Guest post by Dennis Ray Wingo
First I want to say thanks to Anthony for providing this forum for the discussion of climate in a different sense, that is to focus on Durban and what this conference means from the wider perspective of the direction of our global civilization.
When I was young and beginning in the world of technology I complained to my mentor, my company’s regional manager, about a bad performance review delivered to me by a boss who I and he thought was incompetent. His response was to say that “a performance review can be used as a tool or as a bludgeon”. The same thing is true about CO2 and its role on the global stage as providing a tool whereby the technocrats of the UN and its NGO’s seek to reorganize our planetary civilization In keeping with their desired future.
The fear of the negative consequences of the emission of CO2 is being used as a tool to bludgeon the developed world into economic and political suicide. We in the west are told that we must commit this suicide because we must commit to a “Fair and equitable allocation of the atmospheric space, taking into account the criteria of historic climate debt and population;” [bullet 33g of the FCCC/AWGLCA/2011/CRP.39 document]. We are told that the only just and equitable way to do this is to transfer large sums of money to the Non-Annex 1 world and that we must have peak CO2 emissions in Annex 1 (western civilization) immediately [bullet 33d, bullet 32].
There are two critical assumptions that underpin the entire Durban conference as well as previous efforts; the first assumption is that we live in a limited world and that this wealth transfer and the immediate cessation of CO2 emissions is the only possible path toward a “sustainable” future. The second is that technology cannot solve the problem but politics can. What are these assumptions built upon and are they valid? Is this the only path forward? Are we destined to leave our global posterity in a state of perpetual semi-poverty? Human nature rebels against this doom and gloom view of the future, and with good reason.
The Assumptions
I do not wish to seem overdramatic, but I can only conclude from the information that is available to me as Secretary-General, that the Members of the United Nations have perhaps ten years left in which to subordinate their ancient quarrels and launch a global partnership to curb the arms race, to improve the human environment, to defuse the population explosion, and to supply the required momentum to development efforts. If such a global partnership is not forged within the next decade, then I very much fear that the problems that I have mentioned will have reached staggering proportions that they will be beyond our capacity to control.
Who said this? This statement could have very well have been the preamble to the Durban conference but it actually was uttered by UN Secretary General U Thant in 1969 and is included as the introduction to the book, Limits to Growth. The book “Limits to Growth” (LTG) is the touchstone of the environmental movement as well as the ultimate source of the two underpinning assumptions of the Durban conference.
The Limited Earth
The first assumption that the Earth is all we have and that our resources are limited to only what we have here. This is a patently false assumption. In 2005 I was invited to contribute a chapter to a book on “Spacepower Theory” which was commissioned by the defense department as an extension of Clauswitz’s classic “Landpower Theory”, Alfred Mahan’s “Seapower Theory”, and General Billy Mitchell’s “Airpower Theory”. In my chapter on the “Economic Development of the Solar System as the Heart of a Spacepower Theory”, a word was coined and defined.
“geocentric” is defined as a mindset that sees spacepower and its application as focused primarily on actions, actors, and influences on earthly powers, the earth itself, and its nearby orbital environs. (available online at the NDU press here)
The underpinning assumption that the Earth and its resources constitutes all the wealth that exists for humans to access and use is by definition a geocentric mindset and has been falsified by the last three decades of NASA, ESA, and other nations scientific probes sent to the Moon and beyond. Just in the last few years we have discovered billions of tons of water on the Moon to support propulsion, trillions of tons of aluminum, titanium, iron, Uranium, thorium and other rare Earth metals along with Platinum Group Metals, Cobalt, nickel and iron derived from asteroid impacts. In the asteroid belt are untold riches of water, metals and other resources yet to be identified. Just a single small metal asteroid, 3554 Amun, has tens of trillions of dollars worth of metals, and an asteroid of the same type, 216 Cleopatra, has a billion trillion times more resources of the same type. We now know that Mars has extensive water resources and the two rovers Spirit and Opportunity, found in just a few kilometers of driving, enough metallic asteroid fragments to kick start industry on Mars. It is absurd to think that the geocentric mindset of LTG and today in Durban is correct.
No Faith In Technology
The supposed inability of technology to solve our current problems is the other key assumption of LTG and today in Durban. To anyone who understands history and technology this is absurd but here is what the authors of LTG say about technology;
Applying technology to the natural pressures that the environment exerts against any growth process has been so successful in the past that a whole culture has evolved around the principle of fighting against limits rather than learning to live with them. This culture has been reinforced by the apparent immensity of the earth and its resources and by the relative smallness of man and his activities….
