Interesting Links for 02-12-2015

[andrewducker]

• There's a pill that prevents people from being infected with HIV. The NHS should be prescribing it.
  • charge
  • drugs hiv NHS libdem
• The Role of an Enterprise Architect in a Lean Enterprise
  • agile design architecture programming

Comments

[gonzo21]

The only good news about a 6 degree temperature rise is that global agricultural will have failed before the oceans stop producing oxygen, so in a sense those of us still alive will probably find suffocating to death a pleasant break from the daily grind of cannibalism and brutality.

[kalimac]

I expect you're right here. Agriculture is the failure point in our system.

[gonzo21]

Aye, sadly. In an odd sort of way it's how GM foods might just be the salvation of us.

Well, for a generation maybe.

I suspect an average rise of just 2-3 degrees is probably enough to crash the global food chain though.

[kalimac]

From what little I know of either topic, I suspect what we're facing here is way beyond the scope of GM.

No, our only hope is the Singularity. Self-replicating AI, which doesn't need oxygen, may be our only heirs. Unfortunately I don't believe in the Singularity either. For there to be self-replicating AI, humans first have to build machines capable of getting to that point. I see no evidence that we can, and neither do the experts I believe.

[gonzo21]

GM crops built to tolerances that allow them to grow under UV lighting in caves might be sufficient to allow the species to survive. But no, I'm not hopeful. We're well past the point of no return in trashing our ecosystem.

And no, I agree, I see no evidence for computers achieving that either.

[kalimac]

When do you think we crossed that point of no return? My guess is somewhere around 1990-1995, but I'm curious as to your perspective.

[gonzo21]

I'm not sure we have enough data going back long enough to say for sure.

I sometimes kinda wonder if it's inevitable that civilisations all snuff themselves out in the late-industrial phase, because on all alien worlds throughout the universe, it probably follows the same pattern. Burn fossil fuels for cheap energy - destroy environment. (And that this explains why we can't detect any life in the Universe. Because they all do what we're doing.)

But I think ~radical~ intervention in the 90s might have saved us. So I don't think it was too late then. So that we entered the 00's having done nothing but accelerate the rate at which we were burning fossil fuels, that was the tipping point for me.

When the end comes as well, I think it will come faster than anybody is predicting. Because the data on these methane melts in the permafrost are absolutely terrifying.

[octopoid_horror]

Even now, it's sadly hilarious how ~climate summits~ basically just end up with governments saying "uh ok, let's meet again in five years and TOTALLY DO SOMETHING AT THAT POINT"

[gonzo21]

Aye. How long have we been doing that now, 25 years at least?

Oddly the best thing that could happen for the planet is for a super storm cell to hit Florida and wipe the state from the face of the map. Unless something like that happens, I don't think we'll even at least try to save ourselves.

[octopoid_horror]

I am excited for the prospect of nuclear-armed states looking thoughtfully at their weapons stockpile at the point where climate change fucks their food/water stocks.

[gonzo21]

Particularly given America will be starving while Canada is still growing crops.

And indeed let us not forget that China have been frantically buying up a lot of real estate in prime arable land in Africa, in parts that are predicted to last quite well in the face of global warming.

But yes, I agree, I think we will see catastrophic wars, escalating to nuclear exchanges before the end.

Which I suppose ironically might save some of us. Nuclear winter to offset global warming?

[octopoid_horror]

Related to this, Flood by Stephen Baxter is pretty good. If you like being depressed about humanity.

I was quite amused when the government's energy security strategy turned out to openly be "we'll be able to import it from friends". I assume the food security will be the same, and then it'll turn out this relies on having money and friends ;-)

[octopoid_horror]

It's also sad that after decades of cold war where superpowers (or countries that fancied themselves as making a difference to the cold war) spent endless sums of money on "making the world safe", no one really thought to spend all that money on actually making the world safe once the cold war ended.