Global Warming: For the record
March 3rd, 2010
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As I get a lot of questions on what my position is on global warming, I’ve decided to answer them and hopefully put the issue to rest (although I’m sure that won’t happen). Here are some of the common questions I get.
Q. Why don’t you write about global warming and climate change more often?
A. It’s a complicated issue. I’m not an expert and I’m not sure I’m qualified to really address it. Also, it’s so politically charged that if I do say the wrong thing then the concequences would be very bad. I’ve got to cover my ass on that more than anything else.
Q. Do you believe in global warming/climate change? Is it real?
A. I don’t just believe it, it is real and I accept that.
Q. Is human activity the cause?
A. No. It is not the cause. The climate would change with or without human activity.
Q. Is human activity a cause or at least a contributing factor?
A. Yes
Q. How much so? Is it a major contributing factor or a minor one?
A. I don’t know
Q. How much do you think? What do you suspect?
A. While I do not know for sure, and I stress that, my opinion is that it is probably considerably less than it is made out to be by most activists.
Q. Are you sure?
A. No. I just said I’m not sure. This is what I personally think is probably true, and I don’t actually know it for a fact, so please don’t quote me as saying this is how it will be or that I have anything more than a hunch, if that. I may very well be wrong.
Q. Do you think the scientists are inflating their numbers or deceiving the public?
A. Some are, but as for the whole field of climatology? Certainly not everyone, but possibly a significant proportion.
Q. How big a proportion? By how much?
A. I have no idea. I said it’s possible that a significant proportion are. I don’t actually know that they are and I certainly don’t know by how much.
Q. Do you think the media and enviornmental groups are inflating numbers and deceiving the public?
A. Of that I have no doubt. Groups like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, The Sierra Club, The Green Party etc lie more than they tell the truth. The media always reports the most sensational.
Q. Do you think Al Gore lies to us?
A. He lies by omission and cherry-picks the worst data he can find in support of this claims. He’s too smart to lie outright.
Q. Do you think global warming will be catastrophic?
A. Probably not, but I don’t really know for sure. I am confident that the catastrophic predictions made by many lobbyists and groups are not going to happen.
Q. How can you be so sure?
A. They never tell the truth about anything and always inflate the issue to their own advantage. If the earth really was going to be in a state of moderate drought in 20 years, they’d say that it would be complete drought in ten years. If it were going to be in complete drought in ten years, they’d say that the earth was going to burn up in five years. If the earth was going to burn up in five years, they’d say that it’s going to explode in ten minutes. Nothing, absolutely nothing that an “enviornmental” mainstream group says is ever credible and if they do say something that’s true, it’s usually by mistake.
Q. Do you think anything can be done about global warming?
A. Realistically, there’s little we can do now that will have any effect in the immediate future. There is too much of a delayed response and the changes in years and even decades to come are already committed to. It is not an immediate issue, but the long term policies we commit to now can make a difference in fifty to one hundred years.
Q. What do you think of the current proposals to stem global warming?
A. All the mainstream proposals are absolutely worthless or worse than worthless and if we’re only going to do things like carbon capture and storage or building wind turbines, we may as well not even bother, because those kind of solutions are not “solutions” and only hurt us economically while doing not a single thing to reduce enviornmental problems.
Q. Would it surprise you if in thirty years it turned out that it had not gotten any warmer?
A. Not really.
Q. What is the one thing you think climate scientists are hiding the most from the public?
A. The degree of confidence (or lack there of) of projections and measurements. Not that they are really hiding it actively, but it’s not publicized to the degree it should be.
Q. What do you expect the climate will be like in ten, twenty, thirty, forty years in the future?
A. In ten years, it will be roughly what it is now. In twenty thirty, forty or more, I have absolutely no idea.
Q. What do you think of climate change conferences like Copenhagen?
A. A lot of hot air, a lot of politics, a small amount of cherry-picked science and a lot of wasted money wining and dining politicians.
