The technical means exist to mitigate (not eliminate or reverse) the effects of climate change, but they will be very expensive (in the short run) and they will therefore be socially or politically impossible to implement. Powerful economic interests will resist with all the resources at their disposal, and economic interests rarely have a shortage of resources. This need not be the case in the long run, of course, but humans have shown themselves to be quite incapable of dealing with issues with long-run consequences by accepting short-term sacrifices.

This dichotomy between an outcome that is possible and one that is probable has become more and more obvious to me as I grow older, and presumably wiser. We went to the moon 40 years ago, we can’t send a man to our own space station today without hitching a ride with our rivals. But I do not mean to imply this is a purely American trait. Human beings are poor with long-term projects, at least those which do not yield some benefit within the time scale of a human lifetime. Landing on the moon gave military, political and ideological benefit within a decade, other space projects either gave short term tangible benefits (Comsats, Navsats and Landsats), or were scientific missions piggy-backed on to the program by devoted and farthinking men working in the space bureaucracies. As relative costs rise, and private enterprise comes to dominate space exploration, this becomes less and less likely. There is no short term return on investment in space exploration and colonization.

As to what will actually happen if we do nothing regarding climate change, we already have plenty of evidence. This is not the first time the earth’s thermosphere has been perturbed. We have been impacted by meteoroids, suffered massive volcanic eruptions, and no doubt other biological, geological and astronomical events have caused drastic changes in earth’s ecosphere. The world system has adjusted to some new equilibrium and continued to unfold. Whatever man does to the climate, the world will adjust and eventually settle down. Earth Abides.

Eventually, the adjustment will put a curb on man’s activities and the perturbation will be stopped. Think of it as another example of Le Chatelier’s Principle. In other words, climate change will manifest itself as changes in agricultural, settlement and industrial patterns leading to economic problems, which will cause political and military convulsions, and eventually, a severe drop in population. But the earth will not come to an end.

It’s happened before on small geographical and long temporal scales, as nations have overpopulated their fertile valleys, cut down their forests, over-exploited their soils, or become overly dependent on some resource that was naturally limited or had a natural variability, such as stored rainfall for irrigation purposes. Even the apparently limitless resources of the sea are now showing unsustainable damage from our relentless technological attack. This time, it will happen in one lifetime, all over the planet, and with our communications, we will be perfectly aware of what is happening. I still doubt whether we will accept the cause. Faced with falling catches, our response has always been building bigger boats, and fishing farther out.

Climate change does not mean the earth will become another Venus, the planet will still be habitable and fertile, and humans will still be able to thrive here, we are very adaptable. But our cultural artifacts, our civilizations, our industry and agriculture, have all been based on the belief that things will remain the same. Our mind-set refuses to accept even the idea that global change is possible. It would just be too expensive, too threatening, too inconvenient. Preparing for an uncertain long-term future is just too expensive in the short term.

It can be argued that since man is adaptable, then man can survive these changes, manage the result, mitigate the negative consequences and exploit the many opportunities a global change will reveal. Can you imagine the energy and mineral resources(and agricultural potential) of an ice-free Antarctic? But I am not too optimistic this will happen.

I have carefully followed the first few decades of the resources debate, and I feel I am qualified to make some informed judgements on how it will turn out. Even my choice of career, the remote sensing and mapping of the earth’s surface and the study of its natural systems and how they interact with human activities, was based on how I felt I could be most useful to my fellow man during my lifetime. Sure, I wanted a good job, one that was fun and paid well, but I wanted to do something useful to society, too. It was the seventies, after all. I am a geographer by trade and training; my profession was based on my vision of the future when I was a young man. I have seen nothing yet that alters that vision.

And I’m not very optimistic about our future.

*Looks through favorites folder*

Okay, I have entirely too much crap there to post here, but I think this book sums things up nicely (yes, I DO own a copy).

On a side note, anyone know a quick and easy way to post Firefox favorites somewhere?

Spent several hours with a retired director of NOAA’s Climate Services division. I asked about man-driven climate change, if that were real or a myth. He said there were several answers. The scientific answer, he said, is that climate change is real and unquestionably man caused.

He added there was the answer needed by the existing energy interests, and they have decided there is no human influence on the current climate matters. Their conclusions are money-driven and they fund questionable “studies” and interest groups. Much the same techniques which put off recognizing tobacco as a cause of heart and lung problems are in use by these folks. They have virtually unlimited funds at their disposal.

Then a third group, the fundamental Christians, who simply don’t want to believe this is a problem and might affect their standard of living if precautions were introduced. These people carry the same logic into the discussion as they do into creation v. evolution. They will and do believe anything.

He said what is undecided are the consequences of climate change. No one can tell yet, could be more fresh water, less, and so on. The people who are predicting that are simply guessing so far.