[ExI] global warming again

[Damien Broderick]

At 10:56 PM 3/16/2009 +0100, Stefano wrote:

>I know for a fact that humankind thrived with much warmer climates 
>than we know today, and this debunk all notion of "impending 
>extinction unless...",

Not sure which epochs or eras you have in mind, but I suspect the 
global biosphere was significantly different and vastly less 
monocropped on a huge scale than it is now, and humans lived very differently.

And we mustn't oversimplify the discussion: nobody with any sense, I 
think, is imagining a smooth planetary rise in temperature until 
we're all boiling. What's being discussed is increasingly unsettled 
"mixing," turbulence, unpredictable changes in local ecologies.

On top of that, potential "tipping point" catastrophes with huge 
consequences, especially in the oceans.

Dwellers in a global urban economy eating food grown and harvested by 
oil-fed machines can't just climb to their feet and trudge off to a 
nicer region to the north, following the animals. For a start, the 
newly nicer regions will already have people living in them.

The scientific consensus might still be somewhat up for grabs, but 
the majority position surely isn't *silly*, or a Hollywood conspiracy 
of wicked lefties.

Damien Broderick