From: "Phil Hays" <[email protected]>
Newsgroups: gmane.science.general.global-change
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, December 29, 2009 11:40 AM
Subject: [Global Change: 3359] Re: AGW Scientifc Certainty
On Mon, 2009-12-28 at 16:17 -0800, Robbo wrote:
>> You misunderstand me - while there may be population constraints at
>> any one time the human species can move the goalposts with
>> technology. The limit to growth is human ingenuity and I believe
>> that is true yesterday, tomorrow, this century and, with a little
>> flight of fancy, for the unlimited human destiny over the next 5
>> billion years amongst the stars. As we all know – there is no limit to
>> either human ingenuity or human stupidity.
>
>In short, you believe in magic.
>
>I don't believe in magic. It seems to me that the physical world has
>limits that ingenuity can't alter. Or in other words, there are limits
>to ingenuity.
>
>There are physical limits to what can be done. We might not understand
>them completely, but what ever these limits are, they can't be changed
>by anything that we might do.
I think you're talking past each other. Phil is right, for example,
gravitation limits our ability to levitate by the power of mental effort
alone, and on the other hand, it is possible to engineer systems that allow
us to levitate (we call them helicopters).
When it comes to "earth's carrying capacity", it has been theorized that
10^12 people could be sustained indefinitely without breaking any physical
laws, but few would want to live the ant-like existence it would require.
For present purposes, discussions of limits should be bounded by the present
population and the forseeable future: how do we engineer systems to sustain
10^10 people for 10^2 years with high and rising living standards and
minimal environmental damage?
I think IPCC scenarios A1T and B1 make a pretty good starting point for
discussions about what to do next.
-dl
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