OT. Global WHAT?

[dean70]

Right, that's because as we all know, those scientists will all toe the line and agree on everything because they are all cowards motivated by grant money.

 

Cherry picking much? More like self preservation. Would youspeak out against some injustice in your chosen field of work you have built up over your working career, knowing it will potentially end it and destroy your reputation in that field?

 

Any notion why that doesn't work on any other scientific topic you want to name, with the possible exceptions of the theory of evolution and the germ theory of disease?

 

Name one that has such political focus?

 

Oh yeah, real scandal. You must never have worked with large groups of people on complex projects with reams of data involved. The "scandal" was nothing of the sort. Just the kind of correspondence that goes on during such an endeavour.

 

Yes it was Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation - Telegraph

 

 

For every 1 negative article there is flood of media releases supporting the hypothesis. The "green" industry potentially is a mutli $bn industry. A pretty good motivator to support favorable scientific outcomes. The petroleum & oil industry best days are probably behind it.

[Jud]

Paul, I know you're interested in science, so you might want to head over to the Real Climate blog and read the article about the recent journal paper revealing a conflict(!) between ice core and tree ring data. Yep, a conflict. Turns out the ice core data is off by 7 years! The ice core data from the first century AD, that is.

 

They really do have pretty darn precise info, Paul.

[Jud]

Name one that has such political focus?

 

 

 

Yes it was Climate change: this is the worst scientific scandal of our generation - Telegraph

 

 

Political focus: I named two, purposely - evolution and germ theory are highly politicized.

 

God no, not the Telegraph. That's where sbgk got his article supported by "facts" from the guy with the entry in the Encyclopedia of American Loons, a self-described "former architect" who's a quack not only about global warming, but cosmic rays and Earth's magnetic field as well.

[Paul R]

This is as well established as, oh, just picking a random example, the orbit of Saturn.

 

Really.

 

Guess we will just have to agree to disagree then. If it was, finding the proof would be as easy as - well - finding the orbit of Saturn.

 

 

 

 

Good thing all the systems analyses point the same way or it might be harder to draw conclusions. Seriously, read the academic journals and other scientific publications to see how definitive the models are and how much is known. My friend, your impression of the level of uncertainty surrounding the science is completely at variance with reality on this particular topic.

 

See, there's where we start speaking totally different languages. I spent quite some little time on it, in the late 1970s and with a more casual interest every since. My friends who do SA all seem to be conflicted on the problem of not having enough definitive data to predict the outcomes.

 

By the way, SA is not a computer programming skill, I mean systems analysis as in military or strategic applications. I barely qualify to speak with those guys on most levels. Probably don't qualify, but the ones I know are pretty kind hearted.

 

-Paul

[dean70]

Political focus: I named two, purposely - evolution and germ theory are highly politicized.

 

God no, not the Telegraph. That's where sbgk got his article supported by "facts" from the guy with the entry in the Encyclopedia of American Loons, a self-described "former architect" who's a quack not only about global warming, but cosmic rays and Earth's magnetic field as well.

 

I take it you didn't even bother to read the article? It is not the only place questioning the IPCC models.

[gmgraves]

You can see how some New Yorkers might not agree with current global warming models when there's seals and icebergs in New York Harbor! Why pay the $14 bridge toll to get to New Jersey today when you can walk across!

 

 

I suspect that you have noticed that the media and the politicians have stopped referring to "global warming" in favor of the phrase "climate change". What is, in fact a warming period has different effects in different areas. Here on the west coast, in the future, we will be getting much less rain, for instance, and even less snow in the Sierras and the Cascades. on the East Coast, there will be more extremes in weather; more severe winters and hotter, dryer summers. in other parts of the world some dry areas will be getting more rain while desertification will continue to advance in others.

 

It's not like the world hasn't been here in the past. Before the turn of the first millennium, the northern hemisphere was warmer even than it is now, then after the turn of the millennium, it started to get colder. Just because civilization started to advance in an era when the world was cooler, doesn't mean that we humans have the right to expect that it will stay that way forever. Ol' Mother Earth has her own agenda and we really aren't included...

 

Oh, yes, and I think that ultimately the scientific community will conclude that there's not a damn thing we puny humans can do about it except to do what humans are best at and what makes us the dominant species on this planet...... adapt!

