[extropy-chat] Ice cores show warming 'natural' (or not)

[Robert Bradbury]

On 1/9/06, The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> By your own logic then, every transhumanist
> should be scaring the wits out of their neighbors with
> the threat of global warming even if they don't
> actually believe there is a threat. Simply because it
> will accelerate progress in nanotechnology.


Hmmm... I would then suggest that we might then need an age and location
specific "scaring the wits" strategies.  With respect to just about everyone
50-60+ aging and *death* will impact them significantly (and much more
negatively) than global warming will in their generally anticipated
lifetime.  With respect to location, people living in places like Chicago,
Montreal, Fairbanks, Moscow, etc. are going "Yea, bring it on" when you
mention global warming (esp. this time of year) [you can include me,
currently residing in Boston, as being part of this group].  Hell, I've
always wanted to go waterskiiing in the summer on Great Slave Lake.  The
argument tends to fall apart as most people who have some understanding of
global warming, nanotechnology, aging, transhumanism, etc. have *very*
little contact with those who may be most negatively impacted by it (e.g.
those in Brazil, central Africa, India, S.E. Asia and low lying islands).
So it tends to look to me like a lot of scientists "crying wolf" to get
support for their favorite research interests.

The only "significant" negative impacts one can envision out of global
warming are shutting down the Gulf Stream (which may require melting the
Greenland ice cap -- or *more*) and what is probably worse -- a massive
melting of the methane clathrates throughout the world.  However neither of
those situations is being predicted by currently envisioned global warming.

Robert
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