The Indians who live in the SW US are genetically the same as the Indians who live in the Copper Canyon of Mexico. Yet the SW US Indians are grossly obese and suffer inordinately from type 2 diabetes. The Copper Canyon Indians are thin and athletic (or at least used to be). The SW US Indians love the modern American diet of lots of carbs, corn sweetener, and omega-6 fats. The Copper Canyon Indians live (or lived) on a traditional low calorie diet. They also considered a marathon a "womans race", because of the short distance. So, fatties, move to the Copper Canyon and take up their lifestyle. You will get thin, and no longer need to be lesbians, either.

The climate is always changing. Ten thousand years ago the earth entered the Holocene, probably the most benign (for humans) climate period in many million years. So we get six billion humans and plenty more on the way. The present interglacial should have ended then, and sea levels would have dropped, and the earth would gotten colder, dustier, and dryer. But we (accidentally) started to affect the climate through deforestation and subsequent burning of fossil fuels. When we finish burning the fuels in a few hundred years the glaciers will return, sea levels will drop, and our problems will be very different. Humans will do just as the article says, move on. We are a race that can easily pack up and we do just that when the local area becomes unlivable. Diebacks cannot be very pleasant, but Europeans settled the Americas after 50 million locals died off from disease (The American Dieback). The smart, tough and (mostly) lucky will survive. The American Southwest is going back to desert and the people there will adapt or move on. However, as the Earth warms the North Africa monsoon might get stronger and the Sahara will again become a verdant paradise, like it was seven or eight thousand years ago. Climate change is always occurring, stop whining about it.

There has been a lot of research on the population of the Americas prior to the arrival of Europeans. I got the 50,000,000 number from "Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum", a book summarizing the global warming issue. Early explorers in the start of the 16th century noted that there were large agricultural populations living along the Mississippi for example. The early settlers on the East Coast would have never succeeded if it were not for the large dieoff that had occured there in the 16th century. I suggest you do a little research on your own. The Indians died off before most explorers even knew they were there. Since the Indians had done extensive deforestation, and prevented natural reforestation, their disappearance caused a noticeable downward blip in the rate of CO2 increase in the 16th century. This was due to the natural reforestation of the land which absorbed a lot of CO2. The slowdown in the rate of CO2 increase also correlates well with the worldwide plagues that have occurred during recorded history.

The present human population is unsustainable. No matter what we do the necessary reduction in human numbers is going to be very unpleasant, since as always we will depend on the Four Horsemen rather than good sense.

Back home to fish means that he will again hog the South Fork of the Snake River, using armed agents patrolling the banks and helicopters roaring around over head. No one else is allowed to fish or be on the river while he is there. He is truly a brave man.

I just took a look at my 8th grade graduation picture from 1947. It was a mixture of kids from many ethnic backgrounds who lived in Jamaica, NY. There is not one obese kid in the picture, and very few who are even chubby. Has our genetics changed in 60 years? Highly unlikely. Has our diet changed? Dramatically. Every family that I knew ate meals together, and there was very little eating between meals, except for the required snack on coming home from school. We needed that snack because every kid was out playing active and informal games with his or her friends after school. Corn sweetener did not exist, and hydrogenated vegetable oil was rare (Crisco being the exception). Since our genes have not changed, it has to be our diet and activities. Those can be controlled, not by acts of will, but by eating more like we did 60 years ago. There were very few highly processed foods, and mothers (yes, mothers) prepared meals from scratch three times a day. And kids were active, and not in adult regulated activities that have long periods of inactivity, like all organized sports.

Having high levels of body fat is unhealthy, and it ain't pretty either. Other contributors have pointed out that they have avoided or lost weight by controlling what kinds of food they eat and exercising, not by being hungry. It is obvious that fat people eat a lot of the worst types of food, high in carbs.

My wife had a problem with glucose intolerance, which can lead to type 2 diabetes. She gave up carbs and went on basically a high fat, meat, and vegetable diet, and lost a lot of weight, and her glucose problem went away. I went from 173 to 163 as a side effect. My wife and I see long distance hiking and XC skiing as both necessary and fun. Carbs and corn sweetener are the enemy, get them out of your diet. Omega-6 fats are also bad news. Fast food contains lots of these so should be avoided like the plague, which it is.