The Register: “Prehistoric titanic-snake jungles laughed at global warming” Tuesday, Nov 3 2009
environmentalism 3:01 pm
For an interesting article at The Register, see “Prehistoric titanic-snake jungles laughed at global warming”. Would environmentalists concerned about global warming not mind it if we could preserve all the threatened species by either finding them new habitats or genetically engineering them ever so slightly to survive in the warmer environment?
To make things easier, we could just eliminate mosquitoes entirely, thus malaria and other mosquito-transmitted diseases would go away.
From a utilitarian perspective, if environmentalists consider nature to be a good thing, they have somewhat of a moral obligation to increase the variety and complexity of biomass. It’s like planting trees, on a larger scale. Therefore we have a moral obligation to eventually increase the temperature of the planet so that Antarctica can be covered with temperate forests filled with animals, like it was for two hundred million years before the Azolla event. After the Azolla event made the world much cooler geologically overnight by causing the CO2 ratio in the atmosphere to “fall from 3500 ppm in the early Eocene to 650 ppm during this event”1, things got even worse when the Drake Passage opened, creating a frigid Circumpolar Current. Before the Azolla event, the last cool period, with continental glaciers, was the Karoo Ice Age, 260 million years ago. I have proposed attempting to artificially close the Drake Passage as an eventual far-future way of warming the Earth if we chose to.
This is not normal. We are in the middle of a 2.58-million year Ice Age. It’s cold everywhere. Still, it’s fair to say that we currently lack the technology to responsibly engineer a transition between this cold “Icehouse Earth” and a warmer, lusher, “Greenhouse Earth”. Therefore, we have an obligation to fight against global warming for the time being. (To the extent that you regard it as a threat in your personal calculations — while it is generally agreed that anthropogenic gases are warming the Earth, it is uncertain how much the temperature will increase over the next century and whether sea level increases will be measured in millimeters or centimeters.) Still, I hope that some environmentalists would be receptive to warming the Earth if, at some future point, it were better for nature to thrive. The status quo of the cold, barren, grasslands-covered present-day Earth is not necessarily what is best for nature.
Ignoring vague/incoherent/merely claimed preferences, an environmentalist might have a stronger preference for human non-intervention (either lack of deliberate modification, or setting things as they would be if we hadn’t been here), or assign a negative value to the temporary destruction of existing systems (though for plausible magnitudes of this to factor in would require ignoring just how long the future is). More importantly, many environmentalists would probably be (rightly, this time) concerned about this argument being dishonest (for conscious reasons, eg politics, or un-, eg contrarianism), or about the ability of humans to manage such a project without overconfidently botching up some poorly-understood complex system.
Personally, I’d wait until we can upload the ecosystem and make as many copies as we want to try these things out (presumably with all animals replaced by behaviorally indistinguishable zombies or wireheads).
Thanks for linking the Azolla event, btw. Never heard of it, and very cool. (Pun unintended, dammit.)
Great post. I’ve been trying to argue the difference between the “popular” environmentalist movement and what the true motives of environmentalists should be for years.
I have not found a single historical instance where biodiversity DECREASED during a warming period. On the other hand, biodiversity has decreased during every cooling period. It’s why I find the current “climate” of global warming hysteria to be so irrational.
I realize your point is not political (nor is mine). As to engineering a far-future “hothouse earth” climate, I suspect whatever passes for intelligence at that point in time will have other things on its mind by then (if it exists at all)
We don’t have any obligation to “fight against global warming for the time being”. We should simply get on with the business of ending the ice age:
http://timtyler.org/end_the_ice_age/
http://sustain2green.blogspot.com/
Think before u use toilet paper everyday
According to the latest issue of Worl Watch magazine, worldwide, the equivalent of almost 270,000 trees is either flushed or dumped in landfills every day and roughly 10 percent of that total is attributable to toilet paper.
“Steadily increasing demand for toilet paper in developing countries is a critical factor in the impact that toilet paper manufacturer have on forests around the world,” says author Noelle Robbins in a Worldwatch Institute news release.
according to Robbins, this cure could be worse than the disease, Worldwatch said.
“While the paper industry often touts plantations as the solution to creating an ongoing supply of virgin pulp and fiber, these monocultures often displace indigenous plant and animal life, require tremendous amounts of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and soak up large quantities of water.
“While some toilet paper manufacturers rely on forests, others turn to trash cans for their raw materials.”
Posted by Subhasish Ghosh
Think before u use toilet paper everyday
According to the latest issue of Worl Watch magazine, worldwide, the equivalent of almost 270,000 trees is either flushed or dumped in landfills every day and roughly 10 percent of that total is attributable to toilet paper.
“Steadily increasing demand for toilet paper in developing countries is a critical factor in the impact that toilet paper manufacturer have on forests around the world,” says author Noelle Robbins in a Worldwatch Institute news release.
according to Robbins, this cure could be worse than the disease, Worldwatch said.
“While the paper industry often touts plantations as the solution to creating an ongoing supply of virgin pulp and fiber, these monocultures often displace indigenous plant and animal life, require tremendous amounts of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, and soak up large quantities of water.
“While some toilet paper manufacturers rely on forests, others turn to trash cans for their raw materials.”
http://www.sustain2green.com/
Posted by Subhasish Ghosh
While I found the last few comments enjoyable, I have to wonder if the speed of climate change isn’t more an of an issue than the extent of it. There is a difference between change that occurs over a time period that allows adaptation and change that does not. Also I have to ask if any of us would enjoy an Eocene climate. I, for one, have a problem when I step out of an airplane in (icehouse) Houston during August. Not sure I could thrive in an Eocene Houston (or possibly even an Eocene Maine).