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Forecasting Doomsday
Boccaccio writes "James Lovelock, the planetary scientist famous for his Gaia Theory, writes in today's Independent of his belief that it is already too late to divert an environmental catastrophe which will see much of human civilisation destroyed. Fearing it too late to be green, he instead suggests communities plan for survival in a Mad Max type world with limited resources ruled by violent warlords. "We have to keep in mind the awesome pace of change and realise how little time is left to act, and then each community and nation must find the best use of the resources they have to sustain civilisation for as long as they can." He suggests we should be writing a practical guidebook printed on long lasting paper containing "the basic accumulated scientific knowledge of humanity.""
First off, the "climate centres" around the world aren't the equivalent to a pathology lab. This is a bad analogy. Pathology is a science that is fairly solid. There is a pathogen or there isn't, we may miss it but we sure are good at diagnosing it if you have it. More importantly, pathologists can agree with each other.
With the status of the environment, no one agrees with anyone else. The world is ending on one end while the U.S. government isn't too concerned with it at the time. James Lovelock is certain we're doomed while Michael Chrichton is giving speeches detailing environmentalism as a religion.
Who do we believe? The physician or the author? I don't think either are adequately qualified to make the call.
I can understand articles urging us to cut back on emissions or asking everyone to support the Kyoto Treaty. What I don't understand is how this article can be constructive. I read it and it tells me to drive to Wal-Mart as fast as possible and buy a gun and five shells so that I can rob said Wal-Mart of all guns and shells for my basement armory.
I'm not sure whether to read this as honest opinion or a hilarious satire reminiscent of Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
Can anyone please tell me what Mr. Lovelock hoped to gain from this article other than creating hysteria among his fans and receiving "nut job" status from those who disagree with him? Oh, I'm sure that will be a fair and unbiased scientific look at the state of the environment that everyone will love. Why must people make such polarizing comments? Can't they see how many people they alienate with one fell swoop? He could have gotten the same message across without the drama.
My work here is dung.
And people think us Christ followers are bonkers.
This Revenge of Gaia stuff is pure fiction -- but it does sell books. I've been called a doomer-and-gloomer for my opinions over the past 10 years. I'm an avid gold bug, I hate the idea of working as a salaried employee, and I believe in owning land both in urban areas as well as rural areas. You can buy 100 acres of land dirt cheap still in many parts of the U.S.
I don't believe we'll see a Mad Max style world. There is so much land available in the entire globe that I don't see how warlords can use the strength of weapons to take over. The reason we see "chaos" in Somalia is because there is an existing infrastructure that people want to utilize. In this Gaia-chaos vision, there wouldn't be. People who survive would not be anywhere near the billions we have today, and a family of 10 can easily survive even on a near-desert piece of property.
I don't believe we'll see the water of the world undrinkable, I don't believe we'll see the air of the world unbreathable. Humans are a minor part of the balance -- if we do something so bad that billions will perish, we won't be able to continue doing "harm" and the planet will recuperate itself -- quickly, too. The worst catastrophes that could happen would not necessarily be environmental ones but ones dealing with war. Anything we do slowly to the environment will be quickly absorbed and returned to normal -- the so called circle of life. It is the things we can do quickly that would be the most devastating. Nuclear wars come to mind as one possible catastrophe that we couldn't resolve in less than a century.
Even if we did collapse into an chaotic anarchy (opposite of the capitalist anarchy that I promote), weapons wouldn't last without an infrastructure to maintain them. Once all the bullets are expelled or all the maintenance fluids are used up, most weapons are useless. You can't fight a global war with knives, and you can defend yourself much easier in communities against warlords if you take the machine guns and flamethrowers out of the equation. War is one of the most inefficient ways to gain wealth -- it requires millions of people deciding to give up their wealth in exchange for no profitable gain. In fact, I believe war requires democracy.
I wish Julian Simon was still kicking. That guy would offer Lovelock a great debate (and likely win it, too). Simon showed that more people means more wealth, more innovation and long lives for everyone. Look at China. They were on the verge of overpopulation, but it wasn't the mass numbers that was killing them -- it was government and communism. The freer they get, the longer they live, the happier they live, and this lets them live long enough to get Parkinson's, cancers and other diseases that keep us from living forever. Communism offered them shortened lives with no reason to want to live -- freedom gives everyone a reason to work together to try to live longer together.
