Month: June 2010

It bothers me when people suggest that such and such will wipe out Life on Earth. This is usually made as part of an argument suggesting that human activity is the cause of a problem.

My issue is that, by using such an absolute, their argument is weakened and sometimes this means that a useful point loses credibility. Some might decide that, if you can show that life wouldn’t be wiped out then the point must be wrong…

It would be very difficult to wipe out all life on Earth. There are extremophile bacteria living deep in the earth in rock strata. To sterilise the planet you would need something akin to the impact that created our Moon, an impact that would have seen the entire crust rendered molten. That oughta do it. Bear in mind though that, as soon as some parts of the surface cooled to around 70°C or so, the extremophile bacteria in orbit would begin to re-colonise the surface.

It is not sensible to have that level of destruction as the level that justifies us getting our act together to protect ourselves from changes to the environment.

This post is just another wish that people would tone down extreme language, hyperbole and abuse.

I have seen the argument that, if global warming is occurring at all, it is a natural thing so we should do nothing. To be consistent, people who hold that view should not seek medical help when any naturally-occurring illness happens to them. Some people do exactly that, but others are vulnerable to the suggestion that they are being logically inconsistent.

We acquired a new PM today. On the radio I heard some random say that the last bloke was no good because “he wasn’t a normal sort of bloke. He couldn’t communicate”. I think that is actually two separate issues.

The ability to communicate is a vital asset in a politician. In fact, all they have is words, so they’d better be good with them.

As for being a normal kind of person… I always hope for better than that. Do we want some average person handling the complex affairs of a huge and sophisticated democracy? I think that above-average wisdom would be a really good place for them to start not being normal.

I can’t remember any of our Prime Ministers being just like normal people. It really isn’t possible to get to the top of the heap and just be average.

I would like this blog to be informative.

Wales will fit into Queensland 82.961308950914341 times… not including Queensland’s islands.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1066484

http://www.ga.gov.au/education/geoscience-basics/dimensions/area-aus-states-territories.jsp

http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_area_of_Wales

All part of the service.

I have heard it suggested that those who would have us stop using fossil fuels have, as part of their agenda, the destruction of “our way of life”. By “our way of life” they meant Western, free market, Capitalist economies. It is currently common practice for those of us in the echosphere to cherry pick the lunatic fringe to find references to back up the implication that the world is full of extremists. I can’t be bothered. I can make my point and ignore them.

It does not follow that winding down the use of fossil fuels as fast as we can means that we want to destroy the current system. Bear in mind that they are not an infinite resource in any case. We are going to have to tackle this eventually. If the evidence suggests that they are doing harm, and I consider that self-evident (be careful of your car exhaust), why not tackle the problem before we are at the crisis point?

A more positive, optimistic outlook is to recognise the inevitable and realise that the people who get a jump on solving the problem will have something to sell to those who are slower to move. That’s right; the free market will solve this eventually but there are things that can be done to encourage this to be sooner rather than later.

There is a lot on the net written by experts addressing this so I should leave it to them.

My point though is that it is not disloyal, treacherous, traitorous, Luddite, anti-freedom, Communist, Socialist, protectionist or stupid to suggest that we start changing the energy sources of our economy as soon as possible. It does not mean that there is a “hidden agenda” or that an “intended consequence” is that our current society should be destroyed.

Finally, I firmly believe that it is not naive to believe that we can succeed in changing. History shows many such major changes. It also shows that they are usually accompanied by people who cannot imagine a different future could possibly be better and who rail that the “end is nigh”.

Change is coming. Help or get out of the way.

Tony Robinson on Time Team in reference to “Dark Age”, Anglo-Saxon archeology:

“The Thinking Man’s Dungeons and Dragons.”

There are a lot of estimates being tossed about and it is hard to get a grip on the implications. One went like this:

“one Exxon Valdez every two and a half to five days. And we’re on day 50.”

Very disturbing. There is a precedent for this sort of thing in the Gulf of Mexico but we seem to be moving beyond it.

All the crude oil pouring into the Gulf of Mexico was going to be cracked and then burned and end up in the air as various gases; 12,000 to 100,000 barrels a day apparently.

It is a reminder of the rate at which we are converting the carbon that was sequestered underground over the millions of years of the Carboniferous back into gases in the atmosphere. I must find out whether the nature of the global environment at the beginning of the Carboniferous has been determined, as we are in the process of recreating it. What are the chances that it was not significantly different from what we had at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution?