Category Wiki Saves The World

The end of the world is near. If we do not pay attention, humanity will be destroyed by any number of deadly catastrophe.

But don't worry, the great collective mind of wiki is hard at work finding the solution.

This page was created by CostinCozianu, in honour of the sublimely ridiculous and sublimely incompetent effort to save the world started here on wiki, Sunday the 2nd of October 2005 A.D. By two people independently nevertheless, and the fate wanted that both be aussies. One would wonder if there's some kind of flu going on down under.

Look, it's really not hard to figure these things out. GlobalWarming has presently got our neck of the woods about 10 degrees C warmer than it should be this time of year. It's October and it feels like December. The arctic circle is 20% smaller than it ought to be. Polar bears are drowning because they can't swim 400 miles to shore. The oceans are acidifying so quickly that by 2050 krill won't be able to form shells - which means a giant global dieback. Last summer the damn European forests got so warm they became a carbon source rather than a sink. 4.5 million acres of Alaska went up in flames. 1.5 million square miles of Siberian permafrost has thawed. Oh, and then there's those hurricanes.

This isn't a laughing matter. We really are staring extinction in the face. And of course it's ridiculous to propose we do something about it. The only thing more ridiculous is to propose we do nothing about it. Tea break's over, back on your heads! -- PeterMerel

I seem to remember back around 1990 we were facing rampant global warming, total loss of the ozone layer, a collapse of the economy due to oil reserves running out, piles of garbage in the street due to all the landfills filling up, and the death of all plant life by the year 2000. What happened with that anyway? -- CallumLerwick
There was only scanty data on it so only a few extremists were worried about it. Now there's plenty data and only a few extremists don't worry about it.

Pete, come back to the states and run for president. You'll have my vote (if and when they'll grant me citizenship, that is). Or support Ward, who already has put up a program and I'm pretty sure he's a friend of the environment. -- CostinCozianu

Um, yeah, voting, that worked the last two times ... wait, no it didn't. Anyway I don't believe any pollies from any parties are in the slightest competent to deal with these problems. I ask myself who is. Well, I'm not the smartest, most competent, or most committed engineer in the whole world, and I can't speak for the rest of you zombies, but I reckon it's our problem and no one else's. But if you'd rather vote than think, go right ahead, toilets are over there. -- Pete

I'd have to agree. It appears to me that most politicians in most countries seem to be actively involved in making things worse. I'd suggest that any solutions to the current problems faced by humanity aren't going to be solved from inside the competing-nation-state model.

Pete do you ever recall reading a certain EwDijkstra on the necessity of being acutely aware of the limited size of one's own skull ? If not, I'll give you a pointer.
Standard AdHominem Costin. Standard BS, Peter.
I know that you're competent enough to approximately regurgitate the latest "popularization of science" stuff you read in NationalGeographic?, but, common, do you really take yourself seriously ? If you feel like being truly dedicated to this subject, go study it (like at Berkeley, USC, UCSB, UCSD, options are practically unlimited) and then you'll be in a position to do some justice to the subject rather than discredit it with irrelevant and uninspired ramblings. Or find some competent people, invite them to C2. Or better yet, start a wiki dedicated to this problem. -- Costin
- Ever hear about a guy called Norman Borlaug and the Green Revolution? Cut the fearmongering crap, get an education, and fix the problem. -- CallumLerwick
- How can we select cultivars to thrive under rapidly varying climactic extremes?
- Wait, now we're facing rapidly varying climactic extremes? Global warming is only temporary? I'm confused now.
- Global weather is chaotic; we know very little about what the tipping points are or what directions they may push things. For example the big bogey man speculation that had TonyBlair calling conferences on this stuff was that arctic melting would dump sufficient fresh water in the gulf stream to stop it, plunging European temperatures in a manner similar to the 19th century "little ice age" during which people skated on the frozen Thames. The CIA also published a paper supporting this dramatic reversal as a possibility. In general non linear systems given a good thwack in the phase space tend to spend a lot of time wobbling about before settling down into a new behavior.
  - Besides, you missed the point. I didn't tell you what the solution was, the Green Revolution was just an example. How about showing us some solutions, instead of choking up a Wiki with fearmongering? EcoLicense is a nice try, but its a decades old idea that's been shot down many times already in what passes for "public discourse" these days. -- CallumLerwick
  - Ah, very interesting, this kind of information sharing is just what makes wiki such a delight. I'd be very obliged if you could point me at some of those discussions so I can learn from them. Anyway EcoLicense is just a wild hair - see PutTheCarbonBack for a collection of similar. What I'm hoping to see in general is a discussion of technological solutions to this technological problem, not hand-wringing, hair-pulling, or similar paranoid reactions. If GlobalDimming really held this stuff in check, for example, it seems ridiculous to suggest that ArtificialGlobalDimming wouldn't be a fair idea to consider ...
- I guess what I'm saying is ToFightEvilWorkOnTheGood. Worried about lack of food supply? Work on increasing it. (This is what Norman Bourlaug did. Thanks to the Green Revolution, the primary cause of hunger in the world today is political, not technological.) Worried about oil dependence? Work on advancing alternative fuel sources. Worried about a Microsoft monopoly? Work on open source software.
First you want the politicians to solve it for you, then the scientists? Come on Costin, you know scientists don't create solutions - they're button sorters and publish-or-perishers. Barring a very precious few, they're fact finders at best. It's engineers that create solutions - us, you and me. I might be a lousy engineer - though I've never worked with you, you clearly think so. I've only got 20 years of successful projects in my troubled wake, but they're easily blamed on other people. As for you, all I know about you from c2 is you're a noisy pot, but I presume someone out there is paying you to do something that actually turns a buck. If we dare ourselves to stop squabbling and actually engage neurons and think, we have as good a chance as anyone, and better than most I suggest, of coming up with ways forward.
- So I'm still waiting for you to shoot down EcoLicense. If you like you could start with MassiveAlgaeFarming, that's gotta be easier. Work up a good pout, break out your pocket calculator, and tell me why it can't work. Otherwise you're just a fool haranguing a fool, a flea on a flea, and so on.
- Oh, yeah. And TopMind waits for me to shoot down his "flag theory". DavidLiu waits for me to shoot down some Kantian metamorphosis of the latest marketing AlphabetSoup. Please take your place in line, Peter, and have patience. I'll dutifully reply to each of you when I'll see somewhat worth replying to. -- Costin
- What was that guy's name? Djikstra? How do you spell that? ;-) Not actually having a go at you CC, I know this stuff is almost certainly guff, not even wrong, and similarly addled, and my ShiftingTheBurdenOfProof isn't fair either. But if the guff serves to make someone's neurons ping, sometimes FromFertilizerComeFlowers. Love and good times to you and yours.

OctoberZeroFive

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