Rationalia Global Crisis Thinktank Summit

[Atheist-Lite]

This is quite possibly the most serious and important thread I've started. In this thread I shall use my real name Kevin to show that I'm not starting one of the 'fun dismal' threads that I do on occasion with my crumple mask. This is about answers not a exploration of woes. We know the climate is unstable, ice caps are melting and birdflu on the verge of mutating into a killer strain, and the cheap easily accessible oil about gone, that turning land over to bio-fuel is causing food price rises everywhere, the fiat currencies of the globe on the brink of collapse etc. Now all options are on the table here and give free range to your imagination and creative thinking, don't be afraid to be laughed at because we are approaching a terrible global catastrophe now at a fair rate of knots.

[Rum]

'Fun dismal'?

[Atheist-Lite]

'Fun dismal'?

You don't think I'm really being miserable on purpose every other post?

[FBM]

I used to have a friend back in Tennessee who could cite a dozen reasons at the drop of a hat to explain why the end was nigh. That was 20 years ago, and the end hasn't arrived yet. 9/11 came and went, and humans adapted to the "new reality." H. sapiens has survived and prevailed because of its exceptional capacity for adaptation to a myriad of ever-changing environments. It may not be business as usual, but the fact that it's not business as usual is...well, business as usual.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The world ended yesterday.

[Don't Panic]

I'll go for a serious response.

Turn over control of the planet to me, I will cure world hunger, over-population, lack of medical treatment, prison overcrowding, etc, etc..., within 1 year.

It won't be pretty though.

[Hermit]

Now all options are on the table here and give free range to your imagination and creative thinking, don't be afraid to be laughed at because we are approaching a terrible global catastrophe now at a fair rate of knots.

FBM's downplaying of apocalyptic predictions remind me of the oft-cited Great Horse Manure Crisis of 1894. In the late 1800s all urban non-pedestrian traffic was horse-powered and their shit kept piling up. In New York in 1900, the population of 100,000 horses produced 2.5 million pounds of horse manure per day. In the "Times of London" in 1894, one writer estimated that in 50 years every street in London would be buried under nine feet of manure. Then in 1898 the first international urban planning conference convened in New York. It was abandoned after three days, instead of the scheduled ten, because none of the delegates could see any solution to the growing crisis posed by urban horses and their output. Our conservative capitalists love using this as a lesson, from which we are supposed to learn that, given sufficient individual freedom, human ingenuity will always find a (sometimes unanticipated) solution to even the apparently most hopeless and desperate situations. They conveniently ignore examples where whole societies literally died out because of their unsustainable life styles. The Easter Islanders and the Pueblo Indians come to mind.

I don't know how near or far we are to a terrible global catastrophe, but one thing is clear to me: We cannot indefinitely maintain an exponential growth rate in consumption on a planet the resources of which steadfastly refuse to grow at all. The biggest change we need to effect in order to survive is to consume goods in a sustainable manner. Just because we successfully muddled through crises in the past does not mean we will continue to do so. The necessary adjustments won't be easy, and they will definitely not be just economic. They will be social and political as well. Some of them will be horrendous, but humanity, or at least some humans, will survive and get used to the radically different way of life with the usual speed.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The "nine feet of manure" figure did not allow for removal by the city or by rain.

[Schneibster]

This is quite possibly the most serious and important thread I've started. In this thread I shall use my real name Kevin to show that I'm not starting one of the 'fun dismal' threads that I do on occasion with my crumple mask. This is about answers not a exploration of woes.

I'll take you at face value. If you're fuckin' with me it's on your karma not mine.

We know the climate is unstable, ice caps are melting

Let's be quite clear on this issue. The climate is not "unstable." The current consensus is that the temperature change is about 3°C per CO2 doubling, within a couple doublings of where we are now, up but not down. This is called "climate sensitivity." We also know that two factors, the positions of the continents with one pole covered, and the present state of the Milankovitch cycles, militate strongly to the conclusion that we are in an ice age, and specifically in an interglacial that has been going on for 11,000 years and is expected to end in about 30,000 years; the ice age will not end for at minimum several million, with a lot of uncertainty because we do not yet know how to predict the motions of the continents with enough accuracy.

