This is exactly what I said when I started reading “Annals of the Former World” by John McPhee. Awesome book. Makes you realize how short the present moment is.
Carbon dioxide from the human burning of fossil fuel is building up in the atmosphere at a frightening pace, enough to double the present concentration in a century. This buildup has the potential to raise average temperatures on the earth several degrees centigrade, enough to modify the weather and accelerate melting of the polar ice sheets.
Right. That’s why in past epochs, when CO2 concentration was hundreds of times higher than today, for tens of millions of years, like in the age of the dinosaurs, all life on earth was burnt to a cinder. Now if we all just adopt stone age lifestyles and give all power to the self-anointed elites, we can be saved.
geokstr: Right. That’s why in past epochs, when CO2 concentration was hundreds of times higher than today, for tens of millions of years, like in the age of the dinosaurs, all life on earth was burnt to a cinder. Now if we all just adopt stone age lifestyles and give all power to the self-anointed elites, we can be saved.
Gaia Akbar.
Based upon years of lurking here and reading quite a few comments from you I know that in broad strokes we’re probably in the same general vicinity on issues, but you might want to go read the rest of the article before you poo poo it.
For example consider the last few sentences:
The earth doesn’t include the potentially catastrophic effects on civilization in its planning. Far from being responsible for damaging the earth’s climate, civilization might not be able to forestall any of these terrible changes once the earth has decided to make them. Were the earth determined to freeze Canada again, for example, it’s difficult to imagine doing anything except selling your real estate in Canada. If it decides to melt Greenland, it might be best to unload your property in Bangladesh. The geologic record suggests that climate ought not to concern us too much when we’re gazing into the energy future, not because it’s unimportant, but because it’s beyond our power to control.
This CO2 business is nothing. Politicians are too short sighted. In a billion years or so, Sol begins baby steps toward becoming a red giant. That will bring some real global warming. Maybe if we pass a Hydrogen tax now, we can slow it down.
geokstr:
Right. That’s why in past epochs, when CO2 concentration was hundreds of times higher than today, for tens of millions of years, like in the age of the dinosaurs, all life on earth was burnt to a cinder. Now if we all just adopt stone age lifestyles and give all power to the self-anointed elites, we can be saved.Gaia Akbar.
You would think that if a consensus of experts in the field agreed that the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is almost certain to cause a rise in temperature, they would have thought about things like this, but I guess they never considered this fact and are all completely wrong. I wish I could discover something simple like this that a whole scientific field had overlooked and that rewrites everything they’re working on.
Thanks for the delightfully stimulating pointer. I love the way Laughlin (and physicists generally) think.
Regarding his main conclusion, though:
The geologic record suggests that climate ought not to concern us too much when we’re gazing into the energy future, not because it’s unimportant, but because it’s beyond our power to control
I think he’s too optimistic in the near term – he seems to rule out the possibility that what we do with our energy policy could have a substantial impact on earth’s climate. But I don’t see any evidence in the article against the possibility that earth’s climate could be unstable in this regard.
Ironically, I think he’s shortsighted and therefore too pessimistic on a timescale of centuries. It is pretty clear that on that timescale, intelligence will become capable of planetary scale engineering. If we and our progeny can hold it together until then, and learn to make responsible collective decisions, we will be able to deal with pretty much any climatic challenge, whether natural or anthropogenic.
geokstr:
Right. That’s why in past epochs, when CO2 concentration was hundreds of times higher than today, for tens of millions of years, like in the age of the dinosaurs, all life on earth was burnt to a cinder. Now if we all just adopt stone age lifestyles and give all power to the self-anointed elites, we can be saved.Gaia Akbar.
Are you suggesting that there is no concentration between atmospheric CO2 and global average temperatures?
Daedalus,
“Man-caused warming and abatement not only on a global but blink of an eye timescale?”
This appears likely, if we don’t manage to self-destruct. Things on and near planetary scale won’t happen on geologic timescales any longer – rather they will happen in geologic eyeblinks, as determined by intelligence-driven technology. There is a massive qualitative change underway. Imagine if the fastest chemical reactions for eons had been rust, then an exposion happens. We’re in the midst of an explosion.