(page 156, Limits to Growth)
… We have felt it necessary to dwell so long on an analysis of technology here because we have found that technological optimism is the most common and the most dangerous reaction to our findings from the world model. Technology can relieve the symptoms of a problem without affecting the underlying causes. Faith in technology as the ultimate solution to all fundamental problems can thus divert our attention from the most fundamental problem – the problem of growth in a finite system – and prevent us from taking effective action to solve it.
(Page 159, LTG)
If you think that this thought pattern is one of the 1970’s, here is what Al Gore said in his book, Earth in the Balance in 1992:
It is important, however, to remember that there is a great danger in seeing technology alone as the answer to the environmental crisis. In fact, the idea that new technology is the solution to all our problems is a central part of the faulty way of thinking that created the crisis in the first place.
Unless we come to a better understanding of both the potential and the danger of technology, the addition of more technological power simply ensures further degradation of the environment, and no matter what new technologies we discover, no matter how cleverly and efficiently we manage to get them into the hands of people throughout the world, the underlying crisis will worsen unless, at the same time, we redefine our relationship to the environment, stabilize human population, and use every possible means to bring the earth back into balance.
(Page 328, Earth in the Balance)
Technology and technological development, in the form of the industrial revolution (the faulty way of thinking according to Gore), has done more to lift mankind out of poverty than all of the political systems tried in the entire one hundred and seventy thousand year history of our species put together. It is amazing that this neo Luddite attitude could exist today, but it does, and as an example of how it influences the Durban conference, only 15% of the money from their massive wealth transfer would be applied to developing technology. That is less than their administrative overhead! At the end of the day, this a key divergence between the NGO’s and technocrats of the UN and those of us who see another way, one rooted in finding solutions to the problems that confront us today.
Developing an Alternative
Let us, for the sake of the hypothetical and to put us on the same page as the delegates in Durban, let us grant the following:
- The increase in CO2 and other IR absorbing gasses in the atmosphere are bad and we must do something about it or suffer the secular apocalypse.
- We apply the minimum financial resources of the $100 billion per year as set forth in Durban to the problem.
Let us set as the requirements the following as well:
- Whatever solution is found, it must in the end result in a more prosperous world for all mankind.
- Whatever solution is found, it must also preserve individual liberty and provide opportunity for the further advance of mankind.
Unfortunately the requirements of brevity in this forum preclude an advanced treatment of this but lets lay the groundwork and if the reader wants more it can be provided in the future.
Energy
The first area to attack is energy. At the end of the day, energy is the key to the future. Just think that if a megawatt of electrical power was as inexpensive as a kilowatt is today, how many things would be different. A trash compactor could atomize your trash and separate it into its basic constituents for recycling. You could easily create your own hydrogen at home for your fuel cell car. Mining on the Earth could extract metals from base rock with oxygen as the waste product.
Half of the $100 billion per year would be spent on a crash program to develop various fusion technologies, including advanced forms of the National Ignition Facility, Polywell Fusion, Thorium fission, and the “traditional” ITER type Tokomak fusion. Applying this much money to these energy technologies would do far more than all of the political world shaping of the wealth transfer of Durban. Providing advanced energy sources would do far more than solar panels or wind turbines to power a prosperous civilization. Both solar and wind are inherently low energy multiple technologies, meaning that the energy that you get out of either of these is only low multiples of the energy that it takes the make, install, and maintain them.
If we put the proper amount of resources into these energy technologies, then we would “solve” the CO2 problem as a side benefit and we could build a world energy grid that would do more than all the antipoverty programs in place today put together to improve life on Earth. In researching the history of the industrial revolution, human lifespan has been directly proportional to the amount of inexpensive energy available to us. human lifespans in the west went from 35 years of age in the year 1700 to almost 50 years of age at the peak of the age of coal in 1900. Today at the peak of the oil age that number has climbed to almost 80 years in Annex 1 countries. It is also in the advanced energy countries where population growth has dropped to replacement or even below. There is a direct correlation between wealth and population and it is far more fun to make everyone wealthy than to make everyone suffer in poverty as would be the ultimate result of Durban.
