apocalypse or not?
Aug. 18th, 2012 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormsewerAnother article pointing out that a great many of the predicted apocalypses over the last few decades have been overblown at best.
I mean, despite the fact that he's cherry-picked his quotes and data to support his views, he's basically right in pointing out that there's been a lot of crying wolf by so-called experts in the last few decades. But that doesn't mean there aren't wolves out there. Many societies have collapsed under self-wrought ecological disasters in the past. And if we happen to have the hubris to think that we're better than that, that it could never happen to us, well... we'd be far from the first to think that way and be dead wrong.
It's hard to know how to respond to all this. Everyone has an agenda, and it's so hard to sort out the bias from the unfiltered facts. Even if you or I had the expertise to sort through all the raw data and try to draw conclusions from it, we still don't know how good that data is, and we'd still have to be cautious about extrapolating current trends into the future.
I suppose ideally I'd try to hedge. Do what I can to be ready for problems, while still living a life such that I won't feel it a waste if it doesn't hit the fan. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, as they say.
The fact is that temperatures are still marching up, as the pH of the ocean marches down, and there is plenty of reason to believe this trend will continue for the forseeable future. The fact is that oil prices are high and look to continue to get higher, as it seems that cheaply obtainable oil is essentially gone. A lot of alternatives are ramping up, but converting the energy infrastructure to new energy sources isn't going to happen quickly or cheaply. I'm not sure we can trust The Market in all its short-sighted glory to solve this problem for us. We need to be facing these issues, not ignoring them and hoping they'll go away or that someone else will solve them.
I mean, despite the fact that he's cherry-picked his quotes and data to support his views, he's basically right in pointing out that there's been a lot of crying wolf by so-called experts in the last few decades. But that doesn't mean there aren't wolves out there. Many societies have collapsed under self-wrought ecological disasters in the past. And if we happen to have the hubris to think that we're better than that, that it could never happen to us, well... we'd be far from the first to think that way and be dead wrong.
It's hard to know how to respond to all this. Everyone has an agenda, and it's so hard to sort out the bias from the unfiltered facts. Even if you or I had the expertise to sort through all the raw data and try to draw conclusions from it, we still don't know how good that data is, and we'd still have to be cautious about extrapolating current trends into the future.
I suppose ideally I'd try to hedge. Do what I can to be ready for problems, while still living a life such that I won't feel it a waste if it doesn't hit the fan. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst, as they say.
The fact is that temperatures are still marching up, as the pH of the ocean marches down, and there is plenty of reason to believe this trend will continue for the forseeable future. The fact is that oil prices are high and look to continue to get higher, as it seems that cheaply obtainable oil is essentially gone. A lot of alternatives are ramping up, but converting the energy infrastructure to new energy sources isn't going to happen quickly or cheaply. I'm not sure we can trust The Market in all its short-sighted glory to solve this problem for us. We need to be facing these issues, not ignoring them and hoping they'll go away or that someone else will solve them.