[sdolezalek]

I'm finding great pleasure in the fact that those people whose opinions on audio I have learned to respect because of the thoughtful positions they have taken here on Computer Audiophile are also the voices of reason on this thread about Climate Change. That being said, much of this dialog resembles some of the silliness of the objectivist/subjectist and DBT threads. Good news is that this crowd, is, on balance far, far more sensible than the average public.

 

People seem to think that this is an issue that might affect our grandchildren and so while it might be of general interest and make for great controversy, they see it unlikely to meaningfully affect their lives. As someone once said: "that kind of thinking can get you killed..." Check, for example into the degree of drought that Brazil's São Paulo is experiencing. If it continues even a year longer you might have to face the prospect of emptying a city of 44 million people. Where exactly do you put 44 million people?

 

Here is California, we can fortunately just turn off the water to the Central Valley farmers and no one need leave Los Angeles or San Francisco, but think about what that does to food and crop prices throughout the U.S. There will be costs of Climate Change and some of them will come much sooner than most of us think. So why are we so comforted that there might be a few percentage point chance this these droughts and weather patterns are all random? Why do we so strongly want to believe that humans can't possibly be causing this kind of damage to the planet?

 

As to virtually everything in our lives, we tend to govern ourselves by a more likely than not standard. If the level of scientific agreement that exists around Climate Change were to exist about the safety of your next airplane flight, would you get on board? How many other things in our lives are we willing to be so casual about when the odds are so stacked against us?

 

This is one of those issues that deserves every one of us actually taking the time to not only read what both sides have to say on the issue, but also to understand exactly what economic stakes they are protecting. What I think you will find, is that there are lots of individual data points that can either be dismissed or used to make pretty much any argument you want. But at some point the sheer weight of too many data points collectively pointing the same way should make you at least say: "I can't say I necessarily am completely convinced, but I'm certainly worried enough that if this were something I could buy insurance for, I'd be buying some hefty insurance."

 

In audio, if you don't spend $1000 on a USB cable because you can't hear the difference and I can't convince you otherwise, who cares -- I can just decide to go buy that $1000 cable for my own listening pleasure. As to Climate Change, what others do and don't do about it will eventually affect us all.

[Audio_ELF]

Except I am not a denier. Just old enough to remember when nuclear winter was the great bogeyman of the future.

 

Seriously though, I do not think what you are saying is clear thinking. It is possible all those extra tons of carbon may be helping to stave off the next ice age. That would be a very good thing. Nobody has the facts to either prove or disprove half the wild ass theories floating around.

 

Besides- rape of the planet? It's not mother earth, it is a great big hunk of rock. If you want to do planetary engineering, it would be best to drop the false illusions. It survived the siberian traps eruptions, and so, just barely, did the life on the planet. Nothing all the people on the planet can do woukd equal that, including all out nulear war. Admittedly, you would not have to do one tenth that much damage to kill off all of us.

Paul... The simple fact is that the largest element of change asked for by those aiming to reduce the effects of climate change is a reduction in the use of hydrocarbons?

 

Now regardless of if this works (for reducing climate change) this is a good thing as oil, gas, coal etc is a limited resource which too millions of years to create, and a century or two to use up.

 

And to your argument that "the world is a complex system and will look after itself" well then if that's true then reducing carbon usage won't have any negative effect on the ecosystems but it might just have an effect if you are wrong.

 

Any argument against reduction of carbon usage is there for just down to an "I'm all right jack" attitude and economic greed.

 

Eloise

[PeterSt]

I'm finding great pleasure in the fact that those people whose opinions on audio I have learned to respect because of the thoughtful positions they have taken here on Computer Audiophile are also the voices of reason on this thread about Climate Change. That being said, much of this dialog resembles some of the silliness of the objectivist/subjectist and DBT threads. Good news is that this crowd, is, on balance far, far more sensible than the average public.

 

Yes, and take that as how you like to read it. I know how I read it.

