tomc

Coal, Oil and the Human Difficulty of Grasping Long Duration Problems

"2. Very long range problems either do not materialize because too much changes along the way(technology, tastes, ideology,demographics, economic organization, balance of global power) or manifest themselves in ways not anticipated and perhaps incapable of being forecast"

Why is this not being discussed ? The number of known long-range problems in western civilization (at times when there was a LOT more christian "blindness") numbers in the hundreds, at least.

And you know what, those "blind" christians managed to solve every last one of them. For over a millenium various limits were hit, and dealt with.

Some of the things that were accomplished dealing with limits are simply amazing. Holland simply did not exist, neither did half of belgium and a significant part of france. Those areas were simply part of the sea. Those areas were drained. Conquered from the sea. They went from extremely difficult to navigate sandbanks, to swamps with a few settlements, to wetlands with a few cities, to polders where the water is tamed, forests have been planted, and huge cities are located. This did not happen magically, even if blind christians made it happen. It happened due to small communities each deciding a location and an approach, and bit by bit, the problems were conquered.

By the time global warming is supposed to affect us, one of two things will have happened : either it turns out to be wrong after all, or we will have adapted.

Well actually I lied, there's a third option : we make a wrong decision and enforce that decision via the UN or any global force, and that solution turns out to be wrong, there is noone left to care about our mistake. Isn't Darwin grand ?

In all three cases, the problem is solved. We don't have to do anything. In fact, history proves that by far the best course of action is to let every small group decide for themselves what to do about global warming. Some will ignore it, perhaps Osama and some muslims will attempt to make it worse, some will move, some will try to prevent it, some will pray, and some, like most churches will attempt to get communities to protect themselves. We don't know the correct course of action, but one of those reactions is the correct one. Doing this, the only liberal course of action, will yield the same result with a very, very large chance of success : a few will die, 99% will live.

BUT there is the option we seem to be taking : decide with a global government what to do, and use military might to force people to abide by it. This is what the UN and IPCC are about. There's a tiny problem with this approach, which many empires and "civilizations" that do not believe in a liberal approach experienced. The muslim mamluks, the ottomans, the incas, the mayans, the chinese, you name it... : the government decides. Two outcomes are possible : you're killing 99.99% of all humans or you're saving 99.99% of all humans. And then you get to repeat making decisions.

And indeed those empires in history made a few good calls, and they grew. But it only has to happen ONCE that they're wrong, and millions die. And let's not forget the sort of decisions these governments took : that no-one can win a battle against a wall, that allah will sustain muslims, that capturing a few scouts and eating their hearts will ensure victory against the main force, that the land will replenish itself ... and more recently the soviets ... we all know their decisions and the result ... 100 million dead, at least. More likely, for the first time in history, centralized decision making that wasn't even all that wrong, just not optimal, lead to the death of 1 billion humans.

Liberal policy = 99% will survive
UN (or any central govt. force) policy, no matter which policy = 99.99% survives a few times, then a sudden mass dieoff of people

Which do you want ? I find myself strongly in the camp of the "blind" Christians, and the liberal policy.

(and btw. oil exporting countries are the ones profiting from co2 production. If anyone should pay for co2 emissions, it should be them, not the countries forced to pay their profits)