Current Events — HabitableZone

Current Events » in reply to As I Said Elsewhere

Certainty versus uncertainty
Gary — (archived)

Mark,

I agree that there are potentially disasterous scenarios such as the sudden release of methane from the oceanic abyss, etc. What's the probably this will happen? Assuming the methane is suddently released, what's the probable economic damage? Multiply the two numbers and you have an expectation value with large error bars. If you actually had that unknown number, you could compare it against the economic cost of significantly reducing fossil fuel consumption. I suspect(?) that unknown expectation value is less than the economic cost of suddenly reducing fossil fuel consumption through conservation alone. However I should add that this comparison is bogus for multiple reasons, for example:

We have no real clue what that expectation value is.

We should reduce our consumption of fossil fuels anyway because fossil fuels are a nonrenewable resource.

Our current problems in the Middle East flow directly from our dependence upon petroleum. For that reason alone, reducing our dependence upon petroleum is a no-brainer.

Coal is dirty due to its sulfur content and fly ash. Strip mining coal tears up the land with many unwanted side effects, e.g. loss of top soil, degradation of the aquifier, etc.

[my bottom line]

I'd like to see us use more nuclear power but the trend is in the opposite direction. IMHO, the fossil fuel debate becomes "honest" when people are more open about the need to replace fossil fuels with nuclear power.

Gary

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