I not only second the endorsement of “Annals of the Former World,” but indeed recommend anything written by John McPhee. That book requires a substantial investment (of time, to read it, or energy, to carry it), but Prof. McPhee has produced many great short stories. “The Gravel Page,” a story about geoforensics, and The Conching Rooms,” a story about Hershey chocolate, are good examples.
Thanks for your point, arch, but to me our “intelligence-driven technology” is still early Jurassic and not nearly so affecting/ effective or devastating and ameliorative on a planetary scale, as others clearly believe.
Volcanic eruptions, solar flares and such wreak greater and more sustained damage than industrialized mankind “in the midst of an [technological] explosion.” Certainly, the population explosion has been a drag on resources and we should support conservation and anti-pollution efforts, keeping in mind that depletion and extinction on account of geologic phenomena and species activity are natural dynamics on this rock. We are a dominant species, no doubt about that, but aren’t yet Shiva or Brahma on the scales we’re concerned about.
Unless we should worry about that accelerator…
At any rate, if one believes technological sophistication is growing at an exponential rate, then today’s relatively crude efforts at warming abatement would be a financial drain on and scientific diversion from the really big breakthroughs. Some of us aren’t even convinced, however, that a world warming period, even were it to occur, man-caused or not, is necessary or desirable to re-engineer. Perhaps macro thermal ups and downs are essential to earth renewal and balance than man can sufficiently understand from his very limited perspective in early 21 century (human [western] calendar.
As for threats to mankind, shouldn’t we worry more about genetic tinkering and laboratory hubris or sabotage than about increased levels of CO2 which the Earth has coped with before?
Thanks for your thoughtful responses. While I agree that there are plenty of other threats to worry about – some related to hubris and sabotage, some natural in origin – that does not change the fact that we need to survive the next few centuries without unnecessarily creating huge climatic problems as well (if the system is unstable, even our small inputs can have big consequences). At the very least, we should continute to intensively study and closely monitor.
I also agree that we should appreciate and respect the scale and majesty of natural processes, and that human capabilities are currently puny by comparison.
I think where we may differ most is starting a few centuries out. By then, I say, our capabilities on the planetary scale will not be dwarfed by nature. Exponential explosions are – well, exponential.
And certainly, any discussion on geological timescales that does not acknowledge the profound asymmetry between past and future caused by the explosion of our technical capabilities misses the elephant in the living room. On geological timescales going forward our planet and planetary system will pretty much take the form that intelligence, as constrained by physical law, has chosen.
(All of this assumes that our technological civilization survives, which is far from a foregone conclusion. In fact, in Laughlin’s defense, he may be tacitly assuming that our technical civilization has a negligible chance of long term survival. While this is a respectable position to take, it only highlights the need to be proactive concerning our survival chances.)
arch1: Ironically, I think he’s shortsighted and therefore too pessimistic on a timescale of centuries. It is pretty clear that on that timescale, intelligence will become capable of planetary scale engineering. If we and our progeny can hold it together until then, and learn to make responsible collective decisions, we will be able to deal with pretty much any climatic challenge, whether natural or anthropogenic.
If you mean that “intelligence will become capable of” reversing or otherwise drastically altering the laws of physics as we know them now in a manner vastly greater than relativity and quantum mechanics altered classical mechanics, then I beg to differ.
For example, apply back of an envelope classical thermodynamics to the matter of removing gaseous CO2 mixed in the atmosphere. To reverse the entropy of mixing resulting from a ton of CO2 dispersed in the atmosphere would require about 2000 KWH of energy. That won’t change unless our intelligence devises a way to “repeal” the currently known laws of thermodynamics.
For even a billion tons of CO2 that’s equivalent to a not inconsiderable chunk of current US domestic energy production. There are a few trillion tons of atmospheric carbon. So the arithmetic does not inspire confidence in our capacity to unmix it by engineering.
And, as I attempted to point out previously with lame humor, it is unlikely that human engineering ingenuity will prevent the ultimate global warming caused by depletion of Sol’s core Hydrogen a billion or so years from now. The engineering scale required would be vastly greater than planetary.
I think where we may differ most is starting a few centuries out. By then, I say, our capabilities on the planetary scale will not be dwarfed by nature. Exponential explosions are — well, exponential.
