Box 148, Item 1: Draft of Gaean greenhouse, nuclear winter and anthropic doomsday?

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Box 148, Item 1: Draft of Gaean greenhouse, nuclear winter and anthropic doomsday?

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Typescript draft of paper published, Sylvan R (1990), 'Gaean greenhouse, nuclear winter, and anthropic doomsday', Research Series in Unfashionable Philosophy, 4. , Division of Philosophy and Law, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University.

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The University of Queensland's Richard Sylvan Papers UQFL291, Box 148, Item 1

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This item was identified for digitisation at the request of The University of Queensland's 2020 Fryer Library Fellow, Dr. N.A.J. Taylor.

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GAEAN GREENHOUSE, NUCLEAR WINTER,

AND ANTHROPIC DOOMSDAY?
... climate change, like no other issue, calls the whole notion of human
progress into question. The [ever promised] benefits of newer technologies,
more efficient economics, and improved political systems could be
overwhelmed by uncontrolled global warming.
... the pace of climate change will soon overwhelm natural variability in the
earth's climate. Indeed, it can be compared with nuclear war for its potential to
disrupt a wide range of human and natural systems, [severely] complicating the
task of managing economies and coping with other problems. Irrigation
works, settlement patterns, and food production [among others] would be
tragically disrupted ... (Worldwatch 89, p.ll, p.10)

There are many approaches to the
the cluster of problems upon
which this philosophical investigation focuses. These approaches range from playing the
issue down entirely, dismissing it as not a problem, not something anyone should worry
about, at the one end of the range, to playing it up at the other. Those who play it up may
even foresee the demise of the human race, unless substantially new socio-economic
arrangements - with restructured cities, revitalized lands, rejuvenated oceans - soon
eventuate.
There is certainly plenty of room for different approaches (see Diagram 1), and for

some eclecticism. For what is being relied upon, in every case, comprises shaky and
contestable arguments, from flimsy forecasting models lacking many apparently relevant

details. No one of sound judgment, aware that weather reports for twelve hours ahead can
be wildly astray, would place a very high level of confidence on climatic forecasts for fifty

years ahead down a very hazardous track. Nonetheless there is enough information to act;

and there is information rationally requiring action.

For things in the future are not going to be the same. It is very doubtful that they are
going to be any better (though much important economic theorizing presupposes as much,
such as the monetary discounting of the future). They are not going to be similar even,

because so many parameters important to life are changing, several at exponential rates.
Significant in these changes are likely climatic changes. The Greenhouse effect is among

these, a result of the increases of "greenhouse" gases, especially carbon dioxide and
methane, in the Earth's atmosphere, which have followed exponential paths since the highenergy phase of industrial culture (see Diagram 7). The growth in gas concentration

produces, what it is lagged by, but is now apparent, a significant increase in mean global
temperatures. This has major implications for much of life on Earth.

Course of action

Reasons offered

Short response

No problem

Refutable

No certainty

Irrational

Adaptive capacity

Exaggerated

High-tech resolution

Wishful thinking

Severe dislocation
otherwise

Utopian

Individual
survival

Pointless

No action^

Moderate action

Considerable action

These very condensed responses will be expanded and explained as we proceed. In

accord with an esteemed philosophical tradition, a medical analogy is first deployed; it serves

to throw main points into high relief. Consider the possible illness of the Earth, for instance
as a result of brutalisation and poisoning. Look on the Earth then as a patient^, who exhibits

some symptoms of a possibly disabling illness; for instance the patient's system is

overloaded with troublesome trace elements and her temperature appears to be rising.
Compare rational medical practice where a human patient gives indications of possibly

disabling illness, for instance the patient shows signs of hypertension. Now consider some
of the spectrum of approaches. Suppose the advice is to take no action, to do nothing but

monitor the situation until further information comes in, until even (to take a worst case) it
becomes evident that the patient indeed has hypertension and suffers a severe consequence.

That would be regarded as irresponsible practice. To say that there is no problem when
symptoms are there, would be regarded as utterly irresponsible, and medically refutable. To
say that no action should be taken until certainty as to the complaint is established would be

seen as incompetent medical practice.

Taoist no-action would be different. It would not have undertaken excessive industrial action in
the first place.
This is precisely not the way less modest Gaean hypotheses regard the Earth. For there the Earth
is active, actively participating in co-evolutionary developments. But the health analogy does of
course go right back to ancient chthonic view, systematically presented in Plato, according to
which The Earth is a living being of whom humans are only a part. Right relationship with the
Earth means that the total organism is in good health; so environmental problems are seen as
illness, as a failure of one part of the organism to interact supportivcly with others' (Hughes,
p.60). For Gaean themes in other ancient philosophies, both before and after Plato, see Hughes
p.57.

a

?

3

A responsible practitioner begins recommending some remedial action straight away.
Naturally there are various options open as to what may be prescribed. These include, at the
one end, high-tech procedures, such as, what would be ridiculous simply for hypertension,
full medical engine-and-gearbox replacement (heart and kidney transplant), or, a little less
ludicrous but ridiculously commonplace, a whole-remaining-life course of pharmaceutical
products, e.g. tablets. At the other end, lifestyle changes are proposed, such as more
exercise, weight loss, stress reduction, and an improved diet with less sodium input.
Reasonable advice would not include pure adaptation, that the patient went on living as
before in the expectation that her system would adapt to the situation. Nor would it be
reasonably suggested, except in somewhat unusual circumstances, that the patient entirely

change her lifestyle, abandon her work, house and so on, and live somewhere else. Even so

unusual circumstances, which might include residence in a very polluted environment or
work in a nuclear plant, are no doubt on the increase.
Like all analogies, the medical analogy has limitations. One feature it does not capture
concerns the holistic aspects of the Earth's sickness, and why accordingly an individualistic

survival approach, egotistically rational enough for hypertension and perhaps even for a

localised nuclear war, cannot succeed. The reason is, of course, that holistic problems are
too extensive for individuals, or even small collectives, acting on their own to be effective
or to make much difference. Some are too big even for large collectives or states, but would

require whole regions of the Earth acting in concert. But of course some state players, such

as the superpowers as regards nuclear winter, can make a substantial difference, or even all
the difference.

The medical analogy also indicates the outcome of further investigation of approaches.
Briefly, as with a chronic illness, the conclusion is that there is no very easy path; future
humans should expect a hard landing.

1. Investigative philosophy, argument and rational decision as applied to
climatic probiematiques.
The role of philosophy in such a complex problematique as that of Greenhouse effects
is not difficult to state briefly. Philosophy, Anglo-American philosophy especially, is
concerned above all with
Investigative philosophy resembles

philosophy, except that it may upset the philosophy it applies; it investigates arguments, their

features - assumptions, reliability, etc. - and their generalisation to rational processes and
methods, but
normal philosophical topics. The generalisation to rational processes
comprehends a wider range of philosophical throughput than the orthodox narrow range of
argument typically addressed in logic courses; to probabilistic and plausibilistic reasoning, to
decision processing and making.

4
A main objective in this piece of investigative philosophy is to consider certain

argumcmj pointing to probabilities of severe dislocation as a result of Greenhouse effects,
and the resulting impact on rariana/
formation and action. There are certain
arguments of particular interest for radical decision and action: various neo-Malthusian
arguments, catastrophe arguments, and doomsday arguments.

A main run of arguments to considerable action are limitative in character. Such

ZimifafMm arguments are sometimes alternatively called *neo Malthusian', since Malthus
presented a very elementary, very controversial, argument of this general type. But such is
the hostility, especially in Marxist-influenced quarters, to Malthus's associated themes (some

of them admittedly repulsive) that merely to associate an argument terminologically with

Malthus is thereby likely to condemn it. To avoid such fallacious condemnation-byassociation, the graphic term 'neo-Malthusian' is largely avoided in what follows. The

general form of these limitation arguments is simply this: growth in some parameter over

time encounters limits, typically with severe, even catastrophic, effects; for seldom is the

transition to severely constrained behaviour smooth. A characteristic graphic representation
is as follows:

Diagram 2. GrowfA

ZimiM

growth
parameter

exponential growth
pattern

encountering
limits

subsequent
varying behaviour

The limits are often imposed just by finitude, for instance finiteness of a resource or a sink.

But other limits can be important, for instance where new phenomena or thresholds come

into play. General limitation arguments loom in the background in what follows, where we

shall be arguing on a double front:

*

*

5

A. Significant disequilibrium of the Earth's systems is a real possibility, and
accordingly must be reckoned with in decision procedures. Though the probability of such
an outcome may only be modest, the case has to be taken seriously because the result
(arrived at by a limitation argument typically) is so bad. Suppose, for instance, the outcome

is that the Earth ceases to be habitable in present terms, to be able to carry its present
demanding load. Such an outcome would have an extremely high negative value, so it
would tend to dominate other alternatives. (But it need not be an entirely worst case, where
perhaps the dominant terrestrial species becomes extinct, or the Earth becomes devoid of
"higher" life. Under the bad result contemplated some better-off humans in special
circumstance may subsist for a while.) Such sufficiently bad cases
be taken account
of in decision making; they have to be taken account of in rgrz'o/ia/ decision procedures.
A*. Significant disequilibrium not only has a non-negligible probability, but set in the
proper content has a sizeable probability; so it cannot be ignored or discounted as too low to
bother about. For such an argument
has to be established at the outset than for a rational
decision theory argument.
Such a different argument, of especial concern as regard climatic changes, is the
following
argument:-

* There is some probability that the Gaean "greenhouse effect", generated by human

activity, will get out of control, that Gaean control mechanisms will fail, and that the Earth
will, for example, overheat (Runaway Greenhouse, or
premiss).
* That result would be disastrous for human activities, and indeed for humans
Pr<9.sp(?cf).

