William Gibson Gives Up on the Future

Tinkle writes "Sci-fi novelist William Gibson has given up trying to predict the future — because he says it's become far too difficult. In an interview with silicon.com, Gibson explains why his latest book is set in the recent past. 'We hit a point somewhere in the mid-18th century where we started doing what we think of technology today and it started changing things for us, changing society. Since World War II it's going literally exponential and what we are experiencing now is the real vertigo of that — we have no idea at all now where we are going." "Will global warming catch up with us? Is that irreparable? Will technological civilization collapse? There seems to be some possibility of that over the next 30 or 40 years or will we do some Verner Vinge singularity trick and suddenly become capable of everything and everything will be cool and the geek rapture will arrive? That's a possibility too.'"

Comments

global warming again!

[cdn-programmer]

Frankly I am sick and tired of hearing these references to global warming. Of course those who like to use these references like spices typically know next to nothing about the subject.

It is my opinion that if one wants to know how CO2 might affect the planet then one should probably look first at the geological record to see what effect CO2 might have had in the past. I think anyone who disagrees with this premise should show why CO2 levels during such and such a geological period should be expected to not behave as CO2 levels are expected to behave now.

On this basis...

Over the last 570 million years the planet has been about 10 degrees ON AVERAGE warmer than now for at least 80% of the time period. There have been three (3) major cooling events and we are at the bottom of one now. 5 million years ago it was much warmer than now. 2 million years ago there were trees growing north of the arctic circle. Actually I have a friend who is a hard rock geologist and they were drilling Kimberlites in Canada's tundra and struck wood - 2 million year old wood - at a depth of about 150 meters. Yes. There were trees in Canada's tundra back then. The earth was much warmer then.

But what of CO2 driven global warming?

During the Ordovician, the planet plunged from a very warm climate to a very cold climate. The CO2 levels back then were about 13x to 17x greater than now... Even with CO2 levels about 5,000 ppm this gas was not able to prevent the earth from slipping into an ice age. Note that at present, CO2 is about 370 ppm and this is up from about 280 ppm in the 1800's. Yes, CO2 has increased. But geologically it is still at a geological historical low.

Then, during the Carboniferous, there was a cooling. CO2 was much much higher than now.

The paleoclimatology community says that CO2 levels are not linked to temperature in the geological record.

IMHO - global warming is just an excuse for people to worry over something. Mass media wants people to worry. People tend to worry about things they don't understand. People tend to worry about things they do understand also. Pollies like to use this to justify unpopular laws and taxation.

Personally I think there are many things worth worrying about. The Fckd USA health care system is something worth worrying about because a sizable percentage of /.'ers are going to be caught up in it.

The oil wars are worth worrying about. The conflict in the middle east scares me. There is much more going on than we are told. I side with those who say we are at peak oil production. North America passed peak gas production in Jan 2001. We have NOTHING on the back burner now that will provide the energy we need.

When I read and hear about the new security measures I worry. Like why? The system we had before wasn't all that bad. Why the emphasis on security? Then I think about war. If our governments are planning to start WWIII then it all makes sense. Is this something I and other /.'ers should be worrying about?

Many /.'ers are young enough that they will be fighting an oil war - which is a resource grab. Who wants this?

There are alternatives. Many stories address this. One alternative is nuclear.

Maybe instead of worrying about ghosts that probably do not exist we should be all looking at the real problems we do have to face.

Global Warming is not one of them.

The principal green house gas is Water Vapour and at 40 degrees C which is common in the tropics the absolute humidity is about 5% which is 50,000 ppm. We do not know historically if this is higher or lower. CO2 levels are 370 ppm and they are up about 90 ppm over the last say 100++ years.

We cannot even measure water vapour over the planet accurately enough to determine of water vapour levels are up 90 ppm or down 90 ppm or even if they are up 1000 ppm or down 1000 ppm. When the most important variable in the model is ignored then