Actually, arch, this is where we agree. And why, given our limited tools and capital, I think we’re premature in both our assessment of a complex climate system and approaches to staving off or not worsening a warming problem/ phenomenon (if there is one.)
If we and our progeny can hold it together until then, and learn to make responsible collective decisions, we will be able to deal with pretty much any climatic challenge, whether natural or anthropogenic.
This is where we really part ways :) The AGW issue hasn’t lent itself yet, and imo won’t in the foreseeable future, to “responsible collective decisions,” perhaps because no one is really feeling it. NYC is hot this summer but melting polar ice (not really melting acc to latest info) hasn’t flooded its concrete canyons. LA is unusually cool this season but not a single mention of fur-lined Ferraris in People Mag so far.
Up to now, we’ve been treated to post-normal, corrupted, shielded from scrutiny activist science; carbon credit trading lucrative markets (at least till recently); domestic political leveraging for votes and captured industry; pandering, fraud and redistribution international politics; rank hypocrisy and obscene profiteering by many eco saints; and the specter of bigger government here and on a transnational level to devise and administer anti-warming policy that will control more and more in the name of green and collect far too many monies ostensibly to attempt to sustain an optimally temperatured orb but actually to sustain a suboptimal bloated bureaucracy of too many warm bodies decidedly not celestial.
IMO ;), but your perspective you present in a concerned and constructive fashion is arguably more correct.
Just to be clear, I wasn’t assuming mutability of physical laws.
I do think that attempts to extrapolate our exploding technological capabilities to timescales of centuries, and especially to geological timescales, are typically hugely under-imaginative.
Re: C02 mixing – within centuries, we should have access to vastly more energy than we do now, through space based solar, fusion, etc. But we may not need to unmix – we could build solar shades; etc.
Re: Sun becoming a red giant – well before this happens (I thought it was 4-5Gy out?), our progeny should have the capability of increasing the sun’s lifetime (bleeding off some its material, for example, by spinning it up using gravitational tides). Or of moving earth (or earth’s pieces, if we’ve already broken it up) further away. If we haven’t migrated away already, that is.
Actually I think the red giant scenario would be a piece of cake even if our tech capabilities were to freeze (say) 400 years from now. Given that nearly inconceivable level of technology, and billions of years to prepare, what could we not do? Now try to imagine what we could do if technology didn’t freeze – the mind reels.
(Again, all of the above assumes we survive, stay technologicial, stay engaged, behave reasonably; this is far from assured, though once we have achieved a certain degree of physical dispersal the survival prospects arguably improve considerably).
arch1: If we haven’t migrated away already, that is.
IMHO that’s likely the only remotely feasible alternative. The rest, “that nearly inconceivable level of technology”, strikes me as unlikely even given “billions of years to prepare” without ignoring or changing known laws of physics, or discovering revolutionary new ones.
But it’s certainly a more exciting fantasy than my Hydrogen tax plan.
maxwell: You know, carbon as a “control knob” is something all of us can agree upon. We need to dial it down, politically.
All of us who agree that we need to dial down carbon can certainly agree to it.
The bottom line, to me, is that we have to get off this planet. Not totally, just have somewhere else to go. Forget global warming … right now a well-placed asteroid could mostly wipe us out.
I think that all those arguing for the futility of dealing with AGW have a point. I suggest they kill themselves right now because it is obvious that the nature and timing of their death is unknown but inevitable.
Similarly, I suggest all those arguing that we must deal with AGW right now have point. I suggest they retire from the grid and move to a cabin in the Canadian plains. They certainly would be relatively protected from any effects there and would know that nothing they did was contributing to the problem. A hand cranked radio would let them know when the rest of us had come to our senses.
Laura(southernxyl), I’m no carbonist– wouldn’t admit to it in public if I were :)– but second your muse about space exploration, colonization, stationalization(?!) as not merely important to advancing understanding.
A thought: maybe the current shift in focus from manned spacecruising to earthbound discovery (to include orbitsailing) will allow for the eventual adaption of humans to extraterrestrial living through genetic re-engineering or biotech fusion, instead of our relying on awkward external tech only.
