On limiting population growth thru contraception

[Warrior1979]

Except to forget the fact that ice originally takes up room even though its less dense than water. You need to subtract the original ice volume from this: total icewater volume = 27,576,180km3 before then figuring out how much it would raise the overall sea level. It also assumes that none of the ice they are taking into account is inland and would raise the level of water at locations inland and not the ocean. Lots of problems with the math here.

I’m also still waiting for you to explain why there is such a huge difference between the two different estimates you gave me. On the onehand you told me the sea level was rising at around 3mm a year. And then on the other you said within the century we can expect at least 3ft if not 7ft in sea rise. The problem is though that the 3ft rise means a 9mm sea rise every year, and a 7ft sea rise means up over 20mm sea rise per year. My question to you is how do you explain the difference between these numbers? Your predicting at least a 9mm rise in sea level average for the century when the highest we have supposedly seen in one year the last 30 years is 3mm. I’d also point out that even the studies that supposedly show we have had sea level rise during the last 30 years show it to be pretty consistently around 3mm per year.

I can only assume your predicting an exponential growth in sea level rise during the next century and I have to ask where such predictions are coming from and what “models” they are based on because they certainly are based on the data we have so far.

What about this graph of sea level rise which shows a supposed 2mm-3mm rise in sea level for the last 100 years, tells us to expect exponential growth in sea level rise of anywhere near the magnitude your predicting?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Current_sea_level_rise
bluemarble4us.com/page07.html

I haven’t bothered to read through everything yet, but I suspect it may have something to do with rising temperature and thermal expansion (7th grade science ) One of those 7th grade experiments was to take the temperature of water with ice cubes at various intervals, and analyze the results. Water temperature was fairly constant until the ice cubes melt, at which point is rapidly increased to room temperature. Thermal expansion also goes along with that, though it wasn’t measured in that particular experiment.

Once the ice is out of the water, I would expect the temperature (and expansion) to start rising faster than in the fast. The reason is that once the majority of ice is out of the water, the land-based glaciers may continue to melt, but the runoff will be above freezing once it hits the open waterways.

 

[Contarini]

Yes but how did their views compare to those they were against at the time? While their idea of justice may not have been perfect, was it not a whole lot better than the prominent views of justice at that time? Whether they had justice, temperance, and prudence completely figured out at that point doesn’t matter, because the point is that they championed the values that got us where we are today. Hindsight is always 20/20.

You seem to be assuming that the traditional meaning is inferior to the contemporary one.

I made no such assumption whatsoever. You misunderstood me entirely.

I think that the influence of folks like John Locke has been mostly bad–even Pope Leo’s Rerum Novarum was shaped by Locke to some degree, and I think it’s the worse for it. I prefer Aquinas any day in terms of a basic understanding of these issues, even though he did think it was right to execute heretics (a point on which I disagree with him, I hasten to add).

Edwin

 

[Nate13]

You seem to be assuming that the traditional meaning is inferior to the contemporary one.

I made no such assumption whatsoever. You misunderstood me entirely.

I think that the influence of folks like John Locke has been mostly bad–even Pope Leo’s Rerum Novarum was shaped by Locke to some degree, and I think it’s the worse for it. I prefer Aquinas any day in terms of a basic understanding of these issues, even though he did think it was right to execute heretics (a point on which I disagree with him, I hasten to add).

Edwin

Actually I was assuming the opposite haha. I assumed the current meaning as specified by the Church was better than the meaning of “lust” or “prudence” as defined commonly at that time. My point was we can criticize them for not getting the spirit of these terms completely right or we can accept that their understanding was an improvement compared to the time period they were in. Our understanding of these ideas is always developing and building on itself.

 

[Contarini]

You’ve tried this gambit before

It’s not a gambit. It’s a historical observation.

but everything outside of faith and morals is meant to be learned and developed by non-Magisterial Catholics (and others) in the world of living and acting using reason, without exercising "religious authority”.

So you say. You certainly do not speak for Catholics as a whole in this point. I find your perspective fundamentally atheistic. All truth is God’s truth. You have a weird and artificial notion of “religious authority” if you think it just descends from on high to pronounce on selective points of dogma while leaving one’s approach to reality as a whole untouched.

