I've got to keep breathing.It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't
May 10, 2013 10:54 PM Subscribe
Welp.
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:37 PM on May 10, 2013
posted by vibratory manner of working at 11:37 PM on May 10, 2013
I thought it was a really great and well-made video and then I remembered this quote from Walter Benjamin: "[Mankind's] self-alienation has reached such a degree that it can experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order."
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:52 PM on May 10, 2013 [8 favorites]
posted by Pyrogenesis at 11:52 PM on May 10, 2013 [8 favorites]
Just like those Google healthy lifestyle charts which are exaggerated for evangelical effect. Current levels of CO2 (393 ppm) are just over 40% higher than when there were no cars, no electricity, and no industry (276 ppm). For some reason these "scientists" produce a graph with a linear axis from 280 to 390 and scream "look it's off the charts!"
posted by three blind mice at 1:40 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by three blind mice at 1:40 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
"look it's off the charts!"
It is. Well, the scale is exciting. but the more salient fact - I thought - was that the (ppm) amount of CO2 in the atoms. hasn't been this high since, like, a long time ago. According to these ice samples we have.
Wikipedia has other things to say, namely that (using other ways of measuring) there were periods when CO2 concentrations were a lot higher (like 3,000 to 6,000 ppm).
posted by From Bklyn at 1:53 AM on May 11, 2013
It is. Well, the scale is exciting. but the more salient fact - I thought - was that the (ppm) amount of CO2 in the atoms. hasn't been this high since, like, a long time ago. According to these ice samples we have.
Wikipedia has other things to say, namely that (using other ways of measuring) there were periods when CO2 concentrations were a lot higher (like 3,000 to 6,000 ppm).
posted by From Bklyn at 1:53 AM on May 11, 2013
Current levels of CO2 (393 ppm) are just over 40% higher than when there were no cars, no electricity, and no industry (276 ppm).
40% higher is A LOT higher.
posted by DU at 3:01 AM on May 11, 2013 [11 favorites]
40% higher is A LOT higher.
posted by DU at 3:01 AM on May 11, 2013 [11 favorites]
40% higher is A LOT higher.
Especially in a large, closed system. Kind of like a swimming pool's amount of urine increasing by 40%. With nobody in it.
posted by gjc at 3:23 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Especially in a large, closed system. Kind of like a swimming pool's amount of urine increasing by 40%. With nobody in it.
posted by gjc at 3:23 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
there were periods when CO2 concentrations were a lot higher (like 3,000 to 6,000 ppm).
Yeah, but that was before there were humans on the land. Or animals. Or plants.
posted by tommyD at 4:24 AM on May 11, 2013 [6 favorites]
Yeah, but that was before there were humans on the land. Or animals. Or plants.
posted by tommyD at 4:24 AM on May 11, 2013 [6 favorites]
Well, who's to say that can't happen again?
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:45 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:45 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
The prophets say: All of this has happened before, it will happen again.
posted by Mezentian at 8:06 AM on May 11, 2013
posted by Mezentian at 8:06 AM on May 11, 2013
sexyrobot: please allow me to be the first to say, Dooooooomed!
We're not doomed. We just face a painful dilemma: we depend on both a stable climate and on fossil fuels. And fossil fuels are awesome: they provide a tremendous amount of energy in a concentrated form. If they weren't so awesome, it wouldn't be so difficult to give them up.
Looking at it as a question of ethics, the benefits of burning fossil fuels are direct, immediate, and personal--I can keep driving my car, or using electricity generated by burning coal. The negative consequences, on the other hand, are indirect; spread out over the entire world population rather than only affecting me personally; and spread out over time rather than happening immediately.
Most of all, my personal contribution to the overall problem is tiny. If I drove my car and I struck and killed a single person, that'd be a terrible crime. It's much harder to see how my driving can contribute to the destruction of Tuvalu, for example, or heat waves that kill thousands of people in Europe. The scale of the problem only becomes visible when you look at it from a national and international level, and when you look at future impacts and not just immediate impacts. (For example, our ability to adapt to higher temperatures is limited by human physiology, so there's a hard limit on how much temperatures can rise before large areas become uninhabitable.)
