Do you think we should actively engineer adaptation? Or should we let Nature tell us where to put our resources?

Do you think we should actively engineer adaptation? Or should we let Nature tell us where to put our resources? — frank

Nature will be indifferent to our problems and will not tell us anything. She has seen it all before.

One of the adaptations that we might well make is dropping dead in large numbers when we can no longer feed ourselves or provide enough drinking water. That is how nature solves over-population problems when the excess population becomes insupportable.

We will all become vegetarians because that will be the best bet for the next meal, never mind the ethics of eating meat. Some people will probably try what cannibals call "long pig".

Life will become simpler for many people. Many of us will not set foot in dreary offices again. We may never have to deal with another bureaucrat for the foreseeable future. If we don't get picked off by the local gang of liars, thieves, knaves, and scoundrels, we might do OK for a few more days. Or, we will be part of the Liars, Thieves, Knaves, & Scoundrels Benevolent Association until we are liquidated by a larger, better armed gang, like the Karing Kannibals Konsortium.

I don't know. On the upside, there is the fairly pleasant A World Made by Hand. On the downside there is The Road. Which book it will be, don't know.

What I do believe is that extensive adaptive solution-engineering will probably not be possible. Some people say we could power the world with either fission or fusion. Both of those solutions run up against the critical problem of many many tons of rare elements that would be needed for either method of energy production. Fission and fusion reactors won't last forever, and will have to be replaced. Each new reactor will suck up another large order of elements that just aren't plentiful.

For those who think agriculture will just move north into the tundra, think again. The thawing tundra is made up o peaty frozen vegetation and is centuries from being soil that wheat can grow on.

Even if society takes 50 to 100 years to fall apart completely, we are already on a down hill slope. There just won't be a happy ending, I am afraid (and I am afraid).

1. Climate change is unstoppable. — unenlightened

This seems to depend on what time frame is being examined. If the chosen time frame is the lifetime of a baby born today, yes, some amount of climate change is already baked in. That is, unless the change can be reversed by some engineering technique, a prospect perhaps more dangerous than the influence we've already had on the climate.

2. Social collapse will be worldwide, and in the next 10 years or so.

This seems exaggerated, though if we include all factors which could lead to social collapse, perhaps not. Climate change as a sole cause of social collapse in ten years? Doesn't seem likely. Climate change as a contributing factor to social collapse over a longer period, ok, seems reasonable.

3. This will involve Flooding caused by sea-level rises displacing huge populations, decline in crop yields leading to starvation even in developed countries, collapse of infra-structure, power, clean water particularly.

Ok, but over what time period? If this happens slowly we can adapt. If it happens quickly, a crisis.

4. There's fuck all to be done to stop it.

Let's define "it". I presume this to mean damage to civilization driven by climate change. Here's the big hole in this paper and this discussion. To the degree the author is correct in his predictions, the main source of damage to civilization will be nuclear weapons and war in general, not climate change. And there is plenty we can do about this source of damage right now today. Ok, maybe not the war, but the nukes can be destroyed any time we are ready to reclaim sanity.

5. So what might we do or think or discuss in the meantime?

Focus on the primary source of damage and discuss how to remove that threat.

Even if society takes 50 to 100 years to fall apart completely, we are already on a down hill slope. — Bitter Crank

My best guess is that a long view is required.

It would take something the scale of an asteroid strike to wipe us out completely, so it seems humans will continue in some form whatever crisis may disrupt the current status quo.

The Romans attempted to build a global civilization and for awhile they were making good progress. And then the whole thing fell apart. I suspect the same kind of thing is happening in our time, just at a faster pace.

If you think about it, it's actually not too logical to assume that we could successfully construct a highly complex interdependent global technological civilization on the first try. We may get there eventually, but it seems more reasonable to assume such a project will take numerous attempts, with many failures along the way.

My generation, the boomers, has the luck of the Irish. We got here after the Great Depression and WWII and arrived at the peak of success for this iteration of global civilization. We lived high on the hog, and had blessed lives. We didn't do a lot to solve the problems, did quite a bit to make things worse, and now we're checking out and leaving the mess to our kids and grandkids. I doubt we will be remembered fondly on balance.

There's a lesson in the boomer story for younger people. When we boomers were twenty somethings we were VERY idealistic and had the noblest of notions. Those young today should not just assume that the idealism they now possess is a permanent fixture of their lives. A great deal of work and sacrifice will be required to hang on to the idealism of youth, and the odds are not with you.

