TED Community » Matthew Gaylard

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Evolution, the environment, social justice, climate change

Talk to me about

Innovative ways of conceptualizing old problems, social justice

People don't know that I'm good at

catching fish

Comments

• TEDCred score: +6.60 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A comment on Talk: Seth Shostak: ET is (probably) out there -- get ready

  Jun 19 2012: I think the reference to Christopher Columbus is unfortunate, The colonization of the Americas was accompanied by genocide on a scale that has not been seen before or since, not just in terms of numbers, but also brutality. Not that genocide is ever anything but horrific, of course. It's a story very seldom told with nearly enough clarity or honesty.

• A reply on Talk: Juan Enriquez: Will our kids be a different species?

  Jun 19 2012: Travis, when you say "Will the lower class gradually fall out of existence, no longer being able to compete for jobs, food, and shelter? " you are, of course, talking about the majority of us. And envisaging a future where we starve to death. Which is a fairly extreme dystopia.
  
  We're on on the bring of solving world hunger?! Not from what I hear. According to the world health organisation hunger is the single biggest health problem. Most scientists who study earth systems (like climate, water etc) think we are on the brink of environmental disaster, not solving world hunger.

• A reply on Talk: Juan Enriquez: Will our kids be a different species?

  Jun 19 2012: Travis, you do indeed raise some key implications. I'm not sure what you mean by "genetic perfection" though. The concept makes no sense to me.
  I am in no way against scientific research. I believe that knowledge is essential to our survival, which despite the 7 billion humans alive may be more precarious than most of us realize. What we have to improve dramatically is the link between intent and knowledge. And I agree that "capitalism" (for want of a better word) is part of the problem. The idea that "the market" is a magically efficient mechanism for managing social outcomes, or that it is the emergent will of the people, is fundamentally flawed and dangerous, and has had an extremely negative impact on the way that scientific research has been translated into technology.

• A comment on Talk: Juan Enriquez: Will our kids be a different species?

  Jun 19 2012: As a species, we are certainly impacting on the biosphere at significant scale. Juan brings to our attention that we are in the process of not just transforming the "external" biosphere, but are also on the brink of consciously molding the "internal" biosphere of our species.
  
  What is critical here is intent, our understanding of the complexity of living systems, and how we understand the concept of "consciously". One might say, for instance, that the economy is a human creation and is therefore a conscious product. And yet, for so many, its outcomes are so poor. And in fact, not only for our species - the impacts on other species are proving fairly disastrous too!
  
  We're great at using tools and creating - but not nearly as good at understanding the consequences, or fully appreciating the complexity of the interaction between intent and outcome. This problem is directly correlated to the complexity of the systems with which we interact. For instance, consider a tool such as fertiliser. When we consider its application within an artificially simplified model of reality, it seems a great solution to the problem of feeding millions of people. But when we apply it to the real, complex world it results in a whole lot of unintended consequences, such as large scale disruption of the nitrogen cycle.
  
  The boundary between our "internal" and "external" biospheres we now know to be illusory. The biomass of microbes, bacteria, symbiotes and parasites (alien dna) within our bodies outweighs that of "human" dna. And the interaction between our lifestyles and that internal biosphere is something we have only begun to recognise matters - let alone understand.
  
  Considering the very serious situation we face in terms of environmental sustainability, I would suggest we should be quite cautious about upping the stakes and should start by focusing carefully on questions of intent, inequality and our place within a complex living system.
• +1

  A comment on Talk: Brian Greene: Is our universe the only universe?

  Apr 24 2012: Cosmology is intrinsically fascinating, and Brian Greene provides an intriguing glimpse of string theory. The question of future cosmologists confronted by an empty sky is fundamental to my mind, because this is the situation in which cosmology already sits. I don't think it impossible that these future cosmologists, based on extrapolations from observations of their physical environment, would postulate the existence of other stars and galaxies. They would have to accept the impossibility of ever observing them directly. Which seems to be our situation with respect to inflation and hence strings and mutliverses. We have pretty good resolution on the past compared to the future cosmologists, but it is not complete.
  
  The fact that these future cosmologists (and lets just accept that they are just a thought experiment) would never see the stars and galaxies that their study of physics implied exist - how does it affect the reality of these things?
  
  Is it useful to have knowledge of something you can never directly experience? It seems to me that in some fundamental sense, not only is it useful, but perhaps it is intrinsic to human consciousness. I'm not a religious man myself, but it seems likely to me that scientific cosmology and religious cosmology share common roots in this respect.
  
  The mystery of "that which is beyond the horizon" is perhaps just as much about what is going on in our heads when we formulate the mathematical constructs that underpin string theory.