* Because of the unusual, and unusually precarious, position of humans (of certain critical

anthropic parameters), such a probability of disaster is not in fact small but decidedly large.
As a consequence then, the human species will probably sharply decline, and even become
extinct (C^^^p/26
That is, by a rectified version of Murphy's law - that if something can go wrong then in

appropriate unusual conditions, it very probably will - an incrementally small probability is
inflated into a very large probability.
It would be a mistake to conclude that because the argument itself looks an unlikely

one, everyone can stop worrying. The argument is but ong of a substantial raft of
arguments, suggesting that we are already in deep trouble, that 5/23^ have everyone
worried; it is but a final intellectual sting, so to say, from the previously inconspicuous

cosmological tail.

6
Such a doomsday argument no doubt puts together, in one more exact form, some of
the sorts of considerations that are troubling many people, especially concerned youth, about
the Greenhouse business: that humans (including themselves) are on a decline or extinction
path. It is no doubt not the only consideration that should be troubling them or us. For
whether or not doomsday warnings are warranted, there are other matters that should be

sufficiently worrisome, to anyone of moral integrity:* Future times are likely to be exceedingly uncomfortable for very many creatures, as
habitats are destroyed, food producing regions are eliminated, and environments seriously
impoverished. (Many of these creatures are nonexistents, mere future existents, i.e.
creatures that do not yet exist or participate in market or voting rituals, but nonetheless they
wzZ/ exist and may participate. But, despite their presently unfavourable ontological status,
they are entitled to fair and decent treatment.)
* Given such future prospects, present practices which do nothing or vanishingly little to
ameliorate these prospects, are decidedly irrational. Indeed a main message that will emerge

from the present exercise is the mora/ Zrrtmpna/f/y of critical large-scale human practices.

The irrationality, morally-weighed-down irrationality, of present large-scale human
practices is already conspicuous from the wintry downside of climatic prospects of which
Greenhouse warming is the upside.

7

Diagram 3. Macro-c/wKmc jarring am?Observed global average temperatures,
1880-1987, with forward projections (historic data from Worldwatch p.10).
mean
global
temperature
(degrees C)

The apparatus for conducting a world-wide nuclear war is entirely in place and indeed

on alert The probability of such a war, even if small, is not zero. Among the many awful
effects of a large nuclear war is that of nuclear winter, which would probably bring about the

demise of present human civilisation, and would at the very least mean enormous dislocation
for most surviving humans and other creatures. A sufficiently diabolical chemico-nuclear

war, reaching into all inhabited parts of the globe, could indeed drive the human species
close to extinction.
The decidedly dubious rationality and morality of these general nuclear arrangements both through what they are in themselves for what purposes, and through their moral

8
opportunity costs - are widely appreciated. The thesis that the arrangements and practices
are immoral, irradonal, and ought to be dismantled - already much argued, and also
contested^ - is not the present concern. The thermonuclear downside is, by comparison, a

very easy case to examine philosophically, and argue, as compared with the greenhouse
upside.4 For there is, for instance, a case of sorts for much increased use of greenhouse
gases, such as CFCs in refrigerators, a case that hardly extends very plausibly to nuclear

weapons. It is a case heavily pressed by some "developing" nations, for polluting devices
already in widespread use in more affluent places, as necessary for local standards of living.

These nations want, or are heavily encouraged, to extend the war against Nature through the

habitats they have gained control over, in the name of economic progress.

War also joins Greenhouse summer and nuclear winter. For the barely-analogical

rapacious war against Nature is a major contributor to Greenhouse gas emissions, for
instance, in the domestication of wetlands for rice paddies, through the heavy pillaging of

forests, and the like, typically carried on with swords and bayonets reforged to jump
ploughs, chemical weapons turned to herbicide guns, and tanks converted to bulldozers.
The protracted war against Nature^, carried, it had been supposed, to a victorious conclusion
with the rise of science and technology and the ubiquitous advance of industralisation, seems
however to have backfired. For it is turning the Earth, Gaea herself, into a patient, with

crippled life support systems, thereby endangering the sustained future even of the
victorious. Yet another Pyrrhic victory.
Greenhouse and nuclear winter are more intricately connected than through war and as
the upside and downside of meteorological phenomena. One of the high-tech solutions

suggested for atmospheric overheating, involves the generation of wintering effects - to cool
things down - by flinging enough dust up into the atmosphere, a trick no doubt most easily

achieved on the requisite scale by nuclear explosives. Needless to say, like backbuming
against out-of-control fires, artificial winter would be a pretty desperate and, given present

expertise, dangerous expedient.

2. The Greenhouse debate, main policy responses, and irrational decision.
The Greenhouse debate, as to what to do, if anything, about forecast Greenhouse
effects on Earth, is intellectually disturbing. For it has revealed, as we shall soon see, that

many of those who have spoken, worse that /pta/ry q/ r/io-yg wAo

who have some role

For my very small contribution to this, see the War and Peace scries in
Papery
E/iwv/wig/mxZ
RSSS, Australian National University.
Global warming, by no means entirely certain, is assumed to be the outcome of increasing
greenhouse gas build up. Of course though some mean temperatures will rise, cooling will
probably occur also in some localized regions.
A war incited and applauded by illustrious philosophical forebears.

*

&

9
in decision making (including both experts and politicians),
mah'ng in con^'n'on^ p/nncorrainiy or possible riskA

a J7rm gra.%? on

The main canvassed policy approaches to the Greenhouse problematique lie firmly
within the dominant social outlook, the high-tech growth and development ideology.
Diagram 4 E?r<9<26? po/z'cy

fa rA^ Gr^g/i/z<9^^ /?ra^/^marz^a^.

Dominant paradigm options

Alternative ecological outlook

Procrastination (wait-and-see)

Soft energy paths and
alternative regulation

Adaptation (sink-or-swim)

Socio-economic
transformation

Regulation
Intervention (star wars)

We will briefly outline, and find wanting, a// the dominant approaches.
* Procra^rznaaon, the prevailing response.
In fact the main governmental and conservative response thus far has been procrastination,
or "wait-and-see" as it is more benignly known.*? The approach makes much of the
uncertainties, of the shortcomings, in even the most elaborate general circulation models for
future climatic change, of the high noise-to-signal levels. On such bases it contends that it is
too early to do anything, except staging some meetings, organising some review
committees, undertaking some monitoring, and funding a little more "research". It
obviously does nothing to rock the growth ideology boat.

Certainly a few scientists, outside main policy making reaches, do have a sound intuitive
appreciation of these problems, and of the deficiencies of prevailing practices, e.g. Pittock 87.
There is little excuse for prevailing ignorance of or ignoring of decision theory: for the elements
of the standard theory are readily accessible and very elementary. In the present essay a
modification of standard decision theory (as expounded e.g. in Jeffrey) is assumed as background;
for details see Sylvan.
Following Knight, many economists (try to) distinguish between uncertainty and risk. Risk is
said to obtain when some more or less objective numerical probabilities can be assigned to
outcomes, a situation not obtaining as regards global greenhouse effects. Bayesians, who can
always assign subjective probabilities tend to eschew the distinction, e.g. Cyert and DeGroot,
who say that 'decision making under uncertainty refers to situations in which the outcome of the
decision is not precisely predictable'(p.3). Either way, Greenhouse involves uncertainty - to
which rational procedures should be applied.
There is significant rhetorical art in the choice of classificatory labels, a rather philosophically
neglected art. A PR person must have been hired to produce the Greenhouse adaptation of
'adaptation*.

10
There is the pretence that we do not know enough to act.s But it is known that carbon

dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases are fast increasing. The main causes and
enough likely enough consequences are also known. Theoretical considerations have

already been partially confirmed by rising temperatures in the eighties. Outcomes of rising

temperatures are also known in broad outline: rising sea levels, and so forth. In addition,
there are partial small-scale models of Greenhouse effects in action. For example, a city

such as Mexico City, which is situated in the bowl-like valley, is placed in an environment
which traps heat as well as polludon. The ecological effects, like the human effects, are

pretty dramatic even at this small level, and hardly to be sought, or emulated elsewhere.
There is a pretence, fostered also by many sciendsts, that Greenhouse difficuldes have
only just been discovered; a date commonly set for that watershed event is the Villiers
conference and statement of 1985 (e.g. Pittock 87 pp.2-3). Actually there have been
Greenhouse warnings for more than a decade, and there has been a corresponding decade of
inacdon. Nor is any acdon of much significance presently seriously contemplated.

Back in 1979 Bernard wrote at length about and reported the substantial concern of
climatologists about Greenhouse effects. Even the magazine

not then noted for its

green sympathies, recorded that The release of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by the
burning of fossil fuels is, conceivably, the most important environmental issue in the world
today" (May 3 1979). Bernard quotes many other concerned scientists, several asserdng that
'the government must start dealing with this problem now". They meant the United States

government. "The"" government didn't take the hint. For more than a decade then, sciendsts
have been emphasizing that the Greenhouse threat is a major environmental problem, and
that action should be taken immediately. Over 10 years nothing of real significance to

counter the effects has happened. There has been more than a

q/TKacdo/t, during

which matters have got worse, and the time frame for evasive acdon disturbingly shorter. It
is already evident that requisite decision making under uncertainty is not taking place. On

straight inductive grounds, it would be reasonable to expect nothing will be done. While
there are theoretical grounds to back up such an assessment, still it is only just beginning to

get through to a much wider public (which can exercise a marginal influence on what

politicians say) that there is - or T/zay be, as some more reactionary modal-mongering
academics would have - a problem or two.

Part of the problem is that scientists have been caught out (e.g. crying wolf) and have become
ultra-cautious. With the advent of thermodymamics, for instance, scientists began 'threatening
mankind with a rather swift "heat death"' as the universe ran down. Thus M. Alier, on 'blatant
ideological use of science even by scientists themselves' (see Bernard p.9). More recently, many
rang alarm bells prematurely concerning an impending mini-ice-age.
The past predictive failures of scientists have been used as evidence for scepticism concerning
greenhouse effects; see Me Kibben p.8. It is an unsatisfactorily selective argument; interestingly
it is not used in a similar way against economists, whose predictive record is significantly worse.

