Someday in the not-too-distant future someone will ask “How did we get here and why is the family cat on fire?” and I will produce this post as Exhibit A.
Dude, that's gonna happen regardless of what we do! FACT: Some the star we call the Sun will turn into a Red Giant and fry us all...Until then, why worry about it...
Someday in the not-too-distant future someone will ask “How did we get here and why is the family cat on fire?” and I will produce this post as Exhibit A.
THIS.Y'all are conflating news articles on science with scientific research.
One targets a grade four reading level, the other does not.
I'm not talking about news articles! I'm talking books and papers on the subject! Written by educated scientists!Y'all are conflating news articles on science with scientific research.
One targets a grade four reading level, the other does not.
Yes, I believe that's what the cartoon's artist was shooting for, with a bit of "through the mirror, darkly" edge to it....The more serious question is:
What if it's NOT a big hoax,
and we can STILL create a better world (including everything on the presenter's list) for nothing?
Could be; I wasn't sure since the cartoon was open to interpretation.Yes, I believe that's what the cartoon's artist was shooting for, with a bit of "through the mirror, darkly" edge to it....
My worry is that we were well past "just the tip" 50 years ago, and that we will never be able to repair the damage we have done to the environment.Could be; I wasn't sure since the cartoon was open to interpretation.
For myself, my view is well-represented in the "formula" I depicted in my earlier post (#71).
I can see a need to soberly evaluate holes in the CAGW models, but I don't see any need to risk one's credibility by attempting to argue against persons who're better-informed than I. I'll leave that to the "minority report" scientists...assuming they don't get squelched, which seems sometimes to have been an issue.
But for me, the second half of the "formula" always seems the weakest -- and, moreover, something for which the relevant expertise is almost entirely outside the realm of science and falls instead under economics, political science, law, crowd psychology, history, and even trade negotiations.
Let's say we are likely to get CAGW if total emissions rise or remain level instead of falling.
And let's say that due to lagging impacts of changes we might make, we're in for some substantive amount of CAGW negative impacts no matter what we do (something that's probably been true since the 1970's). Cuts we make now probably don't benefit us for 25 years or more; cuts we make in 25 years, for 50 years or more; and so on.
And let's furthermore say that only wealthy 1st-world societies can afford to experiment with clean power-generation technologies, etc.; others are pretty much stuck worrying about survival and advancement towards 1st-world status.
And let's finally add (what as far as I know is not controversial) that power-generation technology (wood -> coal -> oil -> LNG -> early nuclear -> Gen 4 nuclear) trends overall towards lower-emissions over time as a society advances in wealth, with Gen 4 nuclear being zero emissions AND able to "eat" (as fuel) most of the toxic output from earlier-generations of nuclear power.
Seems to me, then, that the hot tip is to avoid doing anything that interrupts the advancement of wealth and technology of any society, so that they can all cross the Gen 4 zero-emissions surplus-power-generation "finish line" as fast as possible.
In the meantime, the advancing societies (e.g. China) will be strip-mining coal and generating smog and whatnot, which is (directly) counter-productive, but (indirectly) an expected stage in the process.
But fifty years on, when every village in Madagascar is powering a near-U.S. level of per-capita power consumption with local Thorium reactors (or whatever), and all the cars are electric, you wind up with all the livable cities, clean water, etc., that you could possibly hope for.
Interrupt that process, and you keep 3rd-world nations stuck in poverty (and 2nd-world nations stuck in 2nd-world status, using carbon-heavy 2nd-generation power plants) without ever meaningfully reducing emissions, elongating the period in which nations rely on high-carbon power sources. That's what I don't want. But that's what most of the LILCAPEL (referring back to my earlier post) ideas seem likely to give us. To me, they look more like symbolic, or even religious, gestures -- a sort of civilizational chest-beating mea culpa, mea maxima culpa -- at the expense of interrupting that process. It's show instead of substance: A half-billion westerners feeling guilty and wanting to wear a hairshirt.
But if they -- we -- would just stay out of the way, I think we'll get most of what we were hoping for...largely by doing nothing.
Could be.My worry is that we were well past "just the tip" 50 years ago, and that we will never be able to repair the damage we have done to the environment.
That’s been figured out a loooooong time ago. The equation is simple: eat less, sweat more. That fact is simply indisputable.Ever try and lose weight? Exercise scientist have multiple different views on how weight loss happens and the popular views on the subject are constantly changing. Every week there is a new "scientific" study that "proves" the beliefs of past exercise scientists wrong.
If scientists cant figure out the best way to do something as easily tested as losing weight how are they to be trusted with something as huge as predicting our effect on the future climate?
My faith in scientists opinions is close to on par with my trust for politicians! They have been proven wrong countless times. I'll believe it when I see it work!
The only sensible action to take is to move to technologies so green they offset the smelly brown tech being used in China.Could be.
Since emissions would increase regardless due to existing trends in China alone even if every other country on the planet went to zero tomorrow, and since China absolutely is not going to voluntarily sit in 2nd-world status to prevent that happening, and since absolutely nobody is going to war to force them to stop burning coal and buying cars...given all that, a certain amount of fatalism seems sensible.
In that case, though, what would be the sensible action to take?
(I'm not asking a rhetorical question; I genuinely am open to discussion.)
If we're in for heat either way, it may be that our remaining choice is whether to endure the heat as wealthy societies or poor ones. In the latter, the heat will kill; in the former, it is an inconvenience, requiring a lot of pricey homes in coastal areas (e.g. Martha's Vineyard) to move inland.
Or perhaps our only way out is with something fairly radical planetary engineering (stuff at the scale of building a giant sunshade in space that stays between us and the sun somehow). Well, there again, it might be the kind of thing the U.S. could undertake, but I'll guarantee we won't try to undertake it during a recession.
Anyhow, wherever I turn, it always looks to me like people are overly-concerned with proving the first half of the formula. I really wish I could hear some more substantive talk about the second half, though. "Okay guys, let's stipulate CAGW for the sake of argument. What then?" It's the responses to that question that keep striking me as variations on the theme of "Let's give lots of regulatory power to whichever politicians have done the best job making CAGW sound scary." I always want to respond, "Fine. And once we've made them and all their donors independently wealthy, what are we going to do that's useful? And I don't just mean, to emotionally express our horror and sorrow at what our parents and grandparents did when driving the family to the beach, back when we were all either in short-pants or no-more-than-a-twinkle. I mean: To make life all nice and clean and green and high-tech looking, like a cross between a really nice botanical garden and the inside of an Apple Store in their heyday. How do we get there?"
I'm open. But until I hear a good plan of that kind, or unless someone shows me that Gen 4 power stations aren't all they're made out to be, my inclination is to sit tight and keep the economy humming so they can scale up as fast as possible. Since Gen 4 also has the benefit of being unable to generate nuclear weapons, I see no reason not to incentivize their construction everywhere we can. ("Here, China, have a power plant on us. Feel free to duplicate as needed. Could save you a lot in urban asthma outbreaks....")