With all the falderal surrounding Al Gore’s movie and the smackdown the hockey stick received recently, I thought it would be a good opportunity to create a list of stuff that worries me more than global warming, and that I think should occupy scientists, policy makers, planners, et al more than global warming:
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
With all the falderal surrounding Al Gore’s movie and the smackdown the hockey stick received recently, I thought it would be a good opportunity to create a list of stuff that worries me more than global warming, and that I think should occupy scientists, policy makers, planners, et al more than global warming:[/quote]
Not much that currently be done about them, except to detect them, monitor them and move away before they blow.
Even then, the catastrophic repercussions on a global scale from one of those eruptions would probably decimate a fair percentage of life on Earth.
No current technology or even foreseeable ones can prevent them from erupting eventually. Colonizing the solar system might be the only current viable solution; and only for the colonists.
A bit similar to the super volcanoes; unless detected very early, altering the course of an asteroid is not something we’re currently capable of. With early detection, you only need a slight nudge to alter it’s course by millions of miles later on.
And no, sending Bruce Willis on the shuttle with an atomic bomb would not do the trick.
We have technology to deal with this threat; the problem is in identifying the threat before the pandemic occurs. A few years ago, it was SARS; today it’s bird flu. If we had stockpiled SARS vaccines, we’d be stuck with them for nothing. Should we stockpile bird flu vaccine? Will it still be a threat a few years down the road, or will there be a newer, more dangerous viral threat?
[quote]6) Strange Matter:
Another sci-fi doom and gloom scenario, with a lot more fiction than science, IMHO.
A, there’s one to fret about. Although it’s pretty much inevitable. As technology advances, it’s possible for smaller and smaller groups to destroy larger and larger groups of people. Before gunpowder, you pretty much had to do it by hand, or by burning down enclosed spaces; gunpowder made possible weapons that could allow one man to kill dozens of others with little danger to himself (say with uzi in a McDonald’s); nitroglycerin, then dynamite and C4 and other, even more advanced explosives pack more and more punch in smaller, more stable packages.
The inevitable outcome is of a briefcase nuclear weapon, dirty bomb or biological/chemical weapon detonated in a crowded city area.
Solution to this are difficult, because efficient ones seem to entail curtailing individual rights and liberties.
Closely monitoring existing stockpiles of dangerous weapons is a solution, but broke down big time when the USSR went belly up. Now a lot of fissile material is MIA and no one is really sure where it’s gone. Not good. Add to that the wide dissemination of knowledge made possible by the internet and it’s pretty much inevitable that eventually, some group will have enough know-how and ressources to pull it off.
My advice? Don’t move to Tel-Aviv to raise your family.
Getting off this planet and into the solar system (and eventually beyond) pretty much solves all those problems. At least it makes them survivable for some portion of humanity. Planetary disasters are (on a geologic time scale) relatively common; solar system-wide disaster are probably much rarer and galaxy killings ones… unheard of? (Ok, a supermassive black hole might swallow one up, but you’ve got a lot of time to plan your escape.)
[quote]pookie wrote:
Getting off this planet and into the solar system (and eventually beyond) pretty much solves all those problems. At least it makes them survivable for some portion of humanity.[/quote]
Hope you don’t mind, but I think the above comment needs some ellaborating.
Getting off this planet and into another is simply one risk management strategy – basically one of diversification – not a risk avoidance one. I know you know that – from your second sentence and the rest of your post – I just wanted to clarify it before somebody got the wrong impression.
To clarify even further, what I mean by that is that there is really no safe place in the Universe. In fact, Planet Earth is possibly one of the safest we can ever hope to find within any reasonable time period. Most alternatives are probably far more prone to planetary disasters. However, much like it’s a good idea to diversify your portfolio – not put everything in one company or even one industry – it would be a sensible risk management strategy to have humans live in other planets and solar systems in case an ELE actually happened on Planet Earth.
Even though it is quite possibly the most expensive risk management strategy we can adopt, it is particularly sensible not only because of the reasons pookie pointed out, but because it is inevitable that EVENTUALLY Earth – and most of the Solar System – will be gone… Furthermore, any Terraforming research we can perform can actually be useful right here on Earth – the more we understand how to deal with inhospitable environments the better we can deal with them right here on Earth.
I like how we are supposed to worry about things we can’t influence, but ignore things we can influence… because it might cost us a manageable amount of money.
[quote]vroom wrote:
I like how we are supposed to worry about things we can’t influence, but ignore things we can influence… because it might cost us a manageable amount of money.
Sounds a bit nutty.[/quote]
I agree with you. I lost any seriousness towards this thread the moment the theory of nanotech robots turning the world into mush came into the conversation.
[quote]vroom wrote:
I like how we are supposed to worry about things we can’t influence, but ignore things we can influence… because it might cost us a manageable amount of money.
