Global Warming

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Monday March 09, 2009 · 3:06 PM PDT

2009/03/09 · 15:06

Al Gore has us all worried about global warming. He is right that calamity will befall the world unless we can reduce the level of creating carbon dioxide to below the level at which the tropical rain forests of the world absorb carbon dioxide.

Gore is wrong to worry about the coasts disappearing or even Florida going under water. Those problems are relatively easily solved by people moving. What isn't talked about much is the changes in weather.

Global warming will cause more severe weather; more hurricanes, more severe hurricanes, more tornadoes, larger tornadoes, more snow storm storms, larger snow storms, more dry spells, more wet spells, and on and on. The relatively calm weather we see today will disappear. Growing food and getting fresh water will become much more difficult.

Yes Gore and others including President Barack Obama are proposing many changes to reduce each person's dependence on energy production that produces carbon dioxide. And yes that will reduce the amount of carbon dioxide the world will produce 50 years from now if those actions were not taken.

However, a large part of the problem of production of carbon dioxide will be caused by population growth.

By 2050, if we continue to reproduce at the current rate, the planet will have between 8 billion and 10 billion people, according to a recent U.N. forecast. This is a 50 percent increase.

see We Are Breeding Ourselves to Extinction by Chris Hedges.

An important part of the solution is contraception. Yet no one appears to recognize this simple point. Contraception was in the stimulus package until republicans complained. Even Chis Mathews (see

) wonders why federal government has an interest in having fewer kids.

We need family planning not just in the US, but in the whole world. Only with a reduction in the birth rate to replacement or below will global warming be reduced.

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