Space Resource Development
In just the past few years the Lunar Recon Orbiter, the LCROSS, and other missions have made a very preliminary map of the resources available on the surface of the Moon. It is inevitable that there are upside surprises waiting us there. Despite the problems of NASA in getting us back to the Moon, to the Moon is our first destination. Let us apply the other $50 billion a year to an effort to begin the industrialization of the Moon. In inflation adjusted terms, this is still only 40% of the budget spent per year at the peak of the Apollo program. If it is that important, then we can increase that budget to the full $100 billion a year (we are talking about building a sustainable global civilization) on a multi-pronged effort in this area.
This would not just be a NASA effort or a NASA, ESA, JAXA effort but an effort that would provide the means whereby private enterprise could contribute through their own efforts and funds. Tax relief, prizes, and other incentives. We begin with the industrialization of the Moon and the construction of a transportation infrastructure to allow humans to easily move about in the inner solar system. The resources of the Moon enable this. We move forward to build infrastructure in geosynch orbit that are many times larger than today, to enable communications and remote sensing infrastructure that would fundamentally transform our global society for the better.
These are not fantasies, these are not science fiction ideas, they are 100% doable today. The problem has been that the financial support has not been there, even considering the $18 billion dollar a year NASA. NASA is not designed to lead the economic development of the solar system, nor should it be, this is something that the American people and our fellows in western civilization are uniquely qualified to do. Dr. John Marburger, the head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Bush administration had a marvelous speech on this subject at the Goddard symposium in 2006. In it he said:
The ultimate goal is not to impress others, or merely to explore our planetary system, but to use accessible space for the benefit of humankind. It is a goal that is not confined to a decade or a century. Nor is it confined to a single nearby destination, or to a fleeting dash to plant a flag. The idea is to begin preparing now for a future in which the material trapped in the Sun’s vicinity is available for incorporation into our way of life.
This is the alternative to the Durban failure that should be investigated and I submit that if we did this, our future would be far better in the year 2100 than even the most optimistic scenarios developed in any of these conferences that focus on how to split the existing pie up in a way that supports their political proclivities. We want to build a far bigger pie. Today the average welfare recipient in the United States lives a life style that Augustus Caesar or the greatest emperor of old China would think of as magic. Our goal should be to create a world in the year 2100 where the poor live a lifestyle that George Soros would envy.
Beyond Artificial Limits
For those of us who work in the space business and who develop new architectures for lunar development and beyond it seems absurd that these false assumptions should underpin serious global deliberations at crafting a better future for the citizens of our planetary civilization. This at the end of the day is my greatest objection to the role that climate scientists play in the arena of solutions to the “CO2 problem”. Whether or not you believe that CO2 is the secular apocalypse, one thing is certain, the people that are trained in the arcane science of climate proxies are inadequate in training and incompetent in execution of something as large as architecting a future for our civilization. We must open up the boundaries of the discussion to include energy development on the Earth and resource development off planet as serious and viable alternatives to plans such as the failed ones being drawn up in places like Durban.
There is a future out there, a glorious one, that while it may not solve all of our problems, it will certainly get us beyond these artificial limits to growth.
I was part of the ITER tokamak fusion project central team for 10 years, 1987-1997. Some day such magnetic fusion or inertial fusion like NIF will work, but I don’t know if it is 30 years or 300 years because of the physics and material science challenges. One of the few things governments should do is fund the long-term R&D that is beyond the time horizon of private industry.
On the other hand, so-called cold fusion is delusional. Sorry, bizarre claims require extraordinary proof and the cold fusion crowd has nada.
Wonderful analysis Dennis! I always enjoy your comments on other science and new-space blogs. It’s great to see you apply your clear thinking to counter the insane proposals the UN is making.
Please keep writing!
The most sustainable energy source that actually works today is nuclear fission with recycle of used fuel. 95% of the used fuel is recyclable uranium and transuranic elements. The zirconium cladding can be recycled as well. Nuclear provides more energy for a given disruption of land, water, and stuff out of the ground. So, any real environmentalist who knows her stuff will support it.
The fantasy that we could somehow move all 6 billion of us to another planet or the moon is too absurd to contemplate, and not worth a moment of serious consideration. There may be habitable planets in the Universe, but we’re a LONG way from being able to move there!
It is an absolute fact that we live on a planet with limited resources. Eventually we will use all the ancient sunlight (oil), and as this process unfolds, the costs will increase. (All the cheap oil is now gone, and we’re left trying to find the expensive stuff in deep water and elsewhere.) There are other costs as well. Ecological systems which support all life are being impaired as we pollute our atmosphere and our water. Fixing these problems will have a huge price tag and the longer we put off developing alternative energy sources, and more sustainable land use practices, the greater the cost we will be forced to pay.
