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Written by Hash
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Saturday, 11 August 2007 22:42 |
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Here's a gem by Freeman Dyson, Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society, excerpted from his book, A Many-Colored Glass. In this short piece Freeman does a great job of countering envirofascist scare-mongering. He points out that the historical growth patterns of ground biomass due to the transfer of atmospheric carbon to the soil are far from well studied. Increased atmospheric carbon levels due to human fossil fuel use are great for plant growth, and he points out, for example, that coal burning in China could be used to promote topsoil growth in the USA, with the atmosphere providing the free transfer of carbon. He also points out that we're overdue for an ice age, being 12,000 years into the warm interglacial period between the last ice age and the next one. The known planetary climate cycle for the past 800,000 years has been of 90,000 year ice ages broken up by 10,000 year interglacial periods. So is human use of fossil fuels helping to prevent the next ice age? A great read.
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