11

Many scientists have joined the wait-and-see queue, with their begging bowls, hoping
for more hand-outs for research. They assume, rightly enough, that more information
would assist with rational decision-making, and also, quite wrongly, that "scientific
certainty" is required for action to be taken. Physical scientists are not alone in their
misapprehension of rational decision methods.
Although there is a good deal of practical experience available of statistical-type
decision making under uncertainty, for instance as regards insurance coverage and

engineering projects, decision theory, especially as regards unrepeatable situations, has not

penetrated very far into standard scientific methodology or much into mainstream parts of
social sciences. 'Economists in particular have shown a talent for bringing every problem
back to a world of certainty where all solutions are known or can be easily found/ Natural
scientists including climatologists are, for the most part, on the same erroneous reducdon-tounattainable-certainty trip.

'This is not to say that economists have not worked on

uncertainty. ... however ... uncertainty is introduced and then taken out by assumption'
(Cyert and DeGroot, continuing, p.l).

But there are several classes of problemadc

situations, where decision and action may be required, where uncertainty

be

removed or discarded by fiat, reducdon stratagems or otherwise, notably:* inherently probabilistic situations, such as those of indeterminacy in quantum theory;

* essentially unpredictable situadons (which may be determinisdc) such as those now under
invesdgadon in chaos theory;
* presently uncertain situations and outcomes, which may eventually resolve into certain
cases, or may tum into some of the above classes, where there is not time to wait for
resolution.

The Greenhouse problem is regularly put into the latter class, a standard assumpdon being

that with enough money and research effort thrown at it, it will resolve to decent certainty.
But it may well not. Climate is now a prime arena for applications of chaos theory (in any
case inidal conditions for application of meteorological equadons are seldom very accurate
and are now shifting with the accumulation of Greenhouse gases). There are grounds for
supposing that critical parts of climatology will fall into the essentially unpredictable class,

that the sought certainly is unattainable. If so the standard begging-bowl posture of too
many research scientists: Supply more funding so we can go on researching undl we obtain
certainty, is misguided.^

Or, less charitably, downright dishonest. Nor does it seem to have occurred to most research
scientists demanding more money that an important reason why they are not obtaining the
funding they expect, or even enough to run complex modellings on expensive computers, is
because their research results could, if unfavourable, act as a serious drag on the industrial
establishment. 77zey are Aar<^/y go//7g to /?e we// jrt/tt/et/ to ^e/eg/twuze woder/i /a^artr/a/
society.

12

There are thus some severe problems with this prevailing response. Firstly, it is
irrational. Certainty,
achieved, may be achieved too late. What was required for
rationality was decision making in advance of certainty. Secondly, certainty may be
unobtainable. The meteorological equations may be non-linear (nonadditive) and so
incapable of delivering firm results given slightly fluctuating initial data. Not only are many

experts and decision makers only comfortable about acting in circumstances of relative
certainty; almost as bad, where some uncertainty is involved, only what is considered Zz^/y
gets genuine consideration. Rational decision making has however to take account of what
may not be very likely at all, but may be quite disastrous should it occur (e.g. a nuclear
accident with full meltdown). In this respect too, the standard response is methodologically

unsound.
* AzZapzarz^n, learning to live with and love the Greenhouse.
The policy That tends to be favoured by most economists' is an adaptive strategy: '"Let

society adjust to environmental changes without attempting to mitigate or prevent the
changes in advance". We could adapt to climate change for example, by planting alternative

crop strains [themselves] ... more widely adapted... ' (Schneider p.8). Observe, however,

that it is a decidedly rayzrzcf&% "adaptation" that is being proposed, that humans adjust to the

results of present economic and industrial practices, rather than adjusting fAem. It is
zz^^zz/?z^6Z that economic growth comes first, that we do not change (e.g. through decent

regulation) high energy industrial practices. A fuller and smarter adaptation would adapt
r/z&yg practices. The policy is like a pernicious agriculture policy that says, "Let farmers

adjust to the results of soil erosion, salination and so on, without attempting to mitigate or
prevent these deleterious changes in advance." Such "adaptadve agriculture", the present
predominant practice in advanced agriculture, is anti-environmental, but is given a spurious

air of evolutionary inevitability and evolutionary redistributive justice; you can't buck natural
evolution, which is entirely natural, can you? Let us condense such far-from-inevitable and
highly artificial mal-adaptation in the neologism
Greenhouse adaptation, like

nuclear adaptation, is badaptation (some, less kind, would say wa^aptation).

There is a pragmatic, if cynical, political argument for badaptation, namely, that
zznzZat^raZ action to prevent a warming is unfeasible and requisite international cooperation is

unattainable. Both contentions are open to doubt. Unilateral action by the USA, by far the
Earth's heaviest resource and energy consumer (per capita and on several other relevant
dimensions), could make a major difference, especially when backed up by pressure
(familiar from other settings, such as the narcotics war) on other nations and through the
United Nations. Unfortunately the USA is also the world's largest supplier of influential

growth economists. In any case, international agreements such as those on whaling and

13
concerning Antarctica, are attainable, and sometimes effective. The ozone protocols,
limiting production of CFCs, show that results can be achieved to limit trace gas emissions.
The adaptadon proposal is presently compatible with wait-and-see; both mean little or

no hauling back on trace gas production. Indeed procrastination will force sociedes towards
badaptation. Typical of adaptation, like procrastination, is an (over-)emphasis on the

uncertainties of Greenhouse forecasts, and on the decision-theoretic paralysis such

uncertaindes are alleged to produce. Characterisdc of adaptadon too is a minimisadon of the
of Greenhouse modification. No doubt the impression that things won't be so very

different, or far removed from what has already been experienced, is important in getting
adaptationism more readily accepted, as a radonal course of acdon (instead of the seemingly
irradonal course it is). Thus badaptation tends to play with figures at the low end of
projected ranges of temperature increase, such as 1.5°C for 2050, when in fact present data
indicates something rather in the vicinity of 4° C - in a setting, furthermore, where fracdons
of a degree centigrade may well be linked to macro-physical and macro-biological change.
Recent modellings deliver, on average, an increase in 2°C attributable to carbon dioxide, and
it is widely thought that other trace gases will double the CO2 effect^, thus yielding a 4°C
temperature increase around 2050.
The colossal extent of future human dislocation has correspondingly been deliberately
underemphasized. The adaptive capacides of human arrangements, when humans are living

at the margin, to massive natural shifts, has been grossly exaggerated. Consider agriculture

alone - set aside flooded cides, sunken atoll islands, and all the rest. Some of the Earth's
major grain producing regions - upon which famine relief projects depend - could be pushed

substantially out of business. The conditions which prevailed during the American dust­
bowl experience of the nineteen-thirties were benign indeed compared with those which
threaten with mid twenty-first century Greenhouse condidons. The mid-continental summer
temperatures were only 1-2° C warmer than the present average; under greenhouse
conditions they could well be more than 3-4° C warmer. In the dust-bowl rainfall only

slipped at critical growing times (e.g. July for northern corn) to 80% of the contemporary

norm; but under Greenhouse conditions it could be significantly less again (only winter
precipitation increasing). A super dust-bowl is not improbable (for much more detail, see

Bernard). Similarly for other similar latitude Northern grain producing regions. But the
high-energy industrial superstructure is crucially based upon sufficient cheap food (bread)
for the urban masses.

10

See e.g. Pearman p.18. Note that methane is beginning to rival carbon dioxide as a gas whose
atmospheric propordons really matter and whose present exponential increase is excessive.

14
* Tnfgrvenn'o?!, high-tech Earth engineering.

Interventionist proposals so far floated include
(D New oceans in parts of the Earth's land surface lying below, at, or near sea level. These
projects would make the mega-dams of recent times look like children's play.

@ Wintering effects. Production of sufficient dust in the atmosphere, achieved for instance
by nuclear detonations, to mitigate heating effects. Such enterprise would make
modification of the weather by cloud seeding look like childs' play.

Fortunately these and other expensive and grandiose proposals, which would call for
considerable international cooperation,
far down the planning track; with these schemes
procrastination is rational.
*

controlling free(-wheeling) enterprise.

Regulation itself is of course transparadigmatic; where it belongs depend on what measures
(what sorts of constraints, rights, etc.) are proposed and how they are imposed or enforced.

If it is, for example, some industrial law-and-order, smokestack scrubbing regulations or
Greenhouse polluting rights, within the status quo, that is one thing, but if a minimally-

constrained growth paradigm is questioned and alternative socio-economic arrangements
advocated, that is quite another, and falls outside the dominant paradigm. Such policies

involving regulations controlling fossil fuel emissions especially, are negatively labelled
in the predominantly American policy literature, though there is now no
preventing some Greenhouse effects; but the worse to follow could still be prevented. What
is usually covered under the label is however some regulation within prevailing political
arrangements. So energy efficiencies and savings for investment in growth elsewhere is
comprehensible, straight growth-curtailing non-consumption is not contemplated. But the
latter is just what alternatives do contemplate.
Democratic political arrangements do not exclude such alternatives; both the power

bases of political leaders and economic prescriptions do. Adequate regulation within
prevailing socio-economic arrangements is going to prove impossible, without adjustment of
power structures and economic imperatives - in effect without far-reaching systemic and
ideological adjustment. While such adjustment appears rational, it seems unlikely (see

further section 5). Power holders and the power structures into which they slot have too
much to lose. So it is hardly remarkable that regulation itself is not so bureaucratically
popular (at least under that mode of presentation) in these latter days of economic
irrationalism, and is strongly resented and resisted.
Some of the U.S. bureaucratic reaction to the Antarctic ozone hole, now regularly

attributed to extensive CFC usage, is instructive. A top Reagan official 'said that since

CFO's were useful to industry, people should use sunglasses and baseball caps as protection

against retina damage and skin cancer' - individualisdcally distributed adaptationism, terrific

€?

