Global Warming

[stone]

Medium Tex, what I meant was that you can either have a bunch of people unemployed and not able to afford oil or they can set up a kelp farm and biodigesters and produce biodiesel and use that. It could all be done purely by using human ingenuity to harvest sunlight and nothing would have been sacrificed in order to do it. The only impediment is the perceived necessity to have a large cohort of people unemployed so as to supposidly reduce inflation with the NAIRU or some such nastiness.

[stone]

Medium Tex, about town planning, there is some argument that entirely spontaneous self built slum developments optimize things in terms of creating good community structures etc. I guess the trick is to get that and also get sewerage .

One of my all time favorite TV programs:-

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/kevi ... ing-it/4od
"As Kevin enters Dharavi he finds open sewers, rats and hazardous chemicals everywhere. But this is also a highly organised place, with thousands of tiny industries and a strong sense of community and spirit."

[MediumTex]

Again, I'm just going to try to loosen up your thinking by playing devil's advocate.

MT,

People have been convinced that they “want”? a high consumption lifestyle by outside forces  because of the simple fact that this is the lifestyle that results in the most amount of corporate profits.  Our present lifestyle is not an organic expression of who we are as humans, but rather a fabricated reality hatched up by corporate America and woven into a model of “planned obsolescence”?.

In laboratory experiments rats will hit a "pleasure lever" until they die.  These rats are not engaging in this behavior because they have been brainwashed by the scientists in the lab.  They do it because they like the pleasurable feeling that the pleasure lever provides, even if it causes them to die much sooner than they otherwise would.

I think that blaming corporate brainwashing for this sort of thing in humans underestimates the basically self-destructive nature of many activities that humans engage in for enjoyment.

What you are implying in your counterargument is that people are making free decisions to live the way that they are living.

They are.  If someone's mind directs him to take a certain action, how is that anything but a free decision?  A decision can still be entirely free even if it is made with imperfect or incomplete information.

I am saying that this blindly overlooks the power of “nurture”? over “nature”?. People are nurtured by the capitalist system to view the world and their relation to it in a very specific way. They have been carefully nurtured to be consumers.  So, when they go out and consume, consume, consume…it isn’t because that is their “nature”?, but rather the result of years of careful mind control driven by the power of our present economic model.

Are rats conditioned to hit the pleasure lever, or do they hit the pleasure lever because they like the way it makes them feel in that moment?  They are "consumers" of the pleasure that is dispensed by the pleasure lever.  No nurture is needed for this response.

I would suggest that the advertising, marketing and other propaganda is simply tapping into a base desire that was always there.  

You are right that the majority of sheeple don’t have the inclination to think about these things. They are happy being part of the Matrix.

Why is The Matrix always something that everyone else is in?  Maybe it's you who is in The Matrix in that you are troubled and those around you are okay with things.  Even Thoreau said that those who were content with the existing system might not find much of value in what he had to say.

However, those people in power or those who have the ability to influence the affairs of the world need to begin to consider how the system we have created is set up to devour itself in the long term.

Why?  We already know that we are hardwired to have planning preferences that favor the short term.  Just because a group of people are simply following their evolutionary instincts that favor short term planning, does that mean that there is a problem?  Be careful how you answer this question, because if your answer is "well yes, there is a problem--the minds of all of these humans are not sufficiently evolved to deal with the problems they are creating for themselves" then you are only setting yourself up to be frustrated.  Imagine if there was the occasional rat in the lab who saw the danger in the pleasure lever and tried to spread the word.  What would his chances of success be?  You have to be realistic about whether the people around you are even interested in being saved, assuming they even know what you are talking about.  I'm just trying to save you from spending too much personal energy on changing a world that hasn't necessarily asked you to help change it.    

There are many small tweaks however that can be made over the course of generations that will have limited impact on people’s everyday life but will help ensure the survival of our species. This is what differentiates us from locusts....

Actually, I would say it's our inability to do such intergenerational planning that makes us more like locusts than we would like to believe.

What you are talking about is first making human more enlightened on a large scale, and then creating human institutions that mirror this increased level of enlightenment.  I would rather take the world as it is and find a way of living in it that allows me to have a sense of peace and happiness without depending on all of these external matters for a sense of coherence in my own life.

