Originally Posted by Brian Rush

I think we have, and I think that's just a distraction here. The real issue involves community versus individuality. Those on this thread who take a skeptical position all seem to be libertarians. Tackling an issue the size of global warming, requiring the kind of change to our economy that one necessitates, means a swing to community. We can't scatter and atomize as much. We have to pull together. Whether it's voluntary or coerced, that means a sacrifice of personal autonomy, at least temporarily.

That's the motive. Everything else springs from that. Justin and the Rani are too smart to fool themselves into thinking A doesn't imply B, so they deny A.

The Early Results

Yo. Ob. Sv. is not a libertarian. Is Mr. David Krein held to be a libertarian?


Perhaps something else is at play. If you might consider voting, we might have a better sample of T4Ter views on the matter.

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

The Early Results

Yo. Ob. Sv. is not a libertarian.

You are also not a skeptic, by your own admission.

Is Mr. David Krein held to be a libertarian?

I have never been able to get a fix on his politics. NTTIAWWT.

Perhaps something else is at play. If you might consider voting, we might have a better sample of T4Ter views on the matter.

I added my vote to the "partialist" camp.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

You are also not a skeptic, by your own admission. I fear that I am a skeptic, by my own admission. I am, again by my own admission, a partialist.

I have never been able to get a fix on his politics. NTTIAWWT.

I added my vote to the "partialist" camp.

Where are the Denialists? And, I thought there would be many more True Believers and Indifferentists?

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

Where are the Denialists? And, I thought there would be many more True Believers and Indifferentists?

The Denialists and True Believers are the more extreme positions. Perhaps T4Ters do not want to be identified as such.

As for our Indifferentist -- I think she likes having her own category.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I definitely agree with more complicated. Are you willing to put up with how complicated?

Thanks! That was a very very well thought reply. The graphs and models are a help, too. Give me time to digest, it's far more compelling than what I have seen before here.

That's all for now.

Originally Posted by Mikebert

Don't you have a science background? It's bad enough Justin has forgotten his chemistry, have you too? Henry's Law.

Most of my energy is spent on biochemistry and molecular biology. It's entirely possible that I've forgotten some of the theory behind some p-chem.

Unfortunately, my math background is fairly weak.

However, I do know how to do some semi-fancy curve fitting. I have friends who can do an even better job of modeling and hence neater curves with principle components analysis (PCA).

One question of such models I would have is whether the different variable inputs into it are independent of one another or dependent on one another. Or if they are only semi-linked to one another. If they are separate of one another it is more rigorous a test--but would be ignoring feedback loops and other non-linear monkey wrenches that surely happen in reality.

I would also wonder if very subtle changes in the model inputs could produce drastically different results in the end product. I would wonder how many times these parameters were tweaked until they produced the satisfied fit. My suspicion is that this happens all the time depending on the bias of the investigator--some want to report catastrophe and others want to report a modest blip.

Anyway, these questions are uninformed, but they are the first instinctual ones that come to mind as I approach something like this.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

That's my evaluation of the problem as well. The very few people who are challenging the role of science in understanding climate have strong libertarian political values.

Well, wait. I was only talking about the people on this thread. In general, those challenging the role of science in understanding climate AREN'T libertarians, they're energy-company apologists, and their agenda isn't protecting individualism but protecting profits. I don't think we have any of those here, though.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Absolutely. The use of antibiotics has resulted in the emergence of treatment-resistant bacteria,

At worst, this means antibiotics have/will have a limited span of usefulness before disease bacteria have evolved to full resistance of every drug in the pharmacopeia. Plenty of lives have been saved in the meantime. That's hardly illusory.

and vaccinations have been linked with the emergence of immune system diseases.

Interesting. I've heard that suggested by alternative-health advocates but you're the first MD I've seen say it. Can you link some information on the subject?

Originally Posted by The Rani

Absolutely. The use of antibiotics has resulted in the emergence of treatment-resistant bacteria, and vaccinations have been linked with the emergence of immune system diseases.

And these are worse than what we had before?

Originally Posted by The Rani

Absolutely. The use of antibiotics has resulted in the emergence of treatment-resistant bacteria, and vaccinations have been linked with the emergence of immune system diseases.

Whoa. Now that should be the topic of another thread.

Likely true: auto-immune diseases are caused by "molecular mimicry" triggered by an infection earlier in life. Pathogens love to co-opt shapes and patterns in protein folding used by their hosts. It is how they evade. When the immune system does find them, sometimes rare clones of immune cells are expanded which attack both the pathogen and the host tissue.