&

15
for creatures outside "sunglasses and baseball caps" economies. Other Reagan
administrators spoke for procrastination, one academic-turned-bureaucrat observing that 'so
far the ozone hole has had little effect on skin cancer rates in the United States'. The
prevailing bureaucratic procrastination stance that was applied to the much easier ozone

problem (which has belated obtained weak international responses), is now extended to
Greenhouse effects. It is typically, typically irrationally, stated by high administrators that
'significant gaps exist in our knowledge .... These scientific uncertainties must be reduced
before we commit the
economic future to drastic and potentially misplaced policy
responses' (preceding quotations from McKibben p.10, p.ll, italics added).

and the
of the Greenhouse
business is thereby also revealed. Like heart disease and cancer, Greenhouse effects are
gaining much discussion and some funding because they just may severely effect the
affluent, affluent humans and affluent nations, that have a good deal to lose, in United States
especially. The impact will, however, be at least as severe in some third world nations,
whose lands or much of them will be flooded, countries which cannot afford extensive
The extensive

expensive dyking (or where such effort would be in the longer term, as seas rise, be

pointless), countries such as Pacific coral atoll nations and delta states like Bangladesh. But

the really serious losers will no doubt be, not humans , rich or poor, but nonhumans.

Biological diversity, already being reduced by various human activities, may be
one of the chief casualties of global warming. Massive destruction of forests,
wetlands, and even the polar tundra could irrevocably destroy complex eco­
systems that have existed for millennia. Indeed, various biological reserves
created in the past decade to protect species diversity could become virtual death
traps as wildlife attempt to survive in conditions for which they are poorly
suited. Accelerated species extinction is an inevitable consequence of a rapid
warming (Worldwatch p.10).

3. Arguments to dislocation and for a Lesser Venus Prospect.
There is at least a small probability that predicted increases in mean atmospheric

temperatures will seriously interfere with most remaining natural habitats and result in the
degeneration or destruction of many of them, especially forests, wetlands, and marine

environments. For example, most wetlands will either be flooded or else evaporate under
increasing temperatures. Again, the prospect is for the boreal forest to shrink from about
23% of the world's forest to something like 1% of a much diminished forest covering. Nor
will adaptationism help here; for natural evolution is much too slow for adaptationism to
succeed n.

11

Cf. Keeton pp.763-4, '... typical migration rates for forest boundaries are of the order of 502000m per annum ... [A requisite] shift of 500-1000km would, however, take hundreds of years.
... Pollen evidence... suggests that large changes occurred in forest composition during the
Holocene period some 8000-10000 years ago, even though the climate changes then were less

16
Natural ecosystems will not adapt effectively to rapid climatic change.... With
regard to forests, habitats for plants and animals cannot be re-created or
transplanted rapidly. Continuing climatic changes would strain the capabilities
of management practices even in commercial tree plantations (Beijer Institute
Report pp.21-3).

The decline or demise of these systems, vast reservoirs for greenhouse gases, will accelerate
the warming, and accordingly make matters substantially worse:
Trees are adapted to a narrow range of temperature and moisture levels, and
cannot cope with rapid climate change. A temperature increase of 1 degree
Celsius per decade in mid- to upper latitudes translates into a shift in vegetation
zones of 60-100 miles northward. Terrestrial ecosystems cannot migrate that
fast. Vast numbers of trees are likely to die, and new trees adapted to warmer
temperatures are unlikely to be able to replace them rapidly. During such a
disruption, huge areas of forest could die and, as they decay or bum, send large
quantities of additional CO2 into the atmosphere, accelerating the warming
(Worldwatch p.10).
Of course the immediate climatic patterns would be somewhat more complex. If enough

soot and ash from fires were flung into the atmosphere there would be a cooling effect, like
that of a small nuclear winter, before heating accelerated. The present pattern of ecosystemic

loss would also be sharply accelerated. For when natural ecosystems get reduced to about
30% of their initial size, they tend to collapse of themselves.

Moreover, there would be other significant positive feedback from ecosystems other
than the terrestrial forests, from the oceans especially. As the oceans warm, they lose their

capacity to serve as carbon dioxide reservoirs. So they too release additional gases,

including previously absorbed CO2, back into the atmosphere, further accelerating the
warming. A critical question arises as to how much danger such positive feedback poses?

As so often, informed opinions, and so probability estimates differ. However 'several
scientists working in the area consider that positive feedback effects will force a very bleak

picture to be drawn" (Worldwatch p.19).^
Unlike the interim effect of a small nuclear winter, where after a few years at most,
climatic behaviour (as distinct from radioactivity levels and, differently, from ecological
communities) would presumably return towards the previous norm, there will be /7<9 similar

under greenhouse impact. Technically then, stability would be lost under the

than those expected by 2030 [and forests were more extensive and less interfered with]' (Pittock
87a p.209, rearranged).
Second order probabilities, probabilities and uncertainties in the light of first order subjective
probabilities, enter importantly.

17
impact,^ disequilibrium induced. An eventual long-term return to some different but
sufficiently congenial equilibrium could well be excluded. Under new climatic regimes

plants themselves may be able to do little more than hang on for part of their own lives. In
many places conditions would be too severe for much of the "year" to permit normal plant
functioning, including what is crucial for Greenhouse amelioration, photosynthesis. In most
plants, photosynthesis only occurs across a narrow band of temperatures (e.g. 6 - 34°C);
outside that range the plants shut down operations.^ Even more important, many plants
would leave few or no successful successors. Even where plants set seed, seedlings would
not survive under the severe conditions expected; for instance, they would be killed by hot
dry summer conditions, or in other places by frosts to which they are not adapted, both
phenomena already familiar after clearfelling of forests. The situation at a famous place in

southern Sahara, where there is but one ancient tree hanging on in thousands of square

kilometres of desert, a tree with viable seeds which sets no seedlings, could be more or less
replicated in many other places where forests or woody plants once grew.
In fact we are already witnessing the demise of the trees in much of Australia. Already
dead and dying trees form a predominant feature of the Australian rural landscape. Virtually

whichever way ecologists travel in Australia where trees remain, they are confronted with
dead and dying trees
The reasons for the present decline of trees in rural Australia is, for
the most part, not to be attributed to early Greenhouse or even pollution effects. "6 It is

thought to be due to a complex of factors, including a range of insect predators whose
efforts are concentrated on isolated trees left after an excessive zeal for clearing (i.e. holistic

effects enter as regards healthy persistence of trees). Excessive disturbance of ecological
systems, though overclearing of trees, has seriously upset the systems. Types of systemic
stress and disturbance are likely to be much accelerated given the additional impact of

Greenhouse warming on plant functioning and reproduction.
f<9 some
q/
worth
disentangling. Firstly, a system may be disturbed by interfering with critical components
There are several

within the system structure, processing parts, such as botanical systems or their

interconnections. As with a computer, if a cridcal component is broken or a circuit cut, the

probability of serious malfunction increases. Secondly, a system normally operates within a

Stability is defined in physics in terms of immediate return to an initial (inertial) position after
small disturbance.
The upper bound may be difficult to appreciate in most of Aotearoa. But in much of Australia,
during the summer, many plants close down their operations for much of the day.
Other effects of increased heat on major food plants matter for human affairs. Severe heat
interferes with fertilization and reproduction in com, and apparently affects the ability of rice in
Asia to reproduce; so considerably reduced yields of staple foods may be anticipated.
Reported by Recher on EarfAworw.
Thus coastline vegctational destruction through detergents in sewerage waters.

18
certain range of condition. Take it outside these conditions or push it towards limits (let the
computer get too hot or too cold), and probability of breakdown is much increased.
Feedback loops, which are an important feature of cybernetic systems are particularly

vulnerable to normality disturbance. Cybernetic systems afford one example of more
holistic behaviour; dissipative systems, where perhaps strange new features may enter as
systemic loading is increased, another. Such new features may not be at all congenial to

dominant forms, or to maintenance of life support arrangements.
It should be evident from details already assembled that there is some probability the
Greenhouse efforts could seriously disturb the crucial carbon cycle. The carbon cycle loops,

in major fashion, through both the higher plant complexes and the oceans, both major
carbon dioxide reservoirs - but just how critically through them is uncertain. However,

with the serious disturbance of main components in the cycle, the real possibility of cycle
malfunction can hardly be excluded. Much the same holds with other crucial chemical
cycles, such as the sulphur cycle (though woody plants are perhaps less important here, the

oceans are highly significant, the oceans Costeau has already pronounced moribund). To a
lesser extent, several of the other well-known bio-chemical cycles, such as those for

nitrogen, sodium, and so forth, depend for their stability and maintenance on the adequate
operation of active ecological structures. Plainly if a cycle loops through a component, such
as a tropical forest, which is severely disturbed then the crucial cycle itself could be locally

disrupted.
There is some probability, furthermore, that the changes will disturb other physical
cycles crucial to the stability of systems. For some of the Earth's feedback systems are in
fact maintained in equilibrium through natural ecosystems. A striking example appears to be

the regulating of the Earth's temperature itself. Lovelock and collaborators have devised an
elementary daiyy wor/d m(9dg/ which reveals how a feedback system with two types of
daisies can, within limits, stabilize temperatures despite increasing solar energy input (see

the next diagram). The limits are important, for as these limits are approached the
maintenance systems break down. Thus again, instability could ensue under disturbance.

19

Diagram 5.77z^rm<9.s7anc r^ga/aizoa a/*rA^ Earr/z j ^zayac^ i^mp^ramrf rAraag/z p/a/zM (a

much simplified picture from Lovelock 88 p.58).

!n the "Datsyworid" mode), tife adjusts the pfanefs
temperature to suit ttseif. A basic assumption is that on
Daisyworid, as on Earth, the sun is getting progressive^
hotter. Biack daisies grow best when the surface temperature
is tow, because their petals absorb radiation. As the sun's
heat increases, the white daisies begin to nourish. Their
petais reflect radiation, thus heipingto iower surface
temperature. Between the time the seeds first germinate and
when the sun gets too hot, the piants maintain a steady
surface temperature by adjusting the pfanefs aibedo.

