Climate Change

[selil]

Bio-Diesel from corn is fairly expensive, but you can also make it from grass. Just plain grass clippings. The largest crop in North America is thrown away every weekend. Those grass clippings, the garbage in land fills, and the grass lands all are renewable, natural, energy sources.

I will now invoke the name of an author who should have marct rushing through the door. Jared Diamond has written a book called "Collapse" that discusses in detail the mechanisms and issues with environment that cause civilizations to collapse upon themselves. We're not talking about end of the world, just end of civilization as we know it. Denying the issues does not make them go away. There is a long history of people destroying their environment and then failing to be able to survive.

I don't happen to like the Kyoto Protocol either. And, yes I've read it front to back with much of a headache. The exclusion of China and India from tarriffs was a nail in the coffin for me. You either want to fix the emissions problem or you want to help (economic credits) developing countries with growth. You shouldn't mix the two in a treaty that would likely cause more conflict in the future.

[marct]

I will now invoke the name of an author who should have marct rushing through the door. Jared Diamond has written a book called "Collapse" that discusses in detail the mechanisms and issues with environment that cause civilizations to collapse upon themselves. We're not talking about end of the world, just end of civilization as we know it. Denying the issues does not make them go away. There is a long history of people destroying their environment and then failing to be able to survive.

Jared Diamond <sigh>. To paraphrase something once said about Margaret Murray, as an Anthropologist, Diamond is an excellent geographer. The best work I have seen on societal collapse was by Joseph Tainter, and archaeologist. Despite all of he praise heaped on Diamond, I find that he reminds me a lot of the geographical determinists of the 1860's.

Do civilizations collapse, sometimes because of self-induced ecological catastrophes? Of course they do - the Mayan city states and Easter Island are excellent examples. But the radical climate change crowd neglects to point out that global warming started before the industrial revolution, which is the prime agent of evil in their little morality play.

Selil, you are quite correct that "denying the issues don't make them go away". Still and all, while we are undoubtedly in the midst of a fairly radical climate change, although nowhere near as dramatic as the one 12,000 years ago, it is the extrapolations made by the Earth Firsters and other blithering idiots that this is all the fault of the greedy capitalists and the only solution is a "return to nature" (without mentioning the 99% population kill off that would entail) that seem to be dominating the discourse.

Marc

[goesh]

Yet we can't deny the loss of forests in Asia, Africa and S. America, clearly accelerating, human factors that can be plugged into any model. Diamond's projection from the primitive to the complexity of the modern has some merit IMO when the displacement of millions can be quickly enacted via modern war technology. Any ecologically sustainable environment could be seriously disrupted by a massive influx of refugees though to date we have seen nothing truly massive that did irreparable damage to an eco system.

[marct]

Hi Goesh,

Yet we can't deny the loss of forests in Asia, Africa and S. America, clearly accelerating, human factors that can be plugged into any model. Diamond's projection from the primitive to the complexity of the modern has some merit IMO when the displacement of millions can be quickly enacted via modern war technology. Any ecologically sustainable environment could be seriously disrupted by a massive influx of refugees though to date we have seen nothing truly massive that did irreparable damage to an eco system.

All quite true - I'd never deny that there is a massive climate change going on or that human efforts are not a factor in that change. I just deny that they are the first cause of that change .

Marc

[marct]

As a side note, actually getting back to the original version of the topic, the Danish have been doing a lot of work in the military-climate change area.

Marc

[Culpeper]

What's with the polar bears suddenly becoming the poster child for global warming? There is something like fourteen different colonies of polars. 13 are increasing in their population and the other one open for hunting and over hunted as well. I would pick a different species before people start finding this one out.

[120mm]

The earth is, in general, cooling. The earth's surface and atmosphere warm and cool, alternatively, independent of man's influence. Regardless if man has impacted this particular warming cycle, it is useful to see what we can do to react to warming and cooling cycles and how they impact man.

I am just chagrined that we are spending so much political energy on whether or not man can manipulate the earth's environment, and very little on dealing with the warming and cooling cycle's impact on man. I truly believe a "treatment model" is the correct one. The "prevention model" appears to be much more costly, and carries a very high risk of being completely and utterly wrong.

[goesh]

From FoxNews.com: 4/23/07:

" Report: Sheryl Crow's Solutions to Global Warming
Monday, April 23, 2007

E-MAIL STORY RESPOND TO EDITOR PRINTER FRIENDLY VERSION
Americans may be using less toilet paper, if Sheryl Crow has her way.

The singer, who is crossing the country on a biodiesel bus with producer Laurie David, proposes limiting toilet paper use as one solution to global warming, according to a Washington Post report.

"I have spent the better part of this tour trying to come up with easy ways for us all to become a part of the solution to global warming," she wrote April 19 on the Biodiesel Bus blog, according to a report by the Washington Post. "Although my ideas are in the earliest stages of development, they are, in my mind, worth investigating."

Her toilet paper manifesto would limit how many squares of toilet paper Americans use in a sitting.

Click here to read the Washington Post report.

