![Disaster-Recovery-Dilbert[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/disaster-recovery-dilbert1.jpeg?quality=83)
From Scott Adams (creator of the Dilbert comic strip) blog, who seems to have stumbled across an interview with the author of this video we recently highlighted at WUWT. Scott Adams writes:
=================================
Fact Checking: Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters
I was watching Real Time with Bill Maher the other day. He had a professor on the show who said climate change can be fixed by making well-understood adjustments to how farmers raise cattle plus some other fairly ordinary changes. Apparently this is all explained in a documentary called Carbon Nation.
I’m skeptical of any claim so big and contrarian, but it does fit with The Adams Law of Slow-Moving Disasters. Simply stated, my observation is that whenever humanity can see a slow-moving disaster coming, we find a way to avoid it. Let’s run through some examples:
Thomas Malthus famously predicted that the world would run out of food as the population grew. Instead, humans improved their farming technology.
When I was a kid, it was generally assumed that the world would be destroyed by a global nuclear war. The world has been close to nuclear disaster a few times, but so far we’ve avoided all-out nuclear war.
The world was supposed to run out of oil by now, but instead we keep finding new ways to extract it from the ground. The United States has unexpectedly become a net provider of energy.
….
(he continues with more items in the list)
…
In California, predicted ongoing droughts were supposed decimate the state. Instead, it rained.
Can anyone give me an example of a potential global disaster that the general public saw coming, with at least a ten year warning, and it actually happened as predicted?
==============================================================
Full story here: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/fact_checking_adams_law_of_slowmoving_disasters/
WUWT readers surely can find some examples?
h/t to WUWT reader AJ
Rap music. Still here and sounds as good as it ever did.
the Eurozone was widely predicted to be a disaster. As a German banker once remarked – “The Euro is a bad idea who’s time has come!”
I’m skeptical of victory unless Dogbert/”The Deputy of Common Sense” is on board. If he is, then not only am I confident of victory, I am confident the alarmists will be mocked mercilessly.
Disasters, we saw coming and warned about?
Yes, nuclear power plants. Three major disasters in less than 50 years. Each one, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, would not have happened if the warnings NOT to build these things had been heeded.
With more reactors being built, in more countries with less than top-notch technical ability, more nuclear disasters are inevitable.
Future generations, living with radioactive dead zones and horrible radiation effects on living tissue, will roundly curse our generation. And, with excellent reason.
“Mommy, they had plenty of coal and natural gas, so why did they build deadly nuclear power plants? What did I ever do to them?”
We have had much more than ten years warning about the slow-moving disaster outlined below. It is not a “natural” disaster, but it is just as real. We are already seeing its effects in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Spain, etc. With high debt, Obamacare, and the expanded welfare state, we are also beginning to see it in the United States. Yet we who live in democracies around the world have chosen to ignore the warning and dive head-first into it.
“A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship. — Attributed to Alexander Fraser Tytler
1984
Martin A says: April 20, 2013 at 5:32 am “Iraq war.
Huge demonstrations against, so was seen coming. 100,000+ dead.”
Good example, but it fails the 10 years warning criterion.
All mankind’s failures have “failed” the 10 years criterion. As they have been political failures which have a reaction period of the same order of magnitude as the original failure (a political failure). The reaction being a political act, as well.
Strangely, this shows that politics is a good thing, in the long term. It counters all other failures (apparently).
During human history many civilisations have existed that at one point have seemed too powerful to ever vanish, yet they did slowly and utterly. Do we really have reasons to believe that it’s different with us? But it might not be because of the slowly approaching disaster that the general public saw, but rather the slowly approaching combined effects of the smaller events that separately are no disasters.
“Dilbert [handing thick binder of info. to Dogbert]: Here’s the full script of the rest of your life. My supercomputer model predicted it.
Dogbert: Well, according to this I’ll be kidnapped by evil squirrels and forced to work in their nut mines.
Dilbert: They get me too.
Dogbert: I didn’t know that evil squirrels had nut mines.
Dilbert: It’s probably too late to do anything about it.”
