Comment Re:I choose survival, thanks. (Score 2, Insightful) 188
If we knew that some sort of disastrous climate change was imminent, and if we had the means to prevent it, don't you think we should?
Herein lies the problem, with that word you used to start your sentence. I'm reasonably convinced that a global climate change of some sort is in progress, as are most people. But we are far from having proved that human beings had any significant amount to do with it. You can throw around figures of this much of x ppm is in the atmostphere and that the average temperture has changed over y number of years, but given our short lived observation of the planet's macro climate change cycle (read: millions of years), to make the assumption that we are causing whatever trend we currently are experiencing is the height of arrogance. We can and have taken polar ice core samples, cross-sections of ancient trees, done soil analysis and other such measurements to get a better picture of the system over time, but in essence we are still looking through keyholes at an elephant. We really not ought to be trying to influnece the system without having a greater understanding of it. And there is no one in the world who deserves the authority to be making such decisions for the whole world (least of all anyone at the UN).
To make an analogy about complex systems and influences on them, if you monkey around with various configuration settings on a UNIX system without understanding how they work, the result is undefined (not knowable). Considering how much more complex the global climate system is (arguably far too complex to understand at our current level of technology) compared to UNIX, and how much more critical it is for our survival, doing nothing is still a much better option than doing something for which the consequences are unforseeable. Earth has done a pretty good job of maintaining balance without us for the last several million years, give or take the occasional supervolcano or cometfall. Who the hell are these guys to think they can solve a problem that has not even been adequately defined?
Herein lies the problem, with that word you used to start your sentence. I'm reasonably convinced that a global climate change of some sort is in progress, as are most people. But we are far from having proved that human beings had any significant amount to do with it. You can throw around figures of this much of x ppm is in the atmostphere and that the average temperture has changed over y number of years, but given our short lived observation of the planet's macro climate change cycle (read: millions of years), to make the assumption that we are causing whatever trend we currently are experiencing is the height of arrogance. We can and have taken polar ice core samples, cross-sections of ancient trees, done soil analysis and other such measurements to get a better picture of the system over time, but in essence we are still looking through keyholes at an elephant. We really not ought to be trying to influnece the system without having a greater understanding of it. And there is no one in the world who deserves the authority to be making such decisions for the whole world (least of all anyone at the UN).
To make an analogy about complex systems and influences on them, if you monkey around with various configuration settings on a UNIX system without understanding how they work, the result is undefined (not knowable). Considering how much more complex the global climate system is (arguably far too complex to understand at our current level of technology) compared to UNIX, and how much more critical it is for our survival, doing nothing is still a much better option than doing something for which the consequences are unforseeable. Earth has done a pretty good job of maintaining balance without us for the last several million years, give or take the occasional supervolcano or cometfall. Who the hell are these guys to think they can solve a problem that has not even been adequately defined?
