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The Forum > Article Comments > The Great Global Warming Blunder - Review > Comments

The Great Global Warming Blunder - Review : Comments

By William Briggs, published 3/12/2010

Feedback is where the real climate science debate occurs, and this book is a must-read contribution.

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Antigreen:
<This is the philosophical [sic] problem should we wait until all evidence is in before taking action[?]>

You and your pals amaze me. So you think you're a philosopher on this issue!

Certainly there's some ambiguity about climate change; variety of causes, degree, effects, the planet's adaptability to affliction etc.--though the weight of expert analysis across the whole myriad spectrum adds up to scientific consensus. Climate change is of course a geological phenomena that ordinarily barely admits of measurements taken in our speck of human time. It is a stupendous task to come up with absolute predictions based on (from our perspective) virtually infinite complexity and interaction, yet the anthropogenic effect is unambiguously in evidence, even if there is no precedent to gauge it by, or way to be sure how these effects will ultimately manifest. So because scientists can't make 100% extrapolations (which makes mapping the human genome look trivial) it's business as usual?
Your "wait and sea" approach is IDIOTIC.
Are you also waiting to see if in fact we ARE clearing the Amazon; polluting waterways; draining groundwater; salianating and desertifying arable land; destroying fauna, habitat and flora in what amounts to a mass extinction event; polluting and acidifying our oceans; poisoning the food chain with innumerable chemicals, hormones, heavy metals etc etc.
Are you also playing wait and see with these manifest realities, or do you concede that humans are the direct cause?
According to Aristotle the central philosophical consideration for humanity is "how should we live?"

It might do you good to ponder that question.
But you're no philosopher!
Posted by Squeers, Friday, 10 December 2010 3:00:04 PM
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This was great...

"Your "wait and sea" approach is IDIOTIC.
Are you also waiting to see if in fact we ARE clearing the Amazon; polluting waterways; draining groundwater; salianating and desertifying arable land; destroying fauna, habitat and flora in what amounts to a mass extinction event; polluting and acidifying our oceans; poisoning the food chain with innumerable chemicals, hormones, heavy metals etc etc.
Are you also playing wait and see with these manifest realities, or do you concede that humans are the direct cause?
According to Aristotle the central philosophical consideration for humanity is "how should we live?"

It might do you good to ponder that question.
But you're no philosopher!"

I like it when someone gets on a roll. Nice work. We live in an era of 'peak everything...' and your paragraphs above concisely touched on titanic issues, each involving desperate struggles between great powers. We live in exponentially dangerous — and potentially exponentially rewarding — times. Which way the coin flips depends on how much denial we face in the coming years.
Posted by Eclipse Now, Friday, 10 December 2010 4:38:53 PM
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Eclipse Now,
I'm interested in your "potentially exponentially rewarding" times (as derivative). Can you elaborate? Is there a silver lining to the "peak everything" we're driving (actually, that's not an exaggeration)? Presumably you see our future as not only transcending nature, but exterminating the whole nasty business and moving on to some kind of post-natural state?
Seriously, I'm fascinated with the positivist mindset that extrapolates its fascination with empiricism to a purely instrumental way of life. Are we talking some form of "transhumanism", or do you just mean rewarding in terms of bucks?
Posted by Squeers, Friday, 10 December 2010 5:07:50 PM
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Eclipse now,
sorry, I think I misunderstood your tone. We seem to be on the same side.
Posted by Squeers, Friday, 10 December 2010 6:36:53 PM
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Hi squeers.

This is my summary of life, the universe and everything.

http://eclipsenow.wordpress.com/eclipse/

Basically, I chose the tag "eclipse" years ago because it means itself and it's opposite. It can mean to cast into darkness, which I think is a real possibility for the modern world (even if I think it is improbable, it is still frighteningly POSSIBLE).

It can also mean to so outshine some other or previous achievement that it is eclipsed while YOU shine.

Basically I think we have the technology to beat peak oil, global warming, and many other HORRIBLE challenges ahead of us IF we can get the *political willpower* behind it. Sadly, I think some of the technologies we have will be unpopular.

EG: New Urbanism: how we design our cities could take us half the way towards solving peak oil and global warming and restoring local ecologies. See this 4 minute summary video "Built to last" which shows how what we build is either our greatest danger or greatest hope. Yet, sadly, many are frightened of density and can't get past the old industrial city scapes, and see suburbia as some sort of Nirvana. Oh well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGJt_YXIoJI

EG: I support the fast-tracking of Gen3 nuclear power until we have finally developed Gen4 nukes that can EAT nuclear waste and could run the world on today's waste for 500 years. Gen4 nukes are on the way, and GE even has a plan for one called the S-PRiSM. And 500 years of free fuel just sitting there, and they call it a WASTE PROBLEM! Wow! In 500 years we might have the next big thing... supercapacitor batteries cheap enough to make renewables viable? Space based solar power? Fusion? Who knows?

Anyway, I'm not a "Singularity" Geek awaiting some kind of techno-rapture. I also see a long and grinding Greater Depression lasting a generation or so as a very real possibility, with an outside chance of Mad Max.

So we have the tools to make it, but do we have the willpower? That's the question.
Posted by Eclipse Now, Friday, 10 December 2010 7:04:38 PM
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Eclipse Now,
thanks for information and the link to your very well designed, and written, site.
I agree with everything there, though I think you're more optimistic than I am. I don't think there's any question of human survival, but in greatly reduced numbers. Crucially, for me the fundamental reason for our failure to act is our economic system; we're addicted to growth and glut. The paradox is that our system is both the only hope for developing the kind of transcendence you talk about, and it's the reason transcendence is demanded. I see the human population as it is--the means of production and development--as analogous to an Apollo rocket. All that mass of redundant material is needed to transcend the atmosphere, after which, having expended itself, it falls back to Earth. The capitalist juggernaut amounts to the same concentration of enormous power, but the way it's displaced is random and uncoordinated, extravagant and destructive. Transcendence would be tantamount to a happy accident; it's certainly not the goal, at this stage; the raison d'etra of the whole thing is simply "more".
Then a question is whether that human fuel can develop sustainable solutions, for the survivors, that is before the planet calls a halt to the whole evolutionary (unthinking) experiment. Another problem, of course, is geo-political strife both now and in the aftermath of inevitable collapse. Will civilisation be able to pick itself back up? And then the ethical/philosophical issues have to be addressed; can humanity transcend itself? it's biological retardedness and morbid melancholia associated with alienation from nature? When you talk about "potentially exponentially rewarding" times, I wonder if you've considered in what sense you mean "rewarding"? This seems to presuppose the reward of human contentment, but without considering what that entails. Thus, what do humans need to be happy, or at least not to be unhappy? Can a technologically advanced and sustainable human world be considered transcendent if its denizens are miserable and still plagued by existential questions?
But I've drifted a bit from peak oil, so time permitted I'll reserve future comments for your web page.
Posted by Squeers, Saturday, 11 December 2010 7:18:14 AM
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