Free enterprise economic development started in the great Catholic monastic estates of the ninth century,

Perhaps so. These would be the same monastic estates that had arguably betrayed their own rule by turning themselves into economic enterprises and which were found in need of drastic reform by the turn of the millennium.

You are holding up for imitation a development that the Catholic monastic tradition as a whole has generally regarded as spiritually disastrous, and against which most later monastic reform movements reacted.

I’m overstating a bit–these developments probably weren’t all bad. History is complicated (as GKC likes to say). But certainly much Catholic thought has been very ambivalent about the development of monasteries into economic centers.

and a solid basis of economic Catholic thought developed from the fourteenth century. In the fifteenth century the Late Scholastics who were Thomists (followers of St Thomas)

They claimed to be followers of St. Thomas, and they certainly used his ideas as a starting point. However, if the summary of their economic thought that I have heard from you and others is correct (I don’t know this material well myself), then they clearly departed from him in economic matters.

“writing and teaching at the University of Salamanca in Spain, sought to explain the full range of human action and social; organization.” They “observed the existence of economic law, inexorable forces of cause and effect that operate very much as other natural laws. Over the course of several generations, they discovered and explained the laws of supply and demand, the cause of inflation, the operation of foreign exchange rates, and the subjective nature of economic value…” For these reasons Joseph Schumpeter applauded them as the first real economists. (Thomas E Woods Jr, The Church And The Market, Lexington Books, 2005, p 8).

False, as free enterprise based on the principles of cause and effect, where in the market wealth is produced and wealth is exchanged, has the undoubted affirmation of Bl John Paul II, and Benedict XVI where, in a democracy, it functions within a rule of law.

Not just a rule of law, but charity and the common good.

 

[Contarini]

Now see the affirmation of free enterprise as Bl John Paul II teaches in Centesimus Annus, 1991:
CA 42. ‘Returning now to the initial question: can it perhaps be said that, after the failure of , capitalism is the victorious social system, and that capitalism should be the goal of the countries now making efforts to rebuild their economy and society? Is this the model which ought to be proposed to the countries of the Third World which are searching for the path to true economic and civil progress?
‘The answer is obviously complex.

In other words, he is not simply answering “yes” to the question. That needs to be underlined, given the way you and others are distorting his thought.

If by “capitalism” is meant an economic system which recognizes the fundamental and positive role of business, the market, private property and the resulting responsibility for the means of production, as well as free human creativity in the economic sector, then the answer is certainly in the affirmative, even though it would perhaps be more appropriate to speak of a “business economy”, “market economy” or simply “free economy”.

Yes, and he goes on (emphasis mine):

But if by “capitalism” is meant a system in which freedom in the economic sector is not circumscribed within a strong juridical framework [your “rule of law”] which places it at the service of human freedom in its totality, and which sees it as a particular aspect of that freedom, the core of which is ethical and religious, then the reply is certainly negative. The Marxist solution has failed, but the realities of marginalization and exploitation remain in the world, especially the Third World, as does the reality of human alienation, especially in the more advanced countries. Against these phenomena the Church strongly raises her voice. Vast multitudes are still living in conditions of great material and moral poverty. The collapse of the Communist system in so many countries certainly removes an obstacle to facing these problems in an appropriate and realistic way, but it is not enough to bring about their solution. Indeed, there is a risk that a radical capitalistic ideology could spread which refuses even to consider these problems, in the *a priori *belief that any attempt to solve them is doomed to failure, and which blindly entrusts their solution to the free development of market forces.

The problem is that American capitalists are using the phrase “free enterprise” to justify precisely the kind of laissez-faire, idolatrous approach that JPII explicitly condemns. He says in that last sentence that simply relying on free enterprise to improve the human condition is wrong. This is precisely what the dominant faction in the Republican party wants to do–reject any kind of societal intervention on behalf of the poor, claiming that simply letting the laws of “free enterprise” work will be to everyone’s benefit.

When American “conservatives” or libertarians claim that this approach is endorsed by Blessed Pope JPII, they are not speaking the truth.