Meanwhile, looks as if we’re going to expend precious money and political capital on iffy carbon control. Luck to us all.
Maxwell, I’d rather see more Biosphere II – type experimentation, without the cant and the hype. Design the experiment as best we can, carry it out, be very honest about the fact that there will be adjustments that have to be made (that’s the point) and once we get a few generations in, we can build a self-contained ecology that’s sustainable and will support human life. Then we can build terrariums, so to speak, on the Moon or elsewhere. Then either terraform the surface, or build underground habitats. Not unthinkable. It’s not like there’s not a wealth of science fiction on the subject.
Good ideas, Laura(southernxyl), but if we build terrariums on the moon, they’ll have to be populated with people having the IQs of plants ;)
I was looking forward to my grandchildren having AI prehensile tails, suckered digits and Seven-of-Nine craniums myself. (Maybe her chest, too, as something to hold onto in low gravity.)
Man has been trying to get back to the “Garden of Eden” or the “Golden Age” or some such since they first started talking to each other about how “life’s a bitch, and then you die.”
The environmentalists are just pushing the “Gaia” religion because they’ve been programmed to reject all the other religions man devised to help us deal with an uncaring universe.
They cloak their new religion in science because it is cool to be rational and scientific and stupid to “believe” or have faith. Lots of politicians and people with science degrees are willing to go along with the gag because they get lots of grant money, or are treated as the saviors of the planet, or it gives their lives meaning, or (in some cases) they get to act like “crazed sex poodles” without consequences.
What I find so amusing is that the same people who are convinced that they can “scientifically prove” that there is no supernatural realm (which by definition can not be proved using natural laws, or human reason, it being “natural”) will accept anything told to them by the high priests of a science (climatology) that is to physics as alchemy is to chemistry.
The poor sods are grasping for something to give their lives meaning, a reason to lord it over the climate “sinners” and, in many cases, a good justification to burn the “heretics.” The AGW believers are just as misguided (and just as dangerous) as the Inquisition. Gaia is just as jealous a god(ess) as Jehovah.
I’d ask God to help open their eyes to their foolishness but that would probably offend someone (and brand me as not rational).
Paul says:
This is exactly what I said when I started reading “Annals of the Former World” by John McPhee. Awesome book. Makes you realize how short the present moment is.
July 29, 2010, 6:14 pmptt says:
Golden retrievers are one meter tall?
I’m not saying I’d object if they were.
July 29, 2010, 7:06 pmgeokstr says:
Right. That’s why in past epochs, when CO2 concentration was hundreds of times higher than today, for tens of millions of years, like in the age of the dinosaurs, all life on earth was burnt to a cinder. Now if we all just adopt stone age lifestyles and give all power to the self-anointed elites, we can be saved.
Gaia Akbar.
July 29, 2010, 8:00 pmGuest12345 says:
Based upon years of lurking here and reading quite a few comments from you I know that in broad strokes we’re probably in the same general vicinity on issues, but you might want to go read the rest of the article before you poo poo it.
For example consider the last few sentences:
July 29, 2010, 8:51 pmuh_clem says:
And in the long run we’re all dead.
Is this an excuse for shrugging ones shoulders and doing nothing?
July 29, 2010, 10:10 pmFub says:
This CO2 business is nothing. Politicians are too short sighted. In a billion years or so, Sol begins baby steps toward becoming a red giant. That will bring some real global warming. Maybe if we pass a Hydrogen tax now, we can slow it down.
July 29, 2010, 10:45 pmChrisZ says:
You would think that if a consensus of experts in the field agreed that the increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is almost certain to cause a rise in temperature, they would have thought about things like this, but I guess they never considered this fact and are all completely wrong. I wish I could discover something simple like this that a whole scientific field had overlooked and that rewrites everything they’re working on.
July 29, 2010, 10:57 pmarch1 says:
Thanks for the delightfully stimulating pointer. I love the way Laughlin (and physicists generally) think.
Regarding his main conclusion, though:
I think he’s too optimistic in the near term – he seems to rule out the possibility that what we do with our energy policy could have a substantial impact on earth’s climate. But I don’t see any evidence in the article against the possibility that earth’s climate could be unstable in this regard.