In the end, I see the only doomsday here being empire and government. Nuclear war won't happen any other way. I don't believe we'll ever get to the Mad Max scenario unless we allow ourselves to continue to arm the elite with weapons of mass destruction. We should work at arming our own households, investing in bountiful properties, creating communities of people who love one another but are no adverse to profit or personal gain.
The environment continues to fix itself -- yesterday's doomsdayers are silent because they were wrong. Today's will be silent tomorrow -- they'll be wrong, too.
Billions of years ago, when the day was 23 hours long, there was no oxygen in the air and hence no ozone. The surface of the earth would have killed any land based animals pretty quickly.
Over time, life transformed the atmosphere and soon after plants and animals started to come out of the sea and started to prosper on land. Billions of years past and today we're sat here with laptop's contemplating what to do about climate change. I personally think that a large chunk of climate change has been caused by humans. I also agree with the scientist that we've already past the point of no return - so the question is not how we can stop climate change but how we can cope with it.
Personally, I think the climate disaster will be very bad for bio-diversity but have a negligable effect on humanity. I often go to Florida on my holiday from the foggy and cold waste lands of the UK :). The heat in Florida is at times unbearable but it
matters not because air conditioning is in nearly every building. If I get too hot, I just go inside.
As the oceans expand and the sea level rises, people will simply move further up the shore. When islands disappear, people will be unhappy but they quickly build new lives in new countries. When crops fail to grow in some countries they will replace the crops with others that grow in those climates. If they've really got money to burn they'll genetically engineer plants that are resistant to the heat. When oil prices start their long climb to unaffordability other technologies will take up the batton. Suddenly the economy will start to allocate resources to bypass the damage that the price-hike induces. Life will go on as normal.
I think we're heading for a mass extinction event - of that I am certain - but is highly unlikely we will feel the pinch. These are interesting times to be alive.
Simon
world with limited resources ruled by violent warlords.
We're already there...
Trolling is a art,
It seems to me that humanity has a tendency to fall into two intellectual traps:
I do believe both attitudes are just wrong. The future holds a lot of promises, but also a lot of challenges. There are international mechanisms in place to deal with global warming, for instance: that's what the Kyoto Protocol is all about.
Peak Oil may be very bad -- I do expect a lot of economic suffering ahead -- but it may also be our best chance to get rid of polluting hydrocarbons, and turn to ultra-efficiency and renewable energies. These, in turn, will have the added effect of lowering global warming and overall pollution.
Another example of this is nuclear war and MAD: it did not happen, probably because intelligent people on both sides understood the terrifying consequences. That also means we are stuck with thousands and thousands of nukes that need to be decommissioned and possibilities of proliferation, but that, too, can be taken care of.
So: ignoring problems is just as bad as putting your head in the sand and pretending everything is A-OK. What Winston Churchill used to say about Americans really apply to the whole human race: "They will always choose the right solution... but only after trying every other one". We may suffer in the short run, but the nimbleness, adaptability and intelligence of human beings mean they will come out all right in the end. Our problem is that we always take the short view and the easy solution first, instead of the long-term view and making the necessary sacrifices right now, instead of tomorrow.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Your comments are, for the most part, spot-on.
"Gaia" is the "goddess earth". It is nothing more than blatant superstitious garbage with an enviro-friendly sheen.
The term "Gaia" was borrowed from the ancient Greek gods, but no more so than Pluto or Mars. The concept is, that as cells make up an organism, and many organisms an ecosystem, many ecosystems make up a still larger system. "Gaia" sounds all new-agey, but in reality, it is nothing more than the extent of all life on earth.
It's not superstitious garbage; it is quite valid to think that destroying the rain forest in Southeast Alaska will have profound effects on New York City, or Moscow for that matter. Then to imagine that the total biosphere can heal itself after a catastrophe is also valid. That is, the environment affects not only the evolution of species, but evolution of species also affects the environment.
Gaia was, perhaps, a poor choice of terms. But "superecosystem" sounds stupid, and isn't as catchy, and doesn't intimate the self-regulating nature of the total biosphere.