Since it's a collective problem, dealing with it will require collective action, i.e. action at the national and international level. The most feasible mechanism is likely to be a carbon tax, rather than cap-and-trade. Saying "all the major industrialized countries need to have a carbon tax of $100/tonne in 2020" is going to be a lot easier than saying "all the major industrialized countries have to limit their emissions to no more than x gigatonnes, and here’s how they’re going to be initially allocated." The latter is a recipe for endless wrangling and non-binding limits; the former is basically just a sales tax. (It only took BC about six months to set up a carbon tax.) See William Nordhaus, After Kyoto.
Of course, if the rational approach doesn't work out, I think what we're likely to see is famine, violence, and war. But that still doesn't mean we're doomed.
posted by russilwvong at 8:17 AM on May 11, 2013 [4 favorites]
We're not doomed. We just face a painful dilemma: we depend on both a stable climate and on fossil fuels. And fossil fuels are awesome: they provide a tremendous amount of energy in a concentrated form. If they weren't so awesome, it wouldn't be so difficult to give them up.
Looking at it as a question of ethics, the benefits of burning fossil fuels are direct, immediate, and personal--I can keep driving my car, or using electricity generated by burning coal. The negative consequences, on the other hand, are indirect; spread out over the entire world population rather than only affecting me personally; and spread out over time rather than happening immediately.
Most of all, my personal contribution to the overall problem is tiny. If I drove my car and I struck and killed a single person, that'd be a terrible crime. It's much harder to see how my driving can contribute to the destruction of Tuvalu, for example, or heat waves that kill thousands of people in Europe. The scale of the problem only becomes visible when you look at it from a national and international level, and when you look at future impacts and not just immediate impacts. (For example, our ability to adapt to higher temperatures is limited by human physiology, so there's a hard limit on how much temperatures can rise before large areas become uninhabitable.)
Since it's a collective problem, dealing with it will require collective action, i.e. action at the national and international level. The most feasible mechanism is likely to be a carbon tax, rather than cap-and-trade. Saying "all the major industrialized countries need to have a carbon tax of $100/tonne in 2020" is going to be a lot easier than saying "all the major industrialized countries have to limit their emissions to no more than x gigatonnes, and here’s how they’re going to be initially allocated." The latter is a recipe for endless wrangling and non-binding limits; the former is basically just a sales tax. (It only took BC about six months to set up a carbon tax.) See William Nordhaus, After Kyoto.
Of course, if the rational approach doesn't work out, I think what we're likely to see is famine, violence, and war. But that still doesn't mean we're doomed.
posted by russilwvong at 8:17 AM on May 11, 2013 [4 favorites]
are just over 40% higher than when there were no cars, no electricity, and no industry (276 ppm). For some reason these "scientists" produce a graph with a linear axis from 280 to 390 and scream "look it's off the charts!"Yeah, We've only almost doubled atmospheric concentration. What could go wrong here?
The oceans were also 180 meters higher then they are now.
Yeah, but that was before there were humans on the land. Or animals. Or plants.
posted by delmoi at 8:24 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
When we let CO2 get up to 1,000 ppm, (0.1% of our air), we'll still be here, but we'll have to use more technology to make things comfortable for us. The past peak around 6000 ppm shows that there are resources on earth that unmanaged can eventually sink the carbon on a looooong time scale. Managing things could multiple those effects by many orders of magnitude. I believe we can probably terraform Venus at some point if we so desire.
It would be smarter to manage things, of course. The idea of funding government through a carbon tax is interesting, but it's entirely possible that it would, in the end, accelerate the production of greenhouse gasses. The reduction of the brakes on the economic activity caused by other taxes could speed the economy past the point where these taxes were initially set, or we could have some other non-obvious greenhouse gas produced that would more than offset the carbon savings, etc.
The fear mongering doesn't help, as eventually people read a bit and learn that it's not really as bad as the mongers say, and then dismiss the message entirely, regardless of the credibility of the source. I'd go so far as to say that if big oil was playing a long game, they'd secretly be funding the fear mongering because of it's suppression of critical thought about long term management of the planet.