Ironically, I think he’s shortsighted and therefore too pessimistic on a timescale of centuries. It is pretty clear that on that timescale, intelligence will become capable of planetary scale engineering. If we and our progeny can hold it together until then, and learn to make responsible collective decisions, we will be able to deal with pretty much any climatic challenge, whether natural or anthropogenic.
July 30, 2010, 12:59 amGoobermunch says:
Are you suggesting that there is no concentration between atmospheric CO2 and global average temperatures?
–G
July 30, 2010, 8:33 amNorman Normal says:
Here’s the definitive take on geologic time and, er, heating up.
July 30, 2010, 10:01 amdaedalus says:
Man-caused warming and abatement not only on a global but blink of an eye timescale?
July 30, 2010, 10:24 amarch says:
Daedalus,
“Man-caused warming and abatement not only on a global but blink of an eye timescale?”
This appears likely, if we don’t manage to self-destruct. Things on and near planetary scale won’t happen on geologic timescales any longer – rather they will happen in geologic eyeblinks, as determined by intelligence-driven technology. There is a massive qualitative change underway. Imagine if the fastest chemical reactions for eons had been rust, then an exposion happens. We’re in the midst of an explosion.
July 30, 2010, 10:38 amArthur Kirkland says:
I not only second the endorsement of “Annals of the Former World,” but indeed recommend anything written by John McPhee. That book requires a substantial investment (of time, to read it, or energy, to carry it), but Prof. McPhee has produced many great short stories. “The Gravel Page,” a story about geoforensics, and The Conching Rooms,” a story about Hershey chocolate, are good examples.
July 30, 2010, 10:57 amdaedalus says:
Thanks for your point, arch, but to me our “intelligence-driven technology” is still early Jurassic and not nearly so affecting/ effective or devastating and ameliorative on a planetary scale, as others clearly believe.
Volcanic eruptions, solar flares and such wreak greater and more sustained damage than industrialized mankind “in the midst of an [technological] explosion.” Certainly, the population explosion has been a drag on resources and we should support conservation and anti-pollution efforts, keeping in mind that depletion and extinction on account of geologic phenomena and species activity are natural dynamics on this rock. We are a dominant species, no doubt about that, but aren’t yet Shiva or Brahma on the scales we’re concerned about.
Unless we should worry about that accelerator…
At any rate, if one believes technological sophistication is growing at an exponential rate, then today’s relatively crude efforts at warming abatement would be a financial drain on and scientific diversion from the really big breakthroughs. Some of us aren’t even convinced, however, that a world warming period, even were it to occur, man-caused or not, is necessary or desirable to re-engineer. Perhaps macro thermal ups and downs are essential to earth renewal and balance than man can sufficiently understand from his very limited perspective in early 21 century (human [western] calendar.
July 30, 2010, 11:24 amdaedalus says:
As for threats to mankind, shouldn’t we worry more about genetic tinkering and laboratory hubris or sabotage than about increased levels of CO2 which the Earth has coped with before?
July 30, 2010, 11:36 amarch1 says:
Daedalus,
Thanks for your thoughtful responses. While I agree that there are plenty of other threats to worry about – some related to hubris and sabotage, some natural in origin – that does not change the fact that we need to survive the next few centuries without unnecessarily creating huge climatic problems as well (if the system is unstable, even our small inputs can have big consequences). At the very least, we should continute to intensively study and closely monitor.
I also agree that we should appreciate and respect the scale and majesty of natural processes, and that human capabilities are currently puny by comparison.
I think where we may differ most is starting a few centuries out. By then, I say, our capabilities on the planetary scale will not be dwarfed by nature. Exponential explosions are – well, exponential.
And certainly, any discussion on geological timescales that does not acknowledge the profound asymmetry between past and future caused by the explosion of our technical capabilities misses the elephant in the living room. On geological timescales going forward our planet and planetary system will pretty much take the form that intelligence, as constrained by physical law, has chosen.
(All of this assumes that our technological civilization survives, which is far from a foregone conclusion. In fact, in Laughlin’s defense, he may be tacitly assuming that our technical civilization has a negligible chance of long term survival. While this is a respectable position to take, it only highlights the need to be proactive concerning our survival chances.)
