On Tue, Dec 18, 2012 at 6:59 PM, David Roberson <[email protected]> wrote: > > John, you must admit that Jojo has a point about proving that a problem > truly exists before excess expense and time is dedicated to solving it. >
Ok, so you are correct in that if there was no or very little and insubstantial evidence for global warming, if there was a minority of scientists who concluded it was genuine. And if the measures were not a good idea anyway. And if they had to cause hard ship and not give benefits of being free from oil. But as it turns out there IS evidence. There is the backing of the vast majority of climate scientists It is a very good idea anyway with many benefits > I expect that you could dream up many possible scenarios of problems that > might arise if you made an effort to do so. For instance, everyone is > convinced that one day soon a major earthquake will hit the west coast of > the US. If we applied the same logic to this possibility as to the global > warming issue, then it is time to force everyone to move out of that area > or rebuild every house that is not capable of withstanding a large > earthquake. I doubt that it would cost more to fix the earthquake problem > than what you propose for global warming. > Ah ha. So you are saying that the cost of saving the earth from a catastrophe that threatens both human society and much of the worlds wild life is about the same as reducing earth quake risk that could reduce the number of deaths from earth quakes. Now I live in New Zealand and Christchurch has recently had a number of devastating earthquakes. Hundreds have died. I am aware of earthquakes in western countries that have killed tens of thousands. But without researching it that is all I am aware of. The point is that this is relatively minor compared with the fall out of global warming. Now if you were to ask if I think that Nuclear plants should not be in areas with any Earthquake risk then I would agree. Even if that means they should not exist. > > In the case of global warming fears time is on our side. The worse case > expectation that might occur by the end of the century is a long way into > the future. > My understanding is that if a tipping point exists and it well might, then the process of either melting the ice caps or paradoxically triggering an ice age might be unable to be stopped at least by any reasonable means. In fact inertia alone is enough to make a situation very hard to stop. This sound like very irresponsible logic. Compared to ignoring a fire because it isn't very big yet, or isn't quite at your place yet. but we do need to worry about our grandchildren. > Ok, good save. BTW I am not convinced the repercussions are as far away as you seem to think. Now your advanced technology argument, yes I do agree with it. But I do not think that excuses abuse now, on the speculation that future technology will be able to undo anything. Actually I believe I am in the process of making such breakthroughs that may indeed be the start of what you talk about. But that still does not mean I would gamble with the earth on it. To bring this to a health analogy, this is abusing yourself today in the hopes that advances in medicine with help fix it all. As true as it is that advances can be astounding, they are also highly unpredictable. If you told people as the moon landings were happening that at the close of 2012 the US would have not visited the moon in a long time (and no one else has), not have any space transport of it's own in operation. I doubt you would find very much agreement, speculation would have had moon bases at the very least by now. John
