On the Mars one I disagree. Maybe a staggering stride, but certainly at a staggering cost, and after ridiculous boondoggles like the shuttle and the ISS, its hard to get an appetite for another visionary manned space extravaganza.

From what I've read, vastly more and better space science can be done per dollar with unmanned vehicles. The argument for sending people seems to be mostly about the thrill of it all. I wouldn't discount that motivation, but all you have to do is go to the websites for any of the ongoing missions-- Cassini/Huygens, the various Mars orbiters and landers, and (one day) New Horizons-- and look at the breathtaking pictures that they send back every day. To me, they are vastly more inspiring than it was to watch Alan Sheppard practice his swing.

All noble endeavors. All moot as long as religion continues to divide people and require that they kill or convert everyone else. Until that one pox is removed from this earth we are doomed.

OK, I am expecting to be blasted, but I just ask for a little introspection and honesty.

What good is religion doing anyone? Please don't say that it makes people moral; it does not. It allows (actually forces through threat of hell-fire) people to stop thinking for themselves and to do as they are told by someone who is a religious "leader." That is not morality.

Religious leaders have encouraged incivility, repression, murder, and more; in the name of one god or the other, every imaginable cruelty has been evoked. The world is far worse off because of all of those who think that heaven is reserved for them --> Prove me wrong.

Jan Knaus

Not sure how we could de-salinate the enormous volume of water that will come spilling over our shores as a consequence of global warming. We can't just dump heavily salinated water on our fields.

If the glaciers and ice sheets melt, there's no way to keep that water out of the oceans, Reid. Water runs off and evaporates and finds its way back down. Florida drowns.

12. Organize the Amalgamated Union of Pixies and Tooth Fairies to sprinkle magic dust on all the bad people and make them nice.

The key issues facing the world are well known. They are overpopulation and the strain this puts on natural resources. Everything follows from this: climate change, oil shortages, ethnic conflicts and territorial disputes, and the rise of ideologies promising simple solutions.

There are two aspects to this. First, the developed countries (especially the US) must transform into societies can that can run on a sustainable basis instead of raping the rest of the world for raw materials and finished goods. Second, the less developed parts of the world must be brought up to a "decent" standard of living without repeating the mistakes of the west.

Since we are not willing to (voluntarily) scale back our cosumerist society and since the developing world is not willing to give up the dream of a US-style society the inevitable changes will be messy and violent instead of planned and peaceful.

When people give up their SUV's and take the bus then we can start talking about meaningful change, until then all the Utopian plans are destined to fall flat.

--- Policies not Politics
Daily Landscape

I'm not clear on why this is true. There have in the past been projects to haul icebergs -- mountains of fresh water -- thousands of miles. Why aren't similar efforts considered now -- the cost of the inundation will be in the trillions of dollars, or even tens of trillions, so one would think that the most unimaginable engineering solutions would in fact be sensible trade-offs against the raising of sea water levels.
Moreover, in previous heating/cooling cycles, as Al Gore explained in Inconvenient Truth, a vast fresh water lake was formed in what is now Northern Canada. Today's Great Lakes are the residue of that lake. As he said in the movie and says in his speech, a great breach in that lake led to the convergence of that fresh water and the salt water Atlantic, stopped the Gulf Stream, and plunged Europe into an Ice Age. All this of course a few years ago. But the point, I would suppose, is that it is not inevitable that the frozen fresh water of the ice sheets at the two poles must enter the saline seas.

Overpopulation does indeed lie at the root of most of mankind's problems, but whence overpopulation? Unfortunately, overpopulation results from very primitive aspects of human nature -- sex drive, propensity toward religion, tribalism, the selfish desire to control, the selfish desire to have others to take care of us.

The fact that our species cannot evolve fast enough to shed what once were survival characteristics -- but which are now suicidal tendencies -- gives me a pessimistic view of the future of humanity.

OK, is that pretentious enough for you?

Instead of a project wonk or policy wonk approach...

Let me propose a values wonk approach, instead.  Articulate and promote the values and the projects and policies sort themselves out and one has some sort of yardstick to provide exclusions and priorities.

One also has a way to select one's verbs:  How do we "cause" Africa and South America to build economies based on non-carbon sources of energy?  Perhaps we might "assist" or even "offer to assist" them instead.  I wonder what might be included in a list of ten values to discuss, clarify, and promote in 2007 and beyond?  Could I be so bold as to offer 5, in no particular order?  I think that out of them a number of the projects arise:

1. Reverence for the natural world, including caution and humility in the ways we attempt to shape it to our perceived needs.
2. Wariness of hubris at all levels, starting at the personal.
3. Recognizing the value of friendship at all levels, and the importance of fostering and nurturing it:  again, starting at the personal level.
4. Valuing the common good, and doing what one can to diminish the poison of alienation:  again, at all levels.
5. Seriously investigating the Happiness Index as an alternative to the Gross Domestic Product as a measure of national success. 

I'm curious what might be added to this list.  To those who say "too Utopian," I guess I'll point them Robert Browning's Direction

Happy New Year, everyone. 

aMike

Reed, perhaps you could encourage your colleagues at the TPMCafe to start a section dedicated to global warming, because this is a complex and wide-ranging topic requiring more expertise (and interest) than has been displayed on this blog to date.

I don't pretend to have scientific expertise, but my general sense as a layperson reading the literature is that the volume of water involved may be too great to be meaningfully impacted by your proposal.