And Pope Benedict’s position is less favorable to capitalism.

CA 43. The Church has no models to present;’

And he goes on:

models that are real and truly effective can only arise within the framework of different historical situations, through the efforts of all those who responsibly confront concrete problems in all their social, economic, political and cultural aspects, as these interact with one another.84 For such a task the Church **offers her social teaching as an **indispensable and ideal orientation, a teaching which, as already mentioned, recognizes the positive value of the market and of enterprise, but which at the same time points out that these need to be oriented towards the common good. This teaching also recognizes the legitimacy of workers’ efforts to obtain full respect for their dignity and to gain broader areas of participation in the life of industrial enterprises so that, while cooperating with others and under the direction of others, they can in a certain sense "work for themselves"85 through the exercise of their intelligence and freedom.

You omit the actual words of JPII and somewhat misleadingly substitute the far less profound (and exegetically indefensible) words of Fr. Percy.

Edwin

 

[StAnastasia]

I can only assume your predicting an exponential growth in sea level rise during the next century and I have to ask where such predictions are coming from and what “models” they are based on because they certainly are based on the data we have so far.

Nate13m let’s agree to disagree, or else this well be in interminable war of citation of sources. I am not a scientist but a theologian, dealing with theological and moral implications of science denial. For my science I rely on climate scientists such as the staff of the International Energy Agency, who have issued this warning:

"The world is likely to build so many fossil-fueled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be “lost for ever”, according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.

"Anything built from now on that produces carbon will do so for decades, and this “lock-in” effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world’s foremost authority on energy economics has found. If this is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.

“The door is closing,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. “I am very worried – if we don’t change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever.”

 

[buffalo]

Nate13m let’s agree to disagree, or else this well be in interminable war of citation of sources. I am not a scientist but a theologian, dealing with theological and moral implications of science denial. For my science I rely on climate scientists such as the staff of the International Energy Agency, who have issued this warning:

"The world is likely to build so many fossil-fueled power stations, energy-guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be “lost for ever”, according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.

"Anything built from now on that produces carbon will do so for decades, and this “lock-in” effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world’s foremost authority on energy economics has found. If this is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.

“The door is closing,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. “I am very worried – if we don’t change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety]. The door will be closed forever.”

The earth is not a closed system.

 

[You]

I have to say I don’t get it. Burning fossil fuels is making global warming and causing rising sea-levels. And we are now at peak-oil, and oil production and burning will decrease from now on.

 

[You]

The earth is not a closed system.

Its an amazing system. Is there any other planet out there which provides all these materials and resources.

 

[buffalo]

What releases more into the air - the rotting jungle floor or man?

 

[You]

Billions of years of rotting jungle floor.

 

[Warrior1979]

I have to say I don’t get it. Burning fossil fuels is making global warming and causing rising sea-levels. And we are now at peak-oil, and oil production and burning will decrease from now on.

Being at peak oil would mean less production and burning of oil, but it would also mean more production and burning of other sources. Some of those sources include dirty fuels, such as coal, which the U.S. certainly has plenty of. In the worst case scenario, it means mass burning of sources such as trees, which of course store CO2 absorbed from the atmosphere.

 

[Warrior1979]

The earth is not a closed system.

That’s true, and the reason why I view the solar carrying capacity of the earth as the norm. Of course, that is not good for a population beyond that capacity, which is where we are now. When the nonrenewables that allow the current level of population to exist go away, so will the excess population.

 

[StAnastasia]

That’s true, and the reason why I view the solar carrying capacity of the earth as the norm. Of course, that is not good for a population beyond that capacity, which is where we are now. When the nonrenewables that allow the current level of population to exist go away, so will the excess population.

Most estimates I’ve seen for sustainability are in the range of 1-3 billion. So however you look at it we now stand at least four billion over solar carrying capacity. The stopgap measure I hope we can implement is nuclear generation of electricity, which should allow us to synthesize liquid fuels in sufficient quantity to give us the grace period slowly to scale back on population. However, even so there is not an infinite supply of uranium (maybe a century’s worth) unless we can begin extracting it from sea water.