Unknown but possibly true: some vaccines administered in certain contexts might similarly trigger an autoimmune condition. The extent to which this is true remains unknown and is the subject of heated debate on the fringes of medical science. Why the fringes? Because medicine is a discipline that, for all its lip-service to the doctrines of science, is still run in top-down fashion by old people who don't like to see rapid change.

Not true: the use of antibiotics has resulted in anti-biotic resitant bacteria. It should be restated to say the MISuse of antibiotics causes anti-biotic resistance. There can only be natural selection in favor of resistance if the concentration of antibiotic is toxic but not lethal to a cell. This happens if the full dose is not administered. This also happens if livestock animals are fed lower mg/kg of antibiotic than is necessary to treat acute infection.

Oh well that's my 0.03 for what it's worth.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

At worst, this means antibiotics have/will have a limited span of usefulness before disease bacteria have evolved to full resistance of every drug in the pharmacopeia. Plenty of lives have been saved in the meantime. That's hardly illusory.



Interesting. I've heard that suggested by alternative-health advocates but you're the first MD I've seen say it. Can you link some information on the subject?

I didn't know that the Rani was an MD. I thought her name was Angeli and did journalism in a midwestern city. Could be totally wrong though.

I think what Justin might be refering to by coefficients is the parameter lambda. Lambda is the sensitivity of global temperature to a ghg forcing. For example, a value of 3.8 watt/sq meter is usually given for the forcing due to a doubling in the effective CO2 level. The expected temperature rise is then projected by multiplying by lambda. The consensus value of lambda given in the US report is about 0.5, which implies nearly two degrees of additional warming from a doubling in CO2 equivalents.

The value for lambda comes from models, which do involve fitting temperature data. Skeptics claim that lambda is smaller than 0.5. Justin might be referring to this line of argument.

One of these skeptics cited by Justin is Lord Monckton who tried to assert that lambda is necessarily 0.3 according to the Stefan Boltzmann Law and that all the climate models were therefore bogus. Monckton doesn't know what he is doing, but he guessed fairly shrewdly. What we was asserting was the grey body assumption. That is, treat the earth plus atmosphere as single grey body with emissivity about 0.61, the apparent emissivity of the Earth as viewed from space.

This assumption amounts to what I call the direct effect of CO2, that is, how much warming would occur all else held constant. In reality, with rising temperatures would come higher absolute humidities. Since water is a greenhouse gas, this effect would magnify the effect of CO2 and we should expect lambda to be greater than 0.3.

Calculating the direct effect of the additional water is easy enough, but its not realistic to expect more water in the atmosphere would have zero impact on cloudiness, which exerts a cooling effect. So as soon as you get away from the direct effect of CO2 (lambda = 0.3) you get into models for which Justin's concerns have some validity.

Like Lord Monckton, Justin doesn't appear to know what he is doing either, but he too touched on an important issue, but then completely missed its significance, going off on a galactic topology tangent.

If the cosmic ray mechanism to which Justin was referring to with his tangent is valid, this means that the sun has a larger effective forcing than what is incorporated in conventional models. Increase the size of the solar driver and you get a different lambda, which might be what Justin was trying to get at with his talk of coefficients and curve fitting.

For example Nir Shaviv gets a lambda of 0.35 when he incorporated a cosmic-ray-based solar forcing into a simple temperature model. Shaviv also tried to argue that cosmic-rays are more involved in the recent warming that the consensus of the data suggests. I think he is wrong here. But his smaller lambda could be correct.

However, whether lambda, is 0.35 or 0.5 the expected additional 6 watts/sq meter of additional CO2 forcing expected by the end of the century is going to translate into significant warming. Since temperatures are already at the highest level in thousands of years there is real risk from adding another 2 or 3 degrees of warming.

The possibility that lamdba is smaller than 0.5 gives more time for us to act, which is why I favor beginning a slow phase in of carbon taxes (with tradeable credits) now.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Hee hee. I am Angeli's evil twin. We did go out for beers one time, which was a lot of fun.

gah. silly me.

Originally Posted by The Rani

How many people ever finish an antibiotic prescription? I don't agree that it's misuse of antibiotics causing the problem, just the way that things in the lab don't always match things in real life. That's a frickin fact, especially in the medical field.

No kidding?!

Originally Posted by The Rani

Immune system problems are complex.

