5 ms·

Reading the comments on here and many other places about global warming, it makes me sad that nobody is open-minded enough to entertain the possibility that an

Reading the comments on here and many other places about global warming, it makes me sad that nobody is open-minded enough to entertain the possibility that an increase in the Earth's temperature could be a positive-sum change. We know very little about the Earth's natural cycles and the effects we have on them, so we are very far from knowing whether things are going in a good* or bad direction. * Good for everyone involved, such as humans, animals, plants, etc.

RuadhanMc 15y ago
It is probably because people are comfortable with the familiar. Sure, a warmer earth might be a positive-sum change, but there's an equally good chance that it won't be. So why take the risk of losing what you have if you can avoid it?
- gwright 15y ago
  > equally good chance that it won't be. probability = ?????? is not at all the same thing as probability = 0.50
  - Jach 15y ago
    In this case, it is! The GP is using a uniform prior assigning "equally good chance" to either outcome (good or bad). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability Of course stopping there seems to be silly since I'm sure more informed people have evidence that can shift that probability one way or the other.
  - meric 15y ago
    If I have a question [???] and the answer is "true" or "false". The probability of it being "true" is 50%; Every question you can come up with, you can come up with a negative version. e.g. "Is your name gwright" vs "Is your name not gwright". So given any question where you know absolutely nothing at all about it, the probability the answer is "Yes" must be 50%!
    - retrogradeorbit 15y ago
      The correct answer is the correct answer 100% of the time. And the wrong answer is the wrong answer 100% of the time. If I gave you a question where the correct answer is "no" and you knew _absolutely nothing_ about it, your answer "Yes" would be correct 0% of the time.
      - meric 15y ago
        That is true, the probability of "Yes" is 0, but only according to you. Relative to me, however, the probability is still 50% chance. It's just like if there was a stock the market know nothing about, but you know it just scored a magnificent deal a couple of hours ago, the market will see it as "meh, 50 50" (no price change), while you see "100% going to go up, must buy." That's called insider trading, however. ;)
- FrojoS 15y ago
  Exactly. The worst case, I'm afraid, would be another MARS in the solar system.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - FrojoS 15y ago
    Down votes? I know physicist, who tell me in private, that they are afraid about a point of no return. That we heat the climate up to a point where the system gets unstable. This is, as far as I know, what could have happend on planet Mars and it could happen here. Yet, you barley see anyone mentioning this public. A sane risk assessment number should be something like: Gain / (Risk * Damage) So if the, theoretical, damage on Earth could make it something like Mars, we should act, even if we loose a lot of gain, that is comfort, and though the risk might seem low. On a sight note, the same goes for other humanity threatening dangers, like big asteroids.
vannevar 15y ago
Looking around the solar system, we would have to conclude that significant climate change in either direction is bad for life. None of our neighbors appears to support even microbial life, much less complex species. All the evidence suggests that the conditions for life lie in a narrow band, which we are sitting in nicely for the moment. We manipulate the climate at our peril.
c2 15y ago
First off, the global warming debate is not just about temperatures. It is also about resource use, pollution, waste, contamination of environments, etc. Secondly, the effect of this 'mini ice age' will last a scant 10 or so years. Call me crazy but it doesn't make sense to burn more fossil fuels and continue to cause potentially unrepairable harm to our environment to optimize for a period of 10 years of relatively cool temperatures. If the scientific community agrees that warmer temperatures are in the planet's best interest, I'm sure there is a safer and more effective way to bring that about then the massive amount of pollution and CO2 we are currently pumping into the atmosphere.
- wunderfool 15y ago
  some interesting food for thought. in james lovelock's last book, he discusses how recent volcanos have indeed had a measurable cooling impact (abeit short term)...he suggests that it may indeed be the case that humanity, in a fit of desperation, may have to (try to) engineer a large scale introduction of such material into the atmosphere to create immediate cooling...even though such material itself poses many dangers
ak217 15y ago
There's a fine line between open-mindedness and having a hole in your head. Seriously though, it's very certain that global climate change of unpredictable magnitude right now is not desirable. The key problem is that we're not prepared to preserve biological diversity. We're placing our ecosystems under extreme pressure, severely compromising them, sometimes depleting their resources so they will take hundreds or even thousands of years to recover. This results in mass extinctions and near-extinctions (which can be very damaging through genetic bottlenecks, aka inbreeding). For most species, we currently have no adequate technology to preserve single individuals, let alone entire populations, outside their original habitat. Why does this matter? Because biological diversity is critical to our long-term success in bioengieering, and mind-bogglingly hard to replenish in an accelerated way. We will be able to preserve and resurrect species much sooner than we will be able to mutate them in a natural way to preserve their intraspecies diversity. But so far we can't even do that, so we're losing entire genotypes forever - genotypes that we have no idea how to reconstruct, or what hidden treasures lay in their genomes. And this is just the biggest problem, not taking into account the philosophical preservationist argument, or the smaller problems like increased risk of global conflicts due to mass displacements, ocean acidification, etc.

