Global warming thoughts
Feb. 3rd, 2007 10:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tagrynSomething I wrote up for a thread on the Eagles board...
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I think one can certainly have an open mind & ask questions about the "how" (and hence the "what should be done") without doubting the "if" of warming. For example:
* There's one big problem I see with the "Look, look, humans are causing all the warming, we're killing the planet!" argument: Mars is also warming up, sans human intervention. This indicates to me that there's something going on beyond just pumping greenhouse gasses into Earth's atmosphere, and I'd want to understand what's behind that as well before reaching a definite conclusion about how we should be altering our terraforming of this planet.
* The political realities of actually regulating greenhouse gasses are daunting, and may well be unconquerable. Even the EU has had big problems meeting their modest Kyoto goals with some of the more highly-regulated economies on the planet. Furthermore, any solution that doesn't address the increasing industrialization of China and India will be doomed to failure...yet, yanking up the ladder and making the argument to them that "hey, sorry guys, you have to remain impoverished because we got through our industrial phase before you did?" is a non-starter.
* Among the geosci community actually providing the analysis of climate change, there seems to be a growing unease with whether the need to shout to be heard is causing the science to suffer by forcing scientists to downplay the uncertainty inherent their forecasts, out of fear that not overplaying the possible perils will cause their warnings to be ignored.
* Finally, feeding my own skepticism is knowing that doomsaying and sensationalism always tends to sell books much better, hence its popularity:
Yet, we're still here.
---
I think one can certainly have an open mind & ask questions about the "how" (and hence the "what should be done") without doubting the "if" of warming. For example:
* There's one big problem I see with the "Look, look, humans are causing all the warming, we're killing the planet!" argument: Mars is also warming up, sans human intervention. This indicates to me that there's something going on beyond just pumping greenhouse gasses into Earth's atmosphere, and I'd want to understand what's behind that as well before reaching a definite conclusion about how we should be altering our terraforming of this planet.
* The political realities of actually regulating greenhouse gasses are daunting, and may well be unconquerable. Even the EU has had big problems meeting their modest Kyoto goals with some of the more highly-regulated economies on the planet. Furthermore, any solution that doesn't address the increasing industrialization of China and India will be doomed to failure...yet, yanking up the ladder and making the argument to them that "hey, sorry guys, you have to remain impoverished because we got through our industrial phase before you did?" is a non-starter.
* Among the geosci community actually providing the analysis of climate change, there seems to be a growing unease with whether the need to shout to be heard is causing the science to suffer by forcing scientists to downplay the uncertainty inherent their forecasts, out of fear that not overplaying the possible perils will cause their warnings to be ignored.
* Finally, feeding my own skepticism is knowing that doomsaying and sensationalism always tends to sell books much better, hence its popularity:
Yet, we're still here.
