From: Colin Hales (colin@versalog.com.au)
Date: Sat Apr 13 2002 - 01:30:29 MDT
spike66
> Sent: Saturday, 13 April 2002 2:09 PM
> To: extropians@extropy.org
> Subject: Re: CO2: Los Alamos perfects extraction process...
>
>
> Colin Hales wrote:
>
> >My personal problem with CO2, methane is less about absolute
> levels than the
> >_rate of change_ of levels. The trees can't grow/evolve fast
> enough to
> >outrun the changing tree line.
> >
> They dont have to. We can plant ones that have already evolved for
> the coming environment, should we manage to actually change that
> environment appreciably.
>
> > Coastal areas, sea life and land animals
> >would have to have the same problem in a different form.
> Australian humans,
> >85% of whom live in a thin coastal strip of a very low lying
> continent, have
> >a grim outlook in the face of rising sea level impacting
> within 1 lifetime.
> >
> Australia is as new as the US. We can move stuff back a few
> meters if we
> have to. Both continents have plenty of land. All the other
> continents do too.
> But that may not even be necessary. If we did water
> management correctly,
> there are ways to store water on land, perhaps on the
> Antarctic continent.
> We can do it with nothing more high tech than dams and pipes.
>
> >It's a boyscout thing. "Leave
> >the campsite as good or in better shape than you found it".
> >
> I was a scout, I agree with that philosphy. This planet is
> too cold and
> there isnt enough CO2 in the atmosphere for optimal plant growth.
> We could remedy both situations, leaving the campsite better than it
> was when we found it.
>
> >When I think of what I bequeath my 3 kids
> >(potential immortality notwithstanding), it bites.
> >
> Colin! Take at least 3 seconds to think about that comment.
> Bud, your
> three *children* *have* *it* *maaaaaaade.* They have it totally made
> in the shade, pal!
>
> Think of all the stuff they have that you and I didnt. Think
> of all the
> things that
> are waaay better now, the computers, the education
> opportunities, the WEB,
> fer cryin out loud! They have all this stuff that couldnt
> have been bought
> for any price when we were teenagers, yet they can trade for
> it for a few
> weeks slave labor at the local burger barn.
>
> They have all the improvements, and I can think of *nothing* that is
> worse for them, not one damn thing. We had Israelis and Palestinians
> fighting back then. We had global whining back then, hell 30
> years ago.
> And the beach is still in the same place I always remember finding it.
> We had teachers assuring us the population bomb would blow up in
> our faces back then. Well, what of that? Where is the Soylent Green
> nightmare scenario? The bomb was a dud! This global whining about
> greenhouse gas is also a dud. Assured nuclear destruction: dud.
> Eradication
> of the worlds rain forests: dud. Massive extinction of wild
> species: dud.
> Choking on car exhaust fumes: dud. Pollution of all the
> world's natural
> waterways beyond life support: dud. Universal famine,
> ecological disaster,
> pandemic disease: dud, dud, dud.
>
> None of that ever happened, because even tough problems have
> solutions.
> If anyone had told me when I was 16 how good life would be 25 years
> down the road, I would not have dared believe it. Lets ask your
> countryman Damien Broderick, he remembers even further back in
> time than I do. Damien, is it better now?
>
> I cannot imagine a better time to be a young person, there has *never*
> in the history of humanity, been a better time to be a young
> person, never
> mind the possibility they will live to see technologically-supplied
> immortality.
> Dont worry about having bequeathed (what did you call it?)
> bites(!) to your
> kids. If so, may we all be so bitten.
>
> spike
>
>
Hmmmmm.
Have you seen 'the land' here? Take a look sometime, more than 100miles
inland - it's arid or desert. The water situation (river systems) here is a
real mess. Melbourne had the cleanest water in the world when I was a kid.
Now a bathful looks brownish and smells of the treatment works. It's an
ecology on a knife edge. Our commercial fisheries are on the way to being
fished out. Species are popping off to limbo weekly. We have a shallow,
fragile topsoil. The U.S. it ain't. And whats that nasty yellowbrown cloud
over the city every day?- worse than ever.
What concerns me is what, as a control engineer, is called 'integral
wind-up'. The cumulative effects of the "out of balance" CO2 jolt from
humanity will have unknown effects down the track for decades, even if we
were to correct it immediately.
Is it "better"? Well kind of.
In Aus the policy of my parents and grandparents and further back was "if it
moves, shoot it" and "if it don't move, burn it down". These generations are
retiring and dieing now and my generation (i'm 47) is getting all the
serious controls. In the city here we've lined the streets with trees and
sidewalk cafes. Galahs and Cockatoos are in the suburbs - we never saw that
as kids. Dolphins are back in our bay and fish are returning to the main
river. My kids will never know what it was like to know your city was
programmed into a nuke somewhere in the U.S.S.R. (may they never know a
USSR). In many ways things are a lot better and I am optimistic - very
optimistic .... always have been really...except where I see fragility and
instabilities and the scars of the past, which are all too obvious here.
Then I get all 'handyman' and want to fix it.
Spike, - time will reveal all, but you've cheered me up with your rah rah
session...thanks. Consider yourself invited over for dinner sometime. I'll
show you a Wombat.
:-)
Colin
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