The thought that all life on earth is a single organism with conscious thought is a little silly. Not many people truly believe that, though. In my experience, most people believe in some weaker form of the Gaia hypothesis-- that even if we humans fuck up so badly we destroy our environment and kill off tens of thousands of species (including humanity), the earth will go on, heal itself, and new species will crop up to replace the old ones.
Other than that: yeah, I think Sir Lovelock is being a bit extremist in his fears. It's kind of like during the five years leading up to 2000; too damned many people thought civilisation was going to collapse, when most of us in the IT trenches knew everything was going to be fine. The didn't stop Edward Yourdon from shooting off his mouth and selling some books, but there will always be people who expect the worst.
The people who scare me, though, are those who want the worst to happen.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Jeez I'm old.
I remember this same meme being around in the early 60's --- it was nuclear war then --- and in the mid-70's, with The Limits to Growth. Oh, and don't forget The Population Bomb. The expected date is always in the potential lifetime of younger readers, but comfortably in the future for older ones, and so far (note that you're reading this) it always fails to happen.
Oh, and one other thing: the person pushing the theory is always selling something. A book, money for "further research," something.
Hands on your wallets, kids.
No, not shocked. And what I said was definitely not scientific, merely anecdotal.
However, it is worth noting that I really ought not to be able to notice significant changes to the climate within the span of my lifetime. And yet I find, very commonly (and again anecdotally - compare and contrast your own experiences) that the typical man-on-the-street view is that 'something is definitely up'. Don't you find that? Nearly everyone I talk to about the weather, at some point, shakes their head and expresses some concern about how it 'used to be' vs how it is now. And that's only in the cities. In the lower arctic circle, where they are watching the glaciers retreat and the permafrost declining, and it is screwing with their hunting, what must they be saying? Have you noticed mountaintop snowcaps disappearing?
What I find disingenuous about the old argument - the one that says 'earth has always changed' - is that it seems dismissive. Even if we aren't causing one iota of climate change, it is readily apparant that the Earth's weather is changing rapidly; shouldn't we be alarmed, even if we are not the cause of it? Saying "its natural" doesn't exactly make me feel better!
If Jesus wants me it knows where to find me.
One thing I've learned is to listen to predictions like this. Look at the long history of disasters diverted by relying on the scientists- The Hindenburg, the Plagues, and th 60's hippie movement. I remember hearing about 9/11 months before on TV, and changing my schedule. I was so close to buying into the Enron thing, when Neil Cavuto changed my mind. And other warnings kept me from going to school naked...no, wait- that was a dream.
My point is, we *never* get warnings about the big stuff. And this is no exception. Remember the coming ice-age, and the population boom of the 1970s? No ice-age. Population has actually gone DOWN by a dangerous extent. I saw both mentioned in Barey Miller, in fact. I remember hearing how acid rain would make the finish on all cars corrode as early as 1975. And by 2000 we'd all have to live underground. This being told to me, a kid in the 5th grade. I was afraid.
Yet somehow the same people who told us the Earth would be unable to support life in the 70's, still feel that way today. I suspect money is the quarry on this hunt.
I'll admit there are temperature changes- the Earth is a dynamic system with lots of history that it changes all the time (See: the 1700s mini-ice age, for example). But to think humans are the cause of it, or have the slightest chance of changing it, is just silly.
Go to Google. Zoom in on a town, find your house. Then notice the actual SCALE of our place on this planet. Now call your local HVAC technician and tell'em you want to install an A/C for the whole planet. Just try to figure out the BTUs. Imagine changing it, if we HAD to. Terraforming is a neat idea, but actually doing it someplace is at least 100 years away.
Just relax; and remember that the Earth will never go away; it might not be like it is, but it will always be here. And so will be these predictions...
--- For a good time mail uce@ftc.gov
Did you ever take history class in High school?
Did you?
Out of everybody, it was the British who came closest to taking over the entire world, and their real estate only came to about 26% of the globe. Your Romans were only 17th with 4%.
Since we have recently completely lost any semblance of morals
Morals are sticky because they are simply the accepted standards of right and wrong for a given group. Some people say that Europeans are less moral than Americans because of infidelity, etc.
(witness the implicit approval of torture in Gitmo and Iraq, as well as the use of nuclear weapons against other countries;
Say what? The US has used just two nuclear weapons against another country and that was back in WWII. Are you going on about that, or has there been some new developments?
have you heard anyone on the news saying nukes are definitely never going to be used? look back a decade or two and the tone is completely different).