Q. So then you’re denying global warming, eh?
A. No, and where the hell did you get that from?
Q. And you think there’s a big worldwide conspiracy of climate change scientists?
A. No, I don’t and where the hell did I say anything like that?
Q. So then you are a big supporter of the Republicans and all over Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and you want Sarah Palin in the Whitehouse right? Why do you hate black people so much?
A. What the? no, I’m a registered Libertarian and… I’m not going to dignify the rest of that with a response.
Q. How much are the oil companies paying you?
A. The same as the pharmaceutical companies: nothing.
Q. What do you think should be done to try to reduce climate change as much as is possible?
A. We need to understand what human-driven climate change and impacts of human energy usage on the enviornment are truly part of.
The single biggest thing we can do is recognize that we, as a society are beginning a great transition, as great as the deployment of electricity, the invention of the steam engine or the mastering of fire. We have begun to outgrow the limitations of hydrocarbon fossil fuels. Hydrocarbon fuels will continue to be an important energy source for some applications, but we can no longer rely on them for our foundational energy needs.
Just as we outgrew the limits of human muscle and moved onto animal muscle; just as we outgrew the limits of animal muscle and moved onto steam power and to electricity, to turbines and beyond, the time has arived that we will take the next great leap to the next order of magnitude of energy sources, and one which will revolutionize our interaction with the enviornment as fire did thousands of years ago.
Climate change is only a symptom of the fundamental issue: we are pushing combustion of hydrocarbons beyond the limits of what it can effectively provide for us without major problems. Fuel costs, shortages and choking emissions are the other symptoms of the same disease. It is time to break these bonds and use the energy source that can send us to the stars and beyond. Nuclear energy is not simply the answer to global warming, it is the answer to the greatest question one can ask: “what is the destiny of mankind?”
Does this put this issue to rest? Because I’m tired of being asked about it. I think I got all the questions I got on there.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 1:16 am and is filed under Announcements, Bad Science, Conspiracy Theories, Culture, Enviornment, Nuclear, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 6:23 am
Great post. This blog deserves much, much higher traffic.
Keep being awesome.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 8:51 am
Kudos
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March 3rd, 2010 at 9:33 am
Well if you want to put it to rest, I’m not sure there is a point to commenting. But, you seem to have the time and intellect to dig deep into the facts on many issues. So, I’m not sure why climate change is something you don’t want to pursue to the same degree. I think if you did, some of the opinions you give above would change. It seems that you would prefer not to do so, and that is certainly up to you.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 10:08 am
Good post. Glad to hear sensibility and a departure from the rampant emotions encircling the debate.
In relation to nuclear power is our destiny: This is something I have never understood about the anti-nuclear crowd or anyone having two cents in the energy debate. Nuclear energy IS the end result of energy production regardless of how we get there. Pro-nuclear activists aren’t fighting for their favorite technology or for a dramatic shift in society. We are simply trying to speed up the transition to an inevitability. This inevitability is quite blatant in my mind and the delaying of it seems to only cause pain and suffering. Nuclear is not a ‘bridge’ to fluffy, friendly, renewables. Current nuclear technology is in its extreme infancy compared to what it will become. Note, WILL become, regardless of its opposition.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 11:29 am
I take these things for known:
-The earth didn’t wait for man to encounter drastic climatic changes.
-Each of these events were temporarilly but extremely bad for most living things, and in particluar dominant species.
-These are not only distant prehistoric events, less than 20.000 years ago, the Sahara was covered by forests and half of north america was under a gigantic glacier.
-Our agriculture is not very resistant to even minor climatic changes, there are examples in which a single volcano caused a famine in several countries.
-A very significant proportion of the human population live and work in places of very low altitude (and near water).
-When I was a kid, the ecologists were planning the end of the word for the 90’s, I’m not that old, so I guess even earlier dates were issued.
As a consequence:
-Is the current trend the start of a serious climate change? I don’t know.
-Are human activities responsible for it? Again, I don’t know, but they clearly don’t help compensating the current trend.