That said, crisis and pain are miracle drugs, so instead of looking to the fat cat softy boomers as a model you might look to the WWII generation. They rose to the challenges presented to them and prevailed, so maybe you can too.

Yes, and all this overwrought discussion triggered by an old snake oil salesman. — Brett

Yet if you get people notice an issue with alarmist attitude of the World is ending in a decade, that doesn't mean that issue isn't true itself. But naturally just saying "perhaps the issue of world ending in a decade" is a bit of a exaggeration OBVIOUSLY means that you think that there doesn't exist any problem with the issue.

This is true. A full-out exchange of bombs among the existing nuclear powers would result in massive fire storms which would greatly extend the initial blast damage, and would throw up so much soot and dust into the upper atmosphere that climate would start cooling rapidly. The world would not freeze, but agriculture might dwindle to virtually nothing for a few years -- long enough for the survivors to starve. Then there is radiation on top of everything else, and a lost of vast stores of resources. — Bitter Crank

But notice how angry Jake comes if you point out that exploding all the nuclear weapons in the World creates way far less energy (and soot and dust to the upper atmosphere) than did the latest mass extinction event, the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Yeah, obviously just saying that I'm denying that nuclear weapons pose a danger.

A few years ago now, we lost most the sandy beach as the council tipped thousands of lorryloads of stones onto the seafront to strengthen the defences. They don't raise the height of the barrier, but they break the force of the waves before they reach the prom. but now there is talk of raising the little wall along the prom, by a foot or so. That's a deal of concrete over a couple of miles. But there's a deal of bricks an mortar to be lost... I'm reminded of Sometimes a Great Notion.

There's some kind of calculation to be made, about what's worth doing to preserve or protect, this or that, but that calculation can only be contemplated when there is a surplus. Some places, they just let your house fall into the sea, and call it 'managed retreat'.

We all know the world is going to hell because welfare scroungers, fat cat bankers, corrupt politicians , and boogie men. But imagine, if the reason Trump got elected is because he told people what they wanted to hear - that problems have solutions. That a wall will stop migration, that a dam will stop flooding, that work will prevent poverty, that a pill will make you happy. Imagine that things are not in human control at all. Imagine all these hotshot engineers are just playing sandcastles on the beach.

There's a lot of angry people about, and they all want to be angry at someone. Right now, its doom and gloom snake-oil salesmen. Time for their world domination to end, What say you? How dare they suggest that the human world is falling apart, that the more we try to control the environment, the more unstable it becomes? How dare they suggest that we are not in charge and not in control?

If you cant accept that, will you please prove that it's wrong? — frank

If I were going to bother "proving wrong" every ridiculous or dubious thing that anyone said, that's all I'd be doing 24/7. I'll let a sort of natural selection take care of the insufficiently skeptical as they wind up conned one way or another.

If you have nothing to offer but an unsupported opinion, you have nothing to offer, period. You are not giving anyone a reason to take what you say seriously. Doesn't mean you're wrong, just that your contribution is superfluous.

There are two ways this discussion could go from here and one of them is not good, and will only please those who don't want to have the discussion at all. I hope that's not the way it ends up, but I'm going to butt out now and let you all at it.

Just to establish some ground, does anyone claim that there is no climate change/global warming? Are we all on the same side of this divide, that we all agree that there is climate change/global warming?

absolutely. There is near complete scientific consensus that man's burning fossil fuels are impacting the climate. However, it is also important to acknowledge that at this moment of time there is no scientific consensus on the timing or extent or effects of climate change.

A side story to make the point. A very very long time ago I worked on a project to improve propeller efficiency in large ships to save fuel. One easy idea was to encase the propeller in a cowl, the physics was easy and predicted a 2 or 3 percent fuel saving. The test tank confirmed the physics. So we installed a few on ships, and did some prolonged sea trials. We could not find any statistical significant fuel savings. There are just too many other variables with a much higher significance in the real world for the minor predicted fuel savings to be measured.

That didn't stop us, we sold them anyway because the engineering was good, and accurate, and buyers would believe, that even though they couldn't measure it, they were still saving 2 or 3 percent of their fuel costs. It was engineered snake oil. And there are thousands of them on ships today.