Just what we need. Give the brainless talking heads something else to "confirm". How can anyone say that nuclear weapons will "definitely never" be used? Do you honestly think that just because nobody has said it that we're somehow more likely to use them? Against who? Even if somebody did "confirm" it, do you think that would really mean anything?
"What do you despise? By this are you truly known." --Princess Irulan, Manual of Muad'Dib
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How is it inconsistent to be able to destroy something but not be able to fix it. I can push a glass of the table very easily but putting all the pieces back is near impossbile. And even if I get it back to something that looks like a glass doesn't mean that it will hold water. There are many things in the world that we can have some effect on but very few that we can reliably control that effect. Weather is a very good example of this. We try and seed rain but don't have any control on where it goes after we made the clouds. Basically all I am saying is that there is a very large difference between ablity to cause change and ability to regulate. Change can be easy consistent regulation is very hard.
"For every 10 "the sky is falling" articles I read, I see 10 "everything is OK" articles."
Unfortunately, this is the result of equal publicity funding, not equal scientific opinion. I'm sorry I won't be providing you with a reference (but you didn't provide one either, so whatever) but I have the distinct impression that about 97% of climatologists and other scientists in related disciplines agree: we have a problem.
"I see relatively cheap gas, so I believe that gas is not running out."
This is a fundamental problem with the global economy and markets. Markets are interesting - they provide a metric for the value which *most monies* would assign to a given resource. "Most monies" refers to people weighted by their investable wealth. Unfortunately, as many past market events should demonstrate, these metrics don't necessarily have anything to do with reality. They have everything to do with perception and popular understanding, which may or may not be actually correct.
As an analogy, consider presidential/PM elections. We elect people who are visible, or want to be elected, and who have the means and support to get elected. We don't necessarily elect the best possible leader because most of us may not know who that is, and that person may be lacking the accessories with which reaching the public is highly unlikely. On a large scale, elections have very little to do with absolute achievement in personal merit, and a lot to do with publicity. Obviously everyone would prefer to choose between the people best suited for the job, but that's not how it works. There are barriers to entry that has nothing to do with merit, qualifications, skills, or talent.
"...geophysicist. He tells me they have no idea what is going on deeper than a few miles..."
So based on this statement, the most rational course of action is to assume that one day the oil will go dry. By the same conservative logic, we should also assume that climate change is a real problem (not only future, I live in Alaska and we're seeing major effects *now*). In this way we can be prepared - maybe not for the worst, but at least for some case worse than the best. Because a large proportion of experts do agree, it's important that we take the possibilities they suggest seriously. I would say this even if the climate change people were a minority opinion and I disagreed with them.
I don't understand how people claiming to be "conservative" can possibly think that doing nothing different is a rational course of action. A truly conservative viewpoint calls for considering all the possibilities and being prepared so that we are never faced with an actual crisis, but these pretenders are calling for ignoring a major [potential] problem because it's not hurting [them] badly enough [yet].
Why in the world would you stake something as important as species survival on a best-case-scenario viewpoint? That makes no sense at all. Go read "Candide" and come back when you understand it.
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and bad fiction at that. In it he created cardboard "environmentalists" who sought to kill off large swaths of the earth's population as part of a tempter tantrum. One of his characters does nothing after being stabbed in the arm with a needle by some strange man and then dies, and yet he was supposed to be one of the best and brightest. The ringleader of the awful plot is has a man killed in the middle of Tower Bridge (the main bridge in London) at Noon and then stands over the corpse and yet doesn't get caught.
Much has been made of his "references", and the idea that he has backed up his bad fiction. If you peruse them you will see that a) they are not exhaustive, b) they favor unjournaled papers by anti-global-warming researchers (no attempt it made to see the science only the editorializing) and c) they include odd references to books on witchcraft and papers (such as the argument that greenland was once warmer) which do not prove his case at all.
The book was commissioned, bought, and paid for by Rupert Murdoch whose FoxNews network has made much of this money denying the state of the environment. Like Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Ann Coulter Michael Crichton has made himself a tool of Murdoch. He has a line to sell and won't let the truth stand in his way.
If you want reasonable discussion of global warming go seek real scientists not an editorial hack. If you want a spy/crime novel go read some old Ian Flemming.