On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 7:59 PM, Brad Lowe <[email protected]> wrote:
It isn't just AGW we need to worry about... > EAGW Earthworm-Accellerated Global Warming is the new hot topic in Climate > Change Research. > > > http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2013/02/global-worming-are-earthworms-accelerating-climate-change > This is peer-reviewed hard science, so please refrain from mocking the > experts. > I actually don't take a strong position on AWG. I'm inclined to go with expert opinion on the matter, with the following caveats: * I'm not sure that expert opinion is as lopsided towards support for the AWG thesis as has been represented in the media; perhaps it is that lopsided, and perhaps it isn't. * I think it's an interesting epistemological challenge to try at the same time to go with expert opinion on AWG, on one hand, and to buck mainstream expert opinion on LENR, on the other. I suspect it can be done, but it's a rickety ship for a hobbyist to try to keep afloat. * From a purely risk-based approach, one should take the bad consequences that could ensue from a given outcome and multiply them by the probability of their occurring On the basis of my limited analysis of the AWG question, the risk alone justifies well-conceived, proactive action in connection with AWG. * I am not persuaded in the slightest that money spent on clean technology is money down the drain; quite the opposite. I suspect it would over the medium term create jobs, revitalize local economies and do the world some good. My earlier point about having have money and having to be willing to spend it in order to save money over the long run is more general and had sort of been made tangentially to the whole AWG debate (which is mercifully civilized now). I just think it's a basic principle that you have to be willing to pony up funding for what you care about, even or perhaps especially if it means that there will be some sacrifice on your part as a consequence. This line of reasoning for me does away with most of the parochial US-specific all-star wrestling death match body-slam budget debate, but I don't have in mind AWG all that much, specifically. I do think the AWG debate carries depressing overtones of the war back in the 1970s and 1980s on whether smoking tobacco is bad for your health, but I'll leave it to future generations to be the final judge of the accuracy of the parallel there. Eric
