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Alternative views are always worth considering, if for no other reason that they provide tests to validate the 'convention.' My reading of the current research is that the notion of climate change stands up to all credible tests. So I'm still going to play the odds. I worry about the proposal to increase the number of scientists (presumably not only physicists, but chemists, biologists, etc would all have things to contribute). The scientists we do have aren't sufficiently trusted anymore, I think. More of them might just make matters worse. I do think that politics plays a very large role in things. And I'm unconvinced it is a good role. For what it's worth, I will continue to remain a-political and focus on the scientific aspects of things. I just find the political aspects insufficiently robust to use as a basis for reasoning about things. I know that puts me at a disadvantage in today's world, but I do what I can. Cheers. Fil On 21 March 2011 17:06, Lubomir Savov Popov <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Dear Anthony, > > My objective was to provide an alternative view regarding the situation. I carefully follow the idea of global warming and also consider several alternative perspectives and scenarios. > > It is interesting that scoring the literature in different languages brings us to different traditions and alternative views. Right or wrong, it is interesting to consider them. One never knows what is right. Check the history of phlogiston. > > I also wanted to raise several alternative issues that I believe are not emphasized enough or are overshadowed with the warming concern. These are new energies, deforestation, and pollution. In the short term, they might be crucial for health and quality of life. > > About energy density. You have detected a trend. My expectation is that we are moving along this trend towards energies of higher densities. What kind? I am not engaging in predictions. However, it will be something that we already know and have discarded as unfeasible. Such a view is derived from history of technology. > > If the money for green design and products are put towards a program on new energies and engines, including natural science and engineering education, over a 20 year period, those money might be used more productively. If the TARP money that were given for free to the banks (about one trillion dollars) were used for such a fund, we might have come with something good. We need more people in physics, more talent in physics, instead of in the financial banks. We need years to build those people, and meanwhile we need to work on new energies and engines. > > We are talking for 40-50 years about new energy sources and new engines, but the investments in research and education are miniscule. > > I read a few days ago about the electric cars from the period 1890-1910. To my surprise, they were doing 20-80 miles without charging. Actually, at the beginning of the automotive era the electric car outpaced the cars with internal combustion engine. However, they very quickly lost the completion. We are back a hundred years. I don't believe that electric cars are the future, but this illustrates the trajectories of human inventions and technical progress. > > Several people mentioned the political forces. That might be the key. While big oil rules, we will fight for oil. And we will make chemical batteries for electric cars. > > Just some musing. > > Best wishes, > > Lubomir > > > > -----Original Message----- > From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Anthony Thompson > Sent: Monday, March 21, 2011 12:35 PM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Re: Design, global warming, equilibrium mechanisms, and resilience of the humankind > > Hi Charlotte and Lubomir, > > Good discussion starting here! > > I want to challenge some of the things that Lubomir says, however. > > Global warming: Lubomir says "we are not sure yet". But what is it that we are not sure of? "We" -- if we mean the global scientific community studying climatology, (and not "we- the general public") have quite a lot of certainty that humans are influencing climate beyond anything that can be explained by Milankovitch cycles (earth's tilt, etc.). We (the former) know with quite a lot of certainty that the temperature now is warmer than anything that society as we know it has experienced. > > Re: meteorology being the west's foundations for predictions... well, not really in the climate models that are widely used. Meteorology - primarily related to weather processes forecasting - is about short-term (weather) and is quite a lot different than long-term (climate). > > Ice melt... is changing in very significant ways -- it's too simple to say that it's simply melting & regenerating. Glacial ice is not re-forming anywhere near the rate at which it's melting. This leads to huge problems for water supplies, especially in some of the areas of the world with the highest populations (e.g. India, Bangladesh, some areas in China and South America). Arctic ice is thinning: so that now ice melts more completely in the summer months than in anytime since human society as we know it has developed. So while the ice does re-form in the winter, it is not as thick, and there is not "old ice" that has been around for centuries. Summer ice melt leads to major concerns of reduced albedo, leading to reinforcing cycles of increased energy absorption. > > Deforestation... is a huge concern within discussion of the global carbon cycle, and solutions to global warming can not be discussed without discussing the role of forests. Not sure why you would say that westerners don't care about it... any more / less than westerners care about other things. I mean that those who understand some of the complexities certainly DO understand the importance of forests, while those who sit back and question whether or not humans are influencing climate may not. > > My point: there is quite a lot of certainty around the idea that humans are impacting the climate. There is MUCH LESS certainty about what the effects of what we are doing will be... increased temperatures / precipitation here, decreased temps / precip there. I think it's important that we -- as scientists -- be accurate on these points. > > With regard to energy transitions... the challenge now is that there is now energy source that provides energy density. In previous energy transitions, society has been able to move to a more energy dense energy source... coal had more energy per unit than wood, and oil had more energy per unit than oil. As we face the end of oil... we do not have an energy source to move to that is more dense than what we are using now. The sun provides 10,000x the amount of energy that human society uses... but we do not have a good way to capture it, let alone transport it after we capture it. > > This is what the "sustainability" movement is doing: bringing together all of these separate issues (global warming, deforestation, ocean acidification, freshwater access, energy, pollution, etc. etc. et.c) to say that we (global society) has lots of problems that affect different people in different ways. Some of those sustainability people are able to portray this as an ocean full of opportunities... rather than a lot of reasons to be depressed! > > I agree very much with Charlotte's point that media reporting greatly influences society's perception of environmental (and social) problems. The challenge in the west is the increasing rate of ownership of media by big / private industry... which often has a motive to increase profits n the way of the status quo... which is often destructive of the global system. > > Our role... as researchers working with product/service design... can/should be to finds way for businesses to do what they need to do (be profitable) in ways that do not destroy ecological and social systems. To do this, we need both radically new approaches to meeting human needs... while also meeting people who are doing design / product development work on a day-to-day basis to provide the incremental innovations that bring them along. I'd like to open up a discussion about how we can support that to happen... > -- Filippo A. Salustri, Ph.D., P.Eng. Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Ryerson University 350 Victoria St, Toronto, ON M5B 2K3, Canada Tel: 416/979-5000 ext 7749 Fax: 416/979-5265 Email: [log in to unmask] http://deseng.ryerson.ca/~fil/