With all that said, I obviously enjoy discussing these matters, I just try not to allow myself to get upset at all of the rats around me that only seem interested in pressing their pleasure levers.

[stone]

Medium Tex, "primative" people typically do revere and protect the natural world though don't they? I thought a standard native American ethic was to not engage in any activity that wasn't clearly sustainable to a seven generation time window. Perhaps we are just fleeting perverts from what standard human conduct is.

[MachineGhost]

[CraigR]This post has been removed. Conspiracy theories attacking particular groups are not permitted.

[MediumTex]

Medium Tex, "primitive" people typically do revere and protect the natural world though don't they? I thought a standard native American ethic was to not engage in any activity that wasn't clearly sustainable to a seven generation time window. Perhaps we are just fleeting perverts from what standard human conduct is.

I think that the situation is that most primitive people have low population density and thus they aren't capable of harming the environment in any meaningful way.

With that said, reverence for nature does seem to be a feature of most primitive cultures, and many of them worship the sun, the moon, etc., and it wouldn't be surprising to see people treat the ecosystem with somewhat more care.  Also, living in an agrarian or hunter/gatherer society requires people to be more in synch with what is going on with the environment, as opposed to, for example, living in a highrise apartment in a modern city.

It's ironic that the most popular theme of religion in America today is the idea that God wants you to be prosperous and that God's blessing will come in the form of a larger house, better car, higher paying job, etc.  In other words, God will bless you by allowing you to destroy the earth's ecosystem more quickly through higher levels of present consumption. 

The last 100 years or so of humanity has clearly diverged radically from the historical mean.  The question is when the mean reversion process will begin.  We all know that such things can go on for far longer than anyone would have imagined.  It might be another 100 years before this mean reversion process begins.  Who knows?

[MediumTex]

People have been convinced that they “want”? a high consumption lifestyle by outside forces  because of the simple fact that this is the lifestyle that results in the most amount of corporate profits.  Our present lifestyle is not an organic expression of who we are as humans, but rather a fabricated reality hatched up by corporate America and woven into a model of “planned obsolescence”?.

Don't forget the mythical nuclear family hatched by studio-owners in Hollywood's early years, plus all the steps and ideals "required" to have a "real" romantic relationship.

Quick trip down memory lane...  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUUiEwOe55E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk5ssc1uY30

MG

Hah!  That's the crying indian commercial.

The crying indian was Iron Eyes Cody, who was actually not a Native American at all.  His real name was Espera Oscar de Corti, and he was born in Louisiana to first generation Italian-Americans.

BTW, I removed the modifier on studio owners in the post above.  I don't want to get another one of those discussions started.

[WildAboutHarry]

Medium Tex, "primative" people typically do revere and protect the natural world though don't they? I thought a standard native American ethic was to not engage in any activity that wasn't clearly sustainable to a seven generation time window. Perhaps we are just fleeting perverts from what standard human conduct is.

There is pretty good evidence that the demise of large mammals in North and South America was hastened, in part, by human hunting.

I think you will find that all human societies have exploited resources to the greatest extent possible, with the technology available at the time.

Recent laws and regulations on clean air, clean water, endangered species, etc. are NOT the norm for human history.

[MediumTex]

Medium Tex, "primative" people typically do revere and protect the natural world though don't they? I thought a standard native American ethic was to not engage in any activity that wasn't clearly sustainable to a seven generation time window. Perhaps we are just fleeting perverts from what standard human conduct is.

There is pretty good evidence that the demise of large mammals in North and South America was hastened, in part, by human hunting.

I think you will find that all human societies have exploited resources to the greatest extent possible, with the technology available at the time.

Recent laws and regulations on clean air, clean water, endangered species, etc. are NOT the norm for human history.

Yes.  The decline of most societies throughout history has been occasioned by poor natural resource management or just bad luck when it came to natural resources (e.g., an unexpected period of droughts).

[stone]

Medium Tex, I saw something on TV about using birch bark to make stuff in Canada. They knew and abided by how much bark could be taken how often from a given tree without harming it.

