[Vision2020] Sea-level rise threatens 1,400 towns

[Paul Rumelhart]

I'm just trying to look at it realistically.  If it's really true that the worst predictions are going to come true with regards to expected consequences, then we have to stare that bald fact in the face.  CO2 isn't going to get scrubbed naturally in a  *long* time, so we best forget that strategically.  Since we are also talking about having to scrub CO2 out of the atmosphere ourselves faster than we are putting it in, then we are pretty screwed there too.  We basically need a CO2 scrubbing industry to rival the fossil fuel and coal energy industries.  Good luck with that.

Given all that, the only thing we can do is be ready as a civilization to react when we need to.  That requires not stifling our energy production in a vain-glorious attempt to curb our CO2 emissions problem.

That's if we believe the worst predictions of the climate scientists, which I am skeptical of.

Paul




________________________________
 From: Joe Campbell <philosopher.joe at gmail.com>
To: Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> 
Cc: Moscow Vision 2020 <vision2020 at moscow.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2013 1:00 PM
Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Sea-level rise threatens 1,400 towns
 


No one is trying to get everyone to stop emitting CO2. That is a 
hopeless endeavor. The idea is to limit production, to conserve energy 
("conserve" as in "be conservative"). You are thrashing at a person made of straw, not a view that policy makers hold. Suppose we rephrase your 
first point with this in mind:

"... while the majority of CO2 dissolves in the ocean within 200 years
 or so, what's left can stick around in the atmosphere for hundreds of 
years.  So getting everybody to [limit production of] CO2 is really a 
non-starter in the cost/benefit analysis arena."


That sounds like a pretty bad set of reasoning.

That's it for now!



On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 9:25 PM, Paul Rumelhart <godshatter at yahoo.com> wrote:

OK, a few thoughts.
>
>First, while the majority of CO2 dissolves in the ocean within 200 years or so, what's left can stick around in the atmosphere for hundreds of years.  So getting everybody to stop producing CO2 is really a non-starter in the cost/benefit analysis arena.  Cutting back on our civilization's progress would be hampered greatly if we all got religion and turned off all the coal plants and stopped burning fossil fuels or using natural gas or plastics while we waited for renewables to take up the slack.  I kind of like staying warm in winter, refrigerating my food, running fans when it's hot, and so forth.
>
>They suggest removing it from the air.  Since we're not going to turn off all the coal plants anytime soon and start riding bicycles, these magic carbon removal technologies would have to scale up to where they were removing more CO2 from the air than mankind was putting in.  I don't see that happening any time soon.
>
>These cities that are threatened by sea level rise have hundreds of years to figure something out about it.  It happens continually; it's not like on one random day 300+ years from now the sea level rises 4 ft in a few hours.  It happens slowly enough that simple natural building abandonment will take care of much of the problem.  How many buildings do we have that are 300 years old?  When they tear down the old building and rebuild, they will move it back a few feet.  We're talking a few millimeters a year in sea level rise.  The ones that get slowly flooded will be abandoned and new ones built farther back.  If you watched it in some kind of simulator, you'd see the city slowly creep back from the water line and move farther inland, one building at a time.
>
>But, if we're worried about it, we should move to a nuclear supplemented by renewables energy scheme right now on a global scale.  Start building new nuclear reactors with the newer designs, and start researching ones that use thorium or current nuclear waste products as fuel.  Then everybody buys a Tesla, and we just have wait as the CO2 is naturally scrubbed from the atmosphere and the world cools down until it's a blessed paradise.  A blessed paradise without plastics or lubricants, but I'm sure we could solve those problems.
>
>Paul
>
>
>On 07/29/2013 07:33 PM, Joe Campbell wrote:
>
>Check out this article from USA TODAY:
>>
>>Sea-level rise threatens 1,400 towns
>>
>>http://usat.ly/1chGyVt
>>
>>
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