I have one thing to say: depopulation is not a global warming strategy.
Geoengineering: Go slow! Carbon reduction: Hurry!
by Mike TrederWe need a crash development program for wind, solar, tidal, wave, geothermal - and possibly nuclear - energy infrastructures. Geo-engineering is too risky except as an absolute last resort.
The Earth Will Be Just Fine, Thank You
by Jamais CascioThe grand myth of environmentalism is that it’s all about saving the Earth. It’s not. The Earth will be just fine. Environmentalism is all about saving ourselves.
The Big Picture: Resource Collapse
by Jamais CascioTruism #1: Human society’s continued existence depends on the sustained flows of a variety of natural resources.
Truism #2: What that set of natural resources comprises can change over time.
Why not do it all?
by Mike TrederWhy not start erecting wind farms wherever they make sense? Why not go forward immediately with projects to tap energy from the tides, from the waves, and perhaps even from deep geothermal sources? Why not set up large community solar collectors in every city, town, and village?
Peak Oil vs. Global Warming
by Jamais CascioCould we avoid the worst ravages of global warming because we run out of oil?
How to solve global warming conflict
by Marshall BrainThe only word that can be applied to a recently-revealed military report is “depressing”: Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us
Scenes from Six Degrees
Jamais was on National Geographic TV talking about cheeseburgers and how we can fix the planet. Check it out!
The Big Picture: Climate Chaos
by Jamais CascioThermal Inertia. Get used to that term, as it drives the relationship between climate disruption and human civilization, now and over the next twenty years. Its meaning is simple: even if we were to stop all greenhouse gas emissions immediately, right this very second, we’d still see continued warming and disruption for the next two or three decades.
Battlefield Earth
by Jamais CascioIt’s only a matter of time before the world’s militaries learn to wield geo-engineering of the climate as a weapon.
Prototyping the Participatory Panopticon
by Jamais CascioWaaaaaay back in the dark days of early 2006, I gave a little talk at the TED conference on the idea of an “Earth Witness” program, with sensing devices built into mobile phones to allow for collaborative environmental science.
Green Tomorrows: the Scenarios
by Jamais Cascio
The four boxes represent a variety of “response” scenarios, each embracing elements of the prevention, mitigation, and remediation approaches to solving the climate crisis.
I Spy With My Orbital Eye…
by Jamais CascioSatellite monitoring is enabling surveillance of the health of the planet, both human and ecological.
Climate change poll
Looks like only one in eight of you still deny the existence of anthropogenic climate change.
The Politics of Geoengineering
by Jamais CascioGeoengineering—or, as I sometimes call it, re-terraforming the Earth—is back in the news, with a sobering editorial in the New York Times by Carnegie’s Dr. Ken Caldeira.
Solving the Climate Crisis
by Jamais CascioWith Al Gore and the IPCC winning the Nobel Peace Prize yesterday, lots of people are talking about global warming. The remaining holdouts and dead-enders continue to bray about hoaxes and imaginary disputes, but by and large the dominant focus of conversation about climate disruption boils down to a simple question: what do we do about it?
Stopping Climate Change (or not)
by Mike TrederRecently we (CRN) posted a somewhat controversial article about four stages of Climate Change Denialism. Our fourth level of denial was characterized as “Global warming is happening, and it is a result of human actions, and it will be catastrophic, but that’s okay.”
Geoengineering Reconsidered
by Mike TrederWe all know that the Earth’s climate is heating up. So, what can be done about it?
Geoengineering and the Future of Desktop Fab
by Jamais CascioThe Christian Science Monitor has a thoughtful article on the morality of geoengineering as an option for confronting climate disaster.
Mapping the Present, Seeing the Future
by Jamais CascioWired’s Danger Room blog noted late last month the emergence of a fun little mashup map site called GlobalIncidentMap.com. Global Incident Map smooshes data about a wide array of suspicious events onto a Google Map page. It’s not the first or the only site to do this, but it does so in a way that nicely maximizes visitor anxiety.
Information, Context and Change
by Jamais CascioI’ve long been a proponent of the core Viridian argument that “making the invisible visible” (MTIV)—illuminating the processes and systems that are normally too subtle, complex or elusive to apprehend—is a fundamental tool for enabling behavioral change. When you can see the results of your actions, you’re better able to change your actions to achieve the results you’d prefer. I’ve come to understand, however, that it’s not enough to make the invisible visible; you also have to make it meaningful.
China’s Environmental Future
by Mike TrederRandall Parker at Future Pundit wrote an important and insightful article a few days ago about ”Asian Air Pollution.”
Obsolescent Heresies
by Jamais CascioI like Stewart Brand, and he and I seem to get along pretty well. I first met him at GBN a decade ago, and I run into him fairly often at a variety of SF-area futures-oriented events.
Poll: Is nuclear power part of the solution to carbon emissions?
Looks like a third of the respondents are skeptics about wither climate change or efforts to stop and remediate climate change. Of those who accept the need for some kind of carbon emissions solution a quarter were opposed to nuclear power out of hand. The rest were roughly equally divided between nuclear power enthusiasts and tentative adopters. No consensus here.
New poll: Should there be a standing United Nations military force to enforce world law?
The Resilient World
by Jamais CascioEnvironmental architect William McDonough is said to have asked, “If a person described her relationship with her spouse as merely ‘sustainable’ wouldn’t you feel sorry for both of them?”
Open Source Terraforming
by Jamais CascioWhether we like it or not, geoengineering—what I’ve taken to calling “(re)terraforming the Earth”—is on the table as a strategy for dealing with onrushing climate disaster. This isn’t because it’s a particularly good idea; as far as we can now tell, the potential negative impacts of geoengineering projects may significantly outweigh any benefits. The reason why (re)terraforming is now the subject of so much attention is that, if it could be made to work, it would be a climate change remediation method, not just a climate change moderation method.
The right to be wrong: tolerating Holocaust deniers and global warming skeptics
by George DvorskyLate last year “revisionist” historian David Irving was released from an Austrian prison after serving 13 months of a 3-year sentence. Irving, a notorious Holocaust denier and anti-semite, had violated Austria’s ’Prohibition Statute‘ which forbids the trivialization of the Nazi Holocaust.
Why there should be an X Prize for an artificial biosphere
by George DvorskyConventional futurist wisdom suggests that if our atmosphere should completely go to pot—which it certainly appears to be doing—humans could still eek out an existence living in self-sustaining biospheres. This would hardly represent a desirable outcome, but hey, it would certainly beat extinction. Moreover, a successful biosphere would prove to be an important step in the direction of space colonization, terraforming and remedial ecology.
Updating Geoethics
by Jamais Cascio(Jon Lebkowsky, over in the conversation with Bruce Sterling at the Well, reminded me of one of my favorite and most difficult posts over at WorldChanging, one that’s worth bringing over here. It’s an exploration of “geoethical principles”—the values we’d need to hold, and to hold tightly, should we ever be faced with the need to engage in geoengineering. Originally written in July of 2005, here it is in its entirety:)
The Footprint of a Cheeseburger
by Jamais CascioI wondered a couple of days ago what the carbon footprint of a hamburger might be. It’s the kind of question we’ll be forced to ask more often as we pay greater attention to our individual greenhouse gas emissions. Burgers are common food items for many people; it’s said that the average American eats three burgers per week, or about 150 burgers per year. What’s the global warming impact of all that? I don’t just mean cooking the burger; I mean the gamut of energy costs associated with a hamburger—including growing the feed for the cattle for beef and cheese, growing the produce, storing and transporting the components, as well as cooking.
IEET Blog