This is not a political or ideological issue. It is simply physics and mathematics.
Hugh Pepper says:
December 11, 2011 at 9:03 am
“(All the cheap oil is now gone, and we’re left trying to find the expensive stuff in deep water and elsewhere.) There are other costs as well. Ecological systems which support all life are being impaired as we pollute our atmosphere and our water. Fixing these problems will have a huge price tag and the longer we put off developing alternative energy sources, and more sustainable land use practices, the greater the cost we will be forced to pay. ”
Yes, but when our capital stock grows faster than these costs it will be relatively cheaper to solve them later. You mentioned mathematics and physics; now learn about economics.
Dennis Ray Wingo:
Thankyou for your informative article. I read it with interest.
I agree your basic premise that a Malthusian view of human development is false (and I have repeatedly explained why including on WUWT).
However, it is not necessary to expand outwards from the Earth to maintain resource supplies. Most of the Earth is covered in water and we are only starting to obtain the resources beneath the seas (e.g. off-shore oil extraction).
I strongly agree with you that we need to enable exploration for resources and development of technologies which enable acquisition of new-found resources. But it is an error to prescribe which new finds should be developed: economics most effectively make the determination for us. So, in my opinion, it is an error to assert that the correct new source of resources is extraterrestrial before the costs are determined.
Indeed, this is the same error that has been made with energy supply which – as you rightly say – is the determinant of the possible conduct of every human activity; e.g. we are being burdened with extraordinary costs of useless windfarms when the money wasted on them could be spent on power stations.
All-in-all, I think your article is a useful and timely reminder that human development is NOT constrained by limited resources similar to a bacterium’s development in a Petri dish. Those thinking such limits exist need to study economics 101 to discover why they are so very mistaken.
Again, thankyou.
Richard
Smoking Frog says:
December 11, 2011 at 6:15 am
“…Life expectancy at later ages has improved since the 19th century, but not nearly by as much.
Example: For American white males: life expectancy at birth for those born in 2004 is 75.7 years, while life expectancy at age 60 for those born in 1850 was 15.6 years; i.e., the average 60-year old white male born in 1850 lived to be 75.6 years old.”
Yes, but that was for those that made it that far. And the average 60 year old was not the average. Thanks for the link by the way.
While my friend Dennis Wingo and I have similar views on space development, I believe he is factually incorrect on both the descriptions of the problems and what Durban et al are about,
To single out climate science, (or evolution science, for that matter) for derision is silly: most climate science in this country for decades has been done either by or for NASA, the lead climate agency (NOAA does weather, NASA does climate), and the only ones who think they are incompetent are those who support oil industry and Fox False ‘News’ propaganda. NASA – and Durban – are not about ‘limits to growth’; and equating them is falsity. It is, simply stated, that there are problems with unlimited growth of carbon emissions in our biosphere that further drives increase in another potent greenhouse ‘gas’, water vapor; and these need to be recognized and their effects mitigated. The solution will involve a mix of better technological solutions and political will. To imply that ‘limits to growth’ and ‘transfer from wealth to poor’ nations are the main objects of the problem are ludicrous.
As a strong proponent of expanding humanity, and humanity’s economy, into space, I still must also point out that our problem this century – a problem that is already occurring, right now – will never have its cheapest, most economical, most cost-effective solution in space; not in this century. It will almost always be cheaper- and quicker – to get more efficient on Earth, to recycle more materials, to capture more wasted energy, etc.
The climate problem is real; the solutions are within our grasp -if we discuss and act intelligently. I honestly don’t feel this post fits into that description.
Dennis Ray Wingo:
I love your optimism. Your writings have been honest and refreshing.
Personally, I think hot fusion will be a perpetual research project. It will produce nothing, except for pushing material design and research to it’s limits. That is reason enough to continue, but as a near future energy supply… not a chance in hell.
As far as space mining, I’ll believe it when they move our space station to a moon orbit. The reality seems to be that despite increasing technology, our space capability seems to be declining. Maybe this will turn around, but with all the actions contemplated for weather (climate) control, I just don’t see the required investment being available, in the resultant economy.
