[geeks] Global Warming causes...

[der Mouse]

> I really don't want to start screwing around with a whole planet just
> to see if human produced CO2 is going to cook that planet.

Perhaps unfortunately, we are already performing that experiment.  But
weather (and climate, which is just a longer-timescale version of the
same thing) is, near as we can tell, a chaotic system, making it very
hard to tell how the outputs we can observe compare to what would have
happened without our meddling.

In short, we can measure things like warming or cooling.  What we can't
measure is whether that is because of our interference, despite our
interference, or just ignoring us.  We have some guesses, but given how
bad we are at modeling chaotic systems, they're mostly just guesses.

But given how uncomfortable (for humans) some of the plausible
scenarios are, it's not unreasonable for us to try to avoid them,
whence all the concern (okay, not all, but the scientifically driven
part of it, at least).  We're just not competent to do so.

One thing I see behind much of this is some kind of belief in linearity
and constancy, a feeling that if we don't affect it it'll stay the way
it was.  This is true only in the large, over timescales long enough to
include an ice age or two, long enough to include most of the state
space area covered by its chaotic oscillation.  In the small, on scales
of years and centuries, it's still basically unpredictable.

I nevertheless support attempts to do things like reduce clearcutting
and carbon dioxide release, though.  The climate will be jumping around
"randomly", yes, but if we push it around, it could very well head over
to a completely different area of the state space and rattle around
there, and if that area is a climate we have trouble living in, it
won't be too nice for us.  (A combination of catastrophe theory and
chaos theory, sort of.)  Since we evolved to fit the current climate,
more or less, pretty much anywhere significantly different from what
we've got is likely to be uncomfortable for humans.  That's why I think
minimizing our effects is a good idea - with luck, it'll stay in more
or less the orbits it's been in for the last several millennia, the
ones we know we can tolerate.

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