There is always a gap between real life, and scientifically modeled life. And it rare that we can accurately account for all the consequences of the actions we take in complicated systems. All that said the science of climate change is good, and we should do what we can reasonably do to mitigate and move away from fossil fuels, whether we can or can not accurately measure the impacts, or know all the consequences.

And one aside.

In almost all climate change discussions, an important part is often missing. The availability of cheap energy over the last give or take 100 years may well be most significant thing that has improved the human quality of life planet wide to level unimaginable less than 3 generations ago. Seems there is no free lunch.

Even if society takes 50 to 100 years to fall apart completely, we are already on a down hill slope. There just won't be a happy ending, I am afraid (and I am afraid). — Bitter Crank

If you look at global temperatures for the last million years, you'll notice what climatologists point out: that during the time human civilization appeared, there was an unusual period of climate stability.

So it may be that what we are is so fragile that it can't adapt to even moderate change. There are a lot of flora and fauna like that. Others survive all kinds of change, like frogs. I think the fact that we're adapted to just about everywhere on the planet indicates that physically, we're in the second category. No climatologist sees any reason that the species itself will be threatened by climate change. Whether civilization can also survive is another question. We've never been here before. We have no experience to draw on in making a guess.

It's possible that the climate stability I talked about was only crucial to the first emergence of civilization. Maybe during our happy beginnings, we developed enough power over nature that to some extent, we are masters of our destinies. I lean toward this theory. And I think when archaeologists dig through our graves 1000s of years from now, their picture of the past will include China, but they'll have to piece together who the rest of the world was.

And to the moderators: this is actually on topic, and if you don't understand that, it's because, as you've been doing throughout the whole thread, you're skimming the conversation and jumping to incorrect conclusions. So quit fucking picking on me.

No climatologist sees any reason that the species itself will be threatened by climate change. Whether civilization can also survive is another question. We've never been here before. We have no experience to draw on in making a guess. — frank

Not to mention that it has nothing whatsoever to do with climate scientists' area of expertise.

But we can't even predict simple sociological phenomena very well, even when we're talking about sociologists making predictions, even when we're making very minor predictions about a very short period of time in the future. The phenomena are too chaotic. There are way too many variables.

Have some airy brain farts.

I don't have any practical skills, so the 'adaptation agenda' in the paper made me want to think about failure points in production and distribution, and what would exacerbate the effects of those failures. An energy crisis maybe could be postponed for a while by switching to nuclear fuel, though the radioactive materials would run out eventually - I find it difficult to imagine a globalised world that doesn't require lots of energy production for its technology. I find such a world desirable to maintain, as the failure to treat the world as our commons seems to me a big factor in why we're unable to address climate change effectively. In an ideal scenario, we have a civilisation that spans the stars, and I believe we need a sufficiently robust (or anti-fragile if you like Taleb) political/economic system to take us there; technology makes nature less cruel to us, it would be a shame if the only viable means for humans to obtain eternity involved having a non-technological, low energy consumptive, highly localised political economy.

Food shortage? There'd probably be need of rationing at some point, which might be an opportunity to undermine the central(ising) role money plays in organising global production if rationing was widespread; though me focussing on this is more about personal ideology than assessments of facts. It is broadly in line with the paper you linked's (very brief and buzzwordy) account of how our political economy makes us unable to address aggregate problems.

Overpopulation and crowding could create localised resource shortages even if production could still provide enough for all to live with basic needs me over a broader geographic area; crowding due to fleeing collapse or shortage is likely to make all the other problems more likely to occur and worse when they do.

Everything's a matter of degree and it's really difficult to get a handle on the aggregate effects of climate change even if we have very precise measurements/models of what changes are driving the effects - Jensen's inequality is a bitch.

Not to mention that it has nothing whatsoever to do with climate scientists' area of expertise. — Terrapin Station

Correct. The author of the article explains that he rejects the temperance of a scientific attitude.

There are way too many variables. — Terrapin Station

Correct. And yet H.G. Wells predicted WW2 with some accuracy. Interestingly, the further away from his own time his predictions get, the more wrong they are.

And to the moderators: this is actually on topic, and if you don't understand that, it's because, as you've been doing throughout the whole thread, you're skimming the conversation and jumping to incorrect conclusions. So quit fucking picking on me. — frank

No no, I think you're putting more effort into your posts in this thread now, and they seem broadly on topic and well considered to me. Though, I am a kind god.

