It's time to get serious!
This preprint by Hansen & Sato is an important read. If you want to skip the technical stuff, just read the last page, then go back to the introduction. Actually it is worth reading all the way through without stopping to figure out the technical details just to see how these guys handle the science...
Paleoclimate implications for Human Made Climate Change
I believe that god speaks to us in many ways, and that we are have some profound choices to make as people, as a civilization and this guy is looking around and says "pay attention", what choices we make now may affect not only the billions now living, but also how countless generations to follow will fare on this planet. It is a gift to have the consciousness to see things, it is a question as to if we can act. It is as if an asteroid has been spotted that is going to hit dead center, and we have to decide what to do.
The Cruise ship approach suggests that hedonism, short term greed, and other similar strategies are the most likely response. What is unique here, is the we have a choice, we have the observations, we have juste enough scientific knowledge, and we have just enough capital and time to do something to make a gift to those who follow of a planet that is so beautiful, so able to support life and civilization.
The path to a future with a planet like we know it requires some fortitude, some sacrifice and some real imagination. The biblical story of the garden of Eden can be read in a larger context today.....as our American Indian people say "all life is sacred".
Life will go on no matter what, the more immediate question is what about our civilization? The challenges that Dr. Hansen casually mentions like the loss of the great sea level cities of the world due to sea level rise after next century are also things so large, that if they are far enough out, folks can just party a bit longer, and someone else can adapt "then". Are we smart enough as a civilization to change while we can?
The emergence of the internet is an amazing way of applying billions of minds to a problem, and it changes everything. We see an understanding emerging that is shared by billions of minds. Will this be a force that helps us to respond in a "smart" and caring way across the globe? I see some encouraging signs that is may occur, and at the same time, attempts by governments and corporations and individuals to control this web to prevent a consensus from emerging. I vote for an emerging consensus based on the power of the spirit, the power of the imagination, the power of collective intelligence united by the web.
I tell young folks who wonder which engineering area to study that being a civil engineer is the biggest growth area, followed by energy engineers. Quite interesting to see how the economics of solar have come around even without much improvement in the basic systems over 20 years, just improvements in the manufacturing processes. Solar is now made at a price competitive with fossil fuel energy although it is not sold at that price yet. And solar is only a small part of the answer to the energy question. So we've been given the means and the knowledge of how to adjust, the only question is will we do what is necessary to adapt to the new situation in time?
We now don't count the environmental cost of our energy sources, "externalizing" those costs. This produces a distortion that until now has been working out just fine for the folks selling this approach. Until the environment gets so bad that further degradation hurts us all, this approach has "legs". The approach advocated by Hansen (and for that matter by Tom Freidman of the NYT) is to start incorporating the environmental cost into the energy price, while taking compassionate steps to ease the shift that will occur as folks see the real total cost of our power systems. We have plenty of renewable power on earth for civilization, but we will have to consciously shift to a sustainable energy economy if our civilization is to continue. If we do so now, it is possible that we can live well, we can ease poverty and the human suffering, and continue to flourish as a civilization for thousands of years.
The explosive growth of the Chinese driving class has forever changed the oil price ups and downs, so time is quite short for us to figure out what we are going to do.....(no blame for the Chinese have as much right to develop as anyone, it's just a matter of this time in history that I'm discussing)
Once we see food prices rise as the artificial energy costs and water shortages start to hit, once the desertification of large zones of arable land occur, these changes are largely irreversible on a timescale that is relevant to our society.
Those changes will drive a shift in the political situation that could see populations want to move at a scale never seen in modern times, conflict for resources driven by desperation, border conflicts that make the stuff we see in Arizona look like childsplay, and disease challenges beyond anything we know today. By that time, the capital that we now have, capital that could be applied to create the new energy economy and stabilize the climate, will be scarce or gone and the only way that the situation stabilizes is with a much smaller population in a world without many of the fellow beings, the organisms that make up the web of life that is the wonder that I experience each morning.
How do we answer the question from god "what have you done with the paradise that I gave you?".
