It's obviously not an objective measure. A 1 % chance of some ill-specified result in a complex system is really a subjectrive measure. Should we respond to a *plausible* 1% chance? How plausible? A 1 % chance of a 1 % chance? I'm not being entirely facetious here. Steinn Sigurdsson used to point out on sci.env that we can't have a proportional response to more than infinitesimal chances of infinite damage.
The fact is that we have a significant number of significant threats to cope with. The strategy for dealing with any one of them in isolation is probably different than the strategy for dealing with the whole cluster of them. Climate change considered in isolation is a big problem, but climate changte considered as a component of other global scale problems (water, food, ecosystems, epidemics, and stupid stubborn hostility based on race, language and superstition) is bigger still. I think the article asks the right question in a sense, but what we're looking for is not a comparison of various threats. It's a way to maximizing the probability of getting through the population crunch of the next couple of centuries without civilization collapsing. We may disagree on whether that is likely without necessarily impacting whether we agree on the best strategy. mt On 7/9/06, william <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > James Annan wrote: > > An interesting comment: > > > > http://www.courant.com/news/opinion/op_ed/hc-yohe0630.artjun30,0,7395459.story > > Clearly not that interesting :-) > > Anyway, yes indeed, if you are going to react to 1% events there will > be a lot of things to react to. I suspect that the 1% doctrine is more > an excuse to do things for little justification, and won't be extended > to inconvenient areas. > > -W. > > > > > --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