RuadhanMc 15y ago

It is probably because people are comfortable with the familiar. Sure, a warmer earth might be a positive-sum change, but there's an equally good chance that it won't be. So why take the risk of losing what you have if you can avoid it?

gwright 15y ago
> equally good chance that it won't be. probability = ?????? is not at all the same thing as probability = 0.50
- Jach 15y ago
  In this case, it is! The GP is using a uniform prior assigning "equally good chance" to either outcome (good or bad). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_probability Of course stopping there seems to be silly since I'm sure more informed people have evidence that can shift that probability one way or the other.
- meric 15y ago
  If I have a question [???] and the answer is "true" or "false". The probability of it being "true" is 50%; Every question you can come up with, you can come up with a negative version. e.g. "Is your name gwright" vs "Is your name not gwright". So given any question where you know absolutely nothing at all about it, the probability the answer is "Yes" must be 50%!
  - retrogradeorbit 15y ago
    The correct answer is the correct answer 100% of the time. And the wrong answer is the wrong answer 100% of the time. If I gave you a question where the correct answer is "no" and you knew _absolutely nothing_ about it, your answer "Yes" would be correct 0% of the time.
    - meric 15y ago
      That is true, the probability of "Yes" is 0, but only according to you. Relative to me, however, the probability is still 50% chance. It's just like if there was a stock the market know nothing about, but you know it just scored a magnificent deal a couple of hours ago, the market will see it as "meh, 50 50" (no price change), while you see "100% going to go up, must buy." That's called insider trading, however. ;)
FrojoS 15y ago
Exactly. The worst case, I'm afraid, would be another MARS in the solar system.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- FrojoS 15y ago
  Down votes? I know physicist, who tell me in private, that they are afraid about a point of no return. That we heat the climate up to a point where the system gets unstable. This is, as far as I know, what could have happend on planet Mars and it could happen here. Yet, you barley see anyone mentioning this public. A sane risk assessment number should be something like: Gain / (Risk * Damage) So if the, theoretical, damage on Earth could make it something like Mars, we should act, even if we loose a lot of gain, that is comfort, and though the risk might seem low. On a sight note, the same goes for other humanity threatening dangers, like big asteroids.

vannevar 15y ago

Looking around the solar system, we would have to conclude that significant climate change in either direction is bad for life. None of our neighbors appears to support even microbial life, much less complex species. All the evidence suggests that the conditions for life lie in a narrow band, which we are sitting in nicely for the moment. We manipulate the climate at our peril.

c2 15y ago

First off, the global warming debate is not just about temperatures. It is also about resource use, pollution, waste, contamination of environments, etc. Secondly, the effect of this 'mini ice age' will last a scant 10 or so years. Call me crazy but it doesn't make sense to burn more fossil fuels and continue to cause potentially unrepairable harm to our environment to optimize for a period of 10 years of relatively cool temperatures. If the scientific community agrees that warmer temperatures are in the planet's best interest, I'm sure there is a safer and more effective way to bring that about then the massive amount of pollution and CO2 we are currently pumping into the atmosphere.

wunderfool 15y ago
some interesting food for thought. in james lovelock's last book, he discusses how recent volcanos have indeed had a measurable cooling impact (abeit short term)...he suggests that it may indeed be the case that humanity, in a fit of desperation, may have to (try to) engineer a large scale introduction of such material into the atmosphere to create immediate cooling...even though such material itself poses many dangers

ak217 15y ago

There's a fine line between open-mindedness and having a hole in your head. Seriously though, it's very certain that global climate change of unpredictable magnitude right now is not desirable. The key problem is that we're not prepared to preserve biological diversity. We're placing our ecosystems under extreme pressure, severely compromising them, sometimes depleting their resources so they will take hundreds or even thousands of years to recover. This results in mass extinctions and near-extinctions (which can be very damaging through genetic bottlenecks, aka inbreeding). For most species, we currently have no adequate technology to preserve single individuals, let alone entire populations, outside their original habitat. Why does this matter? Because biological diversity is critical to our long-term success in bioengieering, and mind-bogglingly hard to replenish in an accelerated way. We will be able to preserve and resurrect species much sooner than we will be able to mutate them in a natural way to preserve their intraspecies diversity. But so far we can't even do that, so we're losing entire genotypes forever - genotypes that we have no idea how to reconstruct, or what hidden treasures lay in their genomes. And this is just the biggest problem, not taking into account the philosophical preservationist argument, or the smaller problems like increased risk of global conflicts due to mass displacements, ocean acidification, etc.