This post has a heavy religious bias - My Religion is a mixture of Technology worship, and faith in "Progress"... please adjust the reading of it accordingly.
posted by MikeWarot at 9:02 AM on May 11, 2013
It would be smarter to manage things, of course. The idea of funding government through a carbon tax is interesting, but it's entirely possible that it would, in the end, accelerate the production of greenhouse gasses. The reduction of the brakes on the economic activity caused by other taxes could speed the economy past the point where these taxes were initially set, or we could have some other non-obvious greenhouse gas produced that would more than offset the carbon savings, etc.
The fear mongering doesn't help, as eventually people read a bit and learn that it's not really as bad as the mongers say, and then dismiss the message entirely, regardless of the credibility of the source. I'd go so far as to say that if big oil was playing a long game, they'd secretly be funding the fear mongering because of it's suppression of critical thought about long term management of the planet.
This post has a heavy religious bias - My Religion is a mixture of Technology worship, and faith in "Progress"... please adjust the reading of it accordingly.
posted by MikeWarot at 9:02 AM on May 11, 2013
I believe we can probably terraform Venus at some point if we so desire.
You are wrong. The only terraforming the human race will ever do is happening right now, and it's running out of our control and was unintentional to begin with. "We" can't even come to a social agreement about global warming, despite the scientific consensus, let alone choose to terraform another planet. There is no answer outside of the earth we stand on. Human beings will never live on another planet, or travel through space farther than a suicide mission to Mars (if that even happens, which I very much doubt). This here, now, is all there is.
posted by jokeefe at 9:50 AM on May 11, 2013 [4 favorites]
You are wrong. The only terraforming the human race will ever do is happening right now, and it's running out of our control and was unintentional to begin with. "We" can't even come to a social agreement about global warming, despite the scientific consensus, let alone choose to terraform another planet. There is no answer outside of the earth we stand on. Human beings will never live on another planet, or travel through space farther than a suicide mission to Mars (if that even happens, which I very much doubt). This here, now, is all there is.
posted by jokeefe at 9:50 AM on May 11, 2013 [4 favorites]
This post has a heavy religious bias - My Religion is a mixture of Technology worship, and faith in "Progress"
You didn't look at the graph, did you? We're driving ourselves off a cliff, not coming to a little curve in the road. I do agree about one thing — your belief that we can keep on accelerating towards the brink because we're so smart we'll somehow figure out how to fly is little better than a religious delusion.
posted by namasaya at 10:06 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
You didn't look at the graph, did you? We're driving ourselves off a cliff, not coming to a little curve in the road. I do agree about one thing — your belief that we can keep on accelerating towards the brink because we're so smart we'll somehow figure out how to fly is little better than a religious delusion.
posted by namasaya at 10:06 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
We've only increased the CO2 levels in our atmosphere by 40% over the levels we found them at when we started to watch. Now we know, and we have to be aware of the effects we're creating.
What we don't have to do is panic. The levels have been at least 10, possibly 20 or more times higher in than the present (according to what I read on Wikipedia), and the earth didn't turn into a Venus-like hell. We have time to get our act together, which will take hundreds of years, because we're a diverse group of folks with lots of layers of socially agreed on value systems which all have to come into eventual synchronization on this topic.
There real limits on our actions are ones we impose upon ourselves, through these social structures and what we believe our own limitations are. The language and metaphors we use to talk and think are boxes which limit our imagination. Thinking in terms of 40% higher levels assumes that the baseline is some sort of gaia / God given "natural" level.
We've increased the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere by 0.014%, from 0.028% to 0.040%. There is good evidence it's been as high as 0.700% in the past. That gives us a lot of headroom to get our act together.
I doubt that deliberate public action is really going to make a dent in this, but I am sure that societal agreement will lead to good management over the long run. We just have to keep the parasite class from misleading us over the next millenium.
If things don't change by about 3000 AD, then we're actually doomed.
posted by MikeWarot at 10:12 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
What we don't have to do is panic. The levels have been at least 10, possibly 20 or more times higher in than the present (according to what I read on Wikipedia), and the earth didn't turn into a Venus-like hell. We have time to get our act together, which will take hundreds of years, because we're a diverse group of folks with lots of layers of socially agreed on value systems which all have to come into eventual synchronization on this topic.