-Could mankind survive a severe climatic change? very probably, adaptability is a strong human trend, but there could be a lot of natural selection.
-Could western civilization (or sustained decadence) survive a severe climatic change? Unlikely.
My goal is to be able to live without my XBox in 10 years, and maybe learn a new job, I’m not sure a collapsing society will really need electronic development engineers.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 12:29 pm
The subject of climate change is one of the worse I have ever run into. I like to think that with some diligence, and research, I can get at the very least, enough of a handle on any topic to form a considered opinion Climate change has resisted all my attempts to ‘gut out’ the truth on several aspects of this subject. It is very frustrating.
That there is broad indications of warming, there is no question, the role Man’s activities have played in this process, is conjecture. What is most important, and is often lost in the debate over blame, is that we must start looking at how we are going to adapt to a different general climate than the one we now enjoy.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 2:18 pm
AGW seems to be a Malthusian argument, that we are in peril of using up vital resources (pick any) overnight without any hope of finding alternatives.
I agree with the majority of your viewpoints, it is unfortunate that even just a little skepticism classifies one as a “denier.”
Hope you don’t need to waste any more bits on this subject.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 3:03 pm
There are AGW believers who are funded from the public purse and who believe that in order to encourage the citizenry to reduce CO2 emission rates, fossil fuels should cost end-users more than they do now, and the extra revenue should go into the public purse.
They seem unable to see any problem with that, and unable to imagine that anyone could see a problem with that. Typically they assert that fossil fuels are subsidized, as if by telling this lie they might effectively launder the fossil fuel money in their pockets.
There are also AGW believers who believe that carbon money in the public purse should be divided back out to the citizens, so as to eliminate governments’ very harmful conflict of interest in controlling CO2 emissions. Dr. James E. Hansen is one of these.
I think it’s useful, in assessing the validity of a thinker on AGW, to get him to declare which of the above two categories he is in.
(How fire can be domesticated)
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March 3rd, 2010 at 7:17 pm
I think you are a denier of a sort. Anything less then acceptance that mankind is the leading factor in warming casts you as a denier. You either accept the science and try to advance it, or you sit back and try to cast doubt and find short comings. Those are the two camps, you can be part of the solution like James Hansen, or part of the problem, like McIntyre. That’s my opinion.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 7:43 pm
Bruce said:
And that is the root of the problem. Because of this attitude, there is no room for any nuanced opinion that might lead to productive discussion on how to deal with the problem, or cope with it. It has become a religious issue and there is no objective truth in religion, no logical foundation. When religious people argue, they’re arguing about absolutes, and they can argue forever.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 7:57 pm
Bruce said:
That is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. There are not two camps on this matter. There is no requirement that you have to accept such a narrow interpretation of an issue that anyone knowledgeable about it will admit is complex and contains a great deal of uncertainty.
Humans may contribute something, but they ca’t be the primary factor because climate has been changing since the ice age.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 8:53 pm
DV82XL said:
Logical foundations are overrated. Because of this attitude, there is an effective public relations strategy.
Like any highly successful religion, Global Warming Hysteria has divided the world into two groups: those who are saved and those who are not. There is no in between.
This strategy is effective, because it means that to be saved requires absolute faith. There is no room for doubt, because questioning the faith is a sign of heresy, and heretics deserve to be punished. In this, the Church of GWH is no different: we have all heard the suggestions that there should be “war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of climate Nuremberg.” Hansen too has claimed that the leaders of the heretics — skeptics, deniers, whatever — are guilty of “crimes against humanity,” another Nuremberg reference. Even the term “denier” has been chosen because of its negative connotations in relation to such crimes.
The alarmists do invoke logic (of a sort) when it suits their purpose, but their logic rivals Pascal’s Wager in its attack on reason and its dependence on untenable, unknowable risks, rewards, and consequences.