Trillions of different potential locks to fit trillions of potential keys, all lurking in each indvidual. Anyone who has knee-jerk reactions against genetic engineering need only look to their own immune system to find that nature does it best. But even then, as you say, we're a long way from figuring it out.

Originally Posted by The Rani

The studies to figure out the connection with vaccinations will never be funded, because there's no money in it. I don't really want to start another thread on it. Anyone who is really interested can do the research themselves.

No kidding!?! You're probably right, though. There is little money to be made in vaccines, period. Extensive research for something that could be a failure with huge side effects? That would probably go fairly slowly... I see your point.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Besides, I'm just a journalist, so what do I know anyway.

My apologies, Princess.

Originally Posted by Ricercar71

I didn't know that the Rani was an MD. I thought her name was Angeli and did journalism in a midwestern city. Could be totally wrong though.

Angeli posts, or used to, under her own name. She writes a column by email called "LAC" (for Lawrence Avenue Correspondent) and does other writing as well, getting paid for some of it. The beer-drinking occasion the Rani mentioned was also attended by The Pervert, Mikebert, Child of Socrates, and me, at a 4T gathering in Chicago several years ago, and unless I was much drunker than I remember and seeing double she and Angeli were definitely different people.

Sounds like there's no hard evidence (for whatever reason) about a connection between vaccination and autoimmune disorders. I'm currently living with someone who has scleroderma, so it's not entirely a dispassionate subject, but I guess I'll do my own research as suggested.

The business about antibiotic resistance may have some resonance with global warming, although I'm not sure the cases are really parallel. Misuse does contribute (for example, those who don't complete a prescription of AB allow the more drug-resistant bacteria to survive and breed a drug-resistant new generation), but it's also true that bacteria just evolve very fast. Introduce survival pressure and you get evolution. Unintended consequences and unforeseen quirks of a complex system.

Where the parallel breaks down, I think, is that this result really SHOULD have been foreseen. The idea of natural selection from Darwin's theory definitely predates the discovery of pennicillin. OTOH, biology and medicine aren't quite the same field even though they're closely related, so you didn't have biologists looking over the physicians' shoulders and pointing out what would happen with the introduction of germ-killing drugs into the ecosystem. Doctors knew they got results from this stuff so they used it and saved lives that way. End of story, except that it wasn't.

Seems to me that climatologists are being a lot more careful and thorough about global warming than physicians were about antibiotics. I can't see anything of significance that's being missed.

Originally Posted by Child of Socrates

Well, strictly speaking, I believe the "end" should be to keep our planet habitable for human life and to take steps to cause as little pain as possible for those people who might be most impacted by rising ocean levels (I don't think there's any debate that ocean levels are rising, and that this is having an effect on people).

Yeah, this is particularly what I was wondering where the emphasis on what is being solved is placed. Apparently, your argument, and several others are focused on the rising sea level effect and other climatological effects of global warming. Perfectly legitimate, understandably, as relocation is a cumbersome and costly undertaking.

However, I think that focus puts things on an entirely unfeasible scale, especially when we're considering policy to affect things on a global level. Of course, what led up to this was precisely that, but even then, there is still debates over the percentages and degrees of influence from varying sources.

I wouldn't think so. There are plenty of economic and political reasons to conserve energy and to use it more efficiently.

I would like to think that other emphases on being more energy conscious and doing other sorts of environmentally sound actions are channeled towards more community-oriented scales, where the accumulated benefits of many smaller units would aggregate to a significant sum, as opposed to some upper-level administrative blanket policy to expedite this change.

I still don't sit well with the An Inconvenient Truth emphasis on large scale effects and disasters as the lynch-pin for change. If this is what it takes to elicit a response, then why not the response be equally as large, such as triggered degassing of many major volcanoes to induce volcanic winter?

Originally Posted by Ricercar71

One question of such models I would have is whether the different variable inputs into it are independent of one another or dependent on one another. Or if they are only semi-linked to one another. If they are separate of one another it is more rigorous a test--but would be ignoring feedback loops and other non-linear monkey wrenches that surely happen in reality.

Interesting question. The same question that Meehl et al asked of the DOE PCM model. The model, over the range they tested, proved to be linear, that is each variable changed independently of the others.

But that might be misleading. Suppose solar forcing causes a temperature increase which causes permafrost to melt, which releases methane greenhouse gas which decomposes into CO2. As I understand it, the DOE PCM model does not have this linkage built in. Instead, they measure the amount of methane and CO2 in the atmosphere. When they try to push the model into the future, they would need to estimate the effects of melting tundra, at which point the model would not be so linear.

