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A Creature of Light and Darkness
May. 19th, 2023 08:12 pmThe past week has been both productive and social; I have a presentation to the Melbourne Agnostics on "Neotopia: A Transhumanist Political Economy", a wide-ranging and dense presentation (yet far from complete) which is transcribed part one and part two). In addition, next week is the Isocracy Annual General Meeting on the housing and rental crisis in Australia under the old meme title "The Rent is Too Damn High!". I have also almost completed my final essay for a Graduate Diploma in Applied Psychology which (and one may wryly smile given my life over the past few years) on relationship advice and online dating after a long-term relationship - it's been a particularly difficult essay because of the sheer density of content that the word count demands. On a related matter I had a particularly wonderful Tuesday the company of one Dr. Yanping as she was being awarded her doctorate at Monash University, and a few days prior I joined Alison B, at a little gathering for Mikey M. and Liz Q. with many old associates from the late 90s/early 2000s goth and gamer scene, and spent a good portion of the evening chatting with the ever-wise Django.
These are all matters of some light in my world. But, truth be told, the deeper I dive into my new degree in climate science and policy, the greater a sense of realistic pessimism looms. This, of course, is a well-known feature of such awareness; frustration, along with a degree of depression and anxiety are a professional risk among climate scientists, although not at a debilitating level. As CO2 emissions continue to increase and show little sign of slowing down with a constant failure among the international community as a classic negative externality (someone else's problem). Last year we hit 417ppm of CO2, and CO2 as a long-lived greenhouse gas we'll have decades of global warming even if we ceased all emissions today. Under these circumstances, I am increasingly convinced that a 4-degree C warming from preindustrial levels by 2100 is the most probable - which does mean a very different world.
These are all matters of some light in my world. But, truth be told, the deeper I dive into my new degree in climate science and policy, the greater a sense of realistic pessimism looms. This, of course, is a well-known feature of such awareness; frustration, along with a degree of depression and anxiety are a professional risk among climate scientists, although not at a debilitating level. As CO2 emissions continue to increase and show little sign of slowing down with a constant failure among the international community as a classic negative externality (someone else's problem). Last year we hit 417ppm of CO2, and CO2 as a long-lived greenhouse gas we'll have decades of global warming even if we ceased all emissions today. Under these circumstances, I am increasingly convinced that a 4-degree C warming from preindustrial levels by 2100 is the most probable - which does mean a very different world.
