Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to Carbon

re: Carbon
Robert — (archived)

Thanks for pointing it out, Nick. I find myself focusing on only one or two aspects of the problem at a time, and thus overlooking other factors like pressure that are crucial.

That's why I'm skeptical that the human brain is capable of consciously managing a planetary biosphere. The counterargument to concern for the environment that "we'll figure out how to fix it" or "technology will save us" strikes me as hubris, and only pushes the problem back a step--the fix will have side effects too. You can end up with a chain reaction cascade of fixed piled atop fix.

I was careful to say "consciously manage", because I do think that with sufficient respect for Nature's grinding problem-solving ability, one could carefully just give nature what it needs and trust it to take it from there. That includes refraining from tinkering, when Nature just needs to be left alone to work things out its own way.

That's also why I don't think it's necessary to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that human-induced climate change will have negative consequences. Rather, the opposite is true: We already know the system was in balance and working for a long time before we perturbed it, so the burden of proof is on us to prove that the perturbations are harmless.

Which, being virtually impossible, makes it a no-brainer to address the problem.

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