But that's why there are scientists up in Alaska and elsewhere watching the tundra. That's why the Army's Arctic study team is working with the DOE.

There was a note at the bottom of the Meehl paper saying that at a global level, on average, the various effects do not strongly interact with one another, but he had evidence that there are local interaction in the tropics. I don't recall what these were.

Above, we have a few feedback loops and non-linear monkey wrenches. Note what happens when Antarctica freezes or melts. Also, the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) may have been a runaway greenhouse event, where melting tundra or a similar effect caused a sudden and deadly shift in temperature with an associated extinction event. So, yes, if you get a bit warmer, and trigger the wrong mechanism, you might suddenly find a sudden temperature shift. Arguably, glacier melt, Arctic polar ice melt and tundra thawing might cause such a jump. Some think we are already beyond a point of no return.

Originally Posted by Ricercar71

I would also wonder if very subtle changes in the model inputs could produce drastically different results in the end product. I would wonder how many times these parameters were tweaked until they produced the satisfied fit. My suspicion is that this happens all the time depending on the bias of the investigator--some want to report catastrophe and others want to report a modest blip.

Except those biased towards a modest blip haven't been able to produce a model that fits. If one weakens the effects of greenhouse gas, one has to find another cause for the heating. None of the other causes for warming took a big jump in the later half of the 20th Century. The data just doesn't correlate with what some of the political and economic biases would like the data to say.

Originally Posted by Ricercar71

Anyway, these questions are uninformed, but they are the first instinctual ones that come to mind as I approach something like this.

Good questions.

Originally Posted by Andy '85

I still don't sit well with the An Inconvenient Truth emphasis on large scale effects and disasters as the lynch-pin for change. If this is what it takes to elicit a response, then why not the response be equally as large, such as triggered degassing of many major volcanoes to induce volcanic winter?

Huh? Is that what you got out of the movie? I got the exact opposite, with the scroll at the end ("change the lightbulbs, buy carbon offsets, yadda yadda"). It was all about small individual and community actions, which are just pissing in the ocean. George Monbiot writes today in the Guardian and on his blog that if we take the IPCC's own (very cautious) numbers at face value, then to avoid catastrophic climate change we need to reduce our per capita emissions by over 90% by 2030. Ninety percent.

No amount of Boomer self-righteousness or Millie can-do-ism will get us to those targets, only Xer kick-ass-ism and massive national mobilization (and maybe a volcano or two.)

Originally Posted by Finch

Huh? Is that what you got out of the movie? I got the exact opposite, with the scroll at the end ("change the lightbulbs, buy carbon offsets, yadda yadda"). It was all about small individual and community actions, which are just pissing in the ocean. George Monbiot writes today in the Guardian and on his blog that if we take the IPCC's own (very cautious) numbers at face value, then to avoid catastrophic climate change we need to reduce our per capita emissions by over 90% by 2030. Ninety percent.

No amount of Boomer self-righteousness or Millie can-do-ism will get us to those targets, only Xer kick-ass-ism and massive national mobilization (and maybe a volcano or two.)

I'm a little less inclined to dismiss or praise the attributes of one generation or another on this one. I think we're going to need the best of all three generations.

So, if throwing a young female virgin into a volcano stops an eruption and saves the local native village from getting wiped out by a lava flow, what would the proper ritual be to get a major global dimming sooty eruption? Or maybe two? Let's see... Gotta think hard on this one... The Celts used to sacrifice their kings on occasion... We don't have a king, though... Let me think about this one a bit longer...

Originally Posted by The Rani

Also, with antibiotics, the way that the super-killer germs are produced has little to do with improper administration of the drugs. Usually, it happens in hospitals, where immunocompromised patients are given appropriate doses of different antibiotics, but due to their own weaknesses they are unable to fight off the infection. Remember that antibiotics don't really kill bacteria, they just slow their growth so the body's natural defenses can take over. Anyway, in these patients, the bacteria that are susceptible to the drug are slowed, but the ones that aren't grow faster than the body can handle them. Then the patients get switched around from drug to drug, because their infections don't improve. Pretty soon, you get nothing left but the resistant germs, who have a nice time partying in the hospital, hopping from one immunocompromised patient to another. The more drugs that are used, the more resistant they become. Eventually, even a non-immunocompromised person can't handle them, because NO drugs are left that will affect them. Then the drug companies make even more money, having to invent new antibiotics all the time.

