Re: Remember Biosphere 2?
Who will fund space exploration?
I haven't reached any conclusions re assigning some exact(?) priority of 'space exploration' VS all else; clearly It is There - and we are wired to forever ask Why (usually a bad question) and always, How.
The morphing of Biosphere 2 sounds even more appropriate now, especially as the focus massively accelerates on matters of Local habitat survival. Perhaps the 'deep space' funding shall have to suffer until some equilibrium occurs twixt the inveterate Deniers and the manic Alarmists re climate change extrapolations.
That Bio article though, indeed applies to climate matters -- in a perspicuous (if a bit snide) characterization of the 'types' of naysayers/boosters who are forever leveraging egos in disgustingly Rovian ways. I see that ignoble facet of the Science equivalent of Suits [and Corporations! specially] as one of the major time-wasters which shall inevitably produce waste.. in the next efforts to coalesce (without simplistically conflating) a massive data-hunt and analysis project we see we Must speedily construct.
No idea if.. a %sufficient of the competent and dedicated can overcome the neurotic personalities next [???] THIS is one of those 'cases' - no longer theoretical - where multiple forks must be simultaneously funded \ufffd l\ufffd Manhattan Project (U? or Pu? or Both?! == Yes.)
There Will be waste because there Must be - for all the giant holes in our present comprehension of the near-infinite dimensions of the planetary feedback system (and for our disdain in improving that knowledge: till faces rubbed in it.) I see the major problems being more of this human/class/caste kind, than in the merely onerous work of measuring, sorting, weighting and digesting - via normal scientific criteria.
It seems we shall have to improvise a crash program in adulthood for a planet of overgrown teens / at the same time as work tries to proceed. 'Grow Up or Die?' has a nice ring to it. Will such propositions counter Greed? How Many of the super-rich shall opt to die Super-rich, rather than not-die.. but lose the Lear?
Imagine... if a cretin like Shrub were 'managing' >This< !!
And, even if he's sent back to cut wood in Crawdad/whatever - we certainly have many mini-Shrubs ever anxious to 'manage'. ie short form: it's [still] a crap shoot, especially when Religio schism rears its ugly head - and, It Will.
Yet there are some encouraging signs from certain evangelicals, abetted by a few soft-spoken scientists (one from Harvard on Charlie Rose, a few nights back) - in putting aside the liturgies and cooperating on common moral grounds. E. O. Wilson, was it? Pity no transcripts from that now very-commercial, Bloomberg-rich guy. :-/
Still: a hopeful presentation. We'll need lots of such surprises.
We may at least Hope that Gaia proves a smarter feedback-manager than the cretins to whom Power remains their main aphrodisiac; She may be a metaphor or She may be ___ something Else, this 'Nature' Thing. But hubris wouldn't consider the idea even worth a glance..
First we kill all the Neocons. Then . . .