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March 3rd, 2010 at 9:35 pm
Does anybody know what the falsiability conditions are? I’ve never seen any AGW type come out and say “I we observe XXX, we will have to go back to the drawing board” – instead, almost everything is claimed to have been predicted (mostly after the fact, it seems).
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March 4th, 2010 at 12:24 am
But where do you stand on global warming?
Just kidding; excellent post. I especially liked the idea of man power => horsepower => steampower => gas power => (hopefully) nuclear power.
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March 4th, 2010 at 2:04 am
Your opinion is rational and there’s nothing wrong with admitting to not knowing something for sure. I wish the climate science culture would show a greater willingness to admit that the climate is chaotic and that predicting it with 100% certainty is impossible.
Like you, I’m sure that global warming is real, but its badly over-hyped. Worst of all, all the plans to do something about it are worthless or worse.
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March 4th, 2010 at 2:36 am
I believe the global warming alarmists are lying because if they weren’t, why aren’t governments building nuclear reactors at breakneck speed, cutting whatever corners need to be cut, and simply shooting any protesters who try to stop them?
After all, compared to the cataclysmic desertification prophesied by the more extreme alarmists, even a dozen Chernobyls would be peanuts. The only possibility I can think of is that most of the global warming alarmists also believe StormSmith is fact. I don’t think I could express my loathing for Storm van der Leeuwen without using swear words.
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March 4th, 2010 at 3:53 am
BMS said:
Complete ignorance.
We’re not talking about an abstract, philosophical argument, where the length is what we want it to be and the outcome of no particular immediate importance. This is a debate about the future of our planet. The science is settled, the 2007 report from the IPCC, produced by a group of scientists from 113 countries, is conclusive. The earth is warming, and mankind is causing it to happen. At this point the focus must be on actions to stop it.
Yes, there are certain parallels to historical fact. This is a situation where we can see a massive disaster on the Horizon, but if we take action now, we can stop it. People who sit around casting doubt are only undermining the efforts at educating the public and getting real action going. As such, you’re part of the problem.
I give you guys some credit, you do at least want to reduce pollution… but the things you propose, assuming they worked, are not nearly enough. We need a total re-think. We need to cut back air travel and massively reduce our carbon footprint.
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March 4th, 2010 at 7:53 am
@ Bruce:
Most disappointing. All the time you’ve been here, and all you can manage at this point is to echo the style of argument that you’ve seen here and noted to be effective. Style is but one element. Substance is also important.
For inbstance, why are you going after air travel rather than the emissions from fossil-fuel power plants? What concievable reason could justify such a prioritisation?
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March 4th, 2010 at 8:26 am
Finrod said:
Perhaps because environmentalists are in some respects modern-day Puritans, and air travel is associated with vacationing (and is therefore sinful)?
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March 4th, 2010 at 10:35 am
George Carty said:
Well, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? This looming “massive disaster” is a convenient excuse to get mankind to curtail its sinful ways, or at least to get people to pay some sort of penance for them.
There is only one way to be saved. Using technology (which in the more extreme Green ideologies is a key part of original sin) is considered cheating.
Thus, regardless of what else we do, Bruce urges that we need to “cut back air travel and massively reduce our carbon footprint.” Nevertheless, sins like air travel are OK if we pay the proper carbon offsets and recite ten Hail Marys and one Our Father.
Then all is forgiven — especially by the companies that sell the carbon offsets.
By the way, why does everyone always crap on the Puritans? At least the Puritans didn’t sell indulgences, unlike the Greens.
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March 4th, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Bruce: Here’s a good example demonstrating the science is not settled.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/03/spencer-using-hourly-surface-dat-to-gauge-uhi-by-population-density/#more-16937
Note: Dr. Spencer is a world renowned climate scientist; he is proposing a method for measuring temperatures; he is asking for input and critique of his methodology; his research methods are transparent; and the comments/critiques are wonderfully scientific for the most part. This is what “deniers” are all about – seeking good science. Your acceptance of “the science is settled” actually makes you the denier – you deny the possibility (which is much higher in my opinion) that there are better explanations for global warming than CO2 forcing.