+1

[PeterSt]

Eloise has just been ahead of me, but I like to say the same but maybe in different fashion :

 

It is just completely beyond me how a treatment to two causes (warm up vs running out of resources) is to be explained explicitly as that one treatment (just don't consume too much of the very precious resources) serving both. And even when that is done ... oh no, just persist in that one cause only and completely reason out that the outcome of that (warm up) has not been proven yet (but spread your wings only a little and that already turns out to be different for most).

 

Too difficult to read eh ?

Well, just try again.

 

So again this is reasoning for the reasoning, what this forum seems to be famous for by now. Sorry.

 

You know, if I personally read the original post, and only that, all what slips into my personal stupid mind is that this in the end will be about running out of resources. And NOT the global warming. Say that it is about the same thing in the end, for me.

 

And then my personal sauce to this thread, but springing from resources-thing :

What happens over here lately (last couples of years) is that we expected to survive XYZ years with the natural gas we are happy to have in our place on this earth - but as how it now turns out, we can't exploit it any more. Suddenly. So after a few decades of exploitation the part of Holland concerned starts to suffer from earthquakes. Of course nothing was built for earthquakes and now once per week or so a few dozen of houses collapse or become unusable. Say that each month a new record for our Richter scale is being broken.

The income from natural gas are billions and billions. The cost for repairing the houses right now are 100s of millions but the work required is too much to even see the start of it, let alone the tail. Of course this increases every week. That by now "big bangs" are expected is another thing and we'll have to see.

 

Point is (for my point of view, different for those who live in the area) :

This will soon imply a big economical crisis because obviously we depend on the income. So everybody agrees that the exploitation has to stop. But everybody also agrees that if that happens, the whole of Holland and far beyond will be out of heating. So right now the discussion is going on to decrease the annual exploitation by 5 billion cubic meter of gas and already that we won't be able to economically bear.

 

Nice problem eh ?

And why does the problem exist ?

Because we were not ready with new means of fuel etc.

 

I can end this with even more fun by telling that out of all the US is doing very well at this moment with shale gas (which can be an alternative in the end). We over here ? no, not we. All scientists and whatever say that it is even more bad than the exploitation of natural gas. They can be right.

 

So the motto : the need for alternative fuel means can be right around the corner, unexpectedly. Too bad that the "system" now also spans the economical system. So yes, quite complex it is.

[mayhem13]

Paul... The simple fact is that the largest element of change asked for by those aiming to reduce the effects of climate change is a reduction in the use of hydrocarbons?

 

Now regardless of if this works (for reducing climate change) this is a good thing as oil, gas, coal etc is a limited resource which too millions of years to create, and a century or two to use up.

 

And to your argument that "the world is a complex system and will look after itself" well then if that's true then reducing carbon usage won't have any negative effect on the ecosystems but it might just have an effect if you are wrong.

 

Any argument against reduction of carbon usage is there for just down to an "I'm all right jack" attitude and economic greed.

 

Eloise

 

Respectfully Eloise, a growing consensus within the scientific community thinks there's nothing we can do to change the course. The only thing left to do is adapt really. You can't currently plan for the future as there's much uncertainty as to what's to come and when. A sad fact......yes.....there will be those unable to adapt to the changing weather. There will be regions swallowed by drought, famine, pestilence and flooding. Reducing fossil fuel consumption and deforestation isn't going to change the course. Preparation and adaptation IS the ONLY course. That's not to say reductions of fuels and other environmental measures aren't responsible and neccessary actions......of course they are. But that's not the measures needed to stop the change or even slow it down.

 

I think many intelligent people realize we're riding a runaway train running out of track. I also think there's others like me who realize that sticking our necks out of the windows isn't going to slow it down.

[firedog]

I shudder think what you might propose as a large negative economic effect. The low price of oil int he U.S. has had an enormous effect on the economy, and not all of it positive. That's just in the U.S., it has had large but other less positive effects elsewhere in the world.

 

Well, reputable economists (not those on the side trying to use scare tactics to deny climate issues) take the cost at about 1% of GDP for a relatively short period, followed by added growth resulting from added efficiency in the economy and the development of green jobs resulting from the changes

Let's look for a second at the statement you take as a given:

 

 

Does it now? Have you got any hard proof that reducing carbon emissions has made or will make any positive effect in global climate change? In fact, where are the hard facts on what the hundreds of billions of tons of carbon emitted into the atmosphere by modern actives has already caused? What about the planetary albedo? What about carbon emissions that are not from usage? Have you found a way to balance reduced carbon emissions in developed countries with the relative increase in carbon emitting actives in *developing* countries? How about those volcanic emissions under the ocean? The carbon emitted from stripping rain forests?

