[ExI] extropy-chat Digest, Vol 75, Issue 2

[Eugen Leitl]

On Tue, Dec 01, 2009 at 03:25:21PM -0800, Keith Henson wrote:

> I am irritated by the whole thing.

Not just you. I'm entirely unsurprised, because this is how
people always address a crisis. See Jared Diamond's
"Collapse" for plenty of examples.

The only difference this time is that the crisis is global, not
local.
 
> What we have is people endlessly arguing about the ship rusting or not
> and if this will sink it in 50 to 100 years in the future.  Meanwhile
> there is a torpedo in the water headed for the ship.

Good metaphor. We need to initiate a immediate change of course,
at full machine power. Anything less won't bring us out of
harm's way.
 
> Running out of cheap energy is a far more serious matter than climate
> change and will happen sooner.  That has to be solved to avert famines
> and resource wars.

We're arguably in resource war regime already. It's just small scale 
mostly (with the exception of the US), but if it reaches China, India, 
Arabia, Africa, North America it's going to get arbitrarily ugly.
 
> There are no long term solutions to this problem that involves
> endlessly putting carbon in the air so any solution to the problem
> must involve displacing fossil fuel with some less expensive source of
> energy.

D'accord. 1000%.
 
> Nuclear, SBSP, or some new method, however we solve the energy
> problem, we also solve the climate problem to whatever extent it is
> real and to whatever extent the problem is caused by humans.  If CO2
> is a problem in 30-40 years, we can pull it out of the atmosphere to
> any degree we want (300 TW years will take out 100 ppm).
> 
> I.e., it doesn't matter a bit if the data has been fudged or not.

But it is so convenient to point fingers instead having to deal
with problems. You first deny that the problem exists, that somebody
invented it. Then, when you no longer can deny it exists you start
blaming somebody else causing it (it's never you, so much mutual
finger pointing ensues). Then when everybody realizes you're in
a zero-sum game everybody starts fighting about what's left, until
you terminate enough parties so there's enough. Except, in this
stage you use nuclear and biological weapons, so there are quite
few indeed left, and they're preoccupied with other things. Like
staying alive, for instance. 

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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