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Can Problems From Climate Change Be Addressed With Science? (scientificamerican.com)
Slashdot reader bricko shares an article from Scientific American about two "ecomodernists" who argue that the problems of climate change can be addressed through science and technology.
In his Breakthrough essay, Steven Pinker spells out a key assumption of ecomodernism. Industrialization "has been good for humanity. It has fed billions, doubled lifespans, slashed extreme poverty, and, by replacing muscle with machinery, made it easier to end slavery, emancipate women, and educate children. It has allowed people to read at night, live where they want, stay warm in winter, see the world, and multiply human contact. Any costs in pollution and habitat loss have to be weighed against these gifts...."
We can solve problems related to climate change, Pinker argues, "if we sustain the benevolent forces of modernity that have allowed us to solve problems so far, including societal prosperity, wisely regulated markets, international governance, and investments in science and technology... Since 1970, when the Environmental Protection Agency was established, the United States has slashed its emissions of five air pollutants by almost two-thirds. Over the same period, the population grew by more than 40 percent, and those people drove twice as many miles and became two and a half times richer. Energy use has leveled off, and even carbon dioxide emissions have turned a corner."
The essay also cites ecomodernist Will Boisvert, who believes climate change will be cataclysmic but not apocalyptic, bringing large upheaval but a small impact on human well-being. "Global warming won't wipe us out or even stall our progress, it will just marginally slow ordinary economic development that will still outpace the negative effects of warming and make life steadily better in the future, under every climate scenario.... Our logistic and technical capacities are burgeoning, and they give us ample means of addressing these problems."
We can solve problems related to climate change, Pinker argues, "if we sustain the benevolent forces of modernity that have allowed us to solve problems so far, including societal prosperity, wisely regulated markets, international governance, and investments in science and technology... Since 1970, when the Environmental Protection Agency was established, the United States has slashed its emissions of five air pollutants by almost two-thirds. Over the same period, the population grew by more than 40 percent, and those people drove twice as many miles and became two and a half times richer. Energy use has leveled off, and even carbon dioxide emissions have turned a corner."
The essay also cites ecomodernist Will Boisvert, who believes climate change will be cataclysmic but not apocalyptic, bringing large upheaval but a small impact on human well-being. "Global warming won't wipe us out or even stall our progress, it will just marginally slow ordinary economic development that will still outpace the negative effects of warming and make life steadily better in the future, under every climate scenario.... Our logistic and technical capacities are burgeoning, and they give us ample means of addressing these problems."
You ask a fundamental question, that is How much time do we have as a species to prevent fossil=fuel combustion from making planet Earth unihabitablefor humans?
Unfortunately, there are several considerations that make things more dire than many might expect:.
1) in many parts of the world we are rapidly approaching wet-bulb temperatures that are lethal to humans. During the most recent El Nino, temperatues in the region of he Persian Gulf rose to above 140 F for hours at a time. The next El Nino, coupled with additonal warming due to carbon dioxide pollution, will greatly expand this region of temperature lethality and temperatures in excess of 145- 150 Fshould be expected within the next 10 years. Since we are in the early phase of a warming that is exponential in nature given its cause (greenhouse gas accumulation), temperatures will rise far more dramatically than they have up till now in human history
2) the geology and chronology of earlier extreme warming periods indicate that massive sea level rises will occur over the next few centuries, perhpas as much as 5-6 m over the course of 200-400 years time. Given that about 80% of world populations live in or near coastlines, the disruption to human activities will be far larger than most imagine.
3) at the current rate of ocean acidification, most organims that deposit calcium in their exoskeletons will go extinct in the next 200-400 years. This is a big deal, since many of these species such as pteropods, whose popoulations are dramatically declining worldwide are the foudations of marine food chains. Humans rely on between 30-50% of all their protein from the oceans (including meals for growing cattle, pigs, and poultry, growing crops, etc.)., with most fisheries in rapid decline worldwide.
4) with the unexpectedly rapid warming of the Arctic a huge reservoir of carbon currently locked in permafrost is about to be rapidly released. Even though only a fraction of this store may enter the asmosphere or the oceans, the reserve does have the potential to double the current rate of warming within a few hundreds of years time, independent of what humans do in the future to curb their own greenhouse gas production..
Now if you carefully look over all the slashdot comments, made by the presumably techically literate among us, and their likely impact on or relevance to any of he 4 considerations just mentkoned, you can see humanity has a major challenge ahead, if it has any chance of survival beyond the relatively near future.