I have ready access to and read climate science papers. I’m not a climate scientist but I can usually tell when the science is reasonably good, and for the most part it is. However, what I note in far too many papers is a conclusion that is disconnected from the study results. For example an author may attribute an effect to global warming without considering that it may be only a local effect. The effect is real, but the conclusion is a non-sequiter. This is rampant in climate science and sad to see.
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March 5th, 2010 at 1:48 am
Chris Blalock said:
Q said:
BMS said:
H. Douglas Lightfoot, an engineer, had it right several years ago.
He stated that clean unlimited energy supplies are more important than Climate Change, because energy is our best survival resource in a Climate Changed world.
That very accurately reflects my view on the situation as well.
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March 5th, 2010 at 2:21 am
Bruce said:
Complete ignorance.
We’re not talking about an abstract, philosophical argument, where the length is what we want it to be and the outcome of no particular immediate importance. This is a debate about the future of our [souls]. The [Truth] is settled, the [Bible], produced by a group of [prophets and desciples], is conclusive. The [Lord] is [coming], and mankind is [sinning]. At this point the focus must be on actions to [repent].
Yes, there are certain parallels to historical fact. This is a situation where we can see a massive [damnation] on the Horizon, but if we [repent] now, we can stop it. People who sit around casting doubt [on God] are only undermining the efforts at [preaching the Good News to] the public and getting real [faith] going. As such, you’re part of the problem.
I give you guys some credit, you do at least want to reduce [immorality]… but the things you propose, assuming they worked, are not nearly enough. We need a total re-think. We need to cut back [on homosexuality] and massively reduce our [dancing] footprint.
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March 5th, 2010 at 4:11 pm
Would it not be better to focus on global population control?
EVERY environmental problem, and many political problems would be much less serious.
I am not arguing for compulsion, simply giving everyone a genuine choice.
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March 5th, 2010 at 4:23 pm
FatBigot said:
The error: The earth is dangerously overpopulated or is getting close to being so
This is a myth which has been around for quite some time – from Malthus in the 18th century who said: “The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man” to environmentalists who see humans as evil in comparison to the rest of nature. But the reality is world is a big place with plenty of space.
So, how much land does it take to hold 6 billion people? To give you an idea, consider the small nation of Japan. It has about 143,000 square miles of area. One square mile has 5280 * 5280 = 27.9 million square feet. Japan has a total of about 4 trillion square feet, enough to give each person of the earth 670 square feet. If we housed people in families of four in simple two-level buildings (8 people per building, one family of four per level), each building could be on a lot of over 5300 square feet. If we used the American average of 8,000 square feet to four people, the entire population of the planet would fit into a space as big as Texas and Nevada combined – leaving the rest of the land for food production and entertainment venues.
It should also be mentioned that many countries in the west are now in a period of population implosion as families are getting smaller.
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March 5th, 2010 at 8:48 pm
There is certainly something to be said for population control on a local and individual basis. There are parts of the world where the food supply is inadequate to begin with and the population continues to grow primarily due to lack of birth control and lack of education about reproduction and reproductive health.
India is an example of somewhere that needs better birth control and education and has really done a pretty poor job of things. Effective birth control has only been widely avaliable in the country since the 1990’s and approval of birth control, distribution and education has been hampered by both the current bureaucracy of the government and a combination of cultural issues including both vestidges of the Victorian sexual ethic that the government inherited from British rule and their own cultural taboos. You would think that they’d manage to revamp things in 50+ years, but it’s been slower than it should be.
A young unmarried woman in a slum in India does not need eight children, and almost certainly does not want eight children. The population explosion in the lower classes there is only hurting them. Yet there has been very poor policy on this.
India is not alone in this respect. Banglidesh is growing at an unsustainable rate and the level of Islamic traditions has been a huge issue to providing effective reproductive choices. Southeast Asia has areas with the same issue.
