On Tue, Dec 9, 2014 'Chris de Morsella' via Everything List < [email protected]> wrote:
> You seem to accept both that the earth is warming at a geologically (and > on ecological time scales as well) extremely rapid rate > Rapid, but not unprecedentedly rapid. > if AGW > Don't forget IHA. > contributes just a small fraction of global warming then what other > climate drivers do you propose as providing the rest of the driving force > for climate change? > I don't know, whatever super complex factors that have caused the temperature of the Earth to go up and down so radically over the billions of years that existed before humans ever evolved I guess. > As for your sanguine attitude that global warming (along with the > inevitable attendant sea rise and flooding of the most densely populated > and agriculturally productive regions of the planet) is not so bad… > The Earth has been at a vast number of temperatures in the last billion, or even in the last million years, do you have any reason to think that the temperature it was in 100 years ago was the exact temperature that would maximize human happiness and productivity? > > you are entitled to your opinions Thank you. And you are entitled to my opinions too. > > we should be very, very careful before experimenting with the basic > equilibrium states of our planetary biosphere. > Forget it, we gave up that option long before the pyramids were built. It was not a coincidence that the megafauna of North America and South America and Australia that had existed for many millions of years disappeared almost immediately after humans visited those continents for the first time. And today there are over 7 billion people on the Earth, never before have there been that many large animals of the same large species, nothing ever even came close. To keep that many animals alive radical things are going to be needed to be done, to also keep them happy even more radical things are going to be needed, like directly or indirectly diverting nearly 40% of the planet's photosynthetic output to human use. It would be astonishing if that sort of intervention did not cause global changes of some sort to the climate, but short of asking 5 or 6 billion people to kill themselves there is simply no alternative. And don't talk to me about windmills, if this is a serious problem it needs a serious solution, you need more than moonbeams and lollipops to keep 7 billion people alive. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