I've heard much the same. There is one bug in particular, originally thought native to Iraq, which has been infecting many of our soldiers. After it became enough of a problem, the Army went back to try to trace a source. They found vaguely similar bugs in the sand. They could only find the problem bug... in US field hospitals and along the evacuation chain. It seems that since the invasion, we've bred up another super bug.

I've heard some say the big pharmaceutical companies don't see much money in researching new antibiotics. Only a small portion of the population require them at any given time. You take them for a short time, then stop. They are only effective for a relatively short amount of time before the bugs develop resistance. Thus it is hard to recoup the money spent on research. Viagra is much more profitable. More people buy such things over a long term. Drugs that reduce symptoms of a long term disease are profitable. Drugs that cure with a short series are not.

There is also a big demand for Sudafed, but that's another story.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I've heard much the same. There is one bug in particular, originally thought native to Iraq, which has been infecting many of our soldiers. After it became enough of a problem, the Army went back to try to trace a source. They found vaguely similar bugs in the sand. They could only find the problem bug... in US field hospitals and along the evacuation chain. It seems that since the invasion, we've bred up another super bug.

Y'all remember evolution? Yeah, that theory they can't legislate away because it keeps happening.

There is also a big demand for Sudafed, but that's another story.

You might say that the drug war, or the war on anything that enough people want, is another form of evolution. Law enforcement gets new tools, the smugglers/dealers find a way around them ect.
Back in high school, I heard about peope drinking cough syrup to get high. That was way too hard core for me then and what's going on is is distructive so much quicker for they are altering chemicals before they use them.

Again, it's all evolution.

The War on Drugs is like a self licking ice cream cone.

The purpose of the War on Drugs is not a war on drugs, but The War on Drugs.

Originally Posted by Finch

Huh? Is that what you got out of the movie? I got the exact opposite, with the scroll at the end ("change the lightbulbs, buy carbon offsets, yadda yadda"). It was all about small individual and community actions, which are just pissing in the ocean. George Monbiot writes today in the Guardian and on his blog that if we take the IPCC's own (very cautious) numbers at face value, then to avoid catastrophic climate change we need to reduce our per capita emissions by over 90% by 2030. Ninety percent.

No amount of Boomer self-righteousness or Millie can-do-ism will get us to those targets, only Xer kick-ass-ism and massive national mobilization (and maybe a volcano or two.)

I don't think it is realistic to cap total ghg at such low levels. It's not going to happen.

Zero emissions is the wrong goal. Technically, our economy is going to have to evolve from a CO2-emitting economy to a CO2-absorbing economy. The easiest way to absorb CO2 is to grow biomass (which removes CO2 from the atmosphere) gasify it to hydrgen and CO2 and sequester the CO2. The hydrogen can be run thorugh a gas turbine or fuel cells to produce electricity, used for home heating in place of natural gas, or used to convert biomass into hydrocarbons for chemicals or fuels--whatever brings in the most revenue.

In a future economy under a high carbon tax doing the above process would generate tax credits, which can be sold to concerns that still produce some CO2 and wish to reduce their costs of doing so. This second income stream from the sale of tax credits obtained from sequestration of CO2 from biomass is what makes the process economically attractive. The net result from an economy featuring ever higher carbon taxes would be a negative emission economy, which would serve to reduce CO2 levels in the atmosphere.

Such reductions would produce cooling to offset rising temepratures from such things as polar melting. If it turns out that the risk from rising CO2 is less than that forecast today, the rate of tax rise can be slowed, making the system flexible.

The key is to get from here to there. This can be achieved uisng an adjustable floor on the tax and a variable rate. Rather than tax all carbon emitted, one taxes carbon above a threshold value per unit energy produced.

With a threshold, zero emission technologies like wind, nuclear and coal gasification with sequestration would earn tax credits serving as incentive to pursuing them. Particularly bad actors like conventional coal would be penalized most severely. Initial the taxes would be so low as to be negligible representing no change form today. But in the near future they would rise and continue to rise. Thus, they will create the expectation of higher carbon costs for the future, which will influence investment decisions made today. In time the threshold level will be reduced, eventually all the way to zero.