July 30, 2010, 12:34 pmFub says:
If you mean that “intelligence will become capable of” reversing or otherwise drastically altering the laws of physics as we know them now in a manner vastly greater than relativity and quantum mechanics altered classical mechanics, then I beg to differ.
For example, apply back of an envelope classical thermodynamics to the matter of removing gaseous CO2 mixed in the atmosphere. To reverse the entropy of mixing resulting from a ton of CO2 dispersed in the atmosphere would require about 2000 KWH of energy. That won’t change unless our intelligence devises a way to “repeal” the currently known laws of thermodynamics.
For even a billion tons of CO2 that’s equivalent to a not inconsiderable chunk of current US domestic energy production. There are a few trillion tons of atmospheric carbon. So the arithmetic does not inspire confidence in our capacity to unmix it by engineering.
And, as I attempted to point out previously with lame humor, it is unlikely that human engineering ingenuity will prevent the ultimate global warming caused by depletion of Sol’s core Hydrogen a billion or so years from now. The engineering scale required would be vastly greater than planetary.
July 30, 2010, 1:38 pmdaedalus says:
Actually, arch, this is where we agree. And why, given our limited tools and capital, I think we’re premature in both our assessment of a complex climate system and approaches to staving off or not worsening a warming problem/ phenomenon (if there is one.)
This is where we really part ways :) The AGW issue hasn’t lent itself yet, and imo won’t in the foreseeable future, to “responsible collective decisions,” perhaps because no one is really feeling it. NYC is hot this summer but melting polar ice (not really melting acc to latest info) hasn’t flooded its concrete canyons. LA is unusually cool this season but not a single mention of fur-lined Ferraris in People Mag so far.
Up to now, we’ve been treated to post-normal, corrupted, shielded from scrutiny activist science; carbon credit trading lucrative markets (at least till recently); domestic political leveraging for votes and captured industry; pandering, fraud and redistribution international politics; rank hypocrisy and obscene profiteering by many eco saints; and the specter of bigger government here and on a transnational level to devise and administer anti-warming policy that will control more and more in the name of green and collect far too many monies ostensibly to attempt to sustain an optimally temperatured orb but actually to sustain a suboptimal bloated bureaucracy of too many warm bodies decidedly not celestial.
IMO ;), but your perspective you present in a concerned and constructive fashion is arguably more correct.
July 30, 2010, 1:52 pmarch1 says:
Daedalus,
We don’t line our Ferraris with fur because fur is easily bleached when it’s sunny and the top’s down (i.e. when it’s sunny, i.e. except at night:-)
July 30, 2010, 7:30 pmarch1 says:
Fub,
Just to be clear, I wasn’t assuming mutability of physical laws.
I do think that attempts to extrapolate our exploding technological capabilities to timescales of centuries, and especially to geological timescales, are typically hugely under-imaginative.
Re: C02 mixing – within centuries, we should have access to vastly more energy than we do now, through space based solar, fusion, etc. But we may not need to unmix – we could build solar shades; etc.
Re: Sun becoming a red giant – well before this happens (I thought it was 4-5Gy out?), our progeny should have the capability of increasing the sun’s lifetime (bleeding off some its material, for example, by spinning it up using gravitational tides). Or of moving earth (or earth’s pieces, if we’ve already broken it up) further away. If we haven’t migrated away already, that is.
Actually I think the red giant scenario would be a piece of cake even if our tech capabilities were to freeze (say) 400 years from now. Given that nearly inconceivable level of technology, and billions of years to prepare, what could we not do? Now try to imagine what we could do if technology didn’t freeze – the mind reels.
(Again, all of the above assumes we survive, stay technologicial, stay engaged, behave reasonably; this is far from assured, though once we have achieved a certain degree of physical dispersal the survival prospects arguably improve considerably).
July 30, 2010, 8:12 pmFub says:
IMHO that’s likely the only remotely feasible alternative. The rest, “that nearly inconceivable level of technology”, strikes me as unlikely even given “billions of years to prepare” without ignoring or changing known laws of physics, or discovering revolutionary new ones.
But it’s certainly a more exciting fantasy than my Hydrogen tax plan.