Without doubt these matters are bad enough. Demise of most of the Earth's richness^
is not a minor matter. Worse could follow.
Apart from direct ecological breakdown, there are several other major ways through

which the maintenance structures of the Earth can be not merely awkwardly disturbed, but
thrown right out of kilter - perhaps, given the d^/zcacy of several critical matters, never to
return present norms. Most obvious and immediately threatening is
* nuclear warfare, and therewith nuclear winter.
But there are of course other severe shocks that the planet could suffer than those chemonuclear warfare, some human induced, some a "chance" matter of the planets' posidon in

space; namely

* a mini Big Bang, or an undermining of metastability, brought about through very high

energy experimentadon (see Leslie);
* a collision with a large meteorite or asteroid.
Such uncertaindes, not germane to the main climatic arguments, are listed, not to achieve a

bogus completeness, but to emphasize that complete certainty is not to expected, not
radonally. Should we obtain it, should we obtain easy relatively unproblemadc lives, then

we have, by world standards, been rather lucky. Moreover, these latter uncertaindes do so

17

Natural richness is its main richness, much exceeding human arufice.

20
far appear negligible compared with those bound up with climate.is The Greenhouse
problemadque differs (as do nuclear winter and also high energy experimentation) from such
possibilities as destruction of the Earth's favourable climate or life-supports by collision with
an asteroid in two crucial respects:
the poor prognoses are largely a matter of human making (meaning the making of certain
among humans) and
the damaging situations could be substantially averted by positive or concerted human
activity.

According analogies with remote phenomena such as decline of the sun, asteroid collisions,
etc., sometimes applied to dismiss concerns with global environmental problems, do not
hold up, and should be resisted.
The human-induced climatic problems are primarily ascribable to:

* excess economic development. The practices involve a complex and sustained assault on

most of the Earth's major ecosystems, forests, seas, and so on, along with the alteration of

atmospheric composition by greenhouse gases. For example, the forests are cut down,
burnt, poisoned by herbicides and acid rain, or otherwise removed or destroyed. (Therewith
too a great deal more carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere and major sinks of

carbon dioxide are removed.) As a result of these concerted growth-and-development

activities such systems are driven to limits, and breakdown occurs. Once it occurs at some
weak point it can escalate elsewhere, like a conflagradon; thus again ecosystemic collapse for
example.

Quite apart from breakdown at or approaching limits, for instance because of systemic
overload, remarkable changes can occur in dissipative systems under stress or strain.
* excess energy or chemical loading. Though such striking examples as the chemical clock,
it has been demonstrated that dissipative systems can suddenly, and often rather

unpredictably, undergo extraordinary changes, as for instance energy flux is increased

(Prigogine and others).

Such non-additive or nonlinear effects, characteristic of more holistic dissipative

systems, seem bound to occur within the Earth's atmosphere and oceans as they undergo
compositional changes. Carbon dioxide itself provides a good example:

None of these assessments are strikingly objective, but are a matter of appearance. The risk of
catastrophic destruction of Earth civilization by an asteroid or comet is discussed, and compared
with either less exotic risks, in Chapman and Morrison, chapter 19. It has been guesstimated at
a 1 in 300,000 chance per year, a much smaller probability than that serious Greenhouse effect
will eventuate (often put at about 85%), but comparable with some rather more mundane risks
(see p.283). The risks from very high energy experimentation will no doubt rise sharply as
orders of attainable energy increase.

21
With small quantities its effect on the temperature of the air is proportional to
the amount added; there is a linear effect. However once the carbon dioxide
concentration in the air approaches 1%, new nonlinear effects come into play
and heating greatly increases. In the absence of a biosphere to fix carbon
dioxide, its concentration in the atmosphere would probably exceed the critical
figure of 1%. The Earth would then heat up rapidly to a temperature near to
that of boiling water. Increasing temperatures would speed up chemical
reacdons and accelerate their progress towards chemical equilibrium. ...
eventually ... the Earth would become permanently cocooned in a brilliant white
cloud - a second Venus, although not quite as hot (Lovelock pp.45-6).

Fortunately for Gaean prospects, the percentage of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is now
nowhere near 1% nor likely to be pushed near 1% by projected increases in carbon dioxide
levels under economic activity over the next 50 years^. However eventual exponential
growth will lead towards accentuated levels, and the side effect of such growth, the release
of carbon dioxide from forests and oceans and the considerable reduction in fixadon of
carbon dioxide with the decline of forests, will lead in that disastrous direction rather more
rapidly. The 1% bound constitutes just one of the many serious limits (fortunately a fairly

remote one) to condnuation of present developmental pracdces.

Now there can be no radonal confidence with respect to complex dissipadve systems about the behaviour of which we presendy know comparadvely little - that other nonaddidve
effects will not be encountered at a much earlier stage. After all, the Gaean system, its
atmosphere, oceans and ecosystems, will be pushed into essendally unexperienced and
substandally unknown reaches. There is, for example, no experience from comparable past

times of such elevated temperatures as Greenhouse effects will lead to, to draw upon.

'There is no evidence that the land-bound glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica have ever
completely melted in the last two million years'. There is experience of much colder
periods. 'During ice ages, the earth's average temperature has been about 5°C colder than at

present, with glaciers covering major portions of continents' (Barth p.7). But there is no

similar experience of temperatures 4-5° C warmer than at present (in any warm interglacial

period), 'a global increase of more than 2°C above present is unprecedented in the era of
human civilization' (Schneider p.6).
It would accordingly be decidedly rash, rash decision making, to assign a zero or

negligible probability to the emergence of new or unknown effects of relevance, to assume

all will go smoothly and well. That would presuppose, in any event, a completeness in
present scientific knowledge, contrary to the information we actually have that present

investigation of holistic systems, among much else, is still in its infancy. The probability of

19

In the atmosphere of the very early Earth, CO? exceeded the critical 1% figure; but solar
luminosity was about 25% less than now. With increasing solar flux the Earth would have
overheated had the proportion of CO2 not been much reduced (e.g. see Lovelock 88 p.56).

22
something critical (e.g. perhaps radicals like hydroxyl) having been left out of estimations,

of room accordingly for something unexpected or for something to go wrong, may be small

(though experience implies it is not always so), but it certainly appears to be non-zero.

For the overconfident, with excess faith in the flimsy scientific edifice, there is a
salutary lesson to be drawn from the erratic and stumbling path of the main proponent of
Gaia hypotheses, Lovelock. Lovelock, coming from a working life as an industrial chemist,

part of that time for a giant chemical transnational, had, and retained for a considerable time
after he began his holistic hypothesizing, a strong antipathy for environmentalists.^ Even
Gaia was for industry and against the environmentalists; she was going to laughingly soak
up all the pollution, courtesy of the chemical companies especially, that we humans could

throw at her. In particular, we did not really need to worry much about ozone depletion or

greenhouse gas escalations^ 'Contrary to the forebodings of many environmentalists,
finding a suitable" destructive agent to bring about a 'doom scenario" 'turns out to be an
almost insoluble problem" (79 p.40). Lovelock makes it easier for himself by helping
himself to the assumption that a doomsday scenario involves the destruction of all "life"',
'down to the last spore of some deep-buried anaerobic bacteria" (p.40). But even for the

least chauvinistic of environmentalists, destruction of all humans but the select elect would
be quite enough for a decent doomsday. Lovelock's high redefinition of a environmental
'doomsday scenario" is unacceptable. Lovelock does not however stay within the bound of
his redefinition. He proceeds to pooh-pooh the idea that anything much that we humans
could accomplish would make any difference to Gaia (p.41) or even to most humans,
including use of nuclear devices.

Unfortunately for Lovelock's credibility, he was writing three years before the

seemingly obvious wintering effects of a major nuclear war were realised by the accredited
scientific community. Appealing in a common scienufic fashion to scientific authority, he
proceeds to minimalize the human and ecological effects of a major war. The report he relies
upon as authoritative was a 1975 (unreferenced) one of 'the US Nadonal Academy of

Sciences ... prepared by an eight-man committee of their own
assisted by forty-eight other
explosions and a//

chosen from those

members,
in the effects of nuclear

to them" (p.41, italics added). Lovelock draws from

the disdnguished expert report the findings that

Coupled with this, there was a certain schizophrenia in Lovelock's attitude to the natural
environment. There was also a matching schizophrenia as to the fragility of life on Earth. On
the one side, it required very delicate settings and fine tuning to arise; this is part of the argument
for a Gaia hypothesis. On the other side, life is 'tough, robust, and [highly] adaptable', virtually
indestructible (79 p.90). But though a flawed hero, Lovelock is a hero nonetheless.
See e.g. Lovelock 79, p.40ff; and also, on ozone, 88 p.63.

23
... if half of all the nuclear weapons in the world's arsenals, about 10,000
megatons, were used in a nuclear war the effects on most of the human and
man-made ecosystems of the world would be small at first and would become
negligible within thirty years. Both aggressor and victim nations would of
course suffer catastrophic local devastation, but areas remote from the battle
and, especially important in the biosphere, marine and coastal ecosystems
would be minimally disturbed (p.41).

