And some parts of the world; northern Canada, Alaska Northern Europe for example, may prefer some warming and will prosper.
----- Original Message ----- From: "Russell Seitz" <russellse...@gmail.com> To: geoengineering@googlegroups.com Cc: jrandomwin...@gmail.com, kcalde...@carnegiescience.edu Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2013 10:50:12 PM Subject: Re: [geo] For the "why geoengineering could prove to be vital" department... " Even before Europeans arrived, the Mayan civilization had begun to collapse thanks to relatively minor climate changes. " The classic Maya civilization collapsed late in the 8th century, and all its great urban ceters were abandoned by the end of the first millennium. More inreresting is the role of climate change and migration in the dissapearance of the Olmec civilization that went before, taking much of mesoamerica's neolithic trade network with it- http://www.nytimes.com/2002/05/22/world/in-guatemala-a-rhode-island-size-jade-lode.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm Wednesday, April 17, 2013 8:15:12 PM UTC-4, Ken Caldeira wrote: I am of the opinion that while climate change may pose an existential threat to those already facing existential threats (i.e., the poor, the marginalized, etc) it is far less clear how large a threat climate change poses to those who live in gated communities. I was quoted in the New Yorker recently (behind a pay wall, but slightly misquoted here): http://stevemasover.blogspot.com/2012/06/human-are-like-rats-and-cockroaches.html "I have two perspectives on what this might mean," he said. "One says: humans are like rats or cockroaches. We are already living from the equator to the Arctic Circle. The weather has already become .7 degrees warmer, and barely anyone has noticed or cares. And, yes, the coral reefs might become extinct, and people from the Seychelles might go hungry. But they have gone hungry in the past, and nobody cared. So basically we will live in our gated communities, and we will have our TV shows and Chicken McNuggets, and we will be O.K. The people who would suffer are the people who always suffer. "There is another way to look at this, though," he said. "And that is to compare it to the subprime-mortgage crisis, where you saw that a few million bad mortgages led to a five-per-cent drop in gross domestic product throughout the world. Something that was a relatively small knock to the financial system led to a global crisis. And that could certainly be the case with climate change." http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/05/14/120514fa_fact_specter I think the uninhabitable claim of Hansen is a bit excessive. While such a world might not be very pleasant, I don't see it as threatening fundamental habitability. In the attached Scientific American article, I wrote: We are re-creating the world of the dinosaurs 5,000 times faster [than it was created in the Cretaceous]. What will thrive in this hothouse? Some organisms, such as rats and cockroaches, are invasive generalists, which can take advantage of disrupted environments. Other organisms, such as corals and many tropical forest species, have evolved to thrive in a narrow range of conditions. Invasive species will likely transform such ecosystems as a result of global warming. Climate change may usher in a world of weeds. Human civilization is also at risk. Consider the Mayans. Even before Europeans arrived, the Mayan civilization had begun to collapse thanks to relatively minor climate changes. The Mayans had not developed enough resilience to weather small reductions in rainfall, and the Mayans are not alone as examples of civilizations that failed to adapt to climate changes. Crises provoked by climate change are likely to be regional. If the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, could this set in motion mass migrations that challenge political and economic stability? Some of the same countries that are most likely to suffer from the changes wrought by global warming also boast nuclear weapons. Could climate change exacerbate existing tensions and provoke nuclear or other apocalyptic conflict? The social response to climate change could produce bigger problems for humanity than the climate change itself. On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 9:32 AM, David Lewis < jrando...@gmail.com > wrote: <blockquote> Jim Hansen is circulating a note calling attention to the Hansen, et.al . "near final" paper (entitled Climate Sensitivity, Sea Level, and Atmospheric CO2) presently available on arXiv.org, i.e. here . The concluding sentence of the abstract reads: " Burning all fossil fuels, we conclude, would make much of the planet uninhabitable by humans , thus calling into question strategies that emphasize adaptation to climate change." Over to those putting forward or supporting the McBurger hypothesis... (The "McBurger Hypothesis" holds that climate change may only become an issue of secondary importance to those who matter, even if all fossil fuels are burned , because it is thought possible or even likely that the American middle class will continue to find ways to remain riveted to their video game screens while surviving on orders of Chicken McBurgers or whatever else is delivered to their climate change proof homes and civilization....) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "geoengineering" group. 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