Though, I am a kind god. — fdrake

You're a jackass.

There is near complete scientific consensus that man's burning fossil fuels are impacting the climate. However, it is also important to acknowledge that at this moment of time there is no scientific consensus on the timing or extent or effects of climate change....
A side story to make the point. A very very long time ago I worked on a project to improve propeller efficiency in large ships to save fuel. — Rank Amateur

A short story of my own: all of us have experienced storms. Rain, wind, snow, whatever. Today brutal, tomorrow sunny and pleasant, tomorrow's yesterday an interesting memory. That is our collective experience: the joy of weather.

A very long time I received instruction on this topic. I owned a home that was flooded. The "pleasant memory" was a mini-disaster for me that took more than a year to resolve, and a catastrophe for the tenant who now years later still has not fully recovered. Our experiences, then, differ, are different. My "enjoying" the storm your disaster. I think that's going to be the early onset story of global warming when, in Joseph Conrad's words, "the real thing comes at last."

I read the meta-message of the paper as warning that the real thing is coming. And just here it's worth pausing a moment to settle on what that means and the right way to respond to the warning. One way is to suppose that it's not going to affect me - it's someone else's problem. Another, as the paper notes, is to take the facts and turn them into a relatively safe narrative. And there's magical thinking. We all do these somewhat and to some extent. We all whistle past by the graveyard. But that's always an error, even though most of us usually get away with it, except for the time when we don't.

And this fallacious thinking ignores the reality. What reality? The reality of the predictive force of the warning. And it undercuts the efforts of thinking to solve the problem and associated problems. One word covers it: Denial.

There is always a gap between real life, and scientifically modeled life. And it rare that we can accurately account for all the consequences of the actions we take in complicated systems. All that said the science of climate change is good, and we should do what we can reasonably do to mitigate and move away from fossil fuels, whether we can or can not accurately measure the impacts, or know all the consequences. — Rank Amateur

"Reasonably"? In my understanding, a useful conception for understanding climate change is men who burst into a crowded restaurant with a gun and start shooting people indiscriminately. In such a setting, one does, or does not. Being "reasonable" is an unaffordable luxury. I fear that even now most folks, with respect to climate change, are engaging in luxury they cannot afford. and the bill will be paid by them, their children, their grandchildren, and so on.

Whether it all comes down, gets real, here or there, at this or that time, is simply to deny the issue by identifying the warning with the thing itself, and as warnings in themselves are harmless, so it's supposed that the thing warned about will be equally harmless.

no free lunch.

Amen!

technology makes nature less cruel to us, — fdrake

I think this is Deeply Shallow. As if nature is not our mother and sustainer. As if we are not the product of nature. It's odd, because this is the trope one more often finds coming from the other side - humans are natural, therefore motor cars are natural. Well indeed, and extinctions are natural. But then nature is not cruel or kind and nothing is better or worse than any other.

Technology allows us to hack nature; literally, technology is a giant machete. We attack our mother with a machete and then accuse her of cruelty. We need to change our mindset at this archetypal level in order to begin to understand what is happening or we will literally go to our self-manufactured extinction still complaining about 'cruel nature'. Technology is the problem. Perhaps technology can be the solution too, but it will take a deep identity change in the hand that wields it.

I think this is Deeply Shallow. As if nature is not our mother and sustainer. As if we are not the product of nature. It's odd, because this is the trope one more often finds coming from the other side - humans are natural, therefore motor cars are natural. Well indeed, and extinctions are natural. But then nature is not cruel or kind and nothing is better or worse than any other. — unenlightened

I don't think it's a sin to believe that technology gives us the opportunity to live better lives. I'm very grateful that when I get ill I can go to a doctor, that we can clean stuff to reduce disease spread, but what I'm most grateful for is the kind of thinking and tinkering that leads to such cumulative betterment. Lives are longer now than ever, so I'll remain optimistic that there is a place for scalpels, microscopes, soap and antibiotics in Eden, and that there's no place in it for cholera and tuberculosis.