Utilities won't shutter their conventional coal plants now, but they won't build new ones. They will also start working on gasification and sequestration. Envisioning the more distant future of high carbon taxes with a zero threshold, they will see an opportunity for serious profits from biomass gasification with sequestration. This should be runable more or less in conventional coal gasification plants. So there would be enormous incentive for utility operators to implement gassification and sequestration everywhere they can, with cheap coal now, and with the idea to move to biomass in the future when this becomes more profitable.

In the meantime, wind and nuclear will get boosts and will efficiency across the board. Natural gas, the cleanest and most attractive of the current fuels will be largley untaxed wiht the initial threshold, but in the mosre distant future it will be taxes as the threshold falls. This will make natural gas the premium fuel and boost its price--stimulating efforts to find more and to use it efficiently.

As the threhold falls to zero nukes natural gas will become unattractive (although ti might already be so because of it highprice). Coal w/o sequestration and petroleum will have largely be phased out by then because they will be prohibitively expensive. Biomass will replace natural gas as the fuel of choice, and its price will rise, stimulating efficience and it's production.

The key to making this cost-effective or even wealth creating is gradualism. The taxes have to start at close to zero and rise slowly at first, then accelerating. Existing operations are not immediately penalized (which could case recession-inducing reduction in output. Operators will be able to see that if they don't change their ways, they will pay a price 10-20 years down the road--so they will plan to change, and disruption will not happen.
Exsiting drivers of low mileage cars won't suffer now, but they will if they purchase another low mileage car after their current one--so they won't. Car makers, knowing this won't even have low mileage models on the market in ten years.

It's the difference between a supply shock forcing restrictions in use (such as happened in the 1970's) and a high price regime inducing investments to reduce future use (like what has happened recently with rising gas prices). The former leads to recessions and stagflation, while the latter does not and can actually serve as a stimulus for growth.

This approach will have small impacts on rising CO2 levels in the short run (20-30 years). In the intermdiate run (30-60 years) it will slow the rate of CO2 rise dramatically. In the long run it will achieve reductions in CO2. Not only that, but it will create an opportunity to create wealth by doing the right thing, which will create a way for developing countries to grow cleanly.

Simply put, I don't want to be required by law to be environmentally correct. Even though it may come to pass that most of us will have to be, I want to preserve choice. Therefore I favor financial incentives so that most people will volunteer to do the right thing, but the curmudgeons amongst us can still opt out--as long as they pay for the privilege. This is why I oppose a mandatory national health service and school vouchers. I favor national health insurance, but with a parallel private system, like public and private schools. Everybody pays, but you don't have to use it.

It is elitist, but I believe that with wealth/ability should come privileges. This is why I am not a leftist. But I see no reason why the wealthy/able shouldn't pay for these privileges. This is why I am not a conservative.

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

The main things this chart implies to me are:

1) The Earth, as a whole, can take a much larger shift than even the doomsayers are predicting.
2) However, such a shift would in effect be a epoch-ending (or maybe even period-ending) minor extinction event.

The Earth goes through extinction events on a regular basis on a megayear timescale, so there's no need to panic on that account. But we do need to look to our own survival, and the survival of all the species we rely on and are caretakers of -- such as the honeybees, who are being whapped by the Columbian exchange at the moment.

A measured response to biodiversity loss would therefore be to take as many samples, seeds, cuttings, and so forth as possible in order to reduce extinction risk, and deciphering genomes (as we are doing at a breakneck pace even now). Then, we can manage climate change so as to reduce impact to the creatures closest to us in the ecology chains -- i.e., the several thousand species directly dependent on or supporting H. sapiens. Once our own stability as a species is assured we can work on restoring biodiversity elsewhere, outward from the pockets we have preserved. The urgent need, then, is to make sure we have the raw materials for that future restoration: wilderness preserves, zygotes and seeds, genomes, husbandry, knowledge of ecology.

As to CO2 management: we need to re-seed the oceans, which have been overfished, and we need a CO2 sink. Perhaps we could start by encouraging plankton growth, which kills two birds with one stone?

Originally Posted by Bob Butler 54

I'm a little less inclined to dismiss or praise the attributes of one generation or another on this one. I think we're going to need the best of all three generations.

So, if throwing a young female virgin into a volcano stops an eruption and saves the local native village from getting wiped out by a lava flow, what would the proper ritual be to get a major global dimming sooty eruption? Or maybe two? Let's see... Gotta think hard on this one... The Celts used to sacrifice their kings on occasion... We don't have a king, though... Let me think about this one a bit longer...

Yes, and when the king was no longer able to perform his kingly functions, to the block or whatever he went. Hmmm....