Graphics
March 16th, 2007 by 
Morgan J. Locke
Here is a graph of world population from 1000 AD to the present:
Here is a graph of carbon dioxide emissions from 1000 AD to present:
Here is temperature from 1000 AD to present:
Here is a thought experiment:
Posit a lily pond. On day one, it has one lily pad. The number of lily pads doubles each day. On day thirty, the pond is completely full of lily pads. On what day is the pond half full?
If you guessed day fifteen, you guessed wrong. The correct answer is day twenty-nine.
All of the above are examples of exponential growth. This is why those of us who have been following the science closely for a while are so worried.
The experts tell us that there is still time to avert the worst of what might lie ahead—but only just. They tell us that there is still room for discussion about exactly what the causes and outcomes will be—but that they aren’t good.
In other words, it’s only alarmist to yell “Fire!” in a crowded theatre if there is, in fact, no fire.
(Note, I couldn’t find the graph I wanted of species extinction rate, but it shows the same trend.)
Posted in Morgan, People, Politics, Science | 
2 Comments »
March 17th, 2007 at 2:26 pm
The debate on this has always puzzled me. And I’m really amazed that it seems to have become a liberal vs. conservative argument.
Until I remember that ‘conservative’ is currently a code word for ‘fascist corporatist, with fundamentalist supporters who think the End Times are coming, so it’s okay to use up nature. Or who just don’t want to think about it, because it’s scary, and if they were honest about it, they might have to do something ‘. Yeah, I know I’m oversimplifying. But maybe not a lot.
It seems bluntly obvious that, if you massively multiply the population of a single species in a given ecology, they’re going to displace other species. We’ve taken over so many niches, and so much physical space, that I can’t imagine how anyone could deny that we’re causing mass extinctions and near-extinctions. Basic ecological thought, as I understand it, is that a diverse ecology is a healthy one, with more ability to achieve new balances as the conditions evolve — rather than simply crashing out and breaking, as a simpler ecology will do if a part of the nature-web gets sick.
And I don’t understand how anyone can deny that pumping more and more greenhouse gases into an atmosphere will eventually cause a greenhouse effect. Or, at least destabilize the current balance, as the nature-web tries to survive and adjust. Especially if you’re in the process of blowing up that complex, diverse ecology that might more readily adapt, and maybe even help rebalance the planet in a way that helps us survive.
Frankly, I think we’re fucked, and are going to experience rolling human population crashes, unless we figure out some clever techno-fix. Too many of us are selfish, and don’t give a damn what happens to other people, or their descendants, as long as they get their goodies now.
As a species, we don’t have a mechanism in place for identifying and neutralizing these types of people . Instead, we seem to reward the bright, aggressive sociopaths with more wealth and power. A few hundred years ago, because their reach was technologically limited, all they could do was invade countries and cause wars and kill hundreds of thousands of people. Now their kind can hurt or kill us all.
All this talk about doing something soon — is doomed. We’re too far away from doing the hard stuff soon. We don’t have enough soon left. And it’s starting to look like we’re hitting some tipping points already, and still in denial about it.
Yrs. truly,
Chicken Little
Who remembers that, for the dinosaurs and so many other species, the sky did indeed fall. Hubris aside, we have no reason to believe that we’re immune to the same thing happening to us.
March 18th, 2007 at 9:16 am
I believe there’s still time, Rory. At least we can avoid the worst case scenarios by acting soon.
We phased out CFCs, remember, when they were found to threaten the ozone layer. I grant you this is a much bigger problem. But it’s the same kind of problem, and solutions may be similar.
Did you know that we bought ourselves ten years on the greenhouse curve by phasing out CFCs, btw? CFCs turn out to be major greenhouse actors — much worse than CO2.
Knowledge and the will to act in human populations can reach a tipping point, just as physical systems can.
What we need are a host of different solutions: more efficient energy use, and alternatives to carbon-based fuels. I’m even up for engineering solutions to slow the rate of change, if they don’t end up doing more damage than good…and as long as we use that time to find ways to reduce use of greenhouse gases, to make our energy consumption sustainable.
For instance, I understand that SFF’s own physicist Gregory Benford is proposing the use of stratospheric diatomaceous earth as a radiation shield, to buy us time while we solve these issues. His idea is incredibly cheap — $100 million bucks to cover the Arctic, a couple of billion, maybe, to cover the Earth. And diatomaceous earth is chemically inert, which was my biggest concern about using sulfates, as I mentioned in an earlier post on the subject.
On one level, it’s scary as shit to think of engineering projects being done on that scale. If they screw up, the negative impacts could be huge — drought, famine. But if it’s done carefully, it could save so many lives and so much of our ecosystem.
We really are entering a science fictional age, aren’t we?