There real limits on our actions are ones we impose upon ourselves, through these social structures and what we believe our own limitations are. The language and metaphors we use to talk and think are boxes which limit our imagination. Thinking in terms of 40% higher levels assumes that the baseline is some sort of gaia / God given "natural" level.
We've increased the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere by 0.014%, from 0.028% to 0.040%. There is good evidence it's been as high as 0.700% in the past. That gives us a lot of headroom to get our act together.
I doubt that deliberate public action is really going to make a dent in this, but I am sure that societal agreement will lead to good management over the long run. We just have to keep the parasite class from misleading us over the next millenium.
If things don't change by about 3000 AD, then we're actually doomed.
posted by MikeWarot at 10:12 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
This post has a heavy religious bias - My Religion is a mixture of Technology worship, and faith in "Progress"I'm not certain which graph you're referring to. I read the Wikipedia page that an earlier commenter linked to, and then found this graph which shows the long term picture of CO2 levels on earth.
You didn't look at the graph, did you? We're driving ourselves off a cliff, not coming to a little curve in the road. I do agree about one thing — your belief that we can keep on accelerating towards the brink because we're so smart we'll somehow figure out how to fly is little better than a religious delusion.
You'll note the peak around 0.7% (7,000 ppm) approximately 500 million years ago. I assume that if we've gone to that level in the past, there's at least a 50/50 shot we could endure it in the future, subject to many things we known, and even more things we don't.
It seems quite reasonable to me that we've got the millenium it's really going to take to properly solve this issue, and to assume full stewardship of this planet.
Again, I admit my biases up front, and do denote where I find error margins.
posted by MikeWarot at 10:21 AM on May 11, 2013
There is no answer outside of the earth we stand on. Human beings will never live on another planet, or travel through space farther than a suicide mission to MarsWell, for sure people are not going to stop making predictions about things they can't possibly know about.
posted by delmoi at 10:31 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
The issue isn't whether the Earth is going to turn into Venus.
The issue is that changes in sea level and weather patterns mean that places which are currently habitable and arable will become uninhabitable (like the place where I rent, at ten feet above sea level, and my two million property-owning neighbors) and agriculturally unproductive. There's plenty of other land that will open up to new living and farming, of course. But people will have to move, and move suddenly, and people don't like doing those things.
At the same time, in all likelihood, we'll be facing a resource crunch where our primary source of energy — fossil fuels — becomes progressively more expensive to extract. This has implications not only for transportation and manufacturing, but for food production as well: a big factor in the "green revolution" was petroleum-based fertilizers.
It is unreasonable to assume that a population as large as ours can continue our current rate of growth indefinitely, and unclear what happens to our economic system without growth. Couple these resource issues with large-scale, involuntary relocations and you have a situation which has, for most of human history, been addressed by destructive, population-shrinking wars.
That's the issue. Our lifestyle will have to change, quite possibly in the next few decades. Can we arrange for the transition to be peaceful?
Rhaomi: sunspot population?
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 10:34 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
The issue is that changes in sea level and weather patterns mean that places which are currently habitable and arable will become uninhabitable (like the place where I rent, at ten feet above sea level, and my two million property-owning neighbors) and agriculturally unproductive. There's plenty of other land that will open up to new living and farming, of course. But people will have to move, and move suddenly, and people don't like doing those things.
At the same time, in all likelihood, we'll be facing a resource crunch where our primary source of energy — fossil fuels — becomes progressively more expensive to extract. This has implications not only for transportation and manufacturing, but for food production as well: a big factor in the "green revolution" was petroleum-based fertilizers.
It is unreasonable to assume that a population as large as ours can continue our current rate of growth indefinitely, and unclear what happens to our economic system without growth. Couple these resource issues with large-scale, involuntary relocations and you have a situation which has, for most of human history, been addressed by destructive, population-shrinking wars.
That's the issue. Our lifestyle will have to change, quite possibly in the next few decades. Can we arrange for the transition to be peaceful?
Rhaomi: sunspot population?
posted by fantabulous timewaster at 10:34 AM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
Well, for sure people are not going to stop making predictions about things they can't possibly know about.
