Species are also stupid. They have little understanding of how their actions are modifying the environment.


The best example is that of the Oxygen Catastrophe.

The Oxygen Catastrophe was a massive environmental change believed to have happened during the Siderian period at the beginning of the Paleoproterozoic era, about 2.4 billion years ago. It is also called the Oxygen Crisis, Oxygen Revolution or The Great Oxidation.

When evolving life forms developed oxyphotosynthesis about 2.7 billion years ago, molecular oxygen was produced in large quantities. The plentiful oxygen eventually caused an ecological crisis, as oxygen was toxic to the anaerobic organisms living at the time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxygen_Catastrophe

The key question is "Are we smarter than Cyanobacteria?"

Oh hell - it's fairwindsfarm.org. I guess I can't edit it now, but by all means check out www.fairwindsfarm.org !!!

- S

Y'all might also want to check out this event, Northeast Animal Power Field Days: http://www.uvm.edu/pss/vtcrops/articles/NE_AP_FD_Brochure.PDF I met the organizers, Carl and Lisa, recently whilst supporting the NE tour of What a Way to Go http://www.whatawaytogomovie.com They are good folk, living the self-sufficient lifestyle in many ways that will be a model for us all in the years to come.

A good recommendation!

One of our local media 'stars' is a young Shire mare who is going for Guiness title of 'world's tallest horse'.

I bred a Percheron-TB cross foal that grew to over 17 hands and 900 kg. It's now taking little kids on trail rides at another location. All things considered I think it's easier to gather timber by pickup and chainsaw, for now anyway. The acreage used for horse grazing now grows hay.

I'm not an expert on decision making theory, but my understanding is that, at its heart, risk analysis involves estimating the expected value of both the action and the inaction and selecting the decision with the higher expected value. When applicable, expected value calculations involve multiplying the estimated probability of an outcome by it value (positive or negative). Consider deciding whether to take a gamble, such as playing the lottery. The expected value of not taking the gamble (inaction) is zero. The expected value of taking the gamble is the cost of the gamble plus the potential reward times the probability of winning the reward.

Applying this approach is not guaranteed to yield the best outcome for any given decision, but is the best way to achieve the best aggregate outcome over thousands of such decisions. We ignore this tool at our peril.

If taking an action has even a small probability of destroying the world, and if destroying the world is properly evaluated as an infinitely negative outcome, then risk analysis would never recommend that action (unless I guess the risk of destroying the world is greater in the case of inaction; All infinities are not created equal :)

I guess the problem comes when there is an unrecognized severe risk that is not incorporated in the calculations. But this could be the case on either the action or inaction side of the equation. If it is the case that the unrecognized risk is more likely to be on the action side of the equation, then I suppose PP has some merit.

Of course there are many situations wherein there is not enough information to apply any formal risk estimation, and decision making boils down to expert opinion and intuition, but it is still preferable to consider c/b for both action and inaction in those circumstances, no?

Risk analysis does not have to be framed in terms of money of course. It can be framed in terms of lives lost/saved, or anything else.

Of course, if the coal plant doesn't blow up, then it destroys ecosystem thousands of miles away for a very very long time.

Hi Todd--

Thanks for the response. I did see Steve's explanation later on, but I had already sent my request to you. I agree that the energy 'solutions' seem primarily geared toward continuing an unsustainable lifestyle/economy. One difficulty is that a 'sustainable' lifestyle might not include 6.5 billion people. Another difficulty is that our concept of an economy is based on the hope of increasing personal wealth (which requires infinite growth), an obviously unsustainable goal but not one individuals give up lightly.

Rick

"The sad thing is that you don't even see it."

Whatever. When you say things like "microbiology can feed and cure the world", you are surely at least flirting with the edge of technocornucopianism ;-)

I suspect eric's basis was simply the application of the precautionary principle. I.e., the onus is on the proponents of a new tech to show that it does not cause harm. As an ecologist myself, I think this is a good policy. This is not a court of law, where a new tech is innocent until proven guilty. We need to be careful in advance...

Incidentally, the Luddites were not against any and all technology. They rightfully perceived that their culture and economic freedom were under dire threat from not only a new technology, but a new way of organizing work and means of production. They fought back and they lost, but they were right. I would suggest to you (and everyone who throws the term "luddite" around) to look into the real historical Luddites. That said, I understand that "luddite" has come to mean "anti-technocornucopian" in modern parlance. :-)

Again, proposing caution in adopting a new technology is not irrational fear - it is a very rational anxiety given the demonstrated unintended consequences of what were thought to be benign technologies. I think it is a good reflex, especially when it comes to our food supply. GM foods got out "in the wild" with not nearly enough research and testing, IMO.

As an ecologist, population geneticist, and evolutionary biologist, I know that everything comes with a cost in plant breeding. A plant has so much resource to work with, and what you do in selective breeding is apportionate it in different ways. E.g., the vaunted Green Revolution developed plants that apportioned more of the plant's resources to the seed heads, and less to the stem, with the result that you had bigger harvests with less falling over of plants, nominally a good thing. Of course, these seeds don't work without extra inputs of water, fertilizers, and pesticides, with all sorts of ramifications to third world farming cultures, land ownership patterns, exports, etc. etc. The results are not always adequately and usefully measured in yields/acre.

I would say that zapping plants with various ionizing radiation and using normal plant breeding techniques to segregate out desirable traits might have some utility. Hell, plant breeders have been zapping plants with x-rays and dosing them with mutagenic chemicals like colchicine for decades, simply to generate the genetic variability from which to select. This is different from so-called genetic engineering, which is yet another instance of concentrating on a small focused problem and not seeing the large scale consequences. Let's save that for another thread, if you want to discuss it. Maybe it doesn't belong on TOD.

Anyway, I've gone on long enough. Yes, labeling people sucks. Let's all try to stay cool (very difficult today - it's 90 and very humid) and try not to get too sarcastic and all. We surely all have our hot buttons. Speaking of buttons, the "preview comment" button is a good one ;-)

Cheers,

- Steve