StAnastasia

 

[Abu]

Contarini #363
They claimed to be followers of St. Thomas, and they certainly used his ideas as a starting point. However, if the summary of their economic thought that I have heard from you and others is correct (I don’t know this material well myself), then they clearly departed from him in economic matters.

From one who knows so little of the great contribution of the Late Scholastics, how foolish to assume that they “clearly departed from him in economic matters”! Learn from those who do know – Dr Chafuen, Dr Woods, Rodney Stark, Fr James v Schall, S.J., Fr Percy. Further, just as St Thomas built on the philosophy of the pagan Aristotle, Catholics can employ a broad range of sources to understand and explain the workings of the economy.

The connection is there for those who wish to face reality.
St Augustine taught that wickedness was not inherent in commerce, that price was a function not simply of the seller’s costs, bit also of the buyer’s wants, and it was up to the individual to live righteously. [Politics I, 1254]. Thus he gave legitimacy to merchants, and to the deep involvement of the Church in the birth of free enterprise. [Stephen P Bensch, *Historiography: Medieval European and Mediterranean Slavery 1998, p 231; Cf. Victory of Reason, Rodney Stark, Random House, 2005, p 57,58, 254].

Randall Collins has noted that innovation and specialization in the monastic estates was “a version of the developed characteristics of capitalism itself… the dynamism of the medieval economy was primarily that of the Church.” [Randall Collins, *The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change, 1998, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p 47].

St Benedict wrote in the sixth century in his famous rule: “Idleness is the enemy of the soul. Therefore the brothers should have specified periods for manual labour as well as prayerful reading….When they live by the labour of their hands, as our fathers and the apostles did, then they are really monks.” [Chap 40: *The Daily Manual Labour].

In the thirteenth century, St Albertus Magnus proposed that the “just price” is what “goods are worth according to the estimation of the market at the time of sale.” [Commentary on The Sentences of Peter Lombard].

“Specialists in the history of economic thought have become more and more aware of the late Scholastics’ contribution to economics, but this is as yet another example of a Catholic innovation well known to specialized scholars, that has for the most part, not made its way to the general public.” (Dr Thomas E Woods, How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Regnery, 2005, p 166).

 

[Abu]

Contarini #364
The problem is that American capitalists are using the phrase “free enterprise” to justify precisely the kind of laissez-faire, idolatrous approach that JPII explicitly condemns.
This is precisely what the dominant faction in the Republican party wants to do–reject any kind of societal intervention on behalf of the poor, claiming that simply letting the laws of “free enterprise” work will be to everyone’s benefit.

The broad brush of “American capitalists” is useless and prejudicial. Catholics need to offer truth.

#364
You omit the actual words of JPII and somewhat misleadingly substitute the far less profound (and exegetically indefensible) words of Fr. Percy.

The maligning of Fr Percy is totally unwarranted.

You quote: Vast multitudes are still living in conditions of great material and moral poverty.

And they will continue to do so until their rulers avoid graft and corruption, practice democracy and adhere to the rule of law and encourage enterprise, as the eminent Fr James Schall, S.J., points out, this is how poverty in the world is alleviated:
“Since the Church wants poverty confronted, since She wants this confrontation to be done justly and with the interest and cooperation of the workers and the poor, She has had to acknowledge, as did the socialist systems themselves, that there are certain ways that must be employed if mankind is to meet its economic problems. These ways can be known and imitated, but they must include a juridical system, profit, enterprise, knowledge, exchange, a market, voluntary organisations, a relatively independent economy, private property, and respect for work and excellence.” (Fr James V Schall, S.J., in *Does Catholicism Still Exist?, *Alba House 1994, p 184-185).

You quote:Indeed, there is a risk that a radical capitalistic ideology could spread which refuses even to consider these problems, in the a priori belief that any attempt to solve them is doomed to failure, and which blindly entrusts their solution to the free development of market forces.

