Science Teacher Talks Planetary Survival

Hello Everyone!

As many of my long term (that is a few months in this case) readers may have noticed a major theme of this blog is planetary survival. Of course this largely ends up meaning human survival, along with that of any number of other species (since the planet itself is much more durable and has had many mass extinctions). While it is a less familiar idea than say environmentalism or even the ecology movement, one very basic issue comes down to this:

Often one has to make very serious decisions on incomplete information. The second is that humans may have to learn to mitigate various situations when certain "experiments" go wrong.

So today, I'm going to listen to my mother and promote a stronger role for teachers in public discourse. Namely the science teacher is a man named Greg Craven of Independence Oregon, who has earned a small ration of fame for putting together some entertaining, but deadly serious videos about Global Climate change. He has also recently published a book called "What's the Worst That Could Happen: A Rational Approach to Climate Change".

In his first video, Craven argues that with global warming we don't need 100% certain to make a choice and might in fact not even have that luxury. Of course, as he points out later in response to a number of rebuttals, the margin of uncertainty for global warming isn't all that high.

It's likely that many of the readers who follow this blog do not need any major convincing that global warming is real or at least highly probable.

So what can you take from this post:

First of all, as the man says you can spread the word. You now have Greg Cravens quirky but sincere videos talking about the "score" if you will regarding global warming. If you know people who are still on the fence, still have doubts about the veracity of climate change, or even are listening to those who call it "religion" or some such, you know where to send them.

Secondly there may be times when we have to make a decision about something with a good deal less certainty. While the Giant Mutant Space Hamsters are unlikely to become the next hot issues, there is a chance that we may have to deal with other situations such as the risk of an asteroid hitting the earth, how much we should prepare for massive geological events (not human caused), and of course Obama's suggestion that the world should seek nuclear disarmament. Also with genetic engineering we may have look at the risks of having the world's wheat, rice, corn, or soy crops as say the European potatoes were in the 1840's.

And it's likely at this point that we don't entirely know what uncertainties and decisions tomorrow will bring.

So that's all for tonight, and try not to worry too much about the Giant Mutant Space Hamsters.

Say Goodnight Readers!!