 

There are hundreds, if not thousands, more factors to consider, and control, and most importantly, to understand their effects.

 

The planet is incredibly resilient - the worst we could do to would be like a minor scratch healing up in a few thousands of years at the most. I am not at all worried about saving the planet. Savings the humans and other animals? Yeah- I am into that.

 

Sorry, nonsense argument that doesn't address any of the issues. The scientific consensus is that climate change is happening and carbon burning is a major factor. And that action needs to be taken in the near future - years, not decades from now - to prevent irreversible changes in climate. So yes, the action needed is to reduce carbon usage and prevent damage to human lives. No one is claiming we need to reduce it to a zero level. Waiting till we have "complete" information is a copout. We won't have jt for decades, at least.

Your argument about the developing countries is silly - it amounts to, "if we can't do the maximum, let's do nothing. And that doesn't take into account that the developing countries may well come on board when they see the developed countries doing their part. It is already starting to happen.

 

And no I can't prove that reducing carbon emissions will work. But pretty clearly reduced carbon emissions is bringing us back to a more status quo situation before all the man made changes were introduced. So the question is exactly the opposite: Do you have any reason to think burning fewer fossil fuels will be harmful? I don't think you can come up with anything other than baseless speculation.

 

 

Says who? And worse than what? Blundering around blind trying to "correct" damage we don't even understand? The consensus that Jud was talking about is that damage is happening, humans are at least partly the cause of it, and that action needs to be taken. There is far less consensus on exactly what the damage is, or what action needs to be taken.

 

Ten years, or even twenty, are nothing in the timespan we are talking about. Take sensible actions yes, but don't turn the planet into a iceball or a barren desert while we are doing it.

 

It irks me that anyone who says we need to understand what we are doing is branded as a denier, and treated with some patronization by those whose believe they are in the "know." Bloody hell, some scientist telling me not to worry because I can't possibly understand what they have studied and understand far better than I do? Yet they cannot answer supposedly simple questions like the above? You want to trust the future of the race to people like that? Are they political demagogs like we have so often in the past trusted our future to?

 

Of course a low risk strategy makes sense. But blindly meddling with systems as complex as planetary climate- that is not low risk. You should agree with that, since that is exactly what we have been doing for so long, and what created the current mess. Case in point, we barely have compute systems capable of handling the data we gather for climate change for one day - much less for multiple years.

 

Systems Analysis is complex.

 

Again, a bunch of arguments that have nothing to do with the issue. Burning less carbon than we have been for the past couple of decades is all that is being asked. Somehow you've turned burning carbons at the level of 30 years ago into some planet endangering adventure with high risk. How does that work?

 

You don't like being lumped with the deniers, but your position is essentially "do nothing till we know everything". So the result of your thinking brings us to the same place as the deniers - do nothing.

 

What I'm suggesting is an extremely low risk strategy. What you are suggesting is the high risk strategy.

[Jabs1542]

Just probing the bogosity level - are you suggesting AGW is a worldwide conspiracy in favor of Elon Musk against poor powerless General Motors and the petroleum industry, or something not quite so entertaining?

 

Not at all. It's just that sometimes we try so hard to grasp an immediate solution that we don't recognize that we might be digging ourselves into a deeper hole. I've done a little bit of work at a superfund site (made robots that were used to cut the material down into storage containers), very nasty stuff - they used robots because humans could not work/live in the environment.

 

So we were quick to develop a cellular network and once it was up we really didn't want to upgrade it (wanted to reap more profits off of that investment) and as a result have now fallen behind the rest of the world regarding cellular communications. Now we are perfectly set up to have an infrastructure invested in electricity while the rest of the world moves on to hydrogen. Do you know what the exhaust output is in a hydrogen car? It's pure clean H2O.

 

Unfortunately there is a lot of money to be made by certain companies, who invest heavily in politics and activist groups, who are leveraging pieces of scientific information to game the system. I'm not a conspiracy theorist, I've just worked in DC long enough to understand how the beast likes to be fed.

