On Mar 28, 2009, at 2:05 AM, Charlie Bell wrote:
One of Dyson's main points is that global warming tends to get
exaggerated. People of our generation or even the next one are
extremely unlikely to die from the effects of global warming. Even
a few generations down the road it is still unlikely unless they
suddenly become very stupid. Who is going to stand still while the
water rises over your head?
Food security is the biggest worry. But I'm not in any state to
discuss just now - been up since 4:40am and rode a very hilly 145km
today...
Food security is a fairly significant worry, all things considered.
It's nearly impossible to build up safety margin in the food
distribution systems of most countries on earth because within one or
two generations of any increase in the ability to produce food, the
population has expanded to fill the gap, so the nature of the system
as a whole is to operate near or at its limit to deliver at all
times. The moment global warming starts to impact food production to
any significant degree, people somewhere on earth will begin
starving. It won't affect people of our generation in the wealthiest
countries (and the USA is still one of the wealthiest, even in its
current weakened state), but it will affect people elsewhere on the
planet almost from the moment food production starts feeling any sort
of pinch.
If it were possible to maintain a margin of production capacity
without triggering an immediate population growth in response that
eats up that margin completely, then it would be possible to ride out
a lot of secondary effects of even fairly major climate change. But
the dynamics of the existing systems and population growth together
don't allow that margin ..
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