Fire and Knowledge

We’ve heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.

–Robert Wilensky, speech at a 1996 conference

The universe is not only queerer than we suppose; it is queerer than we can suppose.

–J.B.S. Haldane in Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything (2003), 16.

A nation wearing atomic armor is like a knight whose armor has grown so heavy he is immobilized; he can hardly walk, hardly sit his horse, hardly think, hardly breathe. The H-bomb is an extremely effective deterrent to war, but it has little virtue as a weapon of war, because it would leave the world uninhabitable.

–E. B. White, “Sootfall and Fallout” (1956) in Essays of E.B. White (1977), p. 94

I am left speechless and dumbfounded. I hope this is some kind of political prank. Note this is not the Onion — it’s the Guardian!

US answer to global warming: smoke and giant space mirrors

The US government wants the world’s scientists to develop technology to block sunlight as a last-ditch way to halt global warming, the Guardian has learned. It says research into techniques such as giant mirrors in space or reflective dust pumped into the atmosphere would be “important insurance” against rising emissions, and has lobbied for such a strategy to be recommended by a major UN report on climate change, the first part of which will be published on Friday….

Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit, thousands of tiny, shiny balloons, or microscopic sulphate droplets pumped into the high atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of a volcanic eruption. The IPCC draft said such ideas were “speculative, uncosted and with potential unknown side-effects”.

That is possibly the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. It would be very expensive and who knows what the side effects could be. Maybe we should spend more time reducing our emissions, but no… let’s instead increase our emissions by creating crazy space mirrors. Genius.

The church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far West simultaneously. And each would have been horrified to think it was a different facet of the same thing. But surely they were both intended to accomplish the same thing: the singing, the devotion, the poetry of the churches took a man out of his bleakness for a time, and so did the brothels.

–John Steinbeck, East of Eden (1952), p. 215

Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.

–attributed to Benjamin Franklin (disputed)

Speaking of climate change, I’d recommend watching Al Gore’s documentary An Inconvenient Truth as an introduction to the science of climate change. Yes, there is too much Gore. But he presents the data well and I found him convincing. No, it’s not a definitive argument (it’s video, after all) but it’s a good introduction and only takes an hour and a half of your time.

My wife and I watched it a few nights ago and found it interesting and helpful. This issue hasn’t been too important to me in the past because even if global warming is not true (and that’s unlikely), I still think we should do the steps that people are saying we should do because it is right. But when you see the graphs of the CO2 levels and how they correspond with global temperature, it’s pretty hard to say there isn’t a link. And our CO2 levels are off the historical charts.

(I especially love the part where Gore shows the vehicle emission guidelines for various countries (US is the lowest) and explains why we can’t sell our vehicles in China because our vehicles don’t meet their emission standards!)

I don’t normally recommend videos, but I do recommend watching An Inconvenient Truth if you (1) haven’t seen it, (2) don’t believe climate change is possible, (3) don’t think we have anything to do with climate change, or (4) are not motivated to do anything about it.

Global warming: the final verdict

Excerpt:

Global warming is destined to have a far more destructive and earlier impact than previously estimated, the most authoritative report yet produced on climate change will warn next week.

A draft copy of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, obtained by The Observer, shows the frequency of devastating storms – like the ones that battered Britain last week – will increase dramatically. Sea levels will rise over the century by around half a metre; snow will disappear from all but the highest mountains; deserts will spread; oceans become acidic, leading to the destruction of coral reefs and atolls; and deadly heatwaves will become more prevalent.

The impact will be catastrophic, forcing hundreds of millions of people to flee their devastated homelands, particularly in tropical, low-lying areas, while creating waves of immigrants whose movements will strain the economies of even the most affluent countries.