Scientists to world: "We're all boned." Part Deux.

[Crimson Knight]

Re: Scientists to world: "We're all boned." Part Deux.

I thought it was locusts?

[The Toecutter]

Re: Scientists to world: "We're all boned." Part Deux.

The next one is fire!

Man's bringing that one all on himself. No need for any act of God on that part...

[Wavelength]

Re: Scientists to world: "We're all boned." Part Deux.

The initial article doesn't seem to explain how global warming can create problems like "800 million people will be hungry by 2080." I'm sure the report explains this (I'm guessing it has to do with less available farmland, but that's a VERY dicey assumption given how many other factors are working the other way), but I've yet to see said report... can anyone give the numbers, or at least a good cause-and-effect for some of the more strange results?

A couple people brought up global warming's effects on fresh water sources... as far as I know, there's no way to directly translate one into the other by a significant amount. That being said, I honestly don't believe fresh water will be a problem 50 years from now. Desalinization (removing the dissolved salts and materials from seawater to make it drinkable) is already being done easily--the costs are prohibitive to do it on a wide scale for now, but both technological advances and the increasing value of resources as opposed to money should, at least in theory, get massive desalinization underway within a few decades.

One of the underlying issues here is the way that China, India, the Eastern European block, and so on, have been quickly speeding up to the world's standards of living (standalone this is great--but it can cause all kinds of problems, too...). Granted, they're still a LONG way off from living like Americans, Japanese, or Brits, in many ways... but the acceleration is greater than ever before. At the same time, the birth rates and disease rates in Africa are really high, and both the overall and unable-to-work populations are ballooning like crazy.

It's not so much that natural or artificial phenomena are causing resources to deplete per se, as much as the demand for these resources is increasing like crazy. Meanwhile, the real hazard is that politicians (and whoever else can manage to get into power) can't get on the same page about how to cooperate and conserve these resources, which creates massive inefficiencies where everyone's grabbing for their own piece of the pie.

I'm of the opinion that the sole purpose of government is to make the hard decisions that benefit society--but that individual members or power players wouldn't make on their own. This is a great example of why they need to fill that role.

[Wavelength]

Re: Scientists to world: "We're all boned." Part Deux.

Terr, that was very interesting information you posted, and as usual your knowledge on the subject is impressive. I'd like to question you on a few things, however...

-legalisation and widespread usage of hemp and marijuana for biodiesel, plastics, paper, clothing, textiles, and medicine

I'm all for hemp--and nearly all drugs, for that matter--being legalized... but how is this, realistically, going to help stop matters related to global warming?

-solar power accounting for another 20-30% of electricity generation

Curious here--are we talking standard Solar panels, or the "Microwave"-style satelites? Getting 20% of the world's total power consumption via the former would be really tough. I'm not informed over how technologically feasible the latter would be.

-a dramatic slowdown of globalization

Now this I'm a bit more informed about, and I'm inclined to say that it's ridiculous. I could describe a million scenarios in which rather heavy globalization could take place and total world energy consumption would drop. Hell, I'd tend to think that globalization would actually make it much easier to take advantage of clean power-generating vessels like nuclear power. And to what extent are you grouping, or separating, globalization with development?

-an end to America's widespread wars over resources(takes a lot of energy and generates a lot of pollution)
-a dramatic reduction in the wealth gap between the rich and poor(will end overpopulation by stopping the people/poverty cycle.)

You're probably right on most levels here, but I think both of these go beyond the scope of the topic, and in some cases could cause more harm than good. The war in Iraq is causing people to die--not fish.

If you're interested in the possible directions that the world will take, I strongly urge you to read the following article by Robert Costanza:

http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol4/iss1/art5/

I did a quick skim over the article; I'll read it more thoroughly tomorrow (I'm a very slow reader). It's very interesting. Anyhow, just wanted to apologize if anything I'm about to say is clearly ignorant of what the article had to say. EDIT: I've read most of the article and I think I did understand everything correctly in the skim. I'll finish tomorrow and edit if necessary.

He outlines four possible directions for the future of civilization and the planet. He lays them out on a grid.

I take a lot of issue with the grid--especially with the way you're relating it to global warming and the other issues in this topic.

First of all, the "Mad Max" scenario is absolutely ridiculous. Would make for cool fiction, of course--VERY cool fiction--but it's contradictory (diseases that actually cause the population to dwindle should increase the amount of food each person gets, and probably decrease total working time as well), and most events that would take place in this scenario would also take place in a world where hemp was legalized, solar panels were erected, and America pulled out of Iraq. I could see a lot of wars and unsustainable power structures budding out of the "Ecotopia" scenario, to be honest.

Second of all, I think we all know that while the grid structure is a nice way to simplify things and come out with quantumized scenarios, the real picture would be, at the very least, a four-dimensional spectrum with a smooth distribution: socioeconomic optimism, technological optimism, socioeconomic reality, and techological reality. Obviously there's going to be some two-way interplay between technology and socioeconomics, but Mr. Costanza lumps them directly together in his grid, and I think that you often lump them together in your thinking, as well.

Third, I have a couple of issues with the value ratings for each outcome. Obviously, these are very subjective and easily influenced by the way the situations are presented. The author admits to this study being nonscientific, and even if it were "scientific," the bias in the situations will absolutely leak into the ratings. It's also important to think about the fallacies in "averaging" the scores of the two outcomes when making a decision, since each dimension should be a spectrum and if we were to draw a graph of "score" (dependent variable) versus "reality" (indep. variable) for each decision, it wouldn't be linear.

The situation is very clear. There is a conflict of interest. The elite from industry and government want society to head in a given direction(the direction we are currently heading in being the 'Mad Max' scenario), pretty much everyone else wants a change of course.

Well, I think part of the problem, too, is that a lot of people don't KNOW what they want (with regards to the issues of conservation and energy)--whether businessmen, bureaucrats, builders, or bums. Like you say, it's a systemic problem in politics.

It's only our entire planet at stake here.

It sure is, and it's about time people pay the proper attention to the issue.