• A reply on Talk: T. Boone Pickens: Let's transform energy -- with natural gas

  Mar 20 2012: In fact, after having a look at the article from which you get those figures they are in fact referring to something else entirely - they are an attempt to by someone to demonstrate that NASA have been manipulating calculations of the global mean temperature anomaly to exaggerate the increase - an attempt that is comprehensively debunked in the article.
• +3

  A reply on Talk: T. Boone Pickens: Let's transform energy -- with natural gas

  Mar 20 2012: Krisztian, I strongly suggest you go back to that site www.realclimate.org and perhaps read the introductory material first. The figures you are referring to are not the temperature increase per century - they are the rate at which the annual global mean temperature anomoly is increasing. In other words, there is a long term temperature trend determined over a century (it increased slightly). Observed annual global mean temperatures are above or below that *historical* baseline measurement (anomolous). In fact recently they are alarmingly and consistently above that. Which means that climate projections for what the *future* long term trends are are being confirmed by empirical evidence.
  
  ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/annual.land.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat This site has the global annual mean temperature anomolies listed for the past 131 years (negative numbers are below the average - the fact that they are all at the start of the series should give you a big hint as to what is going on). Have a look at those figures, and tell me you're not concerned. in the last decade, 3 years were more than 1 degree above the long term average. At the start of the range, where temperatures are below the long term average, none is more than 0.5 degrees below
• +2

  A reply on Talk: T. Boone Pickens: Let's transform energy -- with natural gas

  Mar 19 2012: It's not too late to do something, but it's too late to stop climate change happening at a level that will be costly to deal with and will cause considerable suffering. The UNFCCC website has some good information, or you could try www.realclimate.org. Politicians are not saying it is too late - in some place (like the USA) they aren't even acknowledging that it is a problem. Elsewhere (like in Europe) where they do accept there is an issue, their plans to address it still fall far short of what the scientific community says is required. We should really have begun to transition our economies decades ago, now we have to make big changes suddenly.
  
  The goal of the UNFCCC is to restrict warming to no more that 2 degree celcius this century. Currently we are not really beginning to make progress towards that goal, and are in fact still going in the wrong direction i.e. increasing rather than decreasing emissions. Remember, what we emit now stays in the atmosphere for 100+ years.
  
  If we don't start to cut emissions before 2020, a 2 degree increase no longer becomes an acheivable goal.
  
  The 2 degrees is a global average goal. In the center of a continent such as the USA or Africa, it translates into an increase of 5 to 6 degrees. Needless to say, such an increase will have a dramatic impact on ecosystems and agriculture. Which is why most African countries want a goal of no more than 1.5 degrees.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: T. Boone Pickens: Let's transform energy -- with natural gas

  Mar 19 2012: As an environmentalist, I'm prepared to hold my nose and embrace nuclear. But I can't accept that a carbon tax is not going to happen.
  How we think of what is "practical" and "realistic" has to change. When you're in the middle of a disaster (and we are, although it may not yet be apparent) sometimes what is practical and realistic is drastic and radical.
  Unfortunately, because we're exacerbating a disaster that will only really start to hit some of us maybe twenty years down the road (maybe less) it might seem that gradual, incremental action is a reasonable response. It isn't. Not really.
• +5

  A comment on Talk: T. Boone Pickens: Let's transform energy -- with natural gas

  Mar 19 2012: I like his style ... but not the substance. The problem here is one of urgency. We are too late to stop dangerous levels of climate change. The current levels of CO2, combined with the positive feedbacks created by the lowered albedo of ice-free water, growing releases of methane and CO2 from the tundra, guarantee that. But at the moment we are still throwing fuel on the fire at an increasing rate. The consequences are perhaps not obvious yet to many TED followers (in some parts of the world they are painfully obvious). If we continue on this course, we are going to hasten the arrival of a situation in which they are.
  
  This is the single greatest threat to human society. Environmental disasters have resulted in the collapse of civilisation after civilisation. Globalisation hasn't stopped this problem - it has just upped the stakes.
  
  A good place to start is a carbon tax. Pickens is right to mistrust government - just for the wrong reasons. Our politicians are either too prejudiced to listen to what climate scientists are saying, or else too frightened to communicate the implications to us.
  
  Pickens understands that we need lots of energy to continue living as we do. So he wants that energy to come from a cleaner source - natural gas. Unfortunately natural gas is not clean enough. We may need to go nuclear - but you can't build a nuclear plant overnight, it takes about 10 years, and because of the risks it isn't something you want to rush. So we do need more renewables and much more innovation around storage. And we need to change our habits so that we use less energy - a difficult bullet to bite.
  
  We also need to recognise that climate change will happen, to uncomfortable levels, whatever we do, and start to build climate resilient infrastructure and technologies. Particularly with respect to agriculture.
  
  As to that carbon tax - if you're a patriot, heck if you're a member of humanity, do what you can to get it onto the agenda during the US elections.