Well, sure, let's leave some room for unexpected discoveries (warp drive!) that will make travel possible, plus some way of shielding human beings from the hostile environment which is open space (not to mention Mars itself). But without a lot of handwaving that somehow becomes actual fact and actual technology, the chances of success-- let alone routine travel-- are vanishingly small.
It's easy to forget, sometimes, when you walk through a supermarket full of food, that it could all go away with disruptions in the supply chain, or a bad harvest, or an extinction. We've already had failures of the wheat crop in the US; what if it becomes too hot to grow food in California? What if the rivers run fatally dry? It's easy to feel comfortable, but the future could be very different.
It is, however, rather amazing to read the number of comments on the NY Times saying variations of "I'll be dead by then anyway, so what do I care". That's what we're dealing with: the inability to plan for the future that is part of the self-absorbtion of the human condition, the preference for immediate gain over sacrifice for uncertain reward, a lack of imagination.
posted by jokeefe at 11:06 AM on May 11, 2013
Well, sure, let's leave some room for unexpected discoveries (warp drive!) that will make travel possible, plus some way of shielding human beings from the hostile environment which is open space (not to mention Mars itself). But without a lot of handwaving that somehow becomes actual fact and actual technology, the chances of success-- let alone routine travel-- are vanishingly small.
It's easy to forget, sometimes, when you walk through a supermarket full of food, that it could all go away with disruptions in the supply chain, or a bad harvest, or an extinction. We've already had failures of the wheat crop in the US; what if it becomes too hot to grow food in California? What if the rivers run fatally dry? It's easy to feel comfortable, but the future could be very different.
It is, however, rather amazing to read the number of comments on the NY Times saying variations of "I'll be dead by then anyway, so what do I care". That's what we're dealing with: the inability to plan for the future that is part of the self-absorbtion of the human condition, the preference for immediate gain over sacrifice for uncertain reward, a lack of imagination.
posted by jokeefe at 11:06 AM on May 11, 2013
Phil Plait: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide Levels Hit 400 ppm for the First Time in Three Million Years
Global Warming Deniers Claim—Seriously—That More CO2 Is Good For Us
posted by homunculus at 11:25 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Global Warming Deniers Claim—Seriously—That More CO2 Is Good For Us
posted by homunculus at 11:25 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
If things don't change by about 3000 AD, then we're actually doomed.I wrote a kind of detailed response, but then I thought about and realized that, especially based on this line, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. It's pretty unlikely that there is enough fossil fuel to continue emitting carbon at the present pace for a thousand years. Maybe a few hundred, we have way more then we need to seriously screw up the climate, but not enough for a thousand years.
We've increased the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere by 0.014%, from 0.028% to 0.040%. There is good evidence it's been as high as 0.700% in the past. That gives us a lot of headroom to get our act together.Yeah. And 500 million years ago the surface temperature was 12.6°F hotter and the oceans were 100-300 feet higher And the sun was dimmer, so if it happened today it could be even hotter.
...
You'll note the peak around 0.7% (7,000 ppm) approximately 500 million years ago. I assume that if we've gone to that level in the past, there's at least a 50/50 shot we could endure it in the future, subject to many things we known, and even more things we don't.
The fear mongering doesn't help, as eventually people read a bit and learn that it's not really as bad as the mongers say,Now this is a very bizarre comment. Either you don't know what the 'fear mongers' are saying, or you think they're wrong. Now obviously there are crazy people saying crazy things on both sides, and that can't be controlled (well, one side is composed entirely of crazy people). But there are actual scientists making scientific predictions. Do you think we should be lying about what the reports say? Do you think they're wrong?
This post has a heavy religious bias - My Religion is a mixture of Technology worship, and faith in "Progress"... please adjust the reading of it accordingly.Well, it's done as good a job of making you fact impermeable as any other religion.
What we don't have to do is panic.Yeah, except we do have this thing called science, and from the actual science it's pretty clear that we don't have a thousand years to deal with this problem. In fact:
The IPCC reported that the effectiveness of mitigation efforts over the next two or three decades would have a large impact on the ability to stabilize atmospheric greenhouse gases at lower levels, and that the lower the ultimate stabilization levels, the more quickly emissions would need to peak and decline.[38] For example, to stabilize at between 445 and 490ppm (resulting in an estimate global temperature 2 to 2.4oC above the pre-industrial average) emissions would need to peak before 2015, with 50 to 85% reductions on 2000 levels by 2050.
