EDITOR Eli Blevis [e-mail]

term to address impacts resulting from the warming that would occur even for the lowest stabilization scenarios assessed. There are barriers, limits and costs, but these are not fully understood. Unmitigated climate change would, in the long term, be likely to exceed the capacity of natural, managed, and human systems to adapt. The time at which such limits could be reached will vary between sectors and regions...” [ 1].

The IPCC provides a historical overview of climate change research, which is compelling reading for those who want to understand the scientific basis of climate change predictions [ 2]. One of the scientists this report references is James Lovelock—famous for the Gaia hypothesis, considered controversial by some, that the earth is a living self-regulating system. The IPCC historical overview does not reference the Gaia hypothesis, but rather Lovelock’s work from the 1970s on understanding the effects of CFCs. With respect to the Gaia hypothesis, the notion of an emergence of apparently intelligent or self-regulating behaviors from myriad autonomous agents with highly variant degrees of sentience is easily grasped by computer scientists and interaction designers who may be familiar with connectionism as understood, for example, in Minsky’s The Society of Mind [ 3], Wikipedia, Web 2.0, and similar notions and systems. Lovelock provides a mathematical model called “Daisy World” to support his notion of Gaia—a model that will likely seem familiar and convincing to computer scientists and mathematically trained interaction designers [ 4].

A more dire prediction about climate change
comes from Lovelock’s latest book, The Vanishing
Face of Gaia: A Final Warning [ 4]. He believes we
have already passed the tipping point—the point
at which positive-feedback mechanisms will
induce the near certain likelihood of a period
of global warming, regardless of our efforts to
reform our behaviors. That is, global warm-
ing will continue even if all anthropogenic
greenhouse gas production ceases. Among the
implications of this prediction that Lovelock
enumerates is the ominous notion that the
Earth’s population—now approaching 6. 9 bil-
lion people—may be reduced to under a billion.

[ 1] IPCC. “Summary for Policymakers.” In: Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by Parry, M. L., Canziani, O.F., Palutikof, J.P., van der Linden, P.J. and Hanson, C.E. 7–22. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. See Figures SPM. 2 and SPM. 5.

[ 2] Le Treut, H., R. Somerville, U. Cubasch, Y. Ding, C. Mauritzen, A. Mokssit, T. Peterson and M. Prather. “Historical Overview of Climate Change.” In: Climate Change 2007: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, edited by Solomon, S. et. al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. This report references: Lovelock, J.E. “Atmospheric fluorine compounds as indicators of air move-ments.” Nature, 230 (1971): 379–381.

[ 3] Minsky, M. The Society of Mind. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988.

[ 4] Lovelock, J. The Vanishing Face of Gaia: A Final Warning, 139- 158. New York: Basic Books, 2009.

Strategy:

Reduce greenhouse gas emissions and hope to find successful technological solutions Reduce greenhouse gas emissions, hope to find successful technological solutions, and prepare for and adapt to the potential effects of global warming

Outcome:

We’re too late (probably)

We’ve prepared for the inevitable
(probably), but at the expense (possibly)
of using resources for ineffective
efforts toward reduction and
technological solutions
September + October 2010

Prepare for and adapt to the potential effects of global warming

Outcome: We’re saved and we’ve learned how to sustain ourselves with fewer resources (possibly)

We’ve learned how to sustain ourselves with fewer resources (possibly), but our risk of reaching the tipping point is (probably) higher than if all of our efforts had gone into reduction and technological solutions We will reach the tipping point (probably)

We’ve prepared as best we can (probably)

[ 5] James Hansen’s and Freeman Dyson’s views are at opposite sides of the debate about climate change. See Dawidoff, N. “The Civil Heretic.” Ne w York Times Magazine, 25 March 2009. www.nytimes. com/2009/03/29/ magazine/29Dyson-t. html/.

• Figure 1. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.