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Astrophysicist Adam Frank has an interesting article in The New York Times postulating one answer to the Fermi paradox — that human evolution into a globe-spanning industrial culture is forcing us through the narrow bottleneck of a sustainability crisis and that climate change is fate and nothing we do today matters because civilization inevitably leads to catastrophic planetary changes. According to Frank, our current sustainability crisis may be neither politically contingent nor unique, but a natural consequence of laws governing how planets and life of any kind, anywhere, must interact. Some excerpts:
The defining feature of a technological civilization is the capacity to intensively “harvest” energy. But the basic physics of energy, heat and work known as thermodynamics tell us that waste, or what we physicists call entropy, must be generated and dumped back into the environment in the process. Human civilization currently harvests around 100 billion megawatt hours of energy each year and dumps 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the planetary system, which is why the atmosphere is holding more heat and the oceans are acidifying.
All forms of intensive energy-harvesting will have feedbacks, even if some are more powerful than others. A study by scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Jena, Germany, found that extracting energy from wind power on a huge scale can cause its own global climate consequences. When it comes to building world-girdling civilizations, there are no planetary free lunches.
By studying these nearby planets, we’ve discovered general rules for both climate and climate change (PDF). These rules, based in physics and chemistry, must apply to any species, anywhere, taking up energy-harvesting and civilization-building in a big way. For example, any species climbing up the technological ladder by harvesting energy through combustion must alter the chemical makeup of its atmosphere to some degree. Combustion always produces chemical byproducts, and those byproducts can’t just disappear.
As we describe in a recent paper, using what’s already known about planets and life, it is now possible to create a broad program for modeling co-evolving “trajectories” for technological species and their planets. Depending on initial conditions and choices made by the species (such as the mode of energy harvesting), some trajectories will lead to an unrecoverable sustainability crisis and eventual population collapse. Others, however, may lead to long-lived, sustainable civilizations.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 19 2015, @01:25AM
I have to mention that 'climate change', as per the researcher's point of view, isnt the natural variability of the solar system which results in Climate Change, but is instead referring to the unprovable theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), which states that there is a hot spot of carbon dioxide above the equator, which is force-feed backing to the largest green house gas, water vapour, which is leading to a hot spot of air across the equator. We have been sending weather balloons to that area since 1977 and, based off Ben Santor's work, the temperature has actually decreased in that area by 0.5C, so the theory is wrong and we should be looking for another theory which is less elegant but matches real world observations (all of them, not just some cherry picked records such as NOAA, GISS and CRU's and use non-biased record sets like satellite data from the UAH or RSS).
With that in mind, heres a riddle: what was 1000+ PPM for millions of years and tree's evolved to eat it up as quickly as possible resulting in more food for more animals and humans.
One would be looking for a gas like this, and then change human society to use it because, like the author said:
it is now possible to create a broad program for modeling co-evolving “trajectories” for technological species and their planets
I would imagine that this myserious gas would be the one we should all be burning and letting the trees eat it up and, in turn, feed us and our growing population.
I wonder what gas it could be...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 19 2015, @01:49AM
First, learn to spell. It is "rhetoric". Yes, strange for an English word, that's because it is Greek in origin.
Second,
the unprovable theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), which states that there is a hot spot of carbon dioxide above the equator,
Why should anyone read further after you have so clearly revealed your ignorance of the science? Are you a denier? Huh? Maybe a little?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 19 2015, @06:08AM
Umm, if you deny the first line, you are infact denying the central theory for all the UN-IPCC papers... so in effect, you are denying the very mechanics for which the theory revolves around.
Mispelling a word does not negate the argument - all its doing is attacking the person. Which would mean you are a climate scientist ;)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 19 2015, @06:29AM
Mispelling a word does not negate the argument - all its doing is attacking the person. Which would mean you are a climate scientist ;)
Classic! Only a climate scientist could think that not knowing how to spell words would negate the theory of AGW, hence, um, you are a climate scientist? It's a daisy-chain ad hominem! I have never seen one before in the wild! The sheer improbability makes me think that Global warming must be real, either that or there is http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/01/17/1357250/-Living-In-Denial-Big-Oil-and-the-Religious-Right-s-Alliance-Against-Our-Environment [dailykos.com] an unholy alliance against actual science.
(Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Monday January 19 2015, @06:27AM
the unprovable theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW)
"Unprovable" in what way? After all, we can observe the various aspects of the problem today. Empirical evidence is as close to proof as you'll ever get.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 19 2015, @10:18AM
"Unprovable" as in "by immediately dismissing all evidence as fake and then forgetting about it, you can make sure never to know enough evidence that it would threaten your preconception that AGW doesn't exist."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 19 2015, @09:28AM
I had never heard mention of the CO2 hot spot over the equator.
I can't seem to find it looking at this NASA satellite image of CO2 flow around the globe either:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1SgmFa0r04 [youtube.com]
Where do you get such information?
Also...
You're arguing that temperature falling in one region falsifies the argument that the Global climate is warming? You're using data since 1977 to determine that? Even if what you are saying is true ( which it may or may not be - although I have my suspicions ) how does that support your conclusion?