Technology allows us to hack nature; literally, technology is a giant machete. We attack our mother with a machete and then accuse her of cruelty. We need to change our mindset at this archetypal level in order to begin to understand what is happening or we will literally go to our self-manufactured extinction still complaining about 'cruel nature'. Technology is the problem. Perhaps technology can be the solution too, but it will take a deep identity change in the hand that wields it. — unenlightened

Instrumental rationality gets a bad rep; insofar as it sees nature as just collectable resources, I'm with you in criticising that ideology's deleterious effects. Insofar as people treat large systemic problems like climate change as problems to be worked at within our current political-economic framework with little effort or fundamental organisational change required to solve them, I'm with you in criticising it again.

Humans are historical creatures, we work with tools, we have language; all skill takes to develop incrementally is the tradition allowed by our historicity and the novelty created through our projects. Of course, continued history is required for such development, and that requires we're not all dead. So we have choices to make. Political structures and systems of resource management which facilitate adaptation are technologies in the broad sense. They are simultaneously tools we (and by we I currently mean our betters) choose to use and environments we (the meek) inhabit; I wish we would tinker with our institutions and maybe even our sociality itself with as much passion as the urgency of our situation might require.

Perhaps it's too late, and all we can hope for is that the rot of our civilisation fuels the monied accumulation of resources which destroys the next one. Looting crumbling buildings for precious metals on the new frontier.

but I'm going to butt out now — Baden

Thank you.

You're welcome.

So it may be that what we are is so fragile that it can't adapt to even moderate change. There are a lot of flora and fauna like that. — frank

Two points: First, our fragility. Take the "wet bulb" relationship between heat and humidity. Humans can not do work and survive outside (literally, die) when high humidity and temperatures above 99ºF combine. We die from heat stroke because we can't dump enough heat through sweating and evaporation. Mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun; the rest of us stay in the shade.

There are several large food producing areas, like (southern North America, SE Asia, South Asia, etc.) where low elevation, high humidity, and normally high temperatures are going to severely cut into the time people can work outside on food production. That's a problem.

Second, flora and fauna. A lot of plants are pretty tolerant, but there are limits. Food plants (corn, soy, rice, fruit, grains, seed crops, etc.) have been bred to be more tolerant, but there are limitations on how far breeding and yield can go. As for fauna, you've probably heard about the declining insect populations. In some places it's a decline, in others it's a crash. This is a pretty bad harbinger of things to come. Insects are a key part of the biological web; bees aren't the only pollinators, a lot of insects prey on other insects, many birds depend on insects for food, and so on.

The insect population reflects the complexity of environmental problems. Heat, herbicides (eliminating "weeds" that many insects require for food), pesticides (many kinds), mono cropping (whole regions of nothing but corn or soybeans), etc. So it isn't just one thing (like rising global temperatures) that could upset the applecart. It's negative synergism.

So it isn't just one thing (like rising global temperatures) that could upset the applecart. It's negative synergism. — Bitter Crank

True. And climate scientists point out that since for some portion of the next 10,000 years the mean temperature will rise above what it's been since Homo Sapiens came into existence, there may be something we don't see now that could represent an insurmountable challenge to our survival.

And that's true AGW or not. We are headed for extinction. It's just a question of when. And this is my question for you: what does it mean to accept that? Do you find freedom in it? Or are you unable to face it? Or do you go back and forth? Does it relate in some way to contemplation of your personal death?

I've been sunk for about a year in the Bronze Age and the Bronze Age Collapse and that impacts my perspective. I don't think we (the global civilization of the 21st Century) are going to survive. I'm not sure if it's human nature or Nature itself that manifests itself in arcs: birth, youth, old age, and death, but you can see it in civilizations.

It's only been in the last century that we've even realized the sophistication of Bronze Age societies. I imagine it will be like that. We'll be completely forgotten for a time. And then one fine century someone will start digging in the right place to find us, and they'll be soooo amazed. :)

I don't think it's a sin to believe that technology gives us the opportunity to live better lives. I'm very grateful that when I get ill I can go to a doctor, that we can clean stuff to reduce disease, but what I'm most grateful for is the kind of thinking and tinkering that leads to such cumulative betterment. Lives are longer now than ever, so I'll remain optimistic that there is a place for scalpels, microscopes, soap and antibiotics in Eden, and that there's no place in it for cholera and tuberculosis. — fdrake

Tinkering sounds so innocent, not like rape at all. My medical hero of the 20th century is President Carter .

Guinea worm disease is set to become the second human disease in history, after smallpox, to be eradicated. It will be the first parasitic disease to be eradicated and the first disease to be eradicated without the use of a vaccine or medicine.

