A Sense of Perspective
Rod and I have been arguing about how bad climate change might be for humanity in the near term. Thankfully Warren Ellis has linked to Jamais Cascio’s perspective on the “how bad could it be” issue. (Though I think he means “climate change” when he writes “global warming.”)
Rod, take note. :-)
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:33 pm
Hmm, that’s an enlarged view of what we storage researchers call the “size of the crater” problem. A head crash is a microscopic crater, and everybody’s disaster plan should account for one. A machine room fire is a bigger crater, and if your business would survive it, you need a plan for your data to survive, too. Katrina is a REALLY big crater. Then there are the literal craters such as asteroid impacts…
Perspective is important. Viewed in this light, the fuss over No Child Left Behind seems overblown :-).
January 23rd, 2007 at 7:54 pm
Btw, this scale would seem to put WWII somewhere around -1, narrowly escaping a 0 since Hitler was stopped before completing the Final Solution. The European invasion of North America, with both its direct and unintentional causes such as smallpox, would seem to be a solid 0. KT is somewhere around a 3, and similar events happened on several other occasions…
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:56 pm
I’d actually rate WWII a solid level 0 event. 62 million people clearly meets the mark, and the devastation of Eastern Europe is a pretty good regional civilization crippling. WWI and the subsequent flu pandemic may rate a 0 as well.
Black death?