On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 11:44, kirby urner <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 11:00 AM, Edward Cherlin <[email protected]> wrote: > > << snip >> > >> Let's hear it then from the rest of you. What are your issues with >> Global Warming science vs. the carbon fuel industry and their >> scientific and political shills and common or garden variety dupes? > > Hey there Ed, nice chatting, see you on on edu-sig (Python.org) sometimes too.
Sure. > Our little think tank, isepp.org, meeting @ Linus Pauling's boyhood > home in Portland, Oregon, have talked over GW and/or GCC extensively, > including in our Yahoo! archives. > > This is the heart of the Silicon Forest and we pride ourselves on > being engineers, good ones. > > The decision tree is clear and you spell it out: is there a warming > trend (yes or no) and if yes, are humans responsible to some degree? > > I think you and I would say "yes" and "yes". There is much more to the tree, and much more to any serious answer. The full scientific decision tree has had tens of thousands of decision points so far, and many more to come. They tend to be of the form, "This observation/model/theory/what have you may be extremely important, therefore we should put significant resources into confirming or refuting it, and to improving it." The policy tree has to ask and answer quite different questions. For example, "What are the upside and downside of the science for the economy, the environment, and human survival on scales from purely local to global?" "At what point should we spend money to avert possible catastrophe?" "Wait, could we _save_ money by going to renewable power?" An expenditure of $3 billion on levees would have prevented the flood in New Orleans, which has cost well over a hundred billion dollars in damage and associated expense, and the politically deliberate destruction of any possibility of recreating that part of the city. The people who gave us that disaster are the ones arguing against both science and policy today. > But then there's a pause point we need to insert: is humanity having > responsibility for climate change a bad thing? If we have long term > plans to terraform Mars (some say we do), A question that has some interest, but currently comes over as rearranging the deck chairs on the plans for the successor to the Titanic. > then we need to get our sea > legs with this Gaia Hypothesis (appears to be correct) There are many versions. I don't know which one you mean. > and start > realizing that GCC is somewhat under the conscious control of humans. Past time. The Chernobyl reactor "accident" was intended as a safety experiment, or rather, demonstration, because management assumed that they knew what they were doing. They ordered the engineers to turn off all five safety systems, allow an excursion, and then turn the safety systems on again to restore the reactor to normal operation. The two Space Shuttle disasters were caused primarily by managers overriding engineers, not by the engineering problems with the design. We now have much of the management of Spaceship Earth far more concerned with corporate profit and assorted racist and sectarian hatreds than with human and global welfare. Many of the leaders in Easter Island society recognized that cutting down the last trees to raise bigger and bigger statues would be disastrous, but Conspicuous Consumption prevailed. If the tentative results of the latest climate science are correct, we have done that to ourselves, and cannot prevent the disaster. So I hope that our worst fears are wrong, but I will not fudge the data or the results to make anybody feel better about themselves. > Will they be able to self-organize successfully? Somehow that's > always the question, in every age. > > Remember that vast climate cycling is characteristic of this planet so > that even without human influence, we were expecting another Ice Age > soon. Within a few thousand years, most likely. But there was a conjectural theory, even before Global Warming became so dire, that humans had already changed the cycle of ice ages through agriculture, and that is why the current ten-thousand year interglacial has been longer than any other of the current climate age. Hooray for us if so, up to a point that we have now reached. > If humans have found a way to play with thermostat, that could come in handy. Matches are handy, but I don't see any value in letting children play with them. > On the other hand, giant geodesic domes inside of which we have > climate control, outside of which we have much less (because we don't > control solar cycling), may be the evolutionary trend, not claiming to > be all-knowing. > > Such pockets of climate control (inside domes) is already a feature in > UK architecture (Cornwall) as you probably know. We study this place > in Martian Math (my WikiEducator topic). > > In sum, I don't see "no change" as in any way normal for climate. > It's all about cycling and changing. > > That humans are now butting in at a level that really changes the > ocean water levels is a somewhat new development and we're gaining the > consciousness to go with it, which is what one would expect. The > design is intelligent i.e. self aware and adapting, one might say that > without thumping a Bible. > > I am entirely unaware of what has so far been uploaded to Wikieducator > in the way of Gaia Hypothesis literature. Lynn Margulis is a good > source of information on early Earthian biotica, the different gaseous > makeups one may take as evidence of biomass activity. These gas > disequilibria are what spectrometers look for in seeking the chemistry > of life on other planets. > > Kirby > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "WikiEducator" group. > To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org > To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] -- Edward Mokurai (默雷/धर्ममेघशब्दगर्ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر ج) Cherlin Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation. The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination. http://www.earthtreasury.org/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WikiEducator" group. To visit wikieducator: http://www.wikieducator.org To visit the discussion forum: http://groups.google.com/group/wikieducator To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]
