave of good fortune will wipeout Pentecostal Nativity Sets...(Money for Jam!)
All hail Climate Change! TDR is the new Messiah! ...Coming to a denier near you!
https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com...

Of course the most sensible course of action would be to double the populations of Sydney and Melbourne .

Don’t you agree ?

https://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/quite-scary-rising-tem...

When the spinifex hit Sydney, it was the last thing we expected
When the desert reached to Gladesville we tried to tame it
And when the emus grazed at Pyrmont, it suddenly dawned on us all
Hah, finally the world was silent and the door was shut.

great song, great band.

Climate Change Hates Surfing

Moved it into its own forum

.

2019 Pacific Nations Forum creates waves.

Oz PM is allergic to COAL.[ Forum was banned from using that scary word 'COAL']

Tuvalu PM addresses Oz PM : "You're concerned with saving your economy,we're concerned about saving our people!"

Australia is accused of putting c... (word) before Pacific Family.
Oz is completely at odds with Pacific directorate.

Oz PM was busy departing seas upon hearing drums of thunder from downunder.

Colonial dummy spit from 'Acting Oz PM' (Hon Barnaby's seat warmer MP)
"I get a little bit annoyed when we have people in those sorts of countries pointing the finger at Australia & say we should be shutting down all our resources sector so that they will continue to survive!"
"Pacific Islands will survive, their workers come here to pick our fruit grown with hard Australian enterprise & endeavour & we welcome them & always will."

Fiji PM: "Is this Australia's idea of a step up in it's relations with the Pacific, it's certainly not a step forward. It's a step backwards!"
"China never insult us & are better people than PM Morrison. I can tell you that."

In the wash up...Pacific Nations want Australia expelled from the Forum.

(Pacific allies just faxed Oz strike coordinates to Chinese War Ships ...didn't they).

Extra funding for any school etching Pacific peacemaker Scomo into real Oz history.

Rush Limbaugh? Joanne Nova? really?

Dude this is a surfing website...

"Our sun is reaching the end of it's normal 11 year cycle and is now approaching a period of minimum solar activity. This one's being dubbed the Grand Solar Minimum. Some say it's the real cause of climate change and that it's going to wreak havoc with our weather systems for years to come, possibly even tipping us into a mini ice age. This week we have a look at the science of Solar Cycles."

https://hydroloop.org/real-climate-change-danger-is-the-grand-solar-mini...

Others say that "climate change" is the Beginning of Sorrows from the New Testament.

From Luke 21..

25 And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring;

"In the very next verse, Christ tells us, “All these are the beginning of sorrows” (Matthew 24:8). This is the point at which we find ourselves today. Christ told us it is only the beginning of sorrows! The disasters occurring before our eyes are just the beginning. They are going to get much worse."

https://www.thetrumpet.com/16426-increased-natural-and-weather-disasters

Just food for thought.. relax, don't be triggered. Breath.

a real christ would say no such thing, brutha.

In chapter 12, paragraph 35, Harry Potter said:

"The wind will howl and the sea will rage whilst the sun shines bright as flame. Cast your eyes aside lest ye be blinded and cause the earth to crack, spilling forth Darth Vader, Matt and a bunyip, to wreak havoc upon all humankind and say naughty words."

Just food for thought.. relax, don't be triggered. Breath?

page 1, verse 1, " the waves will pump, the wind offshore, the barrels will open. The sun be warm, the beers be cold and that my friends will never get old".

Sounds like heaven dave, where do I sign up?

{Kingy Bodybash'n Reserve} ~~~/(C`..[ surfer's code )...is davetherave selling out?
See Westofthelake was quick to slide thru the backdoor & knock the top off one.
Line in the sand gets blurred for swellnet crew...tbb is on board with that! ~Chill~

no need to sign up crew, plenty of space and free for everyone so tbb, dave not selling out but giving things out, especially since you said you would be shouting the beers. bloody good blokes those bodysurfers.

JEANS 4 TEENS
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-46380418
https://sl.sbs.com.au/public/image/file/a0470e16-ac13-4b1c-a75a-885b9f40...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/image/10902114-3x2-700x467.jpg
https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/climate-change/kids-storm...

Kids across the country are protesting climate change inaction - defying our PM. But here are all the reasons we should be supporting them. Thanks to Jean Hinchliffe for her hard work and passion! With kids like this, the future looks pretty great. #TheProjectTV pic.twitter.com/671Bh7l9T1

— The Project (@theprojecttv) November 30, 2018

Oz Govt leaders have heroically turned Climate Change on it's head.

Govt floats Qld dust bowl drought town a new Emergency Services Boat.
Not weird, as some 16 months later the rains did flood & SES Ark was dusted off!
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-04-05/flood-boat-finally-gets-used-in-t...

Victorian town under flood gets showered under a bucket of Drought Relief.
16 months on in drought, town had piled 200,000 x $5 bills to bank off a town Dam.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/drought-relief-no-longer-a-dry-a...

Oz Govt's claim their climate change solutions go unrecognised by United Nations.

Buster J & The Murray Darlings send a message to Canberra...'Let it Rain'.

Hahaha
https://www.smh.com.au/national/no-point-having-a-good-education-without...

Well, there ya go! Haha