Rob, Brian, and Ecolog:
While I suspect that Brian is 99% right, I remain concerned about a
fractional percentage that might affect the actual outcome.
For example, I would like to see links to the evidence chain that backs up
general statements. This adds a bit of work to the writing, but for such an
important subject, do you think it would be worthwhile, especially for book
introductions and other short pieces? In the alternative, how about
explaining how general conclusions were reached?
For example, I stumble every time I see the term "alternative fuels." I have
to conclude that the author includes everything from wind power to algae,
including switchgrass. I have high hopes for the former two, but strongly
distrust the latter and the scale slides into absurdity for things like corn
and other "alternatives" that require a lot of energy inputs, require
monocultures on more and more ecosystems, etc. Buzzwords can saw a solid
argument in half, if only through guilt by semantic association.
If one wants to achieve broad credibility across disciplines, trades, and
"stakeholders" like voters, mere authoritative finger-wagging might fall
short, however valid it might be. But if there are interests arrayed against
it, you can bet that any slip-up will feed their propaganda mill.
Then there's the foundation for the position. Regardless of whether a
critical fraction of global warming is caused by anthropogenic activity or
not (and nobody should be able to argue that it has NO effect), reducing
energy waste is a very smart thing to do for a lot of other reasons, many of
which are "old" ones, but perhaps more easily demonstrated. The
precautionary principle alone should be sufficient to indicate that "we"
should clean up our act--even without arguing the more arcane issues that
rest on calculations subject to question and even suspicion.
Nonetheless, every oar in the water on the side of betterment rather than
mindless exploitation and niche opportunism, regardless of its
counter-effect fraction, at least foments discussion and even some action.
But shifting that balance in the right direction by accounting for
counter-pressure in advance might be worth considering. At the rates
involved, one can't afford to be caught picking cherries whilst the world
burns.*
WT
*One confidence-builder might be the up-front acknowledgement that there is
a background rate of climate change, the trend of which might be toward
warming (in which case the point should be made that it is not the
percentage or amount of anthropogenic causes that is at issue, but that a
"silly millimeter" can be enough to upset the apple-cart), or the background
trend might be toward cooling (in which case, the anthropogenic fraction
would have to be large enough--and may well be--to offset the cooling to the
point of net global warming, polar melting, sea-level rise, loss of species,
etc.). The avoidance of these issues could feed into both or either healthy
or tragically misapplied skepticism, even to the point of a loss of public
confidence--again perhaps only to the tipping point.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Rob Dietz" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2010 11:37 AM
Subject: [ECOLOG-L] Good Read in The Daly News
You might enjoy Brian Czech's essay in The Daly News about protecting
polar
regions (I know I did):
http://steadystate.org/epitaph-for-the-poles/
Thanks,
Rob Dietz
Executive Director
CASSE
steadystate.org
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