We have to basically eliminate almost all of our CO2 emissions in a handful of decades. Not a thousand years. 30 years. You can call that 'panic' or not, but if we don't do it, we are going to have a lot of seriously dire shit going down, and people won't think that it was all b.s. because that shit is actually going to happen, unless we actually do cut emissions (which I think we will, but we'll have to see)
posted by delmoi at 11:57 AM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
Well, sure, let's leave some room for unexpected discoveries (warp drive!) that will make travel possible,How do we need warp drives to get to Venus? Venus may not be terra-formable but there are other places in the solar system with liquid water we could go, like Enceladus , Titan, Ganymed and Europa
And if we don't get off the planet in a billion years, or figure out a way to move it, that's it the end of the human race, the oceans, and all the life on earth that ever was.
plus some way of shielding human beings from the hostile environment which is open space (not to mention Mars itself).You know about this thing right? People have been living continuously in orbit for years. I'm not sure how this isn't pretty much a solved problem. They get re-supplied from earth, at this point. But the I don't really see why a self-sustaining system couldn't be built with current technology. What would actually stop this from working?
But without a lot of handwaving that somehow becomes actual fact and actual technology, the chances of success-- let alone routine travel-- are vanishingly small.First of all, the original comment was about Venus, not interstellar travel. As far as interstellar travel goes, there known planets orbiting stars just a few light-years away, and there are estimated to be about 17 billion earth-sized planets in the galaxy.
A self-sustaining ship could be sent out at 1/1,000th speed of light and get there in a few thousand years. And it could get all the way from one end of the galaxy to the other in 100 million years or so. It's not something that could be done in one lifetime, but could be done over multiple generations.
No new technology is required, as far as I know.
posted by delmoi at 12:21 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
delmoi: See this post on Tom Murphy's blog Do the Math (previously): Why Not Space? Also Stranded Resources (on asteroid mining).
Unfortunately, space colonization doesn't look like a plausible answer to our current problems. Basically, outer space looks an awful lot like a vast, empty desert.
posted by russilwvong at 12:44 PM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
Unfortunately, space colonization doesn't look like a plausible answer to our current problems. Basically, outer space looks an awful lot like a vast, empty desert.
posted by russilwvong at 12:44 PM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
The amount of actual science knowledge in those who apparently think that climate change is not all that big of a deal is absolutely staggering.
posted by Podkayne of Pasadena at 1:17 PM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
posted by Podkayne of Pasadena at 1:17 PM on May 11, 2013 [2 favorites]
When things have to change, it is the poor who get the short end of the stick.
And when it comes to climate change, the 99% of humanity who cannot just move somewhere else on a whim are the poor.
And that's why we're fucked: the decision makers are the 1%.
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:02 PM on May 11, 2013
And when it comes to climate change, the 99% of humanity who cannot just move somewhere else on a whim are the poor.
And that's why we're fucked: the decision makers are the 1%.
posted by seanmpuckett at 2:02 PM on May 11, 2013
See this post on Tom Murphy's blog ... Why Not Space?That post doesn't say much of anything It seems to say:
1) most people don't realize humans haven't been passed low earth orbit since 1980 (irrelevant)
2) It takes a long time to walk around a big scale model of the solar system. (so?)
3) If your space ship broke down in the middle of space, you would die. (duh)
4) We can't stop global warming with all earth's resources, therefore we can't terraform mars. (The problem is we are not using all of earths resources to stop global warming, or even a tiny bit of them)
From a technical/resource standpoint, limiting global warming should not be difficult. Globally it would only cost a few trillion dollars a year for 10 years, it's only idiocy that prevents us from doing starting now. The IPCC estimated it would slow global GDP growth by 0.12% to stabilize at 445-535 PPM CO2 by 2030. That is in no way "all of earths resources"
He finishes up with:
Having said all of this, it may come as a surprise when I say that I am a proponent of the space program. As a teenager, I fell in love with the movie The Right Stuff. I cherished visits to the nearby space museum in Huntsville, Alabama, and was thrilled to see Chuck Yeager in person at the National Air and Space Museum ...The main point then seems to be this:
My current project uses the reflectors left on the Moon by the Apollo astronauts: I feel I have touched the reflectors on my own (and discovered them to be dusty). My team and I found the reflector on the lost Soviet Lunokhod 1 rover after forty years of silence. Half of my project funding comes from NASA (they won’t read this, will they?) ...
