Our “way of life” is going to change. Ain’t no avoiding change. Whether it is an “end to civilization as we know it” or a change we can live with may well depend on what we do over the next 2 decades, maybe less. Right now we are doing nothing at all, and that is the worst possible way to prepare.

Flooding the Australian outback doesn’t help the climate stay the same. It is an adaptation which, if anything will help it get warmer because the albedo of the flooded land will most certainly be less than the albedo of the outback, which reflects light pretty good. Of course it might resolve the rabbit problem too, but I don’t think the Australians would like their continent to become an Archipelago.

Cheap Access To Space gives us a future, real control of the thermostat and access to resources that make all the metals and fuels mined and pumped on this planet to date, look tiny.

Don’t argue with me on this one. CATS is the closest thing I have to a religion

respectfully
BJ

“You reject something that cuts emissions in half because it doesn’t cut them to zero, even though it also reduces our dependence on imported “fuels.”

There are no magic bullets. Some argue that exact line about nuclear power generation. It will be a combination of technologies which will do it in the end.

But the real answer to climate change may be societal change. If sea levels rise a metre or so over the next century, build seawalls, relocate cities, or find technical solutions over the next ten decades. Perhaps flood the dead sea? Or the Australian outback? Those projects are just as feasible as the space mirrors.

“Greens do not want to say HOW to make this all happen. All we really want is for the market to get an honest feedback on the cost of the use/destruction of the commons.”

The cost could well be the end of our way of life. Most people are not too keen to reduce their standard of living voluntarily. That is why there is so much pressure on Governments to “do something”, far be it from people to voluntarily cut their carbon emissions…

That’s why CATS is important.

Star-Wars-type ideas? You are making fun of the concept of course, but it isn’t fantasy. This is where the Human Species gets out of having a closed environment. That’s what we have now. That’s why we have problems now. It is how human civilization survives instead of falling back and dying in its own waste. Nothing I discussed is difficult science. It doesn’t require breakthroughs. All it needs is the engineering work to support it. No new ideas really… just an end to having only a single world to live in and on.

That it may not happen is true enough…. but it is not a fantasy like “the force” and lightsabers and all manner of other fantastic inventions of the series. It is not a means of taking war to space, it is a means of bringing peace to earth.

respectfully
BJ

Peter
http://www.kotare.typepad.com/thestrategist

The only thing we haven’tproven is that we can get enough people up there with enough “stuff” to build something, Cheap Access To Space it is not a “Lomborg effect” issue because it is actually a solution that provides for the long term survival of the planet. It is, on current form and owing to human nature, the ONLY such solution that is possible.

Mirrors we understand pretty well. The dynamics of keeping them where we want them is pretty easily understood too.

The better than that solution I prefer is Orbital Power Satellites, which gives you renewable energy as well.

CATS gives the human species a new frontier, new tools to make the planet we live on a lot healthier and resources enough to satisfy our unrelenting population growth for a few years. It also gives some of us the chance to escape the planets gravitation entirely and permanently live in space.

The social problem of unrelenting population growth is simply not tractable in most nations. The minorities find their position frozen, they will ALWAYS be minorities if growth is frozen somehow, and telling parents that they can’t have more than 2 kids is damned hard in a “free” society.

respectfully
BJ

Peter
http://www.kotare.typepad.com/thestrategist

> Oh and geothermal can generate nearly as much CO2 as a gas fired power
> station: http://www.nzgeothermal.org.nz/environmental/emissions.asp

Following the link, one geothermal plant (Ngawha) comes out worse for emissions than a gas-fired station, but still better than a coal or oil plant. The other geothermal plants fare better: the average is a quarter of the emissions compared to a gas-fired plant, with the best (Wairakei and Poihipi Road) producing under a tenth of the grams of CO2 per kWh.

Also on the linked site:
“Atmospheric emissions from geothermal plants average only about 5% of the emissions from equivalent sized fossil fuel power plants”.

However, the mirrors would actually lead to solutions of the climate side of the problem overall, as control of the climate through that means is actually a powerful tool that no species on earth has ever before had. It also would have an incidental benefit. We are unlikely to be able to build them without actually building cheap access to space. Which brings changes we can’t even imagine. Were he to do that I would forgive him every other sin.

I have no belief he will however. Cutting NASA again this year.

Not likely to return Earth Studies to the NASA mission statement either.

respectfully
BJ

You know it won’t really work. You know it defers problems to our children and their children. You reject something that cuts emissions in half because it doesn’t cut them to zero, even though it also reduces our dependence on imported fuels.

… and not a word about conservation, though I regard that as an accidental rather than an intentional omission… I think you have mentioned it in the past at any rate….

But no change welcome…

Greens do not want to say HOW to make this all happen. All we really want is for the market to get an honest feedback on the cost of the use/destruction of the commons. We’re quite happy to accept the results of that method of implementing change, as the invisible hand IS efficient when it can touch all the needful inputs.

Is the ocean an obstacle or a highway?? Is Capitalism a boon or a bane? The difference is the presence of a boat on the one hand or a tax that brings the 50 year from now costs into the present, on the other. Balance the tax with tax relief in other areas. No need to pay more money to government… but make Business today feel the heat of tomorrow. Watch the fuel efficiency numbers go up, ridership on the rails go up, insulation go in, etc, etc, etc.

“as usual” or “the balance we already have” is not one of the possible options. The future won’t permit it. The future CANNOT SUPPORT it.

respectfully
BJ

Peter
http://www.kotare.typepad.com/thestrategist