Sustainability
Lubos was apparently thrilled to find this rather shallow analysis of the concept of 'sustainability' by Roy Spencer on the Exxon funded propaganda site TCS Daily. Spencer's argument:
Some hundreds of millions of years in the future, the accumulation of helium at the Sun's core will cause it to expand and fry the Earth, so in the long run, life on our planet cannot be sustained. At some point, your automobile engine, no matter how carefully maintained, will fail. Neither of these facts is justification for ignoring shorter term sustainability. Drain the oil out of your engine, and it will run for at most a few miles before failing catastrophically. Fail to change the oil, and it will go perhaps a few tens of thousands of miles before suffering the same fate - but properly maintained it may run a few hundred thousand miles.
The same kinds of arguments apply to the Earth. Spencer says:
His "what, me worry" attitude also extends to greenhouse warming, where he rather disingenuously says:
He adds:
Even though it is fashionable for now, ‘sustainability’ is not a very useful concept. In the final analysis, only change is sustainable.Much of his essay is devoted to a couple of lame jokes: the idea that New York had a critical environmental crisis in the form of too much horseshit, only to be saved by the internal combustion engine, and some ecological organization's budget having been determined to be "unsustainable."
Some hundreds of millions of years in the future, the accumulation of helium at the Sun's core will cause it to expand and fry the Earth, so in the long run, life on our planet cannot be sustained. At some point, your automobile engine, no matter how carefully maintained, will fail. Neither of these facts is justification for ignoring shorter term sustainability. Drain the oil out of your engine, and it will run for at most a few miles before failing catastrophically. Fail to change the oil, and it will go perhaps a few tens of thousands of miles before suffering the same fate - but properly maintained it may run a few hundred thousand miles.
The same kinds of arguments apply to the Earth. Spencer says:
Surely there is only so much oil left to be found, though, and so our use of petroleum is, ultimately, unsustainable. But does this mean we should worry about running out of oil?And argues that it will run out whether we worry about it or not. Well, duh! Just maybe, planning for an event that is certain to be extremely disruptive might make sense.
His "what, me worry" attitude also extends to greenhouse warming, where he rather disingenuously says:
if indeed global warming turns out to be a real problem, no rate of increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases is sustainable.Of course if emissions are reduced enough, greenhouse gases won't increase at all, because there are processes that remove them from the atmosphere. Also, the speed with which climate changes occur is likely to play a big role in how well we can adapt to them.
He adds:
Second, the sustainability argument neglects the proven role of technological advances that, historically, make sustainability a moot point.Actually, history has more examples of unsustainable resource use leading to catastrophe than it has of technology riding miraculously to the rescue - the Easter Islanders (previous post), the Maya, the Anazazi, the agricultural civilizations of the Middle East to name just a few.
Would you care to explain what you mean by the agricultural civilizations in the Middle East having had a sustainability crisis? Because, at least in the history I learned, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, Syria, etc., have been continuously occupied by literate, urban civilizations for the last ~5k years.
ReplyDeleteI hasten to add that I'm on your side on this issue...
cosma - Mesopotamia had more productive agriculture in the past, as did most of the then "fertile crescent." Salting of the soil do to extensive irrigation and loss of plant cover due to overgrazing have greatly reduced the fertility of the land.
ReplyDeleteThe population of the Middle East in general, and Iraq in particular, was much larger in ancient times than it was 100 years ago. Modern agricultural methods have undone some of the damage, but it's still pretty barren compared to thousands of years ago.