Seta-San said:
Today the Kyoto Protocal went into effect across the world. Too bad it's pointless because the USA didn't sign into it because it's economic suicide. Plus China and India the biggest upcoming greenhouse gas polluters are completely uneffected. For those of you who have to do such rediculus things such only being able to drive every other day or something like that i hope you're feeling morally superior. Especially since the beginning of the industrial revolution we've only managed to raise the world temperature by a couple of degrees. Nevermind everybody has overlooked at the good sides of global warming such as less severe winters. Again happy kyoto day.
I don’t get it... is it “cool” to be uninformed?
Because saying that less severe winters are a “good side” of global warming is a symptom of utter disinformation. Earth’s climate hangs on a delicate balance, with hundreds of factors affecting it at any one time. That’s why weather forecast seems to be so imprecise… we just don’t have the computational resources needed to accurately predict the weather (and even then, chaotic effects would get in the way, as Lorentz demonstrated back in the 1960s). It’s precisely because of this balance that when you have a “less severe winter” somewhere, you may be screwing up half of the world (with erratic weather patterns, severe droughts, floods… you name it). There’re no good sides to global warming, except for the increased risk of a runaway greenhouse effect.
BTW, no serious researcher is claiming that the world will end in a couple of years. Of course you’ll find a few nutty environmentalists claiming this, but they usually have no scientific background, nor credibility. If you look at the works of serious scientists, you’ll see that the amount of time for everything going FUBAR is far greater (something around 50-100 years, maybe more).
But the window of opportunity in which we can still do something to reverse the current trends is far smaller (something around 10 years), hence the Kyoto Protocol. If the polar ice caps start melting, there’s no going back. Weather patterns will go crazy, coastal areas will be flooded. The Netherlands will have the same fate as Atlantis (ok, I’m joking about the Atlantis part, I know it didn’t exist
).
But the way I see the world today, I know that not even Kyoto will be enough to save our environment, specially since the USA didn’t sign it. Maybe there’ll be time to set things right again if:
a) we develop mature nanotechnology in the next 20-25 years (a likely possibility, according to Drexler);
b) we don’t kill each other with it (a less likely possibility, given the vast warfare power of MNT and the existence of trigger-happy presidents like Bush and crazy terrorist types like Osama [and yes, MNT will be available to everyone… it’s ludicrous to try to keep it down]).
Maybe Sun’s former CEO, Bill Joy, was right when he claimed in an article to Wired magazine that “the future doesn’t need us” (although his idea about relinquishment is more dangerous than he seems to realize).
Or, if the Singularity happens before this, we’ll be able to avoid it as well (but I don’t want to get started on AI right now).
