Quickies
Skepchick Quickies 7.25
Today in history, the infamous Face on Mars photo was taken by the Viking I. Pareidolia is a hell of a thing! Also, Mozart finished his Symphony No. 40 in G Minor (you should recognize it) and Dylan went electric. Finally, today is the birthday of Rosalind Franklin, one of my science heroes.
- Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math – “Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is”
- The Most Spectacular Night View of Earth Ever Captured by NASA – It is truly dazzling, make sure you look at the background to get an amazing view of the twisting nether of space.
- What Happens When You Crack an Egg 60 Feet Underwater?
- Gorilla Youngsters Seen Dismantling Poachers’ Traps—A First – Poachers will set traps for other animals, and when young gorillas are snared they are left to die. Now there are reports that some of them have figured out how to deactivate the traps.
- Meet the Genius Kids of the Google Science Fair
That global warming article is seriously one of the most depressing things I have ever read.
I see nothing that leads me to believe that the human race has the collective foresight to avoid the coming catastrophe.
Check out the site Bill McKibben founded http://350.org/ , amazing organisation.
The time lapses from the ISS really are amazing. Being able to see the stars, the Earth, the city lights, the aurora, and lightning together is pretty much beyond words.
I’ve read a lot of depressing stuff about global warming, but this one takes the cake. The current civilization, if not the species, seems to be screwed.
The problems with global warming isn’t the fossil fuel industries per se, it’s that people are adverse to suffering the economic losses (or gains not realised) not burning those fossil fuels would result in. There’s also a collective action problem here – every country has an incentive to let every other country take the burden of preventing climate change by cutting their emissions. Scenarios like this lead to everybody doing nothing while they wait for everyone else to act.
Our political institutions lack the capacity to produce a meaningful deal on climate change, I fear all the calls for action in the world will achieve nothing. It’s going to be up to scientists and engineers to save us, only by developing zero-carbon power sources that are cost-competitive with fossil fuels will it be possible to get CO2 emissions under control.
With the Rolling Stone article, this BBC piece on Antarctic melt, and this Guardian article about a massive melt on Greenland in July I do not see any way short of stubborn stupidity that it can be argued that AGW is not real.
But as James K points out, proving it real isn’t enough any more, and it may already be too late to do much about it in any case. The planet isn’t going to perish, humans aren’t likely to go by the wayside, but life in one hundred years will not look like it does today. Our political leaders and diplomats can’t wave it away with a stern hand and a look of concern, and unless the universe is vastly different than everything that has been observed the spiritual and religious leaders have no special connections that will save us. We humans need to realize that the planets cares not what becomes of us and wishful thinking and superstition can do nothing to change that.
If we hope to continue our relatively comfortable lives on this planet we had better hope that scientists can save us, much as they have before, but in the mean time we need to do our part in every little way we can because waiting for their help without slowing down the damage is like hoping for the winning lottery ticket while maxing out the credit cards.
The way things are playing out though I would expect the lives of our great-great-great-great-offspring to be brutally different than ours. I hope more for a Starfleet future but fear it will be a lot more Mad Max.
I’m curious as to why the article on climate change says that climate change has no enemies.
It seems to me that there are plenty of enemies. Just look at one of Phil Plait’s posts when he writes about climate change.
Reading the article is rather disheartening.
I very much would like to switch to a hybrid car, have a house with a crap load of solar panals to reduce my electric bills, have solar water heating, ect.
But all of that is beyond my finacial means.
As for what the nation might do, I think it’s time for more agressive strides into the alternatives.
There are plenty of answers out there. No single answer can give a solution, of course, but if all efforts are combined, then we have a chance.
I for one hope for pursuit of the LFTR design of reactor for future power generation. Seems a logical step to reduce CO2 emissions.