In general, population tends to stop growing as much as living standards improve, but there are areas of the world, where poverty is being made worse by population growth that is skewed toward the lower class.
It’s not an issue that will choke the earth or anything, but it puts a strain on already burdened social systems.
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March 6th, 2010 at 7:45 am
FatBigot said:
No, because it doesn’t work unless you use violence or the threat of violence to enforce it. The only effective “population control” is giving people adequate energy, food, water, education and living conditions in general. Children are your retirement plan and a source of cheap labour; that’s how undeveloped economies work.
FatBigot said:
Why? It doesn’t matter if we use up all the coal in a century or use up all the coal in 5 centuries; the problem is using up all the coal. If you have less people you have less human capital, which is the ultimate resource of the economy(can always learn to make more energy from fission or fusion which are for all forseeable intents and purposes infinite), you have less research funding(assuming similar fraction of GDP) and you have less sense of urgency(“we have to get off coal in 20 years!” incites much more action than “we have to get off coal in 100 years!”).
Underlying all this is some fictitious notion of an immutable “carrying capacity”, which hinges on the historically false notion of a constant pattern of resource usage and zero technological progress.
FatBigot said:
By all means; you don’t need any help from the government to enact various futile attempts to entice desperately poor people to act in economically irrational ways. You’ll have exactly as much success as anyone else; zilch.
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March 6th, 2010 at 8:51 am
One thing that I find particularly strange is that the nuttier fringes of the green movement somehow manage to reconsile in their head the idea that humans are a disease and that global warming is bad for the planet(note, I said “the planet”, whatever that means, not human civilization).
If you look at the history of CO2 and average temperature of the planet it is clear that “normal” is something more like 2000 ppm CO2 and 22 degrees celcius average temperature, rather than our current cold spell and up until recently CO2 defficient atmosphere.
http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect16/image277.jpg
It’s the combination of dry climate and falling CO2 levels that allowed grasses to evolve only some 40 million years ago. Clearly if you believe in the Gaia nonsense humans evolved to prevent CO2 from falling, or somethnig like that.
The only manner in which releasing more CO2 is bad is if you consider human civilization as having a great deal of value and recognize global warming as a serious cost; otherwise it just makes no sense.
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March 6th, 2010 at 2:18 pm
Humans are a disease that plagues the land, they use all the resources and destroy everything before moving on, they are nothing but a parasite on the planet’s biosphere etc etc etc. However the difference between us and say Clostridium botulinum is the fact that we can recognize that without our host, we can’t survive. That may be our saving grace.
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March 6th, 2010 at 7:19 pm
I think it’s true that the claims people make in favour of climate change are exaggerated, but I feel they’re doing this with good intent. Look at Y2K. When people said “you know, in 20 years, this system won’t work anymore”, the reply was “so what? It’ll have changed by then.” When people said “guys, in 3 years this system won’t work anymore”, the reply was mass panic.
Just the same, if we tell everyone that climate change, induced by humans, will cause severe problems for us in 100 years, people won’t start to care for another 95 years, and then it’ll be too late. If we exaggerate and tell them it’ll start to cause problems in 5 years, they might actually care now, and do something now. There is a large gap between when it’s too late to prevent the problems from occurring, and when they actually occur.
I also think that even if pollution is not contributing much/at all to climate change, it’s still not a good thing, and making an effort to stop it will benefit the Earth.
#29 has an excellent point. Humans are much like a parasite, the same kind as the mold you’d find on an old piece of cheese, sucking up all the resources. Eventually, there will be no resources left.
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March 6th, 2010 at 8:21 pm
⬡ said:
According to what you have written, humans are not like parasites at all. Rather, they are more like cattle, who deserve to be stampeded according to the latest eco-fashion, with substantial lies and exaggerations of impending doom, so that they do what you tell them.
You have figured this all out for yourself, eh? The proles can be told what to think and have their herds culled … er … controlled like any other parasite or mold on a piece of cheese … as long as it is done with “good intent.”