I've seen other things on TV where they offer prayers of thanksgiving to the soul of a porcupine that they have just killed. The idea of wasting any of it seemed utterly anathema to them.

Medium Tex, "primitive" people typically do revere and protect the natural world though don't they? I thought a standard native American ethic was to not engage in any activity that wasn't clearly sustainable to a seven generation time window. Perhaps we are just fleeting perverts from what standard human conduct is.

I think that the situation is that most primitive people have low population density and thus they aren't capable of harming the environment in any meaningful way.

With that said, reverence for nature does seem to be a feature of most primitive cultures, and many of them worship the sun, the moon, etc., and it wouldn't be surprising to see people treat the ecosystem with somewhat more care.  Also, living in an agrarian or hunter/gatherer society requires people to be more in synch with what is going on with the environment, as opposed to, for example, living in a highrise apartment in a modern city.

It's ironic that the most popular theme of religion in America today is the idea that God wants you to be prosperous and that God's blessing will come in the form of a larger house, better car, higher paying job, etc.  In other words, God will bless you by allowing you to destroy the earth's ecosystem more quickly through higher levels of present consumption. 

The last 100 years or so of humanity has clearly diverged radically from the historical mean.  The question is when the mean reversion process will begin.  We all know that such things can go on for far longer than anyone would have imagined.  It might be another 100 years before this mean reversion process begins.  Who knows?

[stone]

WAH, I agree about the large mammals being killed off in the Americas. Also they say Australia was greatly changed by human bush burning by aboriginals. But those perhaps were events that happened as people conquered new lands and had yet to develop a respect for them. The people who lasted in a set place have been the ones who treated that place with respect.

Easter Island seems a very sobering example of how we can really screw things up.

[MachineGhost]

The last 100 years or so of humanity has clearly diverged radically from the historical mean.  The question is when the mean reversion process will begin.  We all know that such things can go on for far longer than anyone would have imagined.  It might be another 100 years before this mean reversion process begins.  Who knows?

What mean reversion?  I don't see that we're so far above trend that we need to mean revert.  Instead, the trend itself is exponetial.

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[align=center][/align]

[MediumTex]

Doesn't this suggest that some sort of mean reversion might be in our future, especially considering that this graph is measuring at least one finite resource?

[edsanville]

CO2 has reached levels not seen for 100000 years.

Actually, this seems to be an understatement.  It looks like the CO2 levels haven't been this high in at least 400,000 years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Carbo ... 400kyr.png

[Tyler]

not endorsing, citing or claiming "truth" for the following article or its conclusions... just throwing it out as "gas" for the fire
http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2012/01/31/the-coming-of-the-new-ice-age-end-of-the-global-warming-era/?singlepage=true

it is interesting that the same solutions were presented to fix the upcoming ice age back in the 70s as are being proposed to fix the warming today (if the article's claim is true)

Edansville -- the top part of your linked chart is by a scientist named Michael Mann and is commonly referred to as the "Hockey Stick Chart."  It has since been thoroughly debunked by other climate scientists.

http://www.john-daly.com/hockey/hockey.htm

BTW, everyone should Google "Climategate".  Thousands of emails between climate scientists have been released, and pull back the curtain to let you see what goes on behind the outward "consensus."  As an example, one scientist reviewing Micheal Mann's algorithm for generating his chart concluded that populating the data using a random number generator created the exact same results -- basically the end result was a foregone conclusion and the data was irrelevant.  His dissent was not allowed to be publicized.

Just because someone has a physics degree does not mean they are not also political. 

[edsanville]

I have seen many lists like this in the past regarding scientists who disagree with anthropogenic global warming. The majority of scientists signing on to such lists are experts in a field unrelated to climatology. I find this a bit like asking a geologist for advice about how to cure a cancer in my body. While it is true that climatologists are not 100% unanimous, your own article stated that 97.4% of climatologists and just under 90% of all earth scientists think "significant" man made global warming is occurring.

