Oil interests make billions of dollars.
Coal interests make billions of dollars.
Because of pollution and its effects on climate and on people, their bill is finally coming due and they don’t want to pay up. Naturally they will fight change.

How can people reach them when they don’t want to be reached?  By conferences like Copenhagen based on research and persistent confrontation from the world’s people, here, there, everywhere till we get the job of emission controls and greener living technologies universally understood and adopted.
Huge job.  Join the future.

C.Curtis.Dillon…

You’re much too cynical——lighten up a little and don’t be a nay sayer.  If you remember the film “Soylent Green” where an overcrowded world resorts to harvesting humans and producung biscuits to feed the burgeoning population.  Well, in the future we’re not going to eat our own (don’t over-think that phrase), but science is on the verge of synthesizing food that will, in essence, meet the distribution needs of the world.

Good for mankind?  More people?  Every useful piece of land is presently under cultivation.  Irrigation using ground water will ultimately turn much of this land unusable as mineral salts destroy the fertility of the soil (look at the breadbasket of the Middle East, Iraq, for the truth in this).  Warmer weather may improve growth rates of plants, but other influences will counteract any gains.  More violent storms and more severe droughts will make crop yields unpredictable.

As for distribution, we might be able to move food from the developed world to those who need it but would anyone actually accept empty shelves in their local supermarket as a consequence?  If we could keep 100% of everything that is produced, we might be able to support more but that too is problematic.  Much of what we grow is lost due to spoilage.

The current shortages are a result of an improving lifestyle in China and India plus crop issues around the world.  China and India demand more meat and other energy intensive foods as a consequence of their improving financial state.  As more people earn discretionary incomes, this demand will increase and shortages will also become a greater problem.  Crop failures in the only nations creating major surpluses (Canada, USA and Brazil) would have devastating consequences for the world.

The reality of food in the world does not support any argument that we could double or even triple the world’s population.  We are struggling now to meet demand.  The system is so stretched that even a minor break causes untold misery.  Like a typhoon in Malaysia which caused severe rice shortages throughout the Far East.  And 3 years of drought in India is pushing them to the edge.

Please, don’t argue that the world can keep doing this.  We have too many people already.  Gimmicks won’t fix the problem.

Exxon CEO, Rex Tillerson, who currently makes $30
million a year in salary and bonuses, no doubt shares
the delight of climate disruption deniers. The cui bono
crowd loves a cabal, just not in their camp.

The world good easily support twice or even three times the current population——it’s just a matter of resource distribution——it’s that simple!

As for global warming, it is generally known among scientists that overall, global warming will be a benefit for the world.  It may be detrimental to some, but the vast majority of the earth’s population will benefit from a warmer world.

Actually, Miller, it’s 10 billion but that is too much.  We are quickly running out of resources and space to hold so many people.  The world’s food system is one major drought or one major outbreak of crop disease away from a humanitarian disaster (not that we aren’t already in one as is).  But climate change is an issue that far too many people cannot even comprehend let alone agree with.  They have this strange notion that the atmosphere is infinite in size and can take all the junk we dump into it without consequence.  The same goes for the oceans where many believe there is an infinite amount of fish and unlimited capacity to absorb all the pollution we dump into them.  So, instead of even accepting the possibility there might be a problem, they sweep the whole idea aside as rubbish or a conspiracy.  I am embarrassed by the actions of these researchers who have given the climate community a black eye but I do not for a minute think that this has debunked any theories about what is happening.  Those who deny there is something major happening have not witnessed it first hand.  Unfortunately, climate change hasn’t come to the USA yet so they can’t see anything out of their front window that looks amiss.  There are others who are not so fortunate.

World population approaching 1 trillion!!! Good grief. Even for a non-scientist, this is a bit much.

Regardless of the content of some of these emails, the basic science is still valid.  Even to a non-scientist such as myself, it is apparent that with a world population approaching one trillion (I think) we must be profoundly affecting the world around us. How could we not?  Then look at the pollution that we create. Then look at the finite resources which we are using up.  Then explain to me, with a straight face, how global warming isn’t even a possibility, nor worthy of debate.