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March 6th, 2010 at 8:40 pm
⬡ said:
It think if you read what I wrote again, you will see that I am asserting quite the opposite. It is our capacity to understand the situation that provides us with any hope of survival, unlike other organisms that do consume untill there is a population crash.
All those that call for a massive reduction in population to solve this issue, are in fact saying it can’t be solved, that Man cannot through his actions increase the carrying capacity of this planet beyond some already fixed limit. Yet the historical record demonstrates that in fact we can. The progress from gathering to hunting to agriculture and husbandry is clear and undeniable evidence of using technology to produce greater amounts of food and fibre from smaller areas of land.
We have not even begun to push the limits of what this planet can handle, and while it is true that management of both resources and the environment need improving, there is no need for any Draconian reductions of the population to achieve this.
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March 7th, 2010 at 12:56 am
Soylent said:
George Carlin postulated that the planet may have created humans because it wanted styrofoam.
If we’re anthropomorphizing the planet as Gaia and the evolutionary process is the fulfillment of this earth-deity’s will, then the most likely reason I can think of that the planet would want to create humans is to get some of her eggs out of this basket. With as much time as she spent developing dinosaurs as the dominant species only to have them wiped out by a cosmic event, it makes sense that she would feel her cosmological clock ticking and want to reproduce before another great cataclysm occurred. From that perspective, mankind would be charged with colonizing off-planet bodies so that a global calamity won’t wipe out all traces of Earth’s biological past. Gaia may be willing to suffer some pains (pollution, deforestation, extinctions) in the process of allowing mankind to develop into a space-faring species capable of ensuring her legacy doesn’t end even if the Earth is reduced to lifeless fragments drifting off-orbit. After all, in geological time, Gaia will have no trouble recovering from a few thousand years of mineral exploitation and poor soil management if humans don’t work out as intended, but the reward of success would be an insurance policy for a vulnerable biosphere with no hope of averting cosmic disaster.
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March 7th, 2010 at 1:15 am
Shafe said:
Dang it! Yes, I know dinosaurs were not a species.
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March 7th, 2010 at 10:52 am
DV82XL said:
Read Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared M. Diamond. There are examples of overpopulation leading to environmental degradation and the inability to support the population. Kenya now has double the population it had when it had droughts 20 years ago, making the 2009 drought much more severe in outcome.
The total number of mouths the planet can feed may be much greater, but the diet may be less varied, and the effect of catastrophic events will be much more severe owing to less slack in the system.
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March 7th, 2010 at 2:59 pm
FatBigot said:
Please do not confuse a local event with global trends when commenting on carrying capacity. Famine, has been a part of human history since before we were fully human I’ll bet, but it has always been an event restricted to a limited area, or population, While tragic, the fact remains that there is no other reason than political that any population need face starvation today.
The point I was making is that in a global sense, humanity has applied innovation over the years to increase the number of people that a given region can support. Within that context local failures, while regrettable, do not disprove a clear trend.
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May 11th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
for one thing your wrong: human produced co2 does have a significant impact on global climate. it is a greenhouse gas and therefore keeps the heat from escaping. this is well known since the seventys and the actual influence isnt that hard to determine because as a gas the concentration is near to homogene. its the other influences like sunintensity , ozoneholes and clouds that are harder to predict and which cause the differences between prediction and actual climate. since we live in a colder period it would be fatal for the human civilization if temperatures rise , even if its just a few degrees. a little increase in global temperature leads to far more chaotic weather including such spectacular events as hurricanes and tornados.
so its not a matter of believe and waiting of better scientific results, co2 is bad for our climate and therefore its output has to be reduced. further actions to keep this planet habitable do need research but for co2 the point is clear. reducing the carbon footprint also has the bennefit that it helps to reduce the need of natural ressource which are all but unlimited.
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May 11th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
dnfyngng said:
Where did I say it wasn’t? I only said I don’t think it’s the largest. I accept that it’s a very significant contributor.
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