I hope you are right and I am totally wrong. GK
Dave Huntsman;
To imply that ‘limits to growth’ and ‘transfer from wealth to poor’ nations are the main objects of the problem are ludicrous. >>>
Did you fail to understand the draft language that came out of Durban? And Copenhagen? Or are you just lying?
You have put words on what I have always felt. Real science and engineering is what counts. Can I translate this to Swedish and put it on my blog quoting the source? Its a very good description of what is possible and what should be the focus, Cheap reliable energy. Why can’t politician understand that?
Yes
More later.
Damn disappearing posts.
What pathetic B.S. Space mining makes life on Mars look realistic. Air cargo to the space station is a bargain compared to the moon and beyond. How many dollars per pound is that?
Hugh Pepper;
Ecological systems which support all life are being impaired as we pollute our atmosphere and our water. Fixing these problems will have a huge price tag and the longer we put off developing alternative energy sources, and more sustainable land use practices, the greater the cost we will be forced to pay. >>>
What is being “impaired”? Agricultural production is higher than it has ever been, both in terms of area cultivated and in terms of production per square kilometer. Our air is the cleanest it has been in decades, the days of smog alerts several times per week in major cities are so far behind us that one liners like “I shot an arrow into the sky… and it stuck there” don’t even make sense to today’s youth. Plagues caused by water borne or food borne diseases are so far behind us that today’s youth aren’t sure what a plague actually is, and they think “quarantine” is something to do with computer viruses, they have no idea it used to mean entire cities. Our ecological systems have NEVER been as healthy as they are today. We have the lowest mortality rate at birth in human history. We have the longest life span in human history. How in hell did we achieve these things of the ecological systems upon which we depend are “imparied”? The fact is they are healthier than they ever have been.
Thanks Dennis for the challenge and perspective.
There also appears promise for Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) as evidenced by internal 2009 and 2011 NASA evaluations pried out by FOIA.
Low Energy Nuclear Reactions An Energetics Revolution for ALL of NASA’s Missions
and A Solution to Climate Change and the Economic Meltdown J. M. Zawodny – August 12, 2009 NASA
NASA and LENRDennis M. Bushnell, Chief Scientist, NASA Langley Research Center 2009
Overview of Low Energy Nuclear Reactions (LENR) as Implemented by Andrea Rossi and Francesca Piantelli 2011 LENR Workshop at GRC, September 22, 2011 Michael A. Nelson, MSFC Low Energy Nuclear Reaction (LENR) Space, Applications Lead (ER22) NASA-MSFC
Low Energy Nuclear Reactions – Is there better way to do nuclear power?
Dr. Joseph M. Zawodny, NASA Langley Research Center 2011
Posted at NewEnergyTimes.com with links at: http://www.mail-archive.com/vortex-l%40eskimo.com/msg58028.html
David Stockwell reviews LENR news at Niche Modeling.
Solar liquid fuels also have enormous potential
High Temperature Solar in Low Carbon Hydrogen 2011 Sustainable Mobility Seminar: Hydrogen Panel, Dr. Alan Weimer, University of Colorado, Boulder
For those commissioned to pursue this, their promise is: ‘Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.’ Jer 33:3
Hey, I can post–maybe–is this site overloaded or something?
And Dave Huntsman is even more ridiculous. NASA is incompetent all around All of their deadly mishaps were avoidable with competent management. Even in their glory days–which may never be repeated–they quarantined the first moon walkers. Those deadly moon microbes were best left behind. But moon microbes are a more realistic fear than Global Warming. DH doesn’t have a kindergarten understanding of the science. NASA’s James Hansen is the most deluded quack that ever worked for NASA, but he’s still there, and winning. Infiltrating the clockwork and rotting its innards.
DH, there is not a competent scientist on the planet who worries about CAGW. Never was. NASA’s Hansen goes on about dangerous sea level rise, when we all know the rate has decreased from the last decade to this one. And even if the impossible occurred, and all the ice melted in the next half century, it would not increase population density any more than current population growth suggests. These are KNOWN extrapolations as opposed to hypothetical, worst case scenarios. You and your ilk are as far removed from reality as is this Wingo poster.
No common sense whatever. –AGF
Hugh Pepper;
While I’m in rant mode, let me take you to task on the stupidity of “alternative” energy sources. There ARE no “alternative” energy sources. Do you know what solar and wind power actually are?
They are OBSOLETE energy sources.