[Paul R]

Paul... The simple fact is that the largest element of change asked for by those aiming to reduce the effects of climate change is a reduction in the use of hydrocarbons?

 

Now regardless of if this works (for reducing climate change) this is a good thing as oil, gas, coal etc is a limited resource which too millions of years to create, and a century or two to use up.

 

And to your argument that "the world is a complex system and will look after itself" well then if that's true then reducing carbon usage won't have any negative effect on the ecosystems but it might just have an effect if you are wrong.

 

Any argument against reduction of carbon usage is there for just down to an "I'm all right jack" attitude and economic greed.

 

Eloise

 

Absolutely not where I am coming from Eloise.

 

I was serious, we have been running an unplanned, unmonitored, and totally uncontrolled experiment in planetary climate engineering for the past few centuries. Making changes without understanding exactly what the changes are can be disastrous.

 

For example, drastically cutting carbon emissions in the developed countries coukd lead to stripping more of the remaining rain forest in the *northern* hemisphere. Do you know what effects that would have? They would not just be economic, though that would be true too.

 

Guess what? The clearing of rain forest in the southern hemishpere, besides releasing uncounted billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, is also causing problems with the rain forests in the northern hemisphere. Where the vast majority of rain forest is, and where many many times the amount of carbon is sequestered.

 

That is dead simple interaction compared to some of the others. We do not understand it fully. We understand most of the other mechanisms even less.

 

You really want to solve climate change? I do. But before it can be done, we have to understand much more about how it all interacts. And yes, we need to know and plan for the costs of fixing it. All of which are going to have great geo-political impacts, the results of which are goining to be unexpected. Usually, one out of three of those unexpected results are happy things. The other two are often exceedingly unpleasant.

 

By all means, call for immediate action and damn the unpleasent side effects. Is that what you really want? If not why are you not demanding that money be put into research, including funding some of the research from dissenters just in case we are wrong? Demand results that can be easily understood by anyone who takes the time to study them. Not jump to conclusions and pretend they are "the solution?"!

 

Okay- I am off my soapbox.

[Paul R]

Hi Firedog we will just have to agree to disagree then. The cost of containment efforts for "global warming" - not addressing anything but human activities, has already mounted into many billions. Without any signifigant improvement.

 

I do not see how continued unplanned action, based on very imcomplete and ill understood data, not correlated on a worldwide basis is going to solve the problem. Neither, by the the way does the "scientific consensus" you quote. Most scientists are not exhibiting the same level of activism as the hollywood documentary makers are.

 

Nor, by the way, did I ever say, completely understood. Just better understood, in particular, what reactions to expect from the particular actions being advocated, how to apply and enforce them on a global basis, and how the heck to pay for them. Note that a lot of that is not about scientific problems, but rather political problems that have to be solved.

 

Those types of problems are solved exactly two ways- with many many many buckets of money, or when that fails, with military force.

 

Sorry- you want to talk about stupid? Go blindly into the night.

[sdolezalek]

Respectfully Eloise, a growing consensus within the scientific community thinks there's nothing we can do to change the course. The only thing left to do is adapt really. You can't currently plan for the future as there's much uncertainty as to what's to come and when.

 

I knew this argument would pop up sooner or later. Its the same one people tried to make about smoking "you have already so increased your chances of getting lung cancer that you might as well enjoy what little life you have left by smoking more." And the growing consensus is about the fact that nature has feedback loops that once triggered are extremely difficult to slow down or reverse; but every additional degree you raise the temperature, the more of those feedback loops you enable.

 

Just because we may have already done damage that is irreversible in our lifetimes does not give us a license to keep going! There are levels of change we can adapt to and there are levels beyond which no adaptation will work. It is an extremely dangerous and lazy view to assume that the richer parts of the world can simply adapt to any level of destruction.

[mwheelerk]

I think I've worn shorts an t-shirts in all but a couple of weeks since December. Ridiculous near 80 degrees weather for this time of year

[Audio_ELF]

Absolutely not where I am coming from Eloise.

 

I was serious, we have been running an unplanned, unmonitored, and totally uncontrolled experiment in planetary climate engineering for the past few centuries. Making changes without understanding exactly what the changes are can be disastrous.

