DSW

The article also had a pretty cool graphic of robot ships trawling the oceans, pumping salt into the atmosphere in much the way that steamships pump out steam.

I’m afraid you are all too likely to be proved right here, although I don’t think it is going to be fair to blame all this on governments, the people who elect them also have some part to play in the story.

I can’t help but be struck by the similarities between the climatic issues and the demographic ones. In neither case do we seem capable of coming up with an adequate response.

The time scales involved undoubtedly form part of the picture, as does the fact that the science needed to understand the problem is evolving in real time along with the problem itself (Hegel: the owl minerva flies only after dusk). In this case we may get a consensus on the underlying science in both issues only after it is too late to effectively to do much about the problem. Meantime politicians need to get elected, and focus on the here-and-now issues that voters want to know about. In this sense we have badly adapted political systems.

Obviously in both cases we need to act before we have reached a consensus understanding (in the case of demography we still don’t know the long term TFR equilibrium settings, and we don’t know the underlying rate of extending life expectancy out into the future) and this will imply a certain level of risk and uncertainty in what we do.

Unfortunately I don’t understand the fundamentaly science sufficiently to be able to assess the idea of using using genetically-modified forms of methanotrophic bacteria to act as a sink. The question would seem to be: “what else might happen?”, or be careful what you ask for.

So, in the balance, and as a short-term stopgap, while we get a bit clearer what to do, I think it really would make sense to be putting in place a much more rigourous set of energy use controls than those we currently contemplate, difficult as that may be to achieve.

Also, I’m still not sure whether the real issue will be global warming or global cooling (see comment on your other post).

And yes, I am back from holiday, but no, I won’t be back to posting just yet :).

It was warmer, even much warmer, in the past. Ecosystems survived. We never poured free radicals to that extent in the atmosphere.

Doing an unknown geochemical experiment to counter another geochemical experiment that is within precedented range whose consequences’ extent is unknown is insanely risky.

We know how much warmer this planet may become in an extreme case. It would mean profound change, but it is mostly managable.