There was a time when ships crossed the ocean powered only by the wind. People died before they got to their destination, grain spoiled, goods rotted. Windmills once powered food processing, which was capable of little more than grinding grain. Solar power was used extensively for heating homes. In other words, anywhere it wasn’t already warm enough, was pretty much uninhabitable.
The “damage” we’ve done to the ecosystem is as entirely made up as is the notion that the miniscule warming that can theoretically be caused by CO2 is of any serious concern and more than likely benefical. In order to solve problems that do not exist we are being told to develop “alternative energy sources”.
Alternative energy sources failed us. They are obsolete approaches that failed to provide the staggering gains we have made in quality and assurance of life over the last two centuries. They aren’t “alternatives” in any way shape or form. They are obsolete, and returning to them makes no more sense than plowing a field with oxen or only cooking as much food as can be eaten in a day for fear than any longer it will spoil. Improving the efficiency with which we capture energy from wind and solar makes an obsolete technology just a bit less obsolete. It is as ridiculous as coming up with a candle that burns twice as bright for twice as long as “regular” candles and labelling it an “alternative” to light bulbs.
Personally, I think hot fusion will be a perpetual research project. It will produce nothing, except for pushing material design and research to it’s limits. That is reason enough to continue, but as a near future energy supply… not a chance in hell.
The problem with fusion development of all types is that the government gives enough money to keep the lights on but little money to make real progress. Former NASA administrator Mike Griffin said that it takes $8 billion a year just to keep the lights on and salaries paid at the centers. So if you are anti-technology and want to kill something you don’t try to really kill it outright as the supporters will block you. What you do is to give enough money to keep all the lights on and salaries paid but not enough to do what the agency was brought into being to do.
To address the issue of shifting the pork from AGW to Space as not good, I do tend to agree but the parameters of the Durban argument as has been the AGW argument for years is that the ONLY path to climate salvation is to transfer large sums of money to the developing countries while killing our own economies in the process. If you doubt this read the linked document for the original Durban draft.
I did not go into this in detail but what you can do is two things. The first is tax relief. We got a bill through the house of representatives in the year 2000 (Newt Gingrich was in on some of the earlier planning for this bill), called Zero G Zero Tax. What this bill would have done is to remove all corporate taxation from enterprises who made new products in space. The exceptions would be existing enterprises like launch vehicles, and communications/remote sensing satellites. A later version would have removed taxation from the capital gains for investment in these enterprises. The Joint Taxation Committee scored the bill at $10 billion in lost revenue using the static scoring method. Since there were NO companies doing this when the bill originally passed the house, we calculated, based on the JTC scoring, that it would generate over $100 billion per year in GDP growth by the end of that ten year period. It would actually lead to a profit for the treasury as the increased economic activity would generate something like $28 billion in federal revenues from the jobs created. This is the problem with static scoring and is something that should be changed in the House rules. This would result in no net expenditure of federal funds.
The second is prizes. Instead of doing the typical government contracting gig you put up multiple prized for the desired economic activity. For example, you provide a $15 billion dollar prize for the first company to place humans on the Moon and keep them alive there for one year (and return them safely of course).
You provide a second prize of $20 billion dollars to the first organization that brings 100 kg of Platinum Group metals back to the Earth, derived from extraterrestrial sources, whether from the moon or the asteroids. There could be milestones along the way that generate incremental portions of the prize money, much as the National Railroad did in the Pacific Railway Act of 1862, that built the first railroad across the continental United States.
These things would generate a great deal of economic activity and if they were unsuccessful, no pay out. There are ways of doing this that will work and will not burden the taxpayers.
Think Different About Space
the lead climate agency (NOAA does weather, NASA does climate), and the only ones who think they are incompetent are those who support oil industry
Dave, please take me kindly but you simply misread what I said. Here it is…
”. Whether or not you believe that CO2 is the secular apocalypse, one thing is certain, the people that are trained in the arcane science of climate proxies are inadequate in training and incompetent in execution of something as large as architecting a future for our civilization.
Are you seriously going to tell me that the climate science community has any training or competence in the area of systems of systems engineering as Admiral Steidle called it? Would you go the next step and even think that the people who are at Durban have such training and competence? The obvious answer is that they don’t, and the work product that has come out of these conferences are a testimony to this incompetence. Why would you EVER ask Mike Mann, Tom Wigley, Phil Jones, or Keith Biffra about mitigation strategies for AGW? No matter what their training or competence is in climate proxy reconstruction, they have no business even being asked about what to do about it. This is why in my ground rules I simply agreed with those who think that CO2 is bad, to eliminate that part of the argument. Far too many people are wrapped up in that one while ignorning the incredible travesty of the incompetent solutions sets proposed by these conferences.