At this point, we apparently still have time to reduce the impacts of global warming if we focus on reducing the output of greenhouse gases. This will not be easy; even nations that approved the Kyoto Protocol are having trouble meeting what scientists tend to agree are entirely too modest targets.

We need to quickly transition from an oil-based to a hydrogen-based economy. That's going to take a 21st Century version of the New Deal. Who is going to step up to the plate on this one?

Howard Boyce: "We need to quickly transition from an oil-based to a hydrogen-based economy." I haven't been convinced by Avery Lovins and others promoting this. There really isn't a natural source of hydrogen, so it must be produced from water, which just happens also to be the end product of hydrogen fuel cells. So it takes energy, meaning perhaps fossil fuels, to make it; and by the second law of thermodynamics, too, you get back less than you put in.  

John 

http://www.haberarts.com/

Figure out how to divert melting land-based ice caps (both poles) into fresh water lakes, canals, rivers, and irrigation systems to turn deserts green and keep Florida from drowning. (I wish I were kidding. No jokes on this list.)

Reminds me of the New Yorker cartoon. The physicist , by a black board which he's chalked full of equations , points to a spot in the middle and says: "here a miracle occurs".

OK I have to politely disagree with anyone who might argue that a trip to Mars is a bad idea.  In our efforts to reach the Moon we saw a rapid increase in the rate of discoveries especially in the area of electronics which has benefitted all in America and the world.  I think efforts to reach Mars will have the same benefits technologically in the future.

Of course in my mind not as important as tackling global warming and our energy consumption issues but still something worthy of doing.

But it (a proposed trip to Mars) is one of only 2 things I can praise George W. Bush for.  That and making the waters around the Hawaiin Islands a national monument... 

I rather prefer to think of Osama arriving in Paradise -- to be punched in the mouth by George Washington. As he fell to his knees, Thomas Jefferson kicked him, but Robert E. Lee was courteous enough to help him to his feet before delivering a stunning blow.

As Osama shook his head, he overheard "They never quite read it correctly -- the verse is 72 Virginians." That's when John Randolph of Roanoke hit him with a rotten mackerel, shining and stinking by moonlight.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

This is Earth Station, Captain Wigmar speaking:

There is no land at the north pole-- the ice there is floating on a deep ocean, so I believe it is, in fact, inevitable that melting north polar ice will enter the saline seas.

And as to the Antarctic ice cap, the Greenland ice cap, Iceland, and any other glaciated islands, forget it-- that meltwater is also going to the ocean. The vast majority does not flow off in rivers, so we could not capture it in the first place, and if it some does flow off in rivers we in theory could capture it, but where would we put it, and how would we get it there?

Towing a few icebergs around won't change anything.

Captain can you steer us on a path to avoid that large "planet-killer" asteroid that has our name on it?  This hunk of rock we call home can be pretty at times (even if some of the people can behave very ugly) and is the only one we have, I've grown kinda attached to it.  Thanks in advance... ;-)

Nothing much can be done about large chucks of melting ice which abut oceans...except address the cause of what's making them melt.

If there were a true divinity in charge of all this, these false prophets would have been called to account centuries ago.

I really do agree with the sentiments of your post Jan.  But with my spiritual leanings when it comes to these matters I think we as a people were endowed with free will.  We are supposed to know right from wrong and make our own choices accordingly.  And in my mind those accounts will be settled when it is time to stand and be judged...

8. Cease American dependence on foreign oil and gas.

Hydrogen based energy is not an alternative to oil/gas usage. Hydrogen is only available at great cost in energy to separate it from other raw materials. That energy has to come from somewhere, and it can't come from hydrogen.

Hoppy in Sacramento

Well sadly we have a few Quaker Presidents who don't rank all that well -- Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon. Hoover can be redeemed if you focus on his famine relief work during and following World War One -- but Nixon never really got the tradition.

But Quakers have had much to do with American Reforming Movements -- they are at the root of abolition efforts beginning in the 1780's, you'll find them at the heart of prison reform movements, more humaine treatment of the mentally ill, today you'll find them in the restorative justice movement, and in the 20th century, the Civil Rights movement. Non-Violence is a core Quaker principle -- it is hard to imagine an opposition to war growing without Quaker involvement. In the 1950's it was largely Quakers who took up opposition to Nuclear Testing, things like SANE (Now SANE/FREEZE) and later Women's Strike for Peace have Quaker origins and they lead into the Kennedy era treaty, and later improvements.

British and American Quakers won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1947 for relief efforts in post war Europe (both wars), and a number of them were quite active in nominating Jimmy Carter for the same award. I think they may be the only religious sect that has ever won a Nobel.

Quakers generally do not try to manage or control movements they help put into motion -- the idea is more to develop a range of approaches to an issue, seek out all sorts of likely allies, create a consensus, and then nurture the growth of the movement without necessarily sponsoring it. Just as non-violence and opposition to war as conflict resolution is a core principle, so too is the idea of witnessing against social evils, and for meaningful reforms.

Re: If you come up with Buddhism, I would remind you that it is not a religion

Buddhism is a religion. Look it up in any reference book and it will say something like "Asian Religion founded by Siddhartha Gautama..."
Buddhism is also not free of governmental involvements. In Thailand and to some extent it functions much as the Religious Right does here, opposing abortion, gay rights and so forth. American Buddhism bearsabout as much similarity to traditional Asian Buddhism as Unitarianism does to Orthodox Christianity.