Global warming is epic, long-term study says
http://www.cnn.com/2013/03/08/world/world-climate-change/index.html?hpt=hp_t3
Something is really funky on my web server these last couple of days. I am not sure what the problem is, but my provider has cleverly made it nearly impossible to get support any longer so I have no idea how long it will last. I would be off this provider if I could just convince the boss at home to authorize it. In fact, I was intent on moving to hosting from home and just dealing with the issues myself (much as I hate doing administration), but that entails buying a new machine and the boss won’t go for that at present (though this pain-in-the-ass might help motivate her). Anyway…
I babble about global warming here from time to time and remain unconvinced that the only suitable course of action is to throw our society back into the stone age, which seems the only available ‘solution’ that is offered (i.e., eliminating our use of fossil fuels (while at the same time not going full-bore with nuclear)). As I talk here: http://sol-system.com/koxenrider/bok/energy_bogey.html there are really very few alternatives that have any chance of viability, thus, to eliminate fossil fuels is to crash the global economy, plain and simple. In order for alternatives to have a chance to compete, at a minimum transportation fuel has to triple, likely quadruple in price. The pesky issue of scale remains quite substantial, it is impossible for many alternatives to scale (I love the idea of biodiesel from waste oil, but funny thing, there isn’t the required 200 _billion_ gallons of waste oil each year). Those that do have potential to scale often have inverse economies of scale (meaning the price _increases_ as the scale increases), so it might take several decades of increasingly expensive infrastructure investment in order to replace fossil fuels. EVERYONE would have to change and who can pay to replace ALL their vehicles, likely the way they heat their house AND the way they live (the vast majority of all plastics are based on fossil fuels, as is, btw, most fertilizers used to grow crops (not to mention drive the equipment to operate the farm!)). Eliminating fossil fuels would no doubt cost the world 100’s of TRILLIONS of dollars. Yes, it has to happen, fossil fuels have a fixed life expectancy, but market forces can keep up if the process happens over 50+ years, it won’t be possible if it happens overnight (anything less than a couple of decades).
After all that (wait, there is more?), the article (I didn’t burrow into the primary literature) indicates that we would be entering the next ice age RIGHT NOW if it weren’t for all this heating attributable to human activity. So what would the crops be like if things were routinely cooler? Generally things get drier when the air is cooler which likely means less rain, growing seasons tend to be shorter, there are more wild fires, all sorts of things that likely would have serious detrimental impact to our society.
So what should we expect ‘normal’ to be? Should we expect it to be cooler than what we have now, a lot cooler, warmer, what? Given the wide variability in weather, how the hell do we measure and know if any of our remediation efforts are taking effect? How long to wait before accepting that whatever remediation effort is not having the intended effect (or worse, the reverse effect)? WHO THE HELL PAYS FOR ALL THIS GEOENGINEERING?
Once again, I come back to the conclusion that doing nothing (i.e., letting status quo continue) is just as likely to be as beneficial as any remedy I have seen discussed. People should focus their attention on more mundane things like returning the US to a Representative democracy instead of its current oligarchy, ceasing the sterilization of the ocean with drift nets or how about stopping the rape and pillage of our few remaining natural resources like the rain forests, you know, the kind of stuff where you don’t have to wait a century to know if you made the right decision.
Yea, yea, yea, I know I am wasting my effort. Shouting into a vacuum, that is just something I do. Expecting rationality from humans is irrational in itself, just proving how human I am after all.