Of course doing NOTHING which is what you and (it appears) a large part of America is suggesting may be even worse. I'm not suggesting anything radical; simple things like when choosing a car do you really need 4+ l V8 with 15-20mpg consumption where a 2l engine with 30-35mpg will do the same job?

 

For example, drastically cutting carbon emissions in the developed countries coukd lead to stripping more of the remaining rain forest in the *northern* hemisphere. Do you know what effects that would have? They would not just be economic, though that would be true too.

*Could* being the important word. Of course not changing our ways could lead to those trees dying anyway. And changing our outlook and behaviour can be offset by protecting that forest. You imply there is an A leads to B outcome here where as A has nothing directly to do with B they are separate behaviours.

 

Guess what? The clearing of rain forest in the southern hemishpere, besides releasing uncounted billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere, is also causing problems with the rain forests in the northern hemisphere. Where the vast majority of rain forest is, and where many many times the amount of carbon is sequestered.

I'm not sure what you're suggesting here? Of course clearing of the rain forest is bad and most of that is done to create farms, etc. for feeding an exploding world population ... Oh population growth is another big issue...

That is dead simple interaction compared to some of the others. We do not understand it fully. We understand most of the other mechanisms even less.

 

You really want to solve climate change? I do. But before it can be done, we have to understand much more about how it all interacts. And yes, we need to know and plan for the costs of fixing it. All of which are going to have great geo-political impacts, the results of which are goining to be unexpected. Usually, one out of three of those unexpected results are happy things. The other two are often exceedingly unpleasant.

Of course not everything is understood; so as you suggested this is about systems analys then we do simple systems analysis... You change a condition, observe the results then altern the changes until we start to balance the system...

 

By all means, call for immediate action and damn the unpleasent side effects. Is that what you really want? If not why are you not demanding that money be put into research, including funding some of the research from dissenters just in case we are wrong? Demand results that can be easily understood by anyone who takes the time to study them. Not jump to conclusions and pretend they are "the solution?"!

You appear to be suggesting I think we should just stop using oil and everything will be fine ... I'm not suggesting that! Reduction of use of resources is a relatively passive measure though which *may* have a positive effect and has likely few downsides. Call for further research is of course also needed - on all aspects!

 

Eloise

[Audio_ELF]

I knew this argument would pop up sooner or later. Its the same one people tried to make about smoking "you have already so increased your chances of getting lung cancer that you might as well enjoy what little life you have left by smoking more." And the growing consensus is about the fact that nature has feedback loops that once triggered are extremely difficult to slow down or reverse; but every additional degree you raise the temperature, the more of those feedback loops you enable.

 

Just because we may have already done damage that is irreversible in our lifetimes does not give us a license to keep going! There are levels of change we can adapt to and there are levels beyond which no adaptation will work. It is an extremely dangerous and lazy view to assume that the richer parts of the world can simply adapt to any level of destruction.

+1

[burnspbesq]

You can grow more food in warm place than in places covered with a couple clicks of ice.

 

Not if the warm places have no water. Think for a second about how much of your diet consists of stuff grown in California.

[Paul R]

Of course doing NOTHING which is what you and (it appears) a large part of America is suggesting may be even worse. I'm not suggesting anything radical; simple things like when choosing a car do you really need 4+ l V8 with 15-20mpg consumption where a 2l engine with 30-35mpg will do the same job?

 

Of course not, but I am not suggesting doing nothing. I am suggesting we plan the thing at before throwing time and treasure into the wrong efforts. Better gas milage? Great idea! How about planning to move to a hydrogen based economy, or electric cars? Either of those will control a whole lot of the carbon emissions from automobiles. Not so much from power generation though, as both those solutions require high density energy sources, and a lot of them. Also a heck of a lot of expense in terms of infrastructure.

 

(grin) One thing I bet you know in your head about the U.S., but don't really feel is how big it is. I live in Central Texas - it takes, driving at 70mph, between 5 and 16 hours to get out of this state. Seriously. To go visit my wife's sister on the East Coast is 1500 miles, over mountains.