In other words, I’m an insider—and a supporter. I whole-heartedly believe that space offers tremendous scientific promise. If we decide to return to the Moon (with or without people), I am enthusiastic about placing next-generation reflectors on the lunar surface, allowing us to drill deeper into the mysteries of gravity. Radio observations from the quiet far side can peer into the “dark ages” of the universe as the very first stars were forming. I am super-excited about the LISA gravitational wave observatory that I hope someday will get the funding and the green light to launch, assuredly revolutionizing our view of the universe. And to the extent that human spaceflight inspires youngsters to pursue a career of exploration and science, I’m all for it.
But I want to caution against harboring illusions of space as the answer to our collision course of growth on a finite planet. We live at a special time. We have enjoyed spending our inheritance of fossil fuels, and are feeling rather heady about our technological prowess. For many generations now, we have ridden an exponential growth track, conditioning ourselves to believe that our upward trajectory is an eternal constant of our existence. We’ll see. When we cross to the down-slope of fossil fuel availability—beginning with oil—we’ll see how timeless the growth phase seems to be, and whether we can afford a continued presence in space.Which, except for the fact that we'll need to stop using fossil fuels long before we get to the 'down-slope' of in order to stave off global warming, is fairly obvious.
But pay attention to the difference between the following two statements:
1) traveling into space will not allow humans to continue on an exponential energy consumption curve.The blog post addresses #1, which has nothing to do with what I was saying, but not #2, which I think is wrong and was asking for an explanation.
2) "There is no answer outside of the earth we stand on. Human beings will never live on another planet, or travel through space farther than a suicide mission to Mars" --jokeefe
Unfortunately, space colonization doesn't look like a plausible answer to our current problems.Duh.
MikeWarot may have implied that it might be, but obviously it isn't. Space colonization would take hundreds of thousands or millions of years, while global warming needs to be solved in a handful of decades.
However, you do realize that space colonization is the only solution to our future problems. Particularly the future problem of the sun getting brighter and brighter and larger and larger until it boils away the oceans and then expands beyond the earth's orbit and swallows it up?
If it's true that the human race is never going to leave the earth (or move it), then it means that humans, along with all life on earth, every animal, every plant, every bacteria, every scrap of DNA and RNA is going to be wiped out, and every trace erased from the universe forever.
And you're saying you're absolutely certain that will happen?
The amount of actual science knowledge in those who apparently think that climate change is not all that big of a deal is absolutely staggering.Staggeringly minute, perhaps. MikeWarot seems know some random facts, like the fact that 500 million years ago there was a lot more CO2 in the air, but doesn't have an integrated sense of how it all fits together, like, he doesn't seem to realize that the oceans were hundreds of feet higher at the time, and that the sun wasn't even as bright. Like, it's a completely terrible example that actually illustrates how bad things could theoretically end up (not figuring in the whole 'Antarctica moving around' issue as well).
It's not enough to know a few random factoids, you have to understand how everything fits together.
posted by delmoi at 2:10 PM on May 11, 2013 [1 favorite]
In other news: Two Major Tech Leaders Quit Mark Zuckerberg’s Political Group Over Ads Supporting Keystone XL
posted by homunculus at 7:56 PM on May 11, 2013
posted by homunculus at 7:56 PM on May 11, 2013
Heh, I can see why Elon Musk would have a problem with it :P
I wonder why Zuckerburg is such a fan of dirty energy. Seems like such a strange thing for someone so closely associated with younger generations. He is the guy who chose to power his super-efficient Oregon data center with coal, though.
posted by delmoi at 3:08 PM on May 13, 2013
“I have spent a lot of time fighting far larger lobbying organizations in DC and believe that the right way to win on a cause is to argue the merits of that cause.”Well, obviously it would seem that way if you're always on the side that actually has the merits.