Well, climatology is intimately linked with other earth sciences, so I wouldn't completely discount the opinions of geologists, biologists, or physicists.  There was a paleoclimatologist on that list who had an interesting quote:

"Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and Professor of Geology at Carleton University in Canada said in a 2007 newspaper article: "There is no meaningful correlation between CO2 levels and Earth's temperature over this [geologic] time frame. In fact, when CO2 levels were over ten times higher than they are now, about 450 million years ago, the planet was in the depths of the absolute coldest period in the last half billion years. On the basis of this evidence, how could anyone still believe that the recent relatively small increase in CO2 levels would be the major cause of the past century's modest warming?"

If this is true, then it's pretty relevant, I would say.  Correlation doesn't imply causation.

Let me ask you a question. If you had a medical issue and you visited 100 doctors that specialized in the area specific to your problem and 98 of them were in agreement about the cause and the course of action to take, would you feel comfortable accepting their conclusion? Of course, one of the other two who was "doubtful" regarding the diagnosis (keep in mind they have no proof to suggest the 98% are mistaken) could be right, but the odds are clearly not in their favor.

I would go with the 98 doctors who agreed, because I really wouldn't have any alternative.  However, what if I visited 100 doctors in the late 1800s, and 98 of them agreed?  I wouldn't feel nearly as comfortable with their conclusions 120 years ago as I would now.  If climatology, as a science, is at a similar level of development that medicine was during the late 1800s, then should I put much stock in the conclusions of 97.5% of climatologists today?

I used to work in science, by the way.  I worked in physical chemistry, not climatology, but I know that scientists are human (mostly).  They have the same strengths and weaknesses as everybody else.  One of those weaknesses is a desire to go with the crowd.  If you're the only climatologist who disagrees with something, and you turn out to be wrong, you look like an ass.  If you're one of the 97.5% who turns out to be wrong, you don't like an ass.  Most people implicitly understand this... and science is a career for most people.  Looking like an ass just once could destroy a person's career.  Ergo, disagreeing with a majority opinion could destroy a person's career.  Just look at the life of Ludwig Boltzmann...

So, I'm very interesting in the opinion of that 2.5% that disagrees with the consensus.  I want to hear them out, because I think it takes balls to be in that 2.5%.  I'm not saying they're correct... but I want to hear them out.

[edsanville]

Incidentally, I just watched the 1957 movie "12 Angry Men."  Classic movie...  it's a nice demonstration of the true value of a consensus.

[edsanville]

There is pretty good evidence that the demise of large mammals in North and South America was hastened, in part, by human hunting.

I was just about to talk about this...  Apparently, once humans left Africa, they exterminated large mammal populations on every continent they settled.  There used to be all kinds of bizzare large mammals living in North America, Australia, Europe, and Asia.  Once modern humans exited Africa with their advanced hunting techniques, those large mammals didn't stand a chance.  They had never seen humans before, and therefore didn't get a chance to evolve anti-human defenses.  Which is apparently why Africa is the only continent left with a huge number of large mammal species.  Those mammals evolved with humans, and had anti-human defenses.  They still do today, which is one reason to avoid wandering around the African savannah without weapons or a heavy vehicle for defense.

Primitive people probably revere nature for the same reason we revere computers and modern technology:  nature is a huge part of their lives.  They directly depend upon nature for everything they have, and they experience that dependence first-hand.  It doesn't mean that they won't hunt their prey to extinction when given the chance, though.

[stone]

edsanville, I agree that it is very striking how the part of the world that has had human habitation the longest also has pristine megafauna. Remember though that India also has elephants and Rhinos, lions and tigers.

I don't think it is anywhere near as simple as saying that people simply haven't managed to kill off the megafauna in Africa. The people there do have a very strong ethic against killing off those animals and have had for an extremely long time. I don't suppose at all that the East African Elephants are any better at fending off humans armed with spears than were European or North American Mammoths.

Big cats in East Africa definately have a strange relationship with humans. I've seen school children in Kenya walking a hundred yards away from a dozing pride of lions.

On TV, I saw amazing footage of a traditional practice of humans stealing meat from lions. Apparently the trick is to be 100% confident and fearlessly walk up to the lions and take the meat from them. The lions growl and roar and complain a lot but get faced down if the human shows no fear. Totally astounding.