 

To hit the west coast from here is about 2200 miles. To go north, to where Chris lives, is about 1000 miles. About 1500 miles to where Jud lives.

 

And Americans don't consider this absurd or super large distances. We drive those distances without thinking about it, to be honest. This is what you have to address if you want to make significant changes.

 

Driving that distance today, in an electric vehicle, would require *careful* planning. It would not be doable in a hydrogen powered vehicle without taking along gasoline or diesel powered support vehicles.

 

 

*Could* being the important word. Of course not changing our ways could lead to those trees dying anyway. And changing our outlook and behaviour can be offset by protecting that forest. You imply there is an A leads to B outcome here where as A has nothing directly to do with B they are separate behaviours. [/Quote]

 

I am simply saying we do not know where such choices will lead. The research to find out with some high level of certainty is cheaper than making a mistake by taking the wrong action out of a misguided need to do something. Anything, as long as we do something.

 

 

I'm not sure what you're suggesting here? Of course clearing of the rain forest is bad and most of that is done to create farms, etc. for feeding an exploding world population ... Oh population growth is another big issue...

 

Of course not everything is understood; so as you suggested this is about systems analys then we do simple systems analysis... You change a condition, observe the results then altern the changes until we start to balance the system...

 

I could easily live with that. But that is far from anything being suggested right now.

 

 

You appear to be suggesting I think we should just stop using oil and everything will be fine ... I'm not suggesting that! Reduction of use of resources is a relatively passive measure though which *may* have a positive effect and has likely few downsides. Call for further research is of course also needed - on all aspects!

 

Eloise

 

Well, there we certainly agree! I think the cultural and societal change necessary to make the changes are far more drastic than you do however. And I do not believe those changes will come fast. Not in any imaginable scenario where civilization survives.

[Paul R]

Not if the warm places have no water. Think for a second about how much of your diet consists of stuff grown in California.

 

True, but a California with limited water still grows more than a California under a glacier...

[PeterSt]

(grin) One thing I bet you know in your head about the U.S., but don't really feel is how big it is. I live in Central Texas - it takes, driving at 70mph, between 5 and 16 hours to get out of this state. Seriously. To go visit my wife's sister on the East Coast is 1500 miles, over mountains.

 

And what makes you think we don't "have" those distances over here ? Or did you maybe thing that crossing borders are serious hurdles or so ? There aren't even borders.

 

Anyway agreed; "electric" cars (which is not even the same as hydrogen) bring you nowhere. Not yet at least.

[mayhem13]

I knew this argument would pop up sooner or later. Its the same one people tried to make about smoking "you have already so increased your chances of getting lung cancer that you might as well enjoy what little life you have left by smoking more." And the growing consensus is about the fact that nature has feedback loops that once triggered are extremely difficult to slow down or reverse; but every additional degree you raise the temperature, the more of those feedback loops you enable.

 

Just because we may have already done damage that is irreversible in our lifetimes does not give us a license to keep going! There are levels of change we can adapt to and there are levels beyond which no adaptation will work. It is an extremely dangerous and lazy view to assume that the richer parts of the world can simply adapt to any level of destruction.

 

You're making an assumption that 'WE' are the dominant mechanism creating climate change. This has not been established. Developing a strategy for change without a working model is dangerous.....about as dangerous as those contemplating mechanical and chemical alterations to the atmosphere.

 

Don't understand why you're having difficult understanding my position.........The time to focus on measures of change as the primary solution has passed. Focus on things that will matter such as farming, irrigation, infrastructure adaptations and community relocations. These are the primary,most RESPONSIBLE efforts that we can undertake. In many countries, the current infrastructure of roads,rail, housing, power and comms grid, etc is in terrible need of repair or refurbishing. The worlds primary gasoline refineries are located in areas prospected to flooded within 60 years.....and on and on and on.

 

But you would rather us focus on alternative fuels, reduced consumption and green methods instead? Good luck with that, OK?

[Paul R]

And what makes you think we don't "have" those distances over here ? Or did you maybe thing that crossing borders are serious hurdles or so ? There aren't even borders.

 

Anyway agreed; "electric" cars (which is not even the same as hydrogen) bring you nowhere. Not yet at least.

 

 

Relatively sleaking, we live about where Stuttgart is on the map.