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

[Keith Henson]

On Tue, Dec 1, 2009 at 2:16 PM,  Max More <max at maxmore.com> wrote:

snip
>
> I'm feeling pretty lonely on this issue. Just about everyone on all
> sides of the issue seem to be very certain of what's going on.
> Despite considerable reading of clashing sources (or because of it),
> I remain highly unsure.

I am irritated by the whole thing.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Keith