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DemonKia -> RE: How The Obama Administration Elevates Science (6/30/2009 7:50:36 AM)
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FR, after read thru
Here's one of the many problems I have with the idea that this or that form of pollution has no serious consequences, I think of it as the messy room problem. To me, it sounds like there's a notion that the human race can infinitely dump stuff in their room & the room has a near-infinite ability to suck up the mess & the room will stay pristine. All without humans needing to do anything other than dump stuff in the room.
& I guess if it was just petroleum being combusted incompletely & it's by-products coming out of a coupla hundred million cars, that might be one thing. But the assaults on the eco-system we depend on are myriad: fossil fuels; persistent industrial pollutants such as PCBs; massive use of the world's oceans as industrial, commercial, & residential sewers; massive deforestation; & it goes on & on & on . . . . . That's a lot for any room to take.
& here's the math my pointy little brain works thru about just one facet of the CO2-release issue: around 2006 the trillionth barrel of oil was pumped from the ground. That's 44 trillion gallons of petroleum. Roughly 17 gallons of gasoline is extractable from each barrel of oil, so something on the order of 17 trillion gallons of gasoline were refined & combusted by, say, 2007. That's an awful lot of 'nothing' to worry about.
& there's probably still another trillion barrels of oil left that will be ultimately recoverable. & that's not even accounting for all the coal, natural gas, & other sources of green-house gases.
Sure, there are 'natural' climate cycles, & there are cataclysmic events (asteroid & cometary strikes, greater & lesser volcanic activity, & so on), but the human-caused climate change idea is on top of that other stuff, & there appears to be an increasing possibility that when climate shifts get going they can build geometrically or exponentially, & yes, it can shift really fast. & there's no guarantee that at the end of the shift the planet will support much of anything but microbes, insects, & other smaller, more adaptable, & more robust lifeforms as opposed to, say, mammals.
& frankly, the kinda dismissive 'oh the world will just change or even end' thing sounds, well, suicidal to me. Defeatist. & it's weird coming from people who generally seem to be portraying themselves as something other than suicidal & defeatist. I'm not surprised when the opinion-sharer believes in the 'end times', the rapture, or that kinda thing, but when it comes from those making some kind of pretense of reason, for me, it undercuts that facade of rationality . . . . . *shrugs*
I found it interesting that while much of this thread's discussion has circled around what a mid-level government bureaucrat economist had to say, my favorite economist chimed in with his review of the data:
Betraying the Planet By PAUL KRUGMAN
...The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome if we continue along our present course.
Thus researchers at M.I.T., who were previously predicting a temperature rise of a little more than 4 degrees by the end of this century, are now predicting a rise of more than 9 degrees. Why? Global greenhouse gas emissions are rising faster than expected; some mitigating factors, like absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans, are turning out to be weaker than hoped; and there’s growing evidence that climate change is self-reinforcing — that, for example, rising temperatures will cause some arctic tundra to defrost, releasing even more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Temperature increases on the scale predicted by the M.I.T. researchers and others would create huge disruptions in our lives and our economy. As a recent authoritative U.S. government report points out, by the end of this century New Hampshire may well have the climate of North Carolina today, Illinois may have the climate of East Texas, and across the country extreme, deadly heat waves — the kind that traditionally occur only once in a generation — may become annual or biannual events....
Feel like replying to Mr Krugman or the NYTimes? Here's the comment page for that column:
http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/opinion/29krugman.html
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