"Now, I don't want to rob any law-abiding American of his or her God-given rights, but I think we are an industrious enough people that we can make it work with only one square per restroom visit, except, of course, on those pesky occasions where 2 to 3 could be required," she wrote. "

So beware the TPP (toilet paper police). You may be at a mall, get nabbed over an anonymous tip from an angry family member for using too much toilet paper and be dragged into the restroom and there made to drop your pants, bend over, spread the cheeks for a FMRAS (fecal matter residual assessment scan) and fined accordingly. Ms. Crow needs to stick to singing, which she ain't too bad at IMO and leave environmental policing to those agencies that bust people for dumping toxic chemicals in the backcountry. Next we all may be forced to take monthly trips to the zoo to pet whales and dolphins and apologize to them for earth abuse.

[Culpeper]

She needs to stay awhile in Southeast New Mexico. We eat green chili on everything. She'll back off the one square a visit real quick. She can't be serious. Next thing you know they are going to go after the toilet paper manufacturers. Big mistake in my book. If they are wrong about toilet paper than surely they have to be wrong on such important issues such as war and peace. Talk about being out of touch. No pun intended.

[selil]

Do civilizations collapse, sometimes because of self-induced ecological catastrophes? Of course they do - the Mayan city states and Easter Island are excellent examples. But the radical climate change crowd neglects to point out that global warming started before the industrial revolution, which is the prime agent of evil in their little morality play.

I figured invoking Diamond would get a real academics hackles up. That's because his books aren't peer reviewed and much of them are a thought exercises. Unlike a Thomas Kuhn paradigm shift what we see from Diamond is not a change in definition or shift in the generalizations of science, but what Thomas Kuhn warned us about in a shift of perception. Science disciplines exist within a closed culture that determines the validity of the principles being discussed. Governments and individuals may examine science and determine the usability or applicability but to inject that into the process will destroy the foundations of western science.

In climatology we know that areas of the world were lush and populous and now are deserted barren and devoid of human habitation. The evidence trumps the argument that humans are incapable of impacting the environment. Once that point is established we're only arguing about how bad the effect will be, and whether somebody has the right to destroy the same eco-sphere that others inhabit.

I look at the issue as more than a greenie versus industrialist. I look at the entirety of the problem and the impacts of particular consumer patterns and industrial trends as national security issues. If the United States became an exporter of oil what would the impact be on the environment and international relations. A new patent recently filed could make the tar oil sands of the Colorado mining region, Oklahoma and Canadian oil sands viable sources of a thousand years more of oil. At pennies of todays costs. That would change the face of the world. What would changes the world view would be a new technology that made oil worthless. What if one of the new technologies like hydrogen made emissions a thing of the past?

[marct]

I figured invoking Diamond would get a real academics hackles up. That's because his books aren't peer reviewed and much of them are a thought exercises.

Nah, it's not 'cause it's not peer reviewed,it's because it is way to deterministic .

Unlike a Thomas Kuhn paradigm shift what we see from Diamond is not a change in definition or shift in the generalizations of science, but what Thomas Kuhn warned us about in a shift of perception. Science disciplines exist within a closed culture that determines the validity of the principles being discussed. Governments and individuals may examine science and determine the usability or applicability but to inject that into the process will destroy the foundations of western science.

Are you talking about the operation of what Kuhn called "normal science"? If so, Diamond's work is within its parameters; at least those of the past 25 years or so. I'm not sure that I would agree with calling it a "closed culture", although it is definitely insular . Still and all, most of the schools of philosophy of science would tend to agree that any "science" must have some sensory focal point - something hat an observation or hypothesis can be tested against.

In climatology we know that areas of the world were lush and populous and now are deserted barren and devoid of human habitation. The evidence trumps the argument that humans are incapable of impacting the environment. Once that point is established we're only arguing about how bad the effect will be, and whether somebody has the right to destroy the same eco-sphere that others inhabit.

Tsk, tsk, tsk - extrapolating from the specific to the general ! Consider, by way of example, the Antarctic continent. We know that it was "lush and populous" and is now barren and deserted. That, in and of itself, is not evidence of anything except that it was once nice and now isn't. Q: Where is the human agency? A: Not there. We also know of specific cases where human agency was the prime cause of ecological disruptions (e.g. Easter Island). The argument should never be that humans are incapable of impacting the environment - only a politician, theologian or 2 year old would ever hold that position. The argument should be that humans, while capable of impacting the environment, are certainly not the sole agency in ecological change (Lucifer anyone? That's a ref to the asteroid not the semi-deity ). Therefore, once that point is established, we must strive to assign probabilistic degrees of causal efficacy to all identifiable factors.

Let's leave the question of "rights" for another time <evil grin>.

I look at the issue as more than a greenie versus industrialist. I look at the entirety of the problem and the impacts of particular consumer patterns and industrial trends as national security issues.

Actually, we are pretty similar in our outlook. Personally, I am more interested in the relationship between technologies, socio-cultural organization and meaning systems - all of which means that my time horizon, once I'm in full academic mode, tends to be in the 1000's of years.

Marc