The Western Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is in danger of falling off Antarctica, and already three major shelves, including the Ross Ice Shelf, have disappeared in the last few decades. In addition, there is danger of Greenland deglaciating, which would be nearly as bad as the WAIS collapsing. Current estimates put these a century in the future, with uncertainty that implies it might take thirty years but is unlikely to take less, or it might take five hundred but is unlikely to take more. On the other hand, keep in mind as well that the effects of CO2 on the temperature are cumulative, and that means there is a delay of some years or even decades, both in the increase, and in the decrease (if we get our shit together), meaning we could enact draconian legislation today and not stop it if it's coming in thirty years. This complicates the situation considerably. Had we acted in the 1980s or even the 1990s, we would not face this problem; and the longer we wait, the more likely it is that nothing we can do will stop it. Which also complicates it considerably.

Of more import may be the acidification of the oceans; the major source of oxygen in Earth's atmosphere is the algae in the oceans. Just sayin'.

So now we have a clearer idea than "the climate is unstable," which is incorrect, and "the ice caps are melting," which is oversimplified, to discuss this issue around. It will materially affect the measures that will be practical to undertake to avoid or ameliorate it.

and birdflu on the verge of mutating into a killer strain,

I think this undersells the human immune system, overdramatizes the effects of a pandemic, and might actually turn out to delay global warming quite a bit. I don't see this as a credible threat, nor do I think there's much more than we're already doing to be done about it (and we're already doing a lot).

and the cheap easily accessible oil about gone,

I think this seriously undersells technology. We have run out of resources before and worked out how to get along without them; Germany didn't have much accessible oil either, and managed to fight two world wars, using machinery that used oil, without it.

Not only that, but we've only raised the atmospheric CO2 from 250 to 300 PPM so far; but when Earth started putting that stuff away, CO2 was 4000 PPM. It's gotta be there somewhere. Just sayin'.

that turning land over to bio-fuel is causing food price rises everywhere,

Actually, last year's wheat shortage was due to global warming. Bio-fuel is a must; we have to use a fuel cycle that doesn't involve burning stuff that was put into the Earth by reducing the CO2 in the atmosphere from 4000 PPM to 200 PPM three hundred million years ago, because otherwise it's going to raise the CO2 in the atmosphere to 4000 PPM, duh. (Not you, the idea we can burn it and that won't happen.)

the fiat currencies of the globe on the brink of collapse

Please do not discuss economics until you have learned some economics. It doesn't work like your home finances, duh. (That one is directed at you.)

etc.

First order of business: find out what's in that "etc."

Now all options are on the table here and give free range to your imagination and creative thinking, don't be afraid to be laughed at because we are approaching a terrible global catastrophe now at a fair rate of knots.

I started by quantifying the real dangers further, and eliminating several that aren't real.

Carry on.

[Robert_S]

Spontaneous universal existence failure.

[Schneibster]

Vacuum decay. (I suppose it amounts to the same thing.)

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Vacuum decay. (I suppose it amounts to the same thing.)

So what happens to a vacuum when it comes apart?

[Robert_S]

Vacuum decay. (I suppose it amounts to the same thing.)

Wait, you mean those rotting bits of foodstuffs in the filter might actually be the end of us all?

[Xamonas Chegwé]

I just went to a really enlightening Skeptics In The Pub meeting entitled, "An Optimist's Tour of the Future" - given by Mark Stevenson, author of this book (with a strangely familiar title!)


You should read it, Crumple. It's not all doom and gloom, you know?

Among the things he mentioned were: the statistical decrease in children per women, the increase in life expectancy and the increase in calories per person of food production across the globe in the last century; biotechnology that has engineered bacteria that can take CO2 from the atmosphere and produce diesel fuel; personal genome mapping that can allow previously discarded, yet extremely efficacious, drugs with dangerous side-effects to be used safely on those that don't have the genes that trigger those effects; new ways of managing pasture land that can simultaneously increase the beef yield and massively decrease the cost of production (using nothing more sophisticated than efficient fencing!); nanotechnology that not only makes desalination economical but even as cheap as reclaiming water from sewage treatment; a whole string of innovations that can halt, or even reverse, anthropomorphic global warming and which major corporations (including oil companies) are investing multi-millions in!

You should read the book.


Or you can carry on doomsaying. Whatever.

[Schneibster]

Vacuum decay. (I suppose it amounts to the same thing.)

So what happens to a vacuum when it comes apart?

The universe's physical laws/constants change, making life impossible (unless it happens to decay into a configuration that can support something like life, extremely unlikely since the vacuum energy is pretty low and can't go much lower without making atoms or higher-organized structures impossible).

It's pretty much the ultimate ecological catastrophe.