Doing Something About Climate Change
Recently, chris_gerrib accused me of not taking a stand on what we should do about anthropogenic climate change, saying in one of the threads from this entry
http://chris-gerrib.livejournal.com/322157.html
9 out of 10 people use the "can't be sure" argument as an excuse to do nothing. Try harder to differentiate yourself as 1 out of 10.
as if this involved some Medieval profession and act of faith.
(the whole entry is interesting, it includes both chris_gerrib and daveon being reduced to a defense of North Korea to avoid having to admit that any country ever profitted from American-imposed regime change). Comments welcome as far as I'm concerned either to my blog or chris_gerrib's, though I can't say if he'll like it. Note: daveon is a true loon, so his responses should be at least entertaining!)
Anyway, my response:
===
Oh, I'm in favor of "doing something." I just want to make sure that the "something" we do is both effective in the right direction, and sufficiently flexible in the strategic sense that we can change directions if it turns out we're going in the wrong one. It would also be nice if this "something" led us forward to a richer rather than backward to a poorer civilization.
The "something" that most people concerned about anthropogenic climate change want to do -- reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing total energy production and scaling down to a passive-collector based energy economy -- fails these tests. Most obviously, it means both less total energy and much less energy-density, which translates to at least choking off economic growth.
Even more dangerously, it absolutely commits us to a strategy of exerting a downward influence on average planetary temperatures. What happens if we do this and it turns out that our greenhouse gas emissions have been staving off the next Ice Age? The weather phenomena accompanying global cooling would in of themselves hamper or destroy many of the passive collector systems, and our total energy production might be too low to switch to a policy of deliberate increases in greenhouse gas emissions.
The "change" I favor is the rapid deployment of the newer and safer nuclear fission reactor designs, the development of further improved nuclear fission reactors, and finally the development and deployment of nuclear fusion reactors. Solar and other passive energy collection systems would be deployed as auxiliary power systems. Large vehicles (merchant ships) would convert to nuclear-electric, and smaller vehicles to some form of storage-electric power. In space, we would build toward large-scale exploitation of Lunar resources and the construction of an orbital space-based solar power satellite system. Food would be increasingly grown hydroponically and by tissue-culture; former crop and ranchland could be reforested.
The effect of the conversion to non-airbreathing power systems would be a massive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions; and of the conversion from open-air to vat agriculture a massive increase in the uptake of greenhouse gases. All this would be accomplished in an economic environment of growth rather than decline, leaving us with plenty of spare resources to meet unexpected climate change in any direction.
The same infrastructure emplaced to build the space-based solar power system would be readily convertible, at need, to build either solettes or sunshades, allowing us to engage in climatological engineering not merely in any direction, but in a precisely-targeted fashion. We could begin to consciously and intelligently take control of the Earth's climate, rather than merely affect it as a side effect of other economic activities.
This is a way forward toward becoming a full Type I civilization, not a way backward to pre-industrialism. And the longer we delay, the more damage we'll do to the Earth before we can get there.
http://chris-gerrib.livejournal.com/322157.html
9 out of 10 people use the "can't be sure" argument as an excuse to do nothing. Try harder to differentiate yourself as 1 out of 10.
as if this involved some Medieval profession and act of faith.
(the whole entry is interesting, it includes both chris_gerrib and daveon being reduced to a defense of North Korea to avoid having to admit that any country ever profitted from American-imposed regime change). Comments welcome as far as I'm concerned either to my blog or chris_gerrib's, though I can't say if he'll like it. Note: daveon is a true loon, so his responses should be at least entertaining!)
Anyway, my response:
===
Oh, I'm in favor of "doing something." I just want to make sure that the "something" we do is both effective in the right direction, and sufficiently flexible in the strategic sense that we can change directions if it turns out we're going in the wrong one. It would also be nice if this "something" led us forward to a richer rather than backward to a poorer civilization.
The "something" that most people concerned about anthropogenic climate change want to do -- reduce greenhouse gas emissions by reducing total energy production and scaling down to a passive-collector based energy economy -- fails these tests. Most obviously, it means both less total energy and much less energy-density, which translates to at least choking off economic growth.
Even more dangerously, it absolutely commits us to a strategy of exerting a downward influence on average planetary temperatures. What happens if we do this and it turns out that our greenhouse gas emissions have been staving off the next Ice Age? The weather phenomena accompanying global cooling would in of themselves hamper or destroy many of the passive collector systems, and our total energy production might be too low to switch to a policy of deliberate increases in greenhouse gas emissions.
The "change" I favor is the rapid deployment of the newer and safer nuclear fission reactor designs, the development of further improved nuclear fission reactors, and finally the development and deployment of nuclear fusion reactors. Solar and other passive energy collection systems would be deployed as auxiliary power systems. Large vehicles (merchant ships) would convert to nuclear-electric, and smaller vehicles to some form of storage-electric power. In space, we would build toward large-scale exploitation of Lunar resources and the construction of an orbital space-based solar power satellite system. Food would be increasingly grown hydroponically and by tissue-culture; former crop and ranchland could be reforested.
The effect of the conversion to non-airbreathing power systems would be a massive reduction in greenhouse gas emissions; and of the conversion from open-air to vat agriculture a massive increase in the uptake of greenhouse gases. All this would be accomplished in an economic environment of growth rather than decline, leaving us with plenty of spare resources to meet unexpected climate change in any direction.
The same infrastructure emplaced to build the space-based solar power system would be readily convertible, at need, to build either solettes or sunshades, allowing us to engage in climatological engineering not merely in any direction, but in a precisely-targeted fashion. We could begin to consciously and intelligently take control of the Earth's climate, rather than merely affect it as a side effect of other economic activities.
This is a way forward toward becoming a full Type I civilization, not a way backward to pre-industrialism. And the longer we delay, the more damage we'll do to the Earth before we can get there.