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9
What Will Happen to Us?
FAQs on Sustainability
Reality requires veriable facts and data; it also requires a balance
between pessimism and optimism.
9.1 Introduction
Prognostications on human ecological sustainability are difcult to make
because the governing variables are related in a complex, nonlinear, non-
stationary manner. Also, changes in variables often occur slowly, dulling
our perception of them. For example, we can take the record of atmospheric
CO
2
concentration ([CO
2
]) over time and use various numerical extrapolation
programs to predict what the [CO
2
] will be in 2050, or even in 2100. There
is a certain mathematica ...