Conjunctions

A few things that caught my attention recently:

• Wonkette makes a good point here about Pat Robinson’s recent reference to political correctness.  Robinson is a lunatic and not directly relevant here in Europe, but the notion that rejecting political correctness necessarily sanctifies their vitriol is widespread among far right nuts.  I seem to recall even our own Geert Wilders ranting on about the evils of political correctness.

• Matt Yglesias draws attention to Robert Kaplan dissing us Europeans.  I guess we should be offended.

• You’ve probably read this story elsewhere, but nobody tells it as well as The General.  Check the comments.

• If my plants could get on the internet, they would have ordered this by now.

Enjoy.

I know that Paul Krugman is a fan of science fiction, so I suppose it is no wonder that the links he recommends often lead me to a topic I associate more with science fiction than with economics.  I do not mean to suggest that Krugman’s economics is science fictional in any way (well, not now anyway, but having mentioned the possibility I can already imagine an argument based on a view of science fiction as a depiction of emerging reality, or alternatively the sad likelihood that Obama will never listen to Krugman).  But I digress.  An example of how Krugman often leads me to a science fictional topic is his post on what he calls a “[s]uperfreakingly brilliant review of Superfreakonomics by Elizabeth Kolbert” , which lead me to read the review itself (and indeed, it is brilliant – not only for the precise refutation of Levitt and Dubner’s arguments, but mostly for accurately characterizing them as irresponsible cavalier types) and from there to geoengineering, pure science fiction.

Levitt and Dubner’s notion that we can solve global warming through experimenting with geoengineering is particularly cavalier, unless we test these technologies thoroughly before employing them on earth.  The word itself implies that this is a technology that needs to be applied on a planetary scale.  With the stakes as high as they are, these technologies need to be tested first before trying them on a planet with a 6.796 billion people. With that in mind I still advocate that we [well, you have my 10 cents anyway] invest heavily in space exploration (colonizing mars for example) in the hope of generating tested spin-off technologies that can be used on earth to control climate change.

The first requirement for any technology based system of climate control would also be to strictly regulate and minimize the amount of greenhouse gasses that reach the atmosphere, ensuring that some level of social engineering will always be involved in geoengineering as well .  Which is lucky in a way.  At least we do not have to wait around a few centuries for the terraforming of mars to be completed, we can start immediately implementing those technologies already existing to accomplish exactly that, and supplement with new technologies as they become available.  (Read Kim Stanley Robinson’s Red/Blue/Green Mars trilogy for an account of what it could take in social and planetary engineering to manipulate a planet’s climate.  The science is thoroughly researched, and it gives a good impression of the complexity and time scales involved).

Superfreakonomics suggests that we can simply ride out this crisis.  But which ever way you look at it, we need to change, and that is never painless.