[sageikosa]

I've always taken the position that the totality of climatic conditions on this planet are not a designed systemic whole, so there is no teleological purpose to it. If this were not so, then we might best be aimed at setting it back to a past condition (such as the Hadean, right after the heavy bombardment stopped and the crust solidified); since anything else is an alteration to its factory default setting.

[snowwrestler]

Yes--the Earth's climate does not have an objectively "correct setting" that the universe prefers.

However, we prefer the settings we have now. We like our cities where they are, we like the sea level where it is, we like polar bears and the Great Barrier Reef the way they are.

Selfish? Yes! But it is relevant because we are the ones who are changing the climate right now! So we are entitled to have an opinion about the changes we are causing.

[sageikosa]

There aren't settings, only observable conditions. The drivers are non-linearly correlated. My suggestion there is that even if you managed to return the size of the human population to pre-industrial levels in roughly the same geographic distribution as the 18th century (good luck with the eugenics programs on that) you'd still not get the results of that time frame, and you'd probably have to live with pre-industrial technology (no lithium ion batteries that destroy various foreign countrysides, and no cheap power apart from maybe localized hydro-electric). I believe if more people understood that trying to control climate change by political means is a sure-fire way to yield political control, or gain it, they masses might stop preferring any of it and would let cities on alluvial planes (such as Venice and New Orleans and Galveston) sink locally rather than try and convince India and China to undergo environmental austerity measures.

[snowwrestler]

You're the one who introduced the concept of settings, above.

If you think it's not fair that China and India have to deal with climate change, I agree with you. But life is not fair. As you point out above, there's no greater purpose to the universe, it just is.

If China and India don't want massive civil unrest, they better work on the problem. If you think moving billions of people away from the coast is easier than reducing fossil fuel emissions, fine, we can examine that idea with data. But political control is not a useful yardstick. Government is an important tool no matter what the plan is.

[sageikosa]

I also put the concept of settings on the opposing end of non-teleologic identification.

I have no expressed opinion on whether the attempt to make China or India conform to green western politics is fair or not; but those two nations probably do, and that's what's really relevant. They'll most likely experience bouts of massive civil unrest without regard to local atmospheric quality.

[chris_wot]

Could you simplify that a little? Apologies, the issue is not with you but with me, but I just don't understand :-(

[sageikosa]

Teleology is the idea that something has a purpose. I don't see climate as having a purpose (in that it wasn't designed with a goal in mind). I also don't see climate as a system (mainly because I don't see it having a teleologic character), it is the simplification and summarization of somewhat cyclically driven (though definitely non-linear) phenomena.

After that, the Hadean is a period about 4 billion years ago named mainly because (to life) it was hellish, but otherwise relatively self-contained (in comparison to the epoch immediately preceding it when space debris continued to pummel the planet).

[chris_wot]

Thank you :-)

[sageikosa]

Although my middle of the night crisis was that I meant the Archean, not the Hadean. sorry, was shooting from the geologic hip, and I'm more of a geographer than a geologist.

[chris_wot]

Ha! Hey, I always appreciate it when someone explains things clearly - thanks for doing so :-)

[jerryhuang100]

THERE WAS NO LIFE AT HADEAN TIME, DUH.

[sageikosa]

Nor in the early Archean. Kind of my point. If someone wants to undo or revert bad influences on the planet's supposed homeostasis, why just roll back mankind? why not roll back all life? then the earth will be truly pristine. I chose the boundary where the geologic mass stabilized because it makes an identifiable thermodynamic boundary (the system is relatively closed)