[The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams at 163 (1996)]
***********************************************
BTW — as of about 10 minutes ago, my 11:44 post was STILL IN MODERATION. @ur momisugly_@ur momisugly
===========================================================================
I remember reading somewhere that we didn’t know (whether “at the time” or “in time”, I don’t recall) that the Passenger Pigeon required huge numbers to reproduce.
But I also remember some first had accounts from people who witnessed them in action.
One guy spoke of them feeding in a farmer’s field. They looked like a dark cloud rolling over his crop as the ones at the rear ran out of food and flew ahead of the others where there was still food.
Another account was of them roosting in an oak tree. They would just pile up on top of each other. Sometimes there were so many on a branch that it broke. The next morning there was 2 to 3 feet of bird dung under the tree. (I wouldn’t want to have to shovel that out of my driveway!)
If the things weren’t extinct, we may want them to be.
“Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted. That men do not learn very much from the lessons of history is the most important of all the lessons history has to teach.”
– Aldous Huxley
Adams expressly labels the Dilbert Blog as non-serious and not to be taken out of context. Maybe he means this post, maybe he’s just being provocative, but his disclaimer ought to have been preserved.
“Adams expressly labels the Dilbert Blog as non-serious …” [jdgalt]
Adams? SERIOUS? [$:)]#
Well, in case you are correct, CORRECTION (in obscure place on next-to-the-last page of paper):
Adams expressly labels the Dilbert Blog as non-serious and not to be taken out of context. We apologize for the mistake. The Editors.
CORRECTION TO THE CORRECTION POST:
“Adams? SERIOUS?” should read: “Adams? ‘Non-serious’? SERIOUSLY?”
(wow, “serious” is starting to look like a word I’ve never seen before! Try it: serious, serious, serious, serious, serious — starting to look like the name for a new planet or something) %/)
Global Warming is an example of a disaster that Mankind did not have to dodge as it never was real or imminent. Communism is an on-going disaster in a handful of Countries.
Epidemic obesity.
Hurricane Katrina was not a global disaster but it was well known that New Orleans was highly vulnerable and that its levy system was inadequate. And it was also known that the people in charge of the levies and all other aspects of preparedness were both corrupt and incompetent.
Stupidly we have rebuilt New Orleans at huge expense and we probably have not done enough to address the possibility that there will be a repeat of Katrina. Arguably …. it is not possible to do enough to prevent a repeat. It is not particularlty smart to build a city below sea level in a subsidence area, flanked by swamps and the country’s largest river.
This admittedly was not a global disaster but it is a pretty good example of human’s failing to address a known long-term prediction of disaster.
richardscourtney: look it up. It’s not a secret.. Then by all means explain why it was /not/ a problem — if possible without sounding like the kind of person who rejects /any/ evidence that human activity can /ever/ have a negative effect on our surroundings, on principle. After all, healthy scepticism ceases to be scepticism when it is not accompanied by thought. Informed scepticism is not the same as blind cynicism; universally applied, cynicism is merely a faith-based position with nothing to recommend it.
Public education was predicted to become a swollen, incompetent bureaucracy. It did.
Depending on how much calamity you require to reach “global disaster”, the issue is is like the anthropic principle. If we really had one, we wouldn’t be here discussing it.
I wish that Adams had been more skeptical in the last chapter of his book, Dilbert future. It’s got some bizarre stuff in there.
You would think we would learn, especially after reading “Silent Spring” The Population Bomb” and every other book predicting global disaster, that any problem caused by technology can be solved by technology.
The global financial and economic collapse that started in 2008 had been predicted for decades, but it still happened, and it’s getting worse.
Usually the person who correctly perceives something coming is rarely listened to!
Yes, Mark. The global financial and economic train wreck was predicted decades in advance by sensible people. The maiden is tied to the tracks. The train’s looming closer and closer. Sadly, no “hero” is able to save her, the time is too short, now.
And, sadly, much like the absurd “climate scientists” with their absurd computer (science) models predicting the end of the world as we know it, so the absurd “economic scientists” with their own models, assure us no train’s looming; it’s all a silly illusion: nothing to see here. …sigh….
….Lady in Red