In any society, some important fraction of the citizenry is bound to be without income, because of age (too old or too young), disability, illness, or ill fortune. Some will be permanently, some only temporarily, so. A good society will provide care for such persons. Preferably, as the Pope notes, this should be done according to the principle of subsidiarity, with an emphasis on local and “neighborly” assistance, through family, neighbors, churches, unions, fraternal societies, or other associations.37

Notes:
37 See for instance Centesimus Annus, #49 and especially 13: “Apart from the family, other intermediate communities exercise primary functions and give life to specific networks of solidarity. These develop as real communities of persons and strengthen the social fabric, preventing society from becoming an anonymous and impersonal mass, as unfortunately often happens today. It is in interrelationships on many levels that a person lives, and that society becomes more ‘personalized’.” (#49)

Free enterprise was developed by Catholic Late Scholastics and has enabled the banishment of the dire poverty which preceded it, part of how the Church built Western civilization. Bl John Paul II acclaimed the free economy that recognises the “fundamental role” of private property and the freedom of mankind to economic creativity, as “the path to true civil and economic progress” within “the fundamental and positive role of business, the market”… “and the resulting responsibility for the means of production.” Centesimus Annus #42, 1991].

Continuing the development in social teaching, especially from Bl John Paul II, Pope Benedict XVI teaches:
“Society does not have to protect itself from the market, as if the development of the latter were ipso facto to entail the death of authentically human relations…Therefore it is not the instrument that must be called to account, but individuals, their moral conscience and their personal and social responsibility.” (Caritas in Veritate, Benedict XVI, 2009, #36).

Pope Benedict XVI in *Caritas in Veritate *stipulates that true world political authority not only “would need to be regulated by law, [but also] to observe consistently the principles of subsidiarity” (CiV 67). Subsidiarity “is the most effective antidote against any form of all-encompassing welfare state” (57).

 

[You]

That’s true, and the reason why I view the solar carrying capacity of the earth as the norm. Of course, that is not good for a population beyond that capacity, which is where we are now. When the nonrenewables that allow the current level of population to exist go away, so will the excess population.

Well you can’t burn trees in your car. Besides forest fires are natural, some plants need forest fires to open the seeds and the ash to germinate their seeds in. I think the planet can handle burning trees. You could also design scrubbers for chimneys and capture and recycle carbon. It seems that now you have reached peak oil all your worries are a thing of the past.

 

[cho_pilo]

Rise of sea levels is ‘the greatest lie ever told’

But if there is one scientist who knows more about sea levels than anyone else in the world it is the Swedish geologist and physicist Nils-Axel Mörner, formerly chairman of the INQUA International Commission on Sea Level Change. And the uncompromising verdict of Dr Mörner, who for 35 years has been using every known scientific method to study sea levels all over the globe, is that all this talk about the sea rising is nothing but a colossal scare story.

Despite fluctuations down as well as up, “the sea is not rising,” he says. “It hasn’t risen in 50 years.” If there is any rise this century it will “not be more than 10cm (four inches), with an uncertainty of plus or minus 10cm”. And quite apart from examining the hard evidence, he says, the elementary laws of physics (latent heat needed to melt ice) tell us that the apocalypse conjured up by
Al Gore and Co could not possibly come about.

The reason why Dr Mörner, formerly a Stockholm professor, is so certain that these claims about sea level rise are 100 per cent wrong is that they are all based on computer model predictions, whereas his findings are based on “going into the field to observe what is actually happening in the real world”.

Most of the sea rise does not come from melting ice. If he thinks that, he doesn’t even understand the discussion.

 

[Warrior1979]

Well you can’t burn trees in your car.

Actually, you can, but it not very effective. But it is really not relevant, since cars are not necessary for human survival, and didn’t exist for the vast majority of human history.

Besides forest fires are natural, some plants need forest fires to open the seeds and the ash to germinate their seeds in. I think the planet can handle burning trees. You could also design scrubbers for chimneys and capture and recycle carbon. It seems that now you have reached peak oil all your worries are a thing of the past.

The difference nowadays is if the basic fuel source went from nonrenewable sources to wood, the amount of wood needed to be burned will be unnaturally high.

 

[StAnastasia]

Actually, you can, but it not very effective. But it is really not relevant, since cars are not necessary for human survival, and didn’t exist for the vast majority of human history.

Quite true. Most of the great cultural, music, artistic, theological, and scientific insights of humanity have come while the global population was still under one billion.