[ExI] Climate models

[spike]

>... On Behalf Of Ben
...

>>Adrian Tymes <atymes at gmail.com> wrote:

 > "Keith Henson" <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> wrote:
 >>> Why is there a fascination for disaster futures?  This isn't new,  >>
there must be reasons rooted in our evolutionary past.

 >> Because believing that it's hopeless, that there is nothing anyone can
do,  > absolves them of all responsibility and guilt.

>...I think there's more to it than that.  Disasturbation has always been
popular, and seems even moreso these days.  I suspect that there's an
element of delight in it...Ben Zaiboc
_______________________________________________

Somewhere in this discussion a theory needs to deal with the observation
that most threats very suddenly disappeared.  Just 5 or 6 generations ago,
there were so many diseases we had no way to cure, so much danger all around
us every day, so many different ways to die, some suddenly and violently.
Look around us now: just in the past century, we have successfully made life
in most places pretty safe.  So we are a species which has evolved over
thousands of generations to deal constantly with threats.  Suddenly most of
them disappear with a puff of vapor, in one awesome science-filled century,
a flash.

All those deal-with-danger instincts are still there.  Where do they focus
now?  Do they express themselves in mostly imaginary risks?  Are they poorly
suited for dealing with the very real threats?  Why is it we see all this
energy spent on global warming and yet have what appears to be a huge
societal blind spot to the more immediate and dire risk of increasing energy
cost?  That one is already upon us and getting steadily worse, while we
worry over a different threat, the more dire consequences of which are
likely more than a century away.

Our threat reaction instincts need to be tuned somehow.

spike