[WildAboutHarry]

Primitive people probably revere nature for the same reason we revere computers and modern technology:  nature is a huge part of their lives.  They directly depend upon nature for everything they have, and they experience that dependence first-hand.  It doesn't mean that they won't hunt their prey to extinction when given the chance, though.

It is rare to find human societies that truly "revere" nature.  For most of human history nature has killed and eaten us.

Thanking the spirit of the porcupine/deer/rabbit etc. before you eat it is more of a prototypical Pascal's wager than any real reverence.  It is a manifestation of the concern that there may be "something" out there, and if we can appease it perhaps it will leave us alone (or make game more abundant, etc.).

The extinctions in North America are interesting in part because of the coincidence of two things: the ending of the last ice age (primitive global warming, nice tie in to the OP topic ) and the increasing human populations in North and South America.

[stone]

WAH, I thought that the idea was that the megafauna extinctions in the Americas occurred as a "wave front" of the very first humans migrated in. That dense wavefront lived on megafauna hunting it to extinction and then moving south. In that way they traversed from Alaska to Patagonia, causing extinctions all the way.

I'm not entirely sure what your point is. I totally agree that people have caused total destruction. Quite possibly the native North American ethic of avoiding that dates from ancestors who witnessed such destruction. Are you saying that we should join in with currently destroying the place because to avoid doing so would be sub-human?

[WildAboutHarry]

I'm not entirely sure what your point is. I totally agree that people have caused total destruction. Quite possibly the native North American ethic of avoiding that dates from ancestors who witnessed such destruction. Are you saying that we should join in with currently destroying the place because to avoid doing so would be sub-human?

I generally avoid discussions of global warming.  The earth has been in a general warming trend for hundreds of centuries (from continental icecaps to vanishing arctic ice and a several hundred foot increase in sea level in a geologic blink of an eye).  And climate science has obviously become politicized.

So I got into this thread pretty late (page eight) when you made the comment about primitive people revering nature, etc.

I find the whole notion of the "noble savage" interesting, because is has no biological basis.  Biological organisms, us included, are in general designed to exploit our environment to the greatest extent possible.  It is environmental limitations (technology, resources, other biological organisms, etc.) that ultimately regulate populations.  For most of our history we have sought to exploit our environment to the greatest extent of our technological ability.  When bows and arrows were invented, nobody said, "Gee, this is way more efficient at killing animals, perhaps we should stick to clubs and spears to limit our hunting success."

It is only relatively recently that humans have begun to self-regulate their populations.  And it is this point - our self- and environmental awareness - that really makes many modern societies truly revere nature.  We are contemplating population regulation, resource conservation, species conservation, old building conservation, wilderness conservation, etc. that is very contrary to our "biological" natures.  And it is only because modern western societies have achieved a level of material wealth that allows those societies to contemplate such actions.

So no, I'm not saying it is sub-human to avoid exploiting "the place."  I'm saying it is super-human.

[stone]

WAH, thanks for the clarification. An interesting link that Lone Wolf made on a previous thread was that "noble savage" humans apparently did a tremendous amount of self regulation by killing each other:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Before_Civilization

I suppose lions also apparently tightly regulate their population density by killing their neighbors. It is great that we have moderated that natural human behavior.

[MachineGhost]

Doesn't this suggest that some sort of mean reversion might be in our future, especially considering that this graph is measuring at least one finite resource?

I guess it depends on what your definition of mean reversion is.  I don't share in the subtle Green/Democrat anti-technology bias.  We can mean revert back to lower energy consumption of the past in combination with increased energy efficiency through technological innovation, while at the same time growing to and then maintaining the 8.5 to 10.5 billion population plateau in 2050.  The enormous economic pressures alone are forcing it to happen.  The below chart doesn't account for the huge increase in natural gas supplies via the shale plays.

[align=center][/align]

MG

[MachineGhost]

Signed by 16 scientists, this is an interesting opinion piece.  The salient point seems to be what happened to Dr. Frietas when he spoke out against the "consensus".  That kind of behavior should not be tolerated in the intellectual arena.  Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

No Need to Panic About Global Warming
There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 21366.html

MG