I wonder why Zuckerburg is such a fan of dirty energy. Seems like such a strange thing for someone so closely associated with younger generations. He is the guy who chose to power his super-efficient Oregon data center with coal, though.
posted by delmoi at 3:08 PM on May 13, 2013
We are most definitely doomed. But we don't know when our expiration date is. This isn't fatalistic - just fact.
posted by agregoli at 5:52 AM on May 15, 2013
posted by agregoli at 5:52 AM on May 15, 2013
Continuing the going-to-space derail:
delmoi: The blog post addresses #1, which has nothing to do with what I was saying, but not #2, which I think is wrong and was asking for an explanation.
I think the Do the Math blog post is useful because there's a ton of depictions of space colonization in movies (I particularly like the one in Aliens), which gives the misleading impression that space colonization is going to happen Real Soon Now. (I'm not saying that this is your opinion, only that it's a common misunderstanding.) Murphy's point is that unlike earlier waves of colonization, where there were rich territories waiting to be exploited--and thus compelling reasons for people to seek them out--space is basically an empty desert, lacking even oxygen. Antarctica would be a far more hospitable environment than any off-world location. As my friend Jeff puts it: It doesn't make any sense to think about colonizing the Moon until you can't find a parking spot at the mall in Antarctica. Murphy's descriptions of the vastness and emptiness of space also emphasize just how difficult and costly it will be to go into space.
However, you do realize that space colonization is the only solution to our future problems. Particularly the future problem of the sun getting brighter and brighter and larger and larger until it boils away the oceans and then expands beyond the earth's orbit and swallows it up?
Is there another future problem you're thinking of, besides this one? Because I can't think of another compelling reason to go into space.
Given that extra-solar colonization will require a gargantuan effort, and the only obvious reason is to escape a threat that's hundreds of millions of years in the future--100 million years from now, the luminosity of the Sun will have increased by only 1%--it seems extremely unlikely to me that it's ever going to happen. (Granted, that's not the same as saying that it's impossible!)
I think a time horizon of ten thousand years into the future is about as far as we can imagine. (Human civilization based on agriculture is only about ten thousand years old. Given that most past civilizations have collapsed, we can expect that the same will happen to ours at some point.) From this perspective, 100 million years is basically infinite.
posted by russilwvong at 11:20 PM on May 16, 2013 [1 favorite]
delmoi: The blog post addresses #1, which has nothing to do with what I was saying, but not #2, which I think is wrong and was asking for an explanation.
I think the Do the Math blog post is useful because there's a ton of depictions of space colonization in movies (I particularly like the one in Aliens), which gives the misleading impression that space colonization is going to happen Real Soon Now. (I'm not saying that this is your opinion, only that it's a common misunderstanding.) Murphy's point is that unlike earlier waves of colonization, where there were rich territories waiting to be exploited--and thus compelling reasons for people to seek them out--space is basically an empty desert, lacking even oxygen. Antarctica would be a far more hospitable environment than any off-world location. As my friend Jeff puts it: It doesn't make any sense to think about colonizing the Moon until you can't find a parking spot at the mall in Antarctica. Murphy's descriptions of the vastness and emptiness of space also emphasize just how difficult and costly it will be to go into space.
However, you do realize that space colonization is the only solution to our future problems. Particularly the future problem of the sun getting brighter and brighter and larger and larger until it boils away the oceans and then expands beyond the earth's orbit and swallows it up?
Is there another future problem you're thinking of, besides this one? Because I can't think of another compelling reason to go into space.
Given that extra-solar colonization will require a gargantuan effort, and the only obvious reason is to escape a threat that's hundreds of millions of years in the future--100 million years from now, the luminosity of the Sun will have increased by only 1%--it seems extremely unlikely to me that it's ever going to happen. (Granted, that's not the same as saying that it's impossible!)
I think a time horizon of ten thousand years into the future is about as far as we can imagine. (Human civilization based on agriculture is only about ten thousand years old. Given that most past civilizations have collapsed, we can expect that the same will happen to ours at some point.) From this perspective, 100 million years is basically infinite.
posted by russilwvong at 11:20 PM on May 16, 2013 [1 favorite]
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posted by Rhaomi at 11:21 PM on May 10, 2013 [1 favorite]