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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (315575)	12/14/2006 11:29:59 AM
From: combjelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583503

"The risk of extinction from global warming do to human emitted CO2 is apparently less then the risk of extinction from celestial impact." Extinction is just an upper bound. There are many gradations from "no change at all" to "extinction". I am not sure how you surmise that celestial impact has a higher probability, though. The most likely benign scenarios are things like having to relocate the majority of the population, developing new food crops and such. Now the time scale is on the order of a century or so, but that just spreads the cost over time. Building entire major cities or expanding the infrastructure of existing small towns is a huge cost. Not to mention losing the infrastructure of the existing cities.

To: TimF who wrote (315575)	12/18/2006 4:58:15 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1583503

one that can go arbitrarily high, i.e. extinction. You have to consider likelihood as well as maximum possible risk. The risk of extinction if extremely small. An asteroid or large comet hit could cause extinction too. We spend a few million searching for them. Maybe we should spend more. But at this point the estimated risks don't justify reordering our economy. The risk of extinction from global warming do to human emitted CO2 is apparently less then the risk of extinction from celestial impact. OTOH the risk of lesser but still major negative consequences might be larger from CO2. Its very difficult to know what to do with the logic in this post. You admit the consequences of global warming could be pretty significant but then you think the cost to prevent it [reordering the economy] don't justify it. Its such ridiculous logic its hard to know how to respond.