Three years later Turco and others proceeded to detail a very different scenario, that of
widespread and ecologically damaging nuclear winter. Not for the only time, Lovelock had
been caught out badly.
As with pollution, Lovelock has more recently shifted ground,^ considerably, on the
vulnerability of the Earth to human-induced disturbance. When a system such as Gaea in

homeostatis
is stressed to near the limits of regulation even a small disturbance may cause it
to jump to a new stable state or even fail entirely....
It could be that the regulation of the Earth's climate is not far from one of these
limits. Thus if some part of climate regulation is connected with the natural
level of CO2 then clearly we are close to the limits of its regulation. This is
because CO2 cannot be reduced much below the level observed for the last
glaciation, about 180 ppm, without seriously limiting the rate of growth of the
more abundant C3 type plants. If we perturb the Earth's radiation balance by
adding more CO2 and other greenhouse gases to the atmosphere or reduce its
capacity to regulate by decreasing the area of forests or both of these together
then we could be surprised by a sudden jump of both CO2 and temperature to a
new and much warmer steady state; or by the initiation of periodic fluctuations
between that state and our present climate.
The anomalously low abundance of CO2 on Earth when compared with the
other terrestrial planets and especially the fact that the mean temperature of the
Earth is on the cool side of the optimum for regulation, suggests strongly that
the biota is regulating the climate by pumping CO2 from the air. The common
feature of most of our pollutions and of our exploitation of the land surface
seems to be unintentionally to thwart this natural process (Lovelock 85 pp.5354).

The argument to the lesser
par/i, to significant disequilibrium with the Earth's
ecological support system destabilized, takes the following lines. The Earth appears to be a
dissipative (far-from-equilibrium) system held at its present
by a combinadon of an
(increasing) solar flux - a main energy input into the system - and its major ecological

arrangements, especially vegetational complexes and live oceans. The sheer extent to which
the resulting system differs from the stable dead system it could otherwise be is shown by
the following table for atmospheric and oceanic composidon.

Shifdng ground may be fine, especially when it is to an improved position. But it should be
done honesdy and openly, not stealthily or shiftily. Lovelock proceeds to attribute a cancature
of his <9WH previous position to cdtics of the Gaia hypothesis (as a clever Tabneation', which
also it was not): that it is 'an argument developed to allow industry to pollute at will, since
mother Gaia will clean up the mess '(85 p.53).

24

TABLE 1.
Substance

Funerary
Equilibrium

(principal components per cent).

Venus

Earth

Carbon dioxide
A
Nitrogen
1
R
Oxygen
Argon
0
C
E
A
N
S

Water

Lifeless

Mars

Earth

99
0

98
1.9

98
1.9

0

trace

trace

1

0.1

0.1

Earth
95
2.7

0.13

2

63

Salt

3.5

Sodium
nitrate

1.7

Present

0.03
79

21
1
96

n.a.

n.a.

3.5
traces

Surface
temperatures (°C)

n.a

477

Total pressure
(bars)

n.a.

90

290+50

60

-53

13

0064

1

The table is based upon tables 1 and 2 of Lovelock 79, p.37 and p.39.
The whole Earth system is accordingly far from equilibrium. Unpredictable behaviour

as loads increase is therefore almost to be expected. A likely moral is presumably: stress the
system, or destabilize ecosystem controls sufficiently, and the system may be in deep

trouble. It is relevant to inquire briefly into what evidence we so far have on this score.
To do so let us reconsider some of the array of arguments there are from some sort of
holistic organisation of the Earth (for a modest Gaea hypothesis, to the effect that the (outer)

Earth is a naturally regulated nonadditive cybernetic system, important attributes of which
are regulated by the biota).

/or the participation of the Earth's ecological support

systems, plant complexes especially, the Earth would not be blessed with its present life-

benign physical characteristics. The oceans would be much saltier and too salty for most
life, the air would not contain the present rich mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide so
important for terrestrial life, and so on; perhaps most important the Earth would be

significantly hotter and too hot for most life, for most of what does the regulating and

stabilizing of present conditions. For the solar flux has increased in intensity about 30%
since life appeared on Earth, whereas the mean global temperatures have exhibited no

25
corresponding increase, but have remained relatively constant. Such an expected constancy
in the face of disturbing inputs is ascribed, under holistic approaches that do something to
explain it, to the concerted activity of plant life, as already indicated.
The general tenor of the argument is so far this:- By arguments from physical and
other models, and because of uncertainties, the probability that something could go badly

wrong is not merely nonzero^ but indeed far from negligible. Part of the argument can be

put as follows:- There is a decent probability that a modest Gaea hypothesis holds. But
then, there is a considerable probability that excessive Greenhouse build-up will lead to

damaging system destabilization. So combining probabilities, there at least a nonnegligible
probability of such destabilization.
An analogy should now emphasize both the dubiousness of what is being proposed
under adaptationism and the precariousness of the human predicament. The proposal is to
take this ancient craft, now overloaded with human passengers and their heavy baggage, a
cargo it was never organised to carry, out on new routes and run it faster and higher than it

has ever travelled before. Even for an experimental prototype, a now very fast (air-)bus say,

with a select test crew, such a procedure, of running over new uncharted routes at speeds
and heights never attained before, would be risky enterprise. With an ancient craft, with a
heavy non-elite cargo of baggage and passengers (some whom try to interfere with the
controls), the proposal is extremely rash. For the chances that the craft will break/down and
perhaps crash, with serious consequences to passengers and for the baggage, are greatly
elevated over the risks of proceeding as usual much more slowly. With the costs of crashing
so severe, rational operators and sensible pilots would not take them.^
Unfortunately the analogy is not at all far-fetched, but resembles what is in store for

spaceship Earth, already under significant stress with its excessive human passenger load

and their heavy ecological practices. Not only is the future itself pretty new territory, but it
is a future at terrestrial temperatures never before attained. As a result too of these enhanced
temperatures, important processes will proceed faster than ever before, in particular all

chemical processes. Simply to take the craft up there, as do-nothing and adaptation

approaches would have is to emulate the risks and hubris of Daedelus; such approaches are

From logical theories of probability such as Camap's non-zero probabilities are rather easily
reached (perhaps too easily, with the converse feature that natural laws never obtain high
probabilities. The difficulty can be averted, to some extent, by restriction to physical models.)
The analogy is an old one, which we exploited before in the nuclear case; for the "bus analogy",
see Routley and Routley. The analogy admits of much graphic variation. Instead of running the
craft at excess speed, an alternative or additional image is that of destroying the controls of the
craft. Lovelock deploys this apposite image (88 p.63), which corresponds to the demolition of
Gaean control systems. Others speak of a colossal experiment with the Earth; but strictly the
conditions for a controlled experiment are not met.

26
aptly named D<2^Zfa?i. Given anthropic terrestrial practices, a Daedelian future and fate
should not be excluded.

4. A Sting in the Cosmic Tail: the mini-Furphy theorem and on the iikeiy
decline of Homo sapiens spp. economicus.
The anthropic doomsday argument developed relies upon a modified Murphy's law.

The trouble with the initial formulation of Murphy's law:
^anyf/ung can go wrong, if wii/,

was that it was insufficiently qualified, much too absolutist, and apparently self-refuting.^
Certain crucial qualifications are required:* Replacement of the too certain conclusion by a somewhat weaker probabilistic one: for
instance, it pro&a&/y will.

* Correlative to weakening the conclusion, strengthening the premiss, by rendering it more
specific; namely, in place of "anything" or "something" put "some thing ... given a chancy

situation".
The modified formulation is accordingly the following mini-Furphy proposition^
r/HKg can ge/iMZMe/y go wrong, given o re/onvefy cAoncy Mfi/ohon,
zf pro/MZ&iy wi/i.

Here "chancy" means more or less what it means according to the dictionaries: doubtful,

decidedly risky, or as we shall construe it, having a comparadvely low probability vis-a-vis
its altemadves. The precise extent of relative chanciness will be explained as we go.

The proposidon is itself a corollary of a more general result, an ancient principle. The
generalisadon replaces "go wrong" by "happen'; the ancient principle is that of jy/^ndfM^,

sometimes stated, with quite insufficient reservations, as that all places are full, or ony
ggnfdn^/y

^fofg

&onn<% fo

rgo/fy^Z (when genuinely possible states are

compadble with all that is already transpiring). The principle, whose distinguished history is

traced in Lovejoy, has emerged in contemporary particle physics, in such forms as the

For this and other formulations of Murphy's law, and many loosely associated humorous
maxims with grains of truth encapsulated, see Block. As to the history of the "law", which
originated with J.M. Chase, editor of Aw'adPH
see the
A/nerzcgmi;
Chase's inidal formulation in a 1955 issue read 'If an aircraft part can be installed incorrectly,
someone will install it that way". Silberman's paradox, that if Murphy's Law can go wrong, it
will, is not a genuine paradox. For it can simply be asserted that where Murphy's Law is a real
law it will not go wrong. The connection of Murphy's Law with the pnnciple of plendtude
appears to have escaped much notice.
This little theorem was originally titled the Murphy-Leslie theorem. It is an adaptation,
suggested by Leslie's work, of Murphy's Law. While this secuon is overwhelmingly indebted to
Leslie, the arguments developed
from those Leslie advances. For Leslie's arguments and
also his debts, and so the transitive debts of this section, see Leslie himself, who deserves to be
read in defence his own legidmate doomsday apprehensions. The Appendix indicates the very
limited extent to which Leslie's arguments arc here endorsed.

27
following: if a thing (e.g. an elementary particle) is not forbidden, excluded by quantum
rules, then it is bound to occur (or be realised), even is "compulsory". For things and
events generally, such completeness (all nonexcluded particle niches are occupied) cannot
reasonably be expected.^ The main mini-plentitude proposition has, like its mini-Furphy
specialization to bad outcomes, to take the much more hedged form: if something can
genuinely happen, given a relatively chancy situation, it probably will.
To prove this proposition, let us first recast it in appropriate symbolic form. Let D be
some arbitrary (bad) situation, a suitable disaster in the intended application. Let the
possibility of D's happening - such as something's going wrong - be represented by a non­
zero probability, and genuineness by non-negligible probability. It can be assumed that that
probability, P(D), is small; if it were large enough the requisite conclusion would follow in

any case. Let C represent the relativizing features, what is given that renders the situation
chancy. Then what we aim to show is that where P(D) is small positive, P(D { C) is

probable.

