Shannon Larratt is Zentastic

So I've been reading The Revenge of Gaia and it's pretty scary. As I understand it within forty years we reach 500 ppm of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This is an observable and unavoidable truth at this point. To put it into context, that's the same level we had about two billion years ago, except two billion years ago the sun was radiating 25% less energy.

Anyway, at this level under present conditions, three things happen… First, the arctic and antarctic glaciers almost completely melt — we've already passed the point of no return on this. This brings water levels up fifty feet or so, destroying a huge number of cities. This part is pretty much a guarantee, and a guarantee within our lifetime.

However, if the temperature increase continues (which all models predict it will) we then kill off the tropical rain forests (leaving just scrub land and desert), and then if we move up another degree (which we should, because the tropical rain forests are an important temperature regulator), we then kill off the algae in the ocean.

At that point the process is pretty much unstoppable, and the planet becomes barren and inhospitable to anything but thermophile bacteria. I have no idea whether we can stop the process or not. I doubt it. But I know that I won't be buying land that's not elevated.

That said, if we can make solar effective — the sun does gift us a theoretical 1.75 kW per square meter after all — then maybe we can just power through this mess at full throttle? Maybe the solution to the environment is simply to ignore it and replace it completely. I doubt it's the best solution, but it may be the solution we've chosen? It's really the only solution that doesn't involve massive casualties.

Other than that, this ModBlog thread on scarification has been very interesting.