July 30, 2010, 11:51 pmEli Rabett says:
Everyone, including Laughlin, would benefit by watching Richard Ally’s lecture “The Biggest Contrrol Knob: Carbon Dioxide in the Earth’s Climate History”.
July 31, 2010, 8:12 amEli Rabett says:
Sorry, the video itself is at
July 31, 2010, 8:14 amhttp://www.agu.org/meetings/fm09/lectures/lecture_videos/A23A.shtml
maxwell says:
You know, carbon as a “control knob” is something all of us can agree upon. We need to dial it down, politically.
July 31, 2010, 10:20 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
All of us who agree that we need to dial down carbon can certainly agree to it.
The bottom line, to me, is that we have to get off this planet. Not totally, just have somewhere else to go. Forget global warming … right now a well-placed asteroid could mostly wipe us out.
July 31, 2010, 11:20 amanon says:
I think that all those arguing for the futility of dealing with AGW have a point. I suggest they kill themselves right now because it is obvious that the nature and timing of their death is unknown but inevitable.
Similarly, I suggest all those arguing that we must deal with AGW right now have point. I suggest they retire from the grid and move to a cabin in the Canadian plains. They certainly would be relatively protected from any effects there and would know that nothing they did was contributing to the problem. A hand cranked radio would let them know when the rest of us had come to our senses.
July 31, 2010, 12:28 pmmaxwell says:
Laura(southernxyl), I’m no carbonist– wouldn’t admit to it in public if I were :)– but second your muse about space exploration, colonization, stationalization(?!) as not merely important to advancing understanding.
A thought: maybe the current shift in focus from manned spacecruising to earthbound discovery (to include orbitsailing) will allow for the eventual adaption of humans to extraterrestrial living through genetic re-engineering or biotech fusion, instead of our relying on awkward external tech only.
Meanwhile, looks as if we’re going to expend precious money and political capital on iffy carbon control. Luck to us all.
July 31, 2010, 1:02 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Maxwell, I’d rather see more Biosphere II – type experimentation, without the cant and the hype. Design the experiment as best we can, carry it out, be very honest about the fact that there will be adjustments that have to be made (that’s the point) and once we get a few generations in, we can build a self-contained ecology that’s sustainable and will support human life. Then we can build terrariums, so to speak, on the Moon or elsewhere. Then either terraform the surface, or build underground habitats. Not unthinkable. It’s not like there’s not a wealth of science fiction on the subject.
July 31, 2010, 3:46 pmmaxwell says:
Good ideas, Laura(southernxyl), but if we build terrariums on the moon, they’ll have to be populated with people having the IQs of plants ;)
I was looking forward to my grandchildren having AI prehensile tails, suckered digits and Seven-of-Nine craniums myself. (Maybe her chest, too, as something to hold onto in low gravity.)
July 31, 2010, 8:49 pmGaryP says:
Man has been trying to get back to the “Garden of Eden” or the “Golden Age” or some such since they first started talking to each other about how “life’s a bitch, and then you die.”
July 31, 2010, 9:58 pmThe environmentalists are just pushing the “Gaia” religion because they’ve been programmed to reject all the other religions man devised to help us deal with an uncaring universe.
They cloak their new religion in science because it is cool to be rational and scientific and stupid to “believe” or have faith. Lots of politicians and people with science degrees are willing to go along with the gag because they get lots of grant money, or are treated as the saviors of the planet, or it gives their lives meaning, or (in some cases) they get to act like “crazed sex poodles” without consequences.
What I find so amusing is that the same people who are convinced that they can “scientifically prove” that there is no supernatural realm (which by definition can not be proved using natural laws, or human reason, it being “natural”) will accept anything told to them by the high priests of a science (climatology) that is to physics as alchemy is to chemistry.
The poor sods are grasping for something to give their lives meaning, a reason to lord it over the climate “sinners” and, in many cases, a good justification to burn the “heretics.” The AGW believers are just as misguided (and just as dangerous) as the Inquisition. Gaia is just as jealous a god(ess) as Jehovah.
I’d ask God to help open their eyes to their foolishness but that would probably offend someone (and brand me as not rational).
Bob says:
Just last Fri. was the anniversary of the end of the Paleozoic Era.
August 1, 2010, 8:34 pm