The proof applies a special case of Bayes' theorem, which takes the following form
where there are n alternative hvpotheses hi,...,hn including h:
P(h { i)

=

"

* Pd 1 M

I P(hr) X P(i { hr)
r = 1

Here h is the hypothesis, which in our application is D, i is the additional information (or, as
in Carnap, a new observation), which in our case is C.28 P(h j i) is the probability of h
given i, or of h on condition i (the backward arrow notation, { , symbolises the condition

There is a marvellous Greek term,
which could serve to cover items where the particle
physics "principle" is satisfied. 'We may call an event agathonic to convey that, though in itself
it was highly unlikely, we might have known that something of that sort was bound to happen.
... from the name of the tragic poet to whom Aristotle attributes the view that it is very probable
that the improbable should happen. (Kaplan p.9 rearranged). Is the chronic chthonic Greenhouse
escalation agathonic?
The formulation is a special case of that proved in Carnap, p.331; namely that (absolute) case
where the evidence e is elided, or e set = 1. A similar result follows, subject to slightly more
rigorous conditions, in relevant probability theory; see Routley 79 p.954.
In effect we shall look at the form
P(h ) ,) =
--------------- * PC < D
'
P(h) X P(i { h) + XP(hr) X P(i { hr)
n
with the sum excluding the product for h.
Though demonstrable given satisfiable exclusion and exhaustion conditions, Bayes' theorem is
not lacking critics, in part because of the surprises this bit of logic can deliver. Carnap meets
the objection that Bayes' theorem has sometimes 'been applied to cases where it led to strange or
even absurd results' thus: 'This was mostly due to an uncritical use of the principle of
indifference :... [The] theorem is provable ... on the basis of those weak assumptions which
practically all theories of probability seem to have in common' (p.331, sub 1 elided). Of course
the present applications could (just) be objected to on the grounds that the logical conditions for
the theorem to apply are not fully satisfied.

28
involved and shows its direction). For simplicity we shall suppose that all the alternatives to
D are concentrated (as far as symbolic exposure goes) in one, namely D*. Then the form we
seek to apply is simply:
P(D { C)
=
__________ { D)_______________ _
'
P(D) x P(C { D) + P(D*) x P(C { D*)
The arithmetic details needed can be tabulated in a revealing form as follows:

C<2.$ay

D

D*

Initial (or prior) probability

d

1-d

m, say 1/d

m/L,say 1/d!

of outcome
relative chance that C

As it is the
chance of C that matters, we can rescale to set m = 1/d. To make C
relatively chancy, L has some modest size; specifically let L exceed 1-d/d.
Then the probability to be estimated, P(D { C), is

d x 1/d
dxl/d + (l-d)/dL

_
"

__ 1
1+^

where k -

- That is, P(D { C) = y where k = 1,

andP(D { C)>

when

-when L >

.

Thus D is probable, at least in being more probable than not, given C, when L is of at least
modest size, i.e. given C is relatively chancy. In a merely apparently more general form of

the estimation, where we do not align m to d,

P(D { C)

______ d x m______
d x m + (1-d) x m/1

1

1
1 + k'

as before. That is, m drops out, only the relative chanciness really matters. The little
plendtude theorem follows as before.

Now to put some relevant flesh on these abstract statements and figures. Let D be

some future disaster such as the catastrophic decline, for instance, through summer or winter
phenomena, of the human species, from which the enormous present population never
recovers. At worst (from a chauvinistic angle) the population, like many catastrophically

effected by human activities, goes extinct. Suppose, for a bifurcating outcome, there is a

29
catastrophe stage, before halfway through next century, 2050. If humans do not get their act
together before then, they go into catastrophic decline, as already indicated. If however they
do get their ecopolitical act together then humans, while they hardly live happily ever after

(poverty, inequality, domination, and other evils not being removed), continue to persist or
even grow in numbers, perhaps fanning out through the solar system (in the way envisaged
by too many physicists). Suppose further we are optimists, imagining that the prior
probability of D, ecodisaster and human decline, is small, say 1%. That is d = .01, and the

inidal probability of D*, human "success", is .99. The figures are pretty notional. Supreme
optimists would want to set d much smaller, pessimists rather at a higher probability.

Table 2.
D human decline

D* human success

Initial probabilities

1%, i.e. .01

99%, i.e. .99

Relative chanciness,

1/100, i.e. .01

1/100 x 1/1

ofC

Then the probability of human decline given C,
.01 X .01
P(D { C)
.01 x .01 + .99 x .01/1

1/2

, when 1 > 99.

For example, when 1 is set, conservatively, at 1,000, then the probability of human decline
given present chanciness is approximately 90%. It remains to fill out C, thereby showing
that 1 is very likely much much larger than 99, and correspondingly human decline so much

the more probable in the light of additional information, i.e. 6!
usual jargon.

probable in the

There are several high risk factors, acting in a certain concert, factors emphasized more
than a decade ago in world systems modellings (such as, most famously, that of the Club of
Rome), Malthusian factors such as human population, economic product, pollution, energy

consumption, ... . (The list rolls on.) It is appropriate to estimate posterior probability
relative to any one of these, any of which can serve as C, in order to expose the riskiness of
present gross human practices. In brief, because there are several high risk factors, so there

are several appropriate relative or reference classes. Thus the posterior probability is
assessed relative to such matters as humans now being thus and so, our or my being alive

30
now (Leslie's first-person reference class), this being present energy use, present waste

output, present forest destruction and so forth. The upshot is not the triviality that

probability can be jacked up by placement in a suitably restricted context, though that
analyticity is established.^ The point is that, environmentally, more affluent humans have
fdgmjg/vgj produced such adverse circumstances, which are upon us, the very
circumstances typically productive of limitadon results.

In sum, the aadirapfc argument considers the environmentally invidious situadon of
present humans on the Earth. The argument can be carried through either in terms of sheer

population, gross numbers, or in terms of human resource grabbing, as esdmated for
instance through energy consumption. In fact all the other factors are anthropically tied, to
gross human numbers, via the environmental impact equation and because the levels are
human-use numbers.

Let us consider the prospects given addidonal information as to the present phase of
gross human population. C will be some such proposition as: the proportional

preponderance of humans who have ever lived alive now, or to personalize it: the chance that

you or your family, are alive now.
Diagram 6: (?ar praf^nf popidadon pred/camg/zf <?n die /wo jce/iarioj.

Humans have got themselves - to some extent pat themselves, though much may be

the result of muddling through - into an extremely dubious, environmentally insidious, and

One of the weaknesses in the argument may appear to be its dependence on an appropnate choice
of relative class. For, the high relative probabilities can fall away if different reference classes,
not exhibiting such growth patterns are taken, c.g. present wattle distribution, birds being thus
and so. On the other hand, probabilities can be elevated even more by selection of more unusual
reference classes, such as our being scientists, or being computer programmers, etc.. It is not so
remarkable that probabilities can be wound up - or down - perhaps quite dramatically, by
appropriate relativisation, by appropriate selection of a reference class.

31
unsustainable position, on a range of critical parameters. Their numbers are excessive, their
high energy use is excessive, their waste and their polludon are both excessive - and all these
and other excesses are at the steep end of upward exponendal curves. Several relevant
graphs are distressingly exponendal, with the present in the near verdeal growth phase:

Digram 7 : GrowrA in
are drawn from Boyden).

envzronm^nfgZZy r^Z^vanr parg/neter-P (all graphs exhibited

32
Many other similarly shaped graphs could be added, for instance for growth of
pollution, of waste products, of weapons (in terms of tonnes of explosive power), of other

greenhouse gases such as the chlorofluorocarbons (which accelerated from zero in the
nineteen thirties), and so on. The display typifies the accelerating human roller coaster (or
air bus).

Those curves are dghtly interconnected, in criss-crossing fashion. For example, the
productivity of contemporary agriculture which enables the feeding of huge urbanised
human populations depends on a very high energy use (in term of energy efficiency,
contemporary high-tech agriculture falls below that of much traditional agriculture). The
maintenance of high populations with supplies of cheap food depends in tum on fossil fuel
agriculture. Because of the intertwining of these phenomena, there is no easy way of getting
off the accelerating roller-coaster.

Nor, as observed, is there much real effort devoted to slowing the coaster. For
politicians it would be politically risky and inexpedient to try (for them the rhetoric about an
ecologically sustainable future must remain just that, more rhetoric). For many other power
holders and brokers such ideas are ideologically excluded: growth remains the gospel. So a
precarious position becomes ever more precarious. Humans are in a decidedly chancy

position, because of their population situation and other limitative factors; they are becoming

very disaster-prone. If humans want an acceptable future for themselves - they have
virtually ruled out an acceptable future for many other creatures, through their predominantly
selfish thoughtless greedy practices - then they will probably have to mend their collective
ways, very considerably and very soon. But, given the nature of the beast, that itself seems
improbable.
Humans, if they seek a more assured future, should make a concerted effort to put

themselves into a less precarious position. That could be achieved by proceeding to reduce
relative risks. These relative risks, sharply reducing prospects for a reliable future, fall into
two classes:-

* Manufactured risk factors, including weaponry such as mega-nuclear devices and
elements of biochemical warfare, and experimental equipment such as very high energy

particle accelerators (which could perhaps tunnel under a metastable state or induce a miniBig-Bang; see again Leslie).

* Accumulated risk factors, such as the huge relative size of human population, energy
consumption, greenhouse gas production, etc.30

30

As before, there are various different reasons why these induce risk, limitative and probabilistic
in particular.

