Re: The Civil Heretic - Freeman Dyson - Profile - NYTimes.com

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Mary Shaw <mary.shaw () gmail com>
Date: March 29, 2009 12:28:35 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Cc: ip <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: The Civil Heretic - Freeman Dyson - Profile -   
NYTimes.com

Dave and Rahul,

I believe that nature is strong and resilient.  But I don't believe  
that nature has any particular bias in favor of the conditions that  
humans prefer.

Climate change is a large example.  A small example is found on the  
barrier islands off the US Carolina coast. In their natural form the  
dissipate the force of ocean waves before the waves reach the  
mainland, and in the course of doing so, they migrate back and forth.   
As soon as humans put roads and buildings on such an island, we  
convince ourselves that the natural condition of the island is to be  
in the location where it was when we build the roads and buildings.   
Nature does not share this assumption, and humans then engage in a  
struggle to keep the island in place.

We see this also in spring flooding of the Mississippi River basin.   
In its natural state, the river has (had) large fertile floodplains  
that are periodically refreshed by the spring floods. When towns are  
built beside the river, humans build levees to protect the towns (and  
sometimes more extensive areas) from flooding. Each levee changes the  
characteristics of the river, in ways that both increase flood levels  
nearby and increase the speed of the river.  Small wonder that we so  
often hear of historic high flood levels -- climate change may be  
affecting the amount of water in the flood, but the manipulation of  
the river channel with levees and other structures has a much larger  
effect on actual flood levels.

Mary Shaw


On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 8:43 AM, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:

From: Rahul Tongia <tongia () cmu edu>
Date: March 28, 2009 11:55:25 PM EDT

Re. climate change, where I am less of an expert than even Freeman  
Dyson, my impression from discussions with expert is it's not  
"warming" but the change if not disruption that is the issue.  Even if  
the average rise is only 1 degree, regions that experience much more  
can be hurt, hard.

I think there is a fundamental issue of what some may call "arrogance"  
- not the arrogance of models, modelers, science, scientists, etc.,  
but the very idea that we can impact the world so severely means  
humans are way too powerful, when one would think we are not.   
Certainly nature is stronger and more resilient than we think.





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