THE CAVEAT TRILOGY

After the Essential Concepts Videos™ Series has been completed, the host will write and publish three books which will apply the concepts of CAVEAT to policy formation and the development of a consensus to act.

The first book will be entitled WHEN ANTARCTICA MELTS, which will open with the six (6) observations which have convinced me that global warming is a real threat to civilization. They are (1) the Iceman in the Otztal Alps has thawed out, (2) Carbon Dioxide has risen from 280 ppm to over 400 ppm, (3) the permafrost melting has created the drunken trees syndrome, (4) the Arctic Ocean is bubbling methane, (5) geology points to an Paleocene Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) with sea levels 200 meters higher than today, and (6) a feedback loop like a Thermal Death Spiral is inevitable once some unknown threshold is exceeded. The balance of the book will THINK BACK by looking at natural history and the history of the human species to anticipate and extrapolate where this is all going.

The second book will be entitled THE FOOLISH QUESTS, which will examine some foolish policies we are currently pursuing, like extending our lives, cloning of humans, and pursuing renewable energy to the exclusion of other energy sources. Some of the elements (tools) of Catastrophic Thinking will be introduced to explain why these policies are so foolish. In particular the failures of our political leaders and the scientific community to build a consensus will be critically examined. Finally, the apparent lack of realistic solutions, especially with our polarized society, will be dissected.

The third book will be entitled PLAN C—APPLYING CAVEAT TO POLICY FORMATION. While introducing the remaining elements (tools) of Catastrophic Thinking, as well as the new disciplines of Catastrophic Finance and Catastrophic Accounting, there will be difficult passages concerning our values of life and death. Perhaps passages on the mismanagement of death, including the foolish pursuit of cryogenic resurrection, will help society reach a consensus on how to prepare for the catastrophic certainties which await civilization. Then follows a compilation of the best policy ideas collected from these thirty some blogs, including America’s vulnerabilities and why these policies will help us survive any catastrophe.