One thing that has really struck me as an engineer/physicist in doing lunar and Mars infrastructure studies is that the industrial development of these places are in microcosm a reflection of what we need to do here on the earth in a post hydrocarbon based civilization. Since there is no oil on the Moon and presumably none on Mars (unless you believe in the theory of primordial hydrocarbon emplacement rather than fossil) then by definition building a society or developing industrial infrastructure there will be by definition something of a role model for us Earthlings.
The technologies developed “up there” will have a massive and positive feedback loop here as has been laid out in books by my good friend Robert Zubrin.
So Dave, don’t get hung up on your own knee jerk reaction when you see the word incompetent applied to climate scientist without looking at the context. I am quite willing to cede that I am incompetent as a surgeon, but I am pretty darn good in the space arena due to training and experience.
The fantasy that we could somehow move all 6 billion of us to another planet or the moon is too absurd to contemplate, and not worth a moment of serious consideration. There may be habitable planets in the Universe, but we’re a LONG way from being able to move there!
Hough
Why create a strawman to knock down when there is none? No one is proposing what you have stated above. What we in the space community do propose is that the resources of our solar system are so much greater than what is on our little mudball that to eliminate this from consideration is incompetent.
With the proper technical support, both the Moon, Mars, and even free space is habitable for humans. Using your logic Antarctica is uninhabitable, though the aggregate population of that continent is in the thousands at the current time. Habitability is a function of technology. Even with that said, I am not proposing that significant populations move off the Earth, at least not any time in the near future. What our community is proposing is that, through the use of technology and through both human and robotic means, we incorporate the riches of our solar system into our terrestrial economy.
An FYI, for the Zero G Zero Tax Legislation
http://thomas.loc.gov/home/gpoxmlc109/h1024_ih.xml
To choose not to explore is to choose an evolutionary dead-end.
Dennis Ray Wingo:
Hey, if your running for office – You got my vote!
If you’re not, then you must have an alternative plan. In which case I must say:
“Who is John Galt?” GK
Hugh Pepper says:
December 11, 2011 at 9:03 am
Hugh, I mean no offense, but as I read your comment I could not help but wonder what Fred Flintstone told Barney Rubble when “Barn” showed up with the first biface tool setting off the Acheulian tool age 1.8 million years ago. And it took about that long before we figured out how to cook metals out of rocks.
Ultimately you are correct in one regard, this is Spaceship Earth, what is here is here. What isn’t is what’s “out there”, which is one of the many things Wingo was on about. Which brings me to:
“Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, and today is a gift; that’s why they call it the present.” Eleanor Roosevelt.
Yes, there is a finite amount of oil. Yes, technology gone mainstream since at lest 2003 has now extended into the very source rocks, dramatically extending reserves. This, of course, being either a bad thing or a good thing. Depending upon whether or not you really comprehend “when” we live.
If you are unfamiliar with the works of one of the pioneers of paleoclimatology, allow me to introduce Wallace Broecker, perhaps describable more as a warmist today. A seminal paper by Broecker may be found here http://www.personal.kent.edu/~jortiz/paleoceanography/broecker.pdf
Musings along this line of inquiry are updated in http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/30/the-antithesis/
If we are to appreciate the application of the Precautionary Principle correctly then we must also consider that we may very well be close to the end of the present extreme interglacial. Given that the ends of the previous extreme interglacials contain excursions far in excess of what has been predicted from AGW, and that even Broecker realized before the end of the last century that CO2 may ameliorate what he suggested would be a dramatic drop into the next ice age, you just might have a few more variables to integrate into your model.
Wingo quite reasonably obviates the “Spaceship Earth” paradigm by alluding to the ever increasing energy density required to make it to the next level.
The ultimate question here, as seems to be always the case, is actually rather simple. What advantage biface tools over monoedge tools? That one took about 1.8 million years to answer…..
Dennis Ray Wingo
Excellent post! Totally agree with your perspective, thank you for articulating it so well.
“we are talking about building a sustainable global civilization”
Tribalism > Nationalism > Globalization
It’s just a matter of time and technology.
I just hope the UN isn’t around to see it.
I always laugh when progressives think they’re progressive.