[ExI] Inevitability of the Singularity (was Re: To Max, re Natasha and Extropy (Kevin Haskell)

[Kelly Anderson]

On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 6:06 AM, Eugen Leitl <eugen at leitl.org> wrote:
> On Sat, Jul 09, 2011 at 12:39:26AM -0600, Kelly Anderson wrote:
> Global warming can push 2 gigapeople over the brink of starvation.

Possibly. But I think it is unlikely to do so, even if the globe does
warm in the most nightmarish scenario. We are developing tools that
can be brought to the problem if it does happen. The thing that I
think you have to recognize is that climate change means not only that
the climate gets worse in some places, but that it also will get
better in other places.

More to the point, what do you want us all to do to prevent global
warming? What is the solution Eugen? Do you want us to give up
gasoline based transportation en masse? Shall we kill every cow on the
planet? Or should we just bomb the Sasol coal gassification plant in
South Africa?

> This will trigger migrations and wars, including wars with the potential
> to turn nuclear. (But, hey, what is a nuclear war compared to burning
> issues the "teh economy"?)

If the economy collapses, it could result in a lot of the same sorts
of things that you predict. Our world is interconnected and fragile.
Just look at the rippling effects from a very small area of Japan.

> This is not a financial or even economic crisis. It is far, far worse.
> We're facing a systemic crisis through confluence of some ten factors,
> but the core driver behind all these is overshoot. This is serious,
> and it needs to be addressed three to four decades ago.

I agree that we are over extended in many aspects. It's the inevitable
outcome of living beyond our resources. I can't remember if it was you
who was saying we have enough resources for everyone, but someone said
that recently. To that point, we don't have enough carbon free air for
everyone if global warming is the catastrophe that you're making it
out to be.

>> change can have pretty large impacts... Probably the biggest single
>> risk of global warming I am aware of is the chance that the gulf
>> stream will stop circulating. That would honestly be very bad for
>> Europe, causing it to develop a climate similar to Canada at the same
>
> That's distinctly a first world problem.

Believe me, if the first world goes to hell, the developing world will
go to the 9th circle of hell. They live off of our discard and charity
in many ways. Without western charity, half of Africa would be dead of
AIDS. If the first world collapses, there won't be anyone to stop it.

>> latitude. Looking at the globe, this would be bad, really bad.
>> Probably good for somewhere else, but we have a lot of infrastructure
>> in Europe, and it would be a real shame to lose that. This may be one
>> reason that Europeans are generally more alarmed about GW than
>> Americans.
>>
>> The problem is that so many people aren't concerned about it, that it
>> will likely be impossible to do anything about it.
>
> Climate change is only one aspect of overshoot, and even there you're completely
> ignoring major issues like precipitation shifts and food crop loss
> leading to starvation and war, ocean acidification and anoxification
> with further degradation of sea ecosystem and food web, infrastructure
> destruction due to extreme weather events and multiple other factors
> which we'll learn as the situation develops.

Yes, I admit that it could get very bad. But you have to remember that
this is a problem that is unlikely to get REALLY bad for some time.
Our weather was really screwed up this year because of the La Nina
pattern. Yet, in reality, not too many people died from it. A few
hundred from tornadoes, probably some from fire and being over heated.
We have had a rash of drownings here in Utah, about 10 this spring.
People die in these numbers from random crap in this world. It is
always sad, but you can't prevent all bad things from happening.

Again, what is the solution? Stop the economy? That seems like
shooting yourself because you have stage one cancer. What would you
have us do? As I understand it if all the Kyoto protocols and other
such nonsense were implemented, it would only push the problem out ten
years or so... Spending tens of trillions of dollars to push a problem
out, well that isn't going to happen in today's NOW focused society.
So what is the solution?

-Kelly