Sounds a bit nutty.[/quote]
The thing is - you can’t manage anything wrt the environment by spending money. And manageable is a subjective term at best.
It’s just a fairy tale cooked up by those that think we would be better off back in the days of sharp sticks and snare traps.
[quote]vroom wrote:
I like how we are supposed to worry about things we can’t influence, but ignore things we can influence… because it might cost us a manageable amount of money.
Sounds a bit nutty.[/quote]
Ah, I’m glad you brought up money and what we should be doing with it.
There are much better ways to spend our money if we want to get bang for the improvement buck – and we can even touch on one of my worries, a possible pandemic virus (think of an AIDS mutation – I only used bird flu as one example):
As to something we can control, I thought we were in agreement that we didn’t know whether we could control it because we didn’t know the causation from either side?
[quote]Professor X wrote:
vroom wrote:
I like how we are supposed to worry about things we can’t influence, but ignore things we can influence… because it might cost us a manageable amount of money.
Sounds a bit nutty.
I agree with you. I lost any seriousness towards this thread the moment the theory of nanotech robots turning the world into mush came into the conversation.
[/quote]
Prof,
I suggest checking out that last link in my initial post, to the book by the world-renowned astrophysicist. He seems to take the nano-tech threat a bit more seriously than you do…
[quote]Professor X wrote:
theory of nanotech robots turning the world into mush[/quote]
ROTFLMAO!
I know Bob Freitas (the guy who wrote the article about Gray Goo that BB linked) very well and he agrees that is, bar none, the best – and funniest! – abstract either of us have read on that theory (I simply could NOT resist forwarding it to him, even without mentioning the source).
He might even add it to the article, assuming he has your permission.
Yes, not even Bob takes the theory seriously… It’s pretty out there and essentially pure intellectual masturbation… Kinda like objectivism, but for smart people.
It would also make a great Saturday SciFi Channel Movie…
[quote]rainjack wrote:
The thing is - you can’t manage anything wrt the environment by spending money. And manageable is a subjective term at best.
It’s just a fairy tale cooked up by those that think we would be better off back in the days of sharp sticks and snare traps. [/quote]
Rainjack, why do you continue to slant things in a way that supports your political leanings?
I am not suggesting we try to manage the environment, but instead our effect on the environment. The two are very different animals and you surely know that.
I’m surprised you play such kids games with language to support your viewpoint. Honestly, I have much more respect for you than this type of silliness supports.
[quote]BostonBarrister wrote:
Ah, I’m glad you brought up money and what we should be doing with it.
There are much better ways to spend our money if we want to get bang for the improvement buck – and we can even touch on one of my worries, a possible pandemic virus (think of an AIDS mutation – I only used bird flu as one example):
As to something we can control, I thought we were in agreement that we didn’t know whether we could control it because we didn’t know the causation from either side? [/quote]
Boston,
You are in effect arguing for ongoing wanton carelessness, or negligence, with respect to our impact on the environment. It is simply irresponsible and incurs a lot of risk.
It astounds me that people are so tied to the precise way we do things today that they can’t imagine better ways to do things tomorrow.
The environment can and does change on it’s own, but except for catastrophic events it does so slowly. In fact, you can pretty much define a catastrophic environmental effect by the speed at which the effects are incurred… such that life does not have time to adjust itself and adapt from generation to generation, even if only by survival of those most fit to the new conditions.
There is a huge list of worries, and as the right likes to chant, we can do more than one thing at a time. Money is being spent on pandemic monitoring and research, infectious disease research, cancer research, spaceborn object identification and monitoring and so forth.
Nobody is suggesting that all the money on the planet needs to be redirected into environmental issues, but just that it is an area we do need to start allocating resource to – to attempt to reduce our acceleration of climate change.
That is not the same as trying to keep the environment static! I hope you aren’t going to start playing those word games too.
[quote]vroom wrote:
rainjack wrote:
The thing is - you can’t manage anything wrt the environment by spending money. And manageable is a subjective term at best.
It’s just a fairy tale cooked up by those that think we would be better off back in the days of sharp sticks and snare traps.
Rainjack, why do you continue to slant things in a way that supports your political leanings?
I am not suggesting we try to manage the environment, but instead our effect on the environment. The two are very different animals and you surely know that.
I’m surprised you play such kids games with language to support your viewpoint. Honestly, I have much more respect for you than this type of silliness supports.[/quote]
Because the notion of spending money to save the environment is lunacy - and should be treated as such. look at the spin put on things by the Earth First crowd. And you want to accuse me of skewing?
Unless it is a specifically targeted program such as oil spill clean ups, or river reclamation, or somrhting along those lines - all the money will do is create yet another bureaucracy. And when has one of those ever helped do anything but drain pocket books?