This preprint by Hansen & Sato is an important read. If you want to skip the technical stuff, just read the last page, then go back to the introduction. Actually it is worth reading all the way through without stopping to figure out the technical details just to see how these guys handle the science...
Paleoclimate implications for Human Made Climate Change
I believe that god speaks to us in many ways, and that we are have some profound choices to make as people, as a civilization and this guy is looking around and says "pay attention", what choices we make now may affect not only the billions now living, but also how countless generations to follow will fare on this planet. It is a gift to have the consciousness to see things, it is a question as to if we can act. It is as if an asteroid has been spotted that is going to hit dead center, and we have to decide what to do.
The Cruise ship approach suggests that hedonism, short term greed, and other similar strategies are the most likely response. What is unique here, is the we have a choice, we have the observations, we have juste enough scientific knowledge, and we have just enough capital and time to do something to make a gift to those who follow of a planet that is so beautiful, so able to support life and civilization.
The path to a future with a planet like we know it requires some fortitude, some sacrifice and some real imagination. The biblical story of the garden of Eden can be read in a larger context today.....as our American Indian people say "all life is sacred".
Life will go on no matter what, the more immediate question is what about our civilization? The challenges that Dr. Hansen casually mentions like the loss of the great sea level cities of the world due to sea level rise after next century are also things so large, that if they are far enough out, folks can just party a bit longer, and someone else can adapt "then". Are we smart enough as a civilization to change while we can?
The emergence of the internet is an amazing way of applying billions of minds to a problem, and it changes everything. We see an understanding emerging that is shared by billions of minds. Will this be a force that helps us to respond in a "smart" and caring way across the globe? I see some encouraging signs that is may occur, and at the same time, attempts by governments and corporations and individuals to control this web to prevent a consensus from emerging. I vote for an emerging consensus based on the power of the spirit, the power of the imagination, the power of collective intelligence united by the web.
I tell young folks who wonder which engineering area to study that being a civil engineer is the biggest growth area, followed by energy engineers. Quite interesting to see how the economics of solar have come around even without much improvement in the basic systems over 20 years, just improvements in the manufacturing processes. Solar is now made at a price competitive with fossil fuel energy although it is not sold at that price yet. And solar is only a small part of the answer to the energy question. So we've been given the means and the knowledge of how to adjust, the only question is will we do what is necessary to adapt to the new situation in time?
We now don't count the environmental cost of our energy sources, "externalizing" those costs. This produces a distortion that until now has been working out just fine for the folks selling this approach. Until the environment gets so bad that further degradation hurts us all, this approach has "legs". The approach advocated by Hansen (and for that matter by Tom Freidman of the NYT) is to start incorporating the environmental cost into the energy price, while taking compassionate steps to ease the shift that will occur as folks see the real total cost of our power systems. We have plenty of renewable power on earth for civilization, but we will have to consciously shift to a sustainable energy economy if our civilization is to continue. If we do so now, it is possible that we can live well, we can ease poverty and the human suffering, and continue to flourish as a civilization for thousands of years.
The explosive growth of the Chinese driving class has forever changed the oil price ups and downs, so time is quite short for us to figure out what we are going to do.....(no blame for the Chinese have as much right to develop as anyone, it's just a matter of this time in history that I'm discussing)
Once we see food prices rise as the artificial energy costs and water shortages start to hit, once the desertification of large zones of arable land occur, these changes are largely irreversible on a timescale that is relevant to our society.
Those changes will drive a shift in the political situation that could see populations want to move at a scale never seen in modern times, conflict for resources driven by desperation, border conflicts that make the stuff we see in Arizona look like childsplay, and disease challenges beyond anything we know today. By that time, the capital that we now have, capital that could be applied to create the new energy economy and stabilize the climate, will be scarce or gone and the only way that the situation stabilizes is with a much smaller population in a world without many of the fellow beings, the organisms that make up the web of life that is the wonder that I experience each morning.
How do we answer the question from god "what have you done with the paradise that I gave you?".
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