[extropy-chat] FWD [PvT] Terraforming Earth [WAS: FWD (SK) TheComing Climate Collapse]

Brent Neal brentn at freeshell.org
Fri Feb 13 20:48:10 UTC 2004


 (2/13/04 12:21) Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:

>The biosphere is broke, and the US isn't the only ones at fault. The
>third world deforestation of north africa is THE most significant
>environmental impact today, far more important to the climate than CO2
>levels. When you can see from orbit the dust flowing from the Sahara to
>South America, there is a significant problem there that needs fixing.


Either that, or the massive peat fires (also human-caused) that rage in Indonesia. A few years ago, those fires dumped as much CO2 into the atmosphere as all the human activity in Europe. Of course, they are rarely mentioned in the "Eco-Press." 

Deforestation -everywhere- is a serious issue, since most of the enviromental scientists who also understand nonlinear dynamics are saying that the large, dense forests tend to act as part of a complex regulatory system (that includes phytoplankton and lots of other stuff that I don't remember offhand.)  Maybe someone here can fill in the missing spots where my memory is failing - some of my references come from Bjorn Lomberg, others from various climatological modelling papers I read when I was doing computational modelling for a living.

ObLibertarian: If you have private landownership of these large forests, how do you prevent people from making a rational economic decision to cut them down with out regulations or financial incentives?

B

--
Brent Neal
Geekery. Politics. Spirituality.
http://brentn.freeshell.org/blog
"Is reincarnation like rebooting your soul?"



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