5 ms·
There's always a chance it has downsides, but worst case you block the canal and it turns back into a dead sea. I would say we are excellent at modelling outco
by brutusborn 3y ago
There's always a chance it has downsides, but worst case you block the canal and it turns back into a dead sea.
I would say we are excellent at modelling outcomes, just bad at listening to models that tell us what we don't want to hear. For example, we knew about global warming before computers existed. The model and the tech wasn't the problem, human avoidance of bad news was (and is).
We can't just avoid doing everything because our models might be wrong. I find that reasoning repulsive. If humanity took that approach we would have died long ago.
- EdwardDiego 3y agoI figure we've had enough examples of well-meant interventions that lead to worse outcomes to be really conservative about "just change the ecosystem and heat/salinity circulation patterns of two large bodies of water, what's the worst that could happen?"
- joshuanapoli 3y agoWe should be able to extrapolate from the large-scale reservoirs that have already been built. The proposed reservoirs would be 10x larger, so there would undoubtedly be learnings. But we would probably build such projects in stages, so that the project could be stopped or altered if the effect is negative.
- throwaway173738 3y agoYou’re assuming linearity and arguing that all things are equal. I would be surprised if either of those things are true.
- brutusborn 3y agoWe _are_ being conservative. As the article mentions, these kind of projects have been proposed and studied for half a century now, and despite all the predicted benefits we haven’t event built a single one!