No big tech, just good governance and hygiene.

But if you will not admit to sin, try this for a heresy: Human longevity and human happiness are not the beginning and end of virtue. Man is not the measure of all things. but even if he were, science has not arranged the environment all that well for him. Clean water, good sewage, will do most of the work against cholera; clean air, good animal husbandry will do most of the work against tuberculosis. Clean air... now how did the air get dirty?

It's ironic really the scientific and rational education I have been subjected to in this thread in defence of the culture of mass destruction and extinction. As though it is all made up, or if not made up, then unimportant, or if important, easily fixable, or if not fixable, a price worth paying, or if not worth paying...

Science has won, modernism has won, and we snake oil salesmen are laughable - but it is a gallows laugh. I'm just putting it out there, your philosophies are hangovers from a primitive age from the age of childhood tantrums with mother. Time to grow up and start acting responsibly. Mother is old and sick, not very happy with her children, not going to clean up after you any more.

And then one fine century someone will start digging in the right place to find us, and they'll be soooo amazed. — frank

They might be digging with their dextrous six (or horrors, eight) legs. Smart spiders discovering cans of RAID™ designed to kill their forebears. Arachnid rage would incite a pogrom against the intellectually sophisticated, and dexterous rat species, the mammalian princes of the future.

We are headed for extinction. It's just a question of when. And this is my question for you: what does it mean to accept that? — frank

That is a profound question; it's probably worth a thread of its own, but in that thread we would be back here in a flash, so... there is that.

I'm sort of, kind of, in a way reconciled with my own death. On most days I don't welcome it, but death is our common and inevitable fate. Death could have come decades earlier, so... I'm grateful to be alive today.

I feel... "sad" isn't the word; I feel a great grief that our species might (could... probably will? definitely will?) become extinct. Of course, eventually we would be extinct no matter what--but the extinction related to the dying sun is too far off to worry about. An extinction in the next 500, 1000, or 5000 years--or next week--is grievous unto despair. It is grievous to hear of the last of another ancient species dying, and we do not hear of the thousands of "the last of their kind" that die every year.

There is no protector in the universe charged with preventing extinctions. There have been 5 mass extinction events on this planet that we can't be blamed for. It is likely that mass extinction events occur every day somewhere in the universe. So, that's just...

What I am doing is trying to find a stress-relieving context in which to fold our own species-death. So far I have not been successful.

clean air, good animal husbandry will do most of the work against tuberculosis. — unenlightened

Good animal husbandry will help prevent the transmission of TB from cows to humans, but unless we apply animal husbandry to the humans who have TB and transmit it to others, checking cows is only part of the solution. I have a very strong preference for fresh, unpolluted air, but clean air doesn't do much to prevent TB transmission. The healthy person sitting next to someone with active TB in fresh, clean air will still get infected -- as soon as they would in dirty air.

Now that we have multi-drug resistant TB, animal husbandry of sick humans is even more important.

It's ironic really the scientific and rational education I have been subjected to in this thread in defence of the culture of mass destruction and extinction. As though it is all made up, or if not made up, then unimportant, or if important, easily fixable, or if not fixable, a price worth paying, or if not worth paying... — unenlightened

What gave you the impression that I was defending it? I appreciate that you are attempting to give me a revelation through rhetoric; I see technology, learning and social organisation strategies being jointly necessary for humanity's welfare - being essential to its development and maintenance. My reading of your posts is that you also posit humanity's welfare as a necessary metric for the same things, but emphasise the suspicions that purely technological interventions will never set the world aright for us again.

You seem to read my veneration of technology and the progress that its successful application can bring as a paradoxical ideal to hold. In one breath it values humanity's survival in the world we all inhabit and share the consequences of, in another it commands the environment of this world to become uninhabitable for us. I imagine that you see my beliefs above as an ideological corpuscle that cannot be separated from the current existential risks the meddling I value so highly has created.

This is a fair point, and I should have emphasised that seeing humanity's welfare as a yardstick for valuation of our collective action must not also treat nature as something exogenous; either as an unmovable reserve of our resources or as a largely antagonistic set of constraints to be overcome. I agree that holding either of these two views, or selling an ideology that requires either, is decidedly suboptimal for humanity's continued development.

