Getting the Crap Scared Out of Me by Gwynne Dyer (Again)
Gwynne Dyer is the guy whose PBS documentary series War is one of the scarier things I’ve ever seen on my bright-and-noisy-babble dispenser. Now he’s at it again, this time looking at the likely impacts of climate change. “Climate Wars”, he calls it. And no, he’s not talking hyperbolically.
You can download and listen to the podcast version of the three-part radio show he recently did for the CBC Ideas series, at Best of Ideas. (Apparently they purge that archive really quickly, though, so get it fast.) That’s the version that scared me, as I did my daily three-hour carbon-footprint-maximization exercise. Or you can get Dyer’s book at Amazon: Climate Wars. Or you can read the comments of a blogger with the unlikely name Yappa, who apparently attended a lecture Dyer gave in March, 2007, and did a really good job of summarizing the scarier parts: Climate wars.
I’d like to believe that Dyer is a raving alarmist who has no real idea what he’s talking about. I’d really like to.
I don’t.
February 9th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
I wish we could get wingnuts across the world to listen to these three ‘casts. Better to keep it to the first two, since the David Keith bit – which knarls or NL linked to earlier I believe? a TED talk? implies that we can cheaply geoengineer our way out of carbon fuel enviro disaster. Wait did I use the term disaster? I meant mind boggling cluster fuck catastrophe. That would be the more nuanced, rational and truthful descriptor.
We need to take ownership of the planet and create the technologies that we sell to the third world so they don’t pollute the planet like we did. The other options are too horrific to not try to mitigate. Now.
February 9th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
Naaah, just spread some bio-engineered sulphur based nano particles just below the ozone layer for a few years and see if that works. If not we can work on that moon station we used to see all the time in sci fi flicks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rooyt3ptNco
February 10th, 2009 at 6:33 am
Well, there exists a model of climate change as the result of the decline of numerous empires in ancient times. The Egyptian Old Kingdom, the Maya, the Olmecs are all empires that disappeared possibly due to climate change.
I’m not going to mock the sulfur dioxide thing, that may come down to being our last move. I suppose it’s bad that I’m hoping Krakatoa erupts again?
There is one issue that this post has made me think of. We’re talking about clean energy, reduction of fossil fuels, and the rest, but while those things seems like good steps, at some point the core issue of man made global crisis seems to be population. Population control, as practiced by the Chinese seems horrible, draconian even to us in the west, but is there anyone to sanely educate people to reproduce less?
February 12th, 2009 at 10:50 am
I have heard, haven’t done any personal research, that the more industrialized nations, the US, Japan, Europe etc are at an almost zero growth. Is that because they are more educated or more prosperous, greedy (less kids = more money for toys), I don’t know. But I think you are right.
February 13th, 2009 at 5:56 am
I came across this piece on the BBC this morning:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7886646.stm