Surprises.
A deep dive into a topic can lead to uncovering some significant surprises.
Surprises uncovered range from discovering things widely accepted as facts are instead myths, through to others pivotal to understanding the world around us.
In response to feedback that direct links would be clearer than “Sources of surprise”, there is now a plan to progressively add direct links under “Highlighted Surprises” over the next few weeks.
Planets, Aliens and Fermi Paradox: Climate or Photons?
There should be well over 11 billion planets in our galaxy with a potential to host life, yet all our searches have not found anybody out there.
What gives?
China Population Surprise: Peak Population in 2022.
I read a story on population in China that I found surprising in three ways.
- 1. The story reports China has already reached peak population.
- 2. The author believes that despite over 700 million people in China in around 1970 being considered too many people, 1.4 billion people today is not enough.
- 3. Population growth is even suggested as a solution to the problems of housing and education.
1.5°C by 2026? Already +1.25°C in 2021: What You Are Not Being Told Other Than By Greta Thunberg et al., And Why Not.
I started out wondering how much temperatures have risen so far, what is the best estimate for when will reach +1.5°C , and how bad is +1.5°C anyway. I expected that finding the first two answers would be easy, but it was not. I found the answers, and why they were not easy to find.
I found that with warming at +1.0 in Paris in 2015, +1.5 logically seemed 50 years away, but in 2021 just 6 years later, we are halfway there at +1.25°C. Much changed during the Covid-19 distraction, and at this rate +1.5°C is set to be here by 2026, not the 2050 predicted at Paris.
Environment sensitive reproduction rates: parents instinctively seek maximum opportunities for kids.
Human birth rates are falling at a rate that has some fearing population collapse, but could this be a natural instinctive biological response to ensure optimum population of the future generation, rather than any cause for alarm?
Looking at nature, clearly it is not just the species with maximum children that survive as the fittest, but the species with the optimum number of children. Most species don’t just multiply whenever possible at maximum rate like bacteria in petri dish and survival of the fittest doesn’t just mean the species with the maximum children, it means the right number and at the right time.
Analysing mechanism that vary reproduction in other species may provide some interesting insights and possible answers to at least a large part of what is happing with human birth-rates that will determine whether our future is population is one of: continued growth, collapse, or stability, on a planet where population of all life is not growing.
We can’t run out of fossil fuels.
In the 1970s, there were the ‘Oil Crises‘. Then, and at other times it has been suggested that one key reason for moving to renewables, is that as there is only a finite supply of fossil fuels which will come to an end one day. But when?
There is also a mistaken belief that ‘peak oil‘ projections are a result of supplies of fossil fuels becoming exhausted.
Whether you are worried oil supplies will run out, or are hoping oil supplies will run out, although prices may rise, they won’t run out. In fact, we can’t possibly use all fossil fuel.
Earth, The Sun and CO2: What really determines our climate?
There is a myth that ‘there is always climate change’, with the implication that humans could live through such changes despite past mass extinctions, and the fact the planet is dying. You would think the Earth always supported complex life, humans have always existed, and no species had ever become extinct.
Even that Earth supports human life for even a very short window of time is remarkable. While Mars and Venus have changed by hundreds of degrees, as the heat from our Sun risen 45% since the planets were born, temperatures on Earth have changed very little, due to heat regulation by CO2 levels.
Understanding the interaction of plants, the Sun and CO2, is key to understanding both natural and anthropogenic climate change.
Natural Climate Change: Surprises from Nature!
There is a lot of focus on climate change caused by humans, as there should be! But this focus can miss just how fragile the environment is even without us humans breaking things. This page looks at some of the surprises are in store when we explore natural climate change.
This exploration of natural changes, and the history and future of changes even without human interference as background relevant when considering the potential impact of man-made climate change. A big surprise is that life on Earth is already naturally on a downward spiral, and Earths ‘carrying capacity‘ for all life is in natural decline already. The natural decline is far more gradual than possible impact of humans but does illustrate the fragility of nature. Fortunately, we have millions of years to develop solutions to avoid the worst natural climate disasters, provided we first find a way to avoid prematurely destroying the already fragile natural environment ourselves.
Peak Population 2055: Really? That soon?
Is it realistic that Earth could reach peak population by 2055? Is there really already the largest number of under 35s on Earth there will ever be? Peak newborns already? What is the reality, and what are the implications?
Peak Child: When, and what does it mean?
Globally, peak child arrived just a few years after this was first published, although this global picture is not experience at every individual location.
Data now clearly confirms that globally, the world has returned to ‘peak child’, ending of three centuries of a population explosion, and perhaps even millennia of more gradual growth prior to the explosion.
Return to peak child means we could either return to the gradual growth levels of prior to the industrial revolution or become a mature species and exist in balance with nature and other living things. Perhaps even stop displacing other species?