However, the emphasis you are placing on seeing nature as neither reserve nor enemy is fully consistent with a perspective that sees both as detrimental to human welfare, while still using human welfare as a system of valuation for our collective actions and attitudes towards nature. In essence, you are selling a promise to improve our chances of survival and development by stopping the rape of nature. I agree with this, it is a useful rhetorical strategy to make nature our beloved codependent whore instead.

But of course, I'm exaggerating the difference I see in our positions, I'm fairly sure that we actually agree on most things but disagree over what ideological framework to use to renegotiate our relationship with nature. You're not being a mystic, you're being a different flavour of sustainability management technician.

Edit: I appreciate your link to the Guinea Worm project, it is always nice to be reminded that human progress does not require firing lasers at everything.

What gave you the impression that I was defending it? — fdrake

I'm only quoting you because you're the only one talking about the topic. I don't mean to accuse you, and I'm not really even addressing you more than the rest of the world, and mostly myself.

the emphasis you are placing on seeing nature as neither reserve nor enemy is fully consistent with a perspective that sees both as detrimental to human welfare, while still using human welfare as a system of valuation for our collective actions and attitudes towards nature. In essence, you are selling a promise to improve our chances of survival and development by stopping the rape of nature. — fdrake

To a large extent, I'm trying on a perspective. As if, we are at the end of something, that might be civilisation, or humanity, or a particular scientistic ideology, as if we (I) realise too late or almost too late that all this (unspecified but sort of understood) is already dead. So that most of our conversations should they survive will look to 'them' like the religious arguments of the scholastics, complex, futile dated, irrelevant. I'm not committed to anything more than an obituary of failed philosophies in all this.

I'd like to make a connection - perhaps it's extravagant.

1. Controlling the environment tends to destabilise it.
2. Controlling the psyche tends to destabilise it.

1. is obvious in this context as to meaning, truth is another matter. As to 2., it is half formed, but think as a maybe-paradigm of the Catholic attempt to control sexuality, and the scandal of child abuse - latest instalment in Australia this week. There must be a mathematics of control systems, but it probably involves strange attractors and does my head in.

I'm only quoting you because you're the only one talking about the topic. I don't mean to accuse you, and I'm not really even addressing you more than the rest of the world, and mostly myself. — unenlightened

I'm quite happy to be accused.

To a large extent, I'm trying on a perspective. As if, we are at the end of something, that might be civilisation, or humanity, or a particular scientistic ideology, as if we (I) realise too late or almost too late that all this (unspecified but sort of understood) is already dead. So that most of our conversations should they survive will look to 'them' like the religious arguments of the scholastics, complex, futile dated, irrelevant. I'm not committed to anything more than an obituary of failed philosophies in all this. — unenlightened

This makes more sense to me now, thank you for the clarification. It's an interesting topic to think through.

There must be a mathematics of control systems, but it probably involves strange attractors and does my head in. — unenlightened

Something really amazing about how weather prediction models work is that we actually understand the forces that drive the climate pretty well at this point, we're in a position to make very accurate short term predictions. How error is sometimes evaluated in these models, apparently, is that the models are re-run lots of times and the variety of the results informs, say, the probability of raining tomorrow, of attaining a certain temperature and so on. But, the perturbations to the initial parameters in their models that they use to study their modelling error are actually very close the machine precision for their giant supercomputers. As in, a change in an observation of temperature by 10^-16, 10^-32 or 10^-64 degrees; which is about the same proportion (or much smaller for the last two) of a meter to an atomic nucleus; can quite rapidly result in huge differences in expected behaviour under the model.

I think this suggests that actually modelling the climate with incredible precision is actually wrongheaded when trying to think in the long term; we shouldn't be thinking about % impacts on wheat yields in the long term. For long term planning, we should be trying to curtail exposure - how much is at risk and what are its effects. Rather than counting human lives saved by a policy or precisely how much starvation will occur, I believe it makes more sense to try and create systems of political economy that are less sensitive to perturbation; ones with broader comfort zones and more levers to pull to keep things within that zone. I doubt it is possible to design a social system in the aggregate which actually likes the disorder associated with its necessities, or at least I find it inconceivable. Humans are fragile, and we shouldn't ideally have political-economic structures that allow highly correlated failure over all their components. Such organisation makes the extremes that will eventually come lethal, rather than 'just' a huge setback.