Re: 23-Apr-17 World View -- Scientists worldwide hold an international March for Money on 'Earth Day'
Posted: Mon Apr 24, 2017 9:07 am
Oh, John, whenever we revisit this topic, you come down on the side of untenable arguments. Let's review:
(1) Your graph showing reduction of carbon emissions is for the US. What does this graph look like for the combined other nations on the planet? Are they all reducing as well? Doubtful. And you didn't include a graph of global temperature. Is it dropping in concert with this altruistic move by the US. Once again, doubtful. An increase in global temperature is "baked in the cake" for several decades, regardless of declining emissions, and I believe you know this.
(2) You love that "horse shit/ New York City" analogy, but it doesn't apply. The "New York" problem was a LOCAL catastrophe. Climate collapse is a SYSTEMIC catastrophe. Meddling with the climate carries huge "tail risk" and needs to be viewed through that lens.
(3) The planetary climate system is a complex system, with multiple feedback loops, and it has evolved over 4 billion years to compensate for various perturbations and insults (solar variability, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, etc). The impact of plant & animal life has been minimal, UNTIL this one aberrant species became hugely successful and began digging carbon out of the ground and burning it.That is is a massive perturbation. John, you have experience with huge software programs that have multiple feedback loops, patched together over years of use and modification. And you have described how they can collapse unexpectedly.We can continue to perturb the complex system that is our climate, and it will try to compensate and control the results. But at some point, with enough perturbation, it will "reset" and it is impossible to predict what those conditions will be. But you can say that they will be quite different from what we have now. Is that a risk worth taking?
(1) Your graph showing reduction of carbon emissions is for the US. What does this graph look like for the combined other nations on the planet? Are they all reducing as well? Doubtful. And you didn't include a graph of global temperature. Is it dropping in concert with this altruistic move by the US. Once again, doubtful. An increase in global temperature is "baked in the cake" for several decades, regardless of declining emissions, and I believe you know this.
(2) You love that "horse shit/ New York City" analogy, but it doesn't apply. The "New York" problem was a LOCAL catastrophe. Climate collapse is a SYSTEMIC catastrophe. Meddling with the climate carries huge "tail risk" and needs to be viewed through that lens.
(3) The planetary climate system is a complex system, with multiple feedback loops, and it has evolved over 4 billion years to compensate for various perturbations and insults (solar variability, volcanic eruptions, forest fires, etc). The impact of plant & animal life has been minimal, UNTIL this one aberrant species became hugely successful and began digging carbon out of the ground and burning it.That is is a massive perturbation. John, you have experience with huge software programs that have multiple feedback loops, patched together over years of use and modification. And you have described how they can collapse unexpectedly.We can continue to perturb the complex system that is our climate, and it will try to compensate and control the results. But at some point, with enough perturbation, it will "reset" and it is impossible to predict what those conditions will be. But you can say that they will be quite different from what we have now. Is that a risk worth taking?