33
Despite the ideological obstacles - enormous political, religious and economic

obstacles blocking the way of requisite change - major efforts should be put into reducing

these types of risks. Philosophers, beyond other intellectuals, cozdd have a significant
role in breaking down the ideological barriers and in clarifying and developing the arguments
involved. Given the track-record of professional philosophers, don't expect very much.31

5. Further notes on human prospects and improved practices: What in
generai ought to be done about the Greenhouse problematique?
The general result already reached, that humans collectively should substantially
reduce their risk taking, and in particular reduce their gross numbers, extends to radonal
Greenhouse decision and action theory. But that large and difficult challenge - with all that
it entails by way of radical change upon present arrangements - is not all that there is to try,
all that should radonally be attempted.
While some increase in mean global temperatures, and what that implies, can no longer
be averted, the potentially most damaging effects can be: namely, by curtailing humaninduced output of Greenhouse gases. Moreover, there is an approximate upper bound of
importance, upon temperature, which can serve to supply a significant limit on output. That
bound - which conrrnns rfyZr raZd/zg by confining encountered situadons a? those where there

is some
ba-sds* - is given by esdmated temperatures during Aldthermal and
Eemian eras. Those temperatures are estimated to have been between about 1/2 a degree and
1 degree Centigrade above contemporary (pre-1980) temperatures; so the upper bound is
about PC.

31

There is much else for philosophers to contribute in these fields, especially on the expanding
issues of future redistributive justice, ecological equity, genuinely pluralistic arrangements, etc.

34

gZo^zzZ

zznd^r Z&ree zn/^rcy/zzzg sc^zzzzrzoy.

AT

(°C )

Dnzgram # :

B^zckgroz/nd in/orw^hozz:
'Annual mean global surface air temperature computed for trace gas scenarios A, B, and C
.... Scenario A assumes continued growth rates of greenhouse gas emissions typical of the
past 20 years, i.e., about 1.5% per year emission growth; scenario B has emission rates
approximately fixed at current rates; scenario C drastically reduces trace gas emissions
between 1990 and 2000.... The shaded range is an estimate of global temperature during the
peak of the current and previous interglacial periods, about 6,000 and 120,000 years before
present, respectively. The zero point fbr observation is the 1951-1980 mean; the zero point
for the model is the control run mean' (Walsh p.14, from whom the diagram is drawn).

Not only will a continuation of current emission trends take global temperatures clean

through and way beyond that bound, so also will an alternative set-up where emission rates
are fixed more or less at current rates. The only apparent way to remain rationally within an

experiential domain is to curtail sharply trace gas emissions, beginning early in the 1990s.

That means shifting from the dominant growth ideology; it means expensive re- and de­
industrialisation. Short of catastrophic nuclear war it seems unlikely.

35

There are several reasons why requisite change looks unlikely. Firstly, requisite
changes are generally difficult, ideologically unwelcome, extensive and expensive.
Politicians will accordingly be extremely loath to undertake them, to offer more than
tokenism. Moreover, those states and corporations that avoid making hard changes will,
like free riders, be at a comparadve advantage in the short term as regards both profits and

power. Secondly, then, there are Tragedy-of-Commons reasons, i.e. those deriving from
general Prisoners' Dilemma situations. However the troughs induced by such dilemmas
could be climbed out of; they can be transcended given, for instance, some resolute players
committed to major change, despite heavy commercial and political disadvantages, and
prepared to pursue judicious tit-for-tat strategies. Thirdly, because main Greenhouse effects
are gradual, long-term by polidcal standards, and uncertain, the main pohdcal temptation will
undoubtedly again be to avoid the problems - to muddle incrementally along, and hope that
the problems will dissolve or that something (some magical technology perhaps) will turn up

or that adaptadon will occur or, at worst, that the problems will fall to some successors.

Meanwhile the problems will continue to be dismissed as "too hard", "too uncertain", and
their costs, polidcal and economic and ideological, as "too great". We have already

accumulated substantial experience of these inadequate evasive, dismissive and
postponement procedures.
What should of course be attempted involves extensive changes and restructuring

across virtually the entire face of industrialisation and urbanisation, and therewith extensive
alterations in the demands they impose upon new urban environments. The ultimate

objective as regards the Greenhouse problems - a reduction in the rate of increase of, and
then in the gross levels of, emissions of Greenhouse gases - direcdy implies, above all,

constraints on the combustion of fossil fuels, both decelerating use and improved use, but
also much better regulation, in one way or another, of production of other Greenhouse gases

and of interference with ecosystems storing or absorbing Greenhouse gases. The main
burden as regards requisite changes falls on the main users of fossil fuels and main

consumers of Greenhouse relevant products, namely the Earth's most affluent centres: North
America, Japan and Europe. In these centres especially, the work should be started on
reducing consumption of fossil fuel involved goods and services. (In a thoroughly
methodical approach a GG, Greenhouse gas, rating would be assigned to each sort of good
and service, the objective being to reduce these ratings, an effort that would no doubt
concentrate upon highly rated and easily altered items.) The general types of changes needed
or desirable are well enough known to environmental planners, and include: restructuring of
cides into network systems, so that reliance upon automobile commudng and truck transport

of goods is much reduced, improved building practices for energy efficiency cogeneration

and related technologies, increased reliance on solar energy technologies, and so on.

36
Venturing much further into unknown territory are the types of political and economic
alterations required to implement the planning changes. It has already been insinuated that
conventional governmental and public policy practices, analyses and procedures are
inadequate to the tasks ahead. For these presuppose, for example, reladvely short-term and
quite bounded settings, in which most information (as to costs, benefits, beneficiaries, etc.)
is more or less certain, and where an ethical/ideological framework is taken for granted.
Indeed most of the favoured procedures - such as reliance on standard cost-benefit analyses,

on markets of orthodox economics, on muddling through, etc - not only depend on certainty

and are unfitted for situations of uncertainty, and assume at best a decidedly shallow

approach to environmental matters; but further they tend to exhibit, what is quite compatible
with short-term rationality, long-term irrationality. Much intellectual effort should be
invested, straightaway, in designing and developing improved political structures and

matching decision-making procedures. Such structures deserve to be better articulated and
understood - a large task - before the struggle is begun in earnest - perhaps in East
European style - to put some of them into place.
From the angle of radical change, then, impact of the Greenhouse problematique is far

from entirely negative. For it may encourage or even force many more of us into thinking
about and doing what should be done from a deep perspective anyway, such as rectifying

recent heavy human impact upon environments, and beginning at once to put in place more
environment-friendly arrangements and structures'^

Richard Sylvan

APPENDIX: As to the Doomsday Argument circulated by Leslie.
The anthropic argument of the penultimate section applies limitation results to escalate
probabilities. By contrast, the argument deployed by Leslie has comparatively little to do
with limitation features or the special risks of the present times (it does depend upon some

features of the temporal distribution of the total human population). As a consequence also,

32

This more positive conclusion contrasts with final pessimistic corollary which ended the
previous interim version of this essay. The corollary, which followed the gloomy (but
warranted) claim that requisite restructuring change seems unlikely, and was intended to underpin
it, was simply this: Humans collectively are not (particularly) rational. But we had already
been told as much by philosophers like Russell and surmised as much from the latest
perambulations in the long history of human wars.
Finally, a significant debt should be recorded at least to all the following: to John Leslie for
leading ideas and for comments, to David Bennett for comments and for research and production
assistance, to Pat Troy for an opportunity to read his unpublished paper on the topic, to
Malcolm Slade and Joseph Wayne Smith for encouragement to write on the topic, and to several
members of the audience at the Australasian Association of Philosophy Conference, held in
Christchurch, New Zealand, during August 1989, where parts of the essay were fruitfully
discussed and several worthwhile suggestions or objections made.

37
it has no direct application to the special environmental problems of the present. It yields at
best a general admonition against human risk taking - and even the inference to that is shaky
the argument itself is unavoidable.

The central claim of Leslie's argument comes to this: unless the human race ends soon,
then any one of us present humans is not an ordinary one at all, but an exceptionally early
one. (Such statistical ordinariness is presumably supposed analytic upon total human

populadon distributions.) Thus (contraposing and distributing a reasonable expectation
functor), since it is reasonable to expect that such humans are ordinary (minor premiss), it is
reasonable to expect the human race will soon die out
of the weaknesses of Leslie's Doomsday Argument, especially in its quasiinductive guise (e.g. PQ p.2), is its background reliance upon an indifference principle
assumpdon, much as in faulty applicadons of Bayes' theorem, already noted. (The principle
is used in Leslie's um argument; see p.12.) The problemadc assumption shows up in c^rz.y

clauses in Leslie's deontic probability (typicality) principle, what he describes as
"the Argument's underlying principle' (in fact a minor premiss): one should. %ZZ eZ^ &^Zng

take one's position to be fairly typical rather than very untypical, or in different

formulation: whenever Zach'/zg gvz'^nce to r/zg ccnfra/y, one should prefer to think of one's
own position as fairly typical rather than highly untypical (both principles are stated, though
with different emphases in PQ p.2). Much the same principle, but in stronger form, operates
in what he calls 'the crux of the argument': dmZ^yj you /zav^ specially jfrong
to
believe that you are a very untypically early human, you ought not to believe it' (p.10,
rearranged, different emphasis).

Unfortunately for the Argument's principle, matters are not so indifferent, things are
not so equal, some sciendsts have reasons which they think are cogent, for believing that
present humans are fairly early members of the species. Consider Lovelock, whom, as we
have seen, used to think that the Earth and its life systems were virtually indestructible; it is
only necessary to add the familiar belief that humans themselves (like rats) are very
resourceful beings, virtually impossible to exterminate, to arrive at the result that there is

reason to believe that the human race is bound to persist for many more generations. That
is, of course, both the informed and not unreasoned popular view, guiding much practice.
As a result the principle is, at the very least, in doubt. Accordingly what Leslie presents as
the crux of the argument is not endorsed here.

The Argument is vulnerable in other ways as well. For one, the main premiss is, in
duly contraposed form, not quite so evident, as for instance the human race could just tail off
at low population levels on Earth. For another, the distribution of the functor 'it is

reasonable to expect that' across the conditional involved is not unproblematic: the

38
distribution principle itself is contested in the literature, and here the result it is supposed to
yield looks unreasonable!

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Collection

Citation

Richard Sylvan, “Box 148, Item 1: Draft of Gaean greenhouse, nuclear winter and anthropic doomsday?,” Antipodean Antinuclearism, accessed March 29, 2024, https://antipodean-antinuclearism.org/items/show/119.

Output Formats