Climate Policy

[kandrathe]

We're testing it right now, in a gigantic lab orbiting our sun. That's part of the whole point. We're not sitting idle, waiting for data and modeling to get better before making a decision about what to do. We're experimenting in real time on a planetary scale with the only home we currently have. What does a dramatic increase in atmospheric CO2 levels do to the climate? We don't strictly know, but we'll find out soon enough, because we've done it, we're still doing it, and if we accept the status quo, we'll keep doing it. I hope we like the answers, because if the climate really is nonlinear, there's no guarantee even the best CO2 sequestration technology can get us back to square one.

Another area I haven't thought through yet. Perhaps the linear growth of CO2 correlates with global deforestation. From the first logs hewn for ships and castles to the present day how has land use affected the climate? Some scientists predict deforestation accounts for 25% of anthropogenic atmospheric CO2, but perhaps that is larger due to other processes such as erosion releasing carbon from the soil as well.

Anyway, whether you want to put a stake in the ground at the development of the steam engine, or the wooden sailing ship, people have been changing the environment drastically for at least the past half a millennium, if not since the first human dammed the first river etc. Over the past few hundred years, humans are addicted to higher and higher amount of energy consumption. So I only see three possible outcomes; either we 1) replace the energy source, 2) reduce the humans, or 3) force the humans to go cold turkey with a drastic cut (probably resulting in #2).

I just watched a documentary on the Toba eruption and it possibly dropping the human population down to perhaps as low as 30 breeding females. I'm proposing that we should have a large number of nuclear power plants to augment solar production in the event that some volcanic event reduces solar flux for a prolonged period. While mass starvation is still likely, some nuclear power would allow the artificial growing of some food to sustain a meager number of humans on the planet.