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On the subject of completely fucked up :
In December 2012, a pink-haired complex systems researcher named Brad Werner
made his
way through the throng of 24,000 earth and space scientists at the Fall
Meeting of the
American Geophysical Union, held annually in San Francisco. This year’s
conference had
some big-name participants, from Ed Stone of Nasa’s Voyager project,
explaining a new
milestone on the path to interstellar space, to the film-maker James Cameron,
discussing his adventures in deep-sea submersibles.
But it was Werner’s own session that was attracting much of the buzz. It was
titled
“Is Earth F**ked?” (full title: “Is Earth F**ked? Dynamical Futility of
Global
Environmental Management and Possibilities for Sustainability via Direct
Action
Activism”).
Standing at the front of the conference room, the geophysicist from the
University of
California, San Diego walked the crowd through the advanced computer model
he was
using to answer that question. He talked about system boundaries,
perturbations,
dissipation, attractors, bifurcations and a whole bunch of other stuff
largely
incomprehensible to those of us uninitiated in complex systems theory. But
the bottom
line was clear enough: global capitalism has made the depletion of resources
so rapid,
convenient and barrier-free that “earth-human systems” are becoming
dangerously
unstable in response. When pressed by a journalist for a clear answer on the
“are we
f**ked” question, Werner set the jargon aside and replied, “More or less.”
Read the rest: http://www.newstatesman.com/2013/10/science-says-revolt
It is the case that our situation is beyond rescue.Even if a turn around is to happen it
may not be until 2025 before the political direction is seriously changed.Even then one
has to consider the economic inertia still to overcome, where this inertia is fossil
fueled economic activity.This then means we will have to engage in geo-engineering, which
will be a part of trying to manage our situation that is becoming increasingly unstable
and that involves exponential trends in growth, change and complexity.We might only at
best be shifting the collapse or implosion time a few decades; a century if we are lucky.
It is curious that science and religion do seem to be converging on one point; the end is
nigh.The “end” here though is somewhat different, and religion proposes a certain faith
based escape or end-run plan around the implosion.Science offers no such thing, except
maybe a way to hunker down on the moon or Mars long enough in order to come back to
Earth.The source of this end is also different, science tells us things about energy and
environment, religion focuses on our moral failings and sexual peccadilloes.
LC
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