6 ms·

There are debatable aspects of climate change - but I hope these clear, data-driven, illustrative works help convince the tech community that if you can trust t

by hendler 17y ago

There are debatable aspects of climate change - but I hope these clear, data-driven, illustrative works help convince the tech community that if you can trust the science in the papers provided, that the outcome is clear. I also like to mention the decision matrix - I forget the term in game-theory - but the possibility space is 2x2 - either global warming is man made or isn't on one axis, and on another axis is that humanity acts on this information is doesn't. In the case that there is no man made global warming and we act, then the outcome is still good. Moreover - even if the warming is from natural causes, trying to understand and alter the global climate is an important skill to have for a species with ambitions to survive for thousands more years, at least.

dantheman 17y ago
Your analysis of the 2x2 possibility space is simplistic and wrong. I'll attempt to quickly illustrate this. We assume the desired goal of mitigating global warming is to save the lives of poor of those in poor countries. An argument can be made that the relatively rich will face changes, but will be able to adapt. So the do nothing and no global warming scenario, while on its surface may not seem to have any negative effects, its effects in fact are quite devastating. The money and attention that we are focusing on global warming could be used to address problems that are actually killing people today. Some simple examples, are vaccination, education, disease research, building infrastructure etc. So the question is best phrased as giving what we know now, what can we do to mitigate risk and save the most people. Some solutions are: 0. Family Planning & Birth Control 1. Nuclear power 2. Research into drought resistant crops and crops that can grow in warmer environments. 3. Improved monitoring of the earth 4. Research into new energy technologies, so that they can be deployed when they are mature enough. So I'm not advocating any action over any other, I'm merely pointing out that your analysis is heavily flawed.
- DougWebb 17y ago
  I agree with everything you say, except for "Family Planning & Birth Control". The last thing we want is government enforcement of birth rates; prosperity takes care of that without taking away anyone's freedom. Most prosperous nations have lower-than-replacement birth rates among the wealthy citizens, and that's actually going to become a serious problem unless we can make more poor people wealthy. By 'wealth', I don't mean just money, I mean everything that goes into a better quality of life: Freedom, food, water, housing, education, and energy. In my opinion the first and last are the keys: people must be free to pursue activities which will improve their lot in life, and energy must be abundant and inexpensive to enable people to act on their freedom. With plentiful energy, food can be produced with minimal labor, water can be cleaned, materials for housing can be produced cheaply, and all of the above can raise people up from struggling for subsistance so that they have the time to devote to education. Finally, in a world full of industrious, well-educated, and free people who have plenty of energy at their disposal, the problems caused by global warming can be tackled and solved whatever they may be. Dikes can be built, farms can be moved, even whole populations can be relocated.
  - dantheman 17y ago
    I completely agree with you that the government enforcement of birth rates is immoral and should not be attempted. When speaking of birth control, I'm talking about mitigating the population explosion that's happening in the third world by providing, making accessible for little or no money, modern birth control methods. Providing free or low cost birth control is relatively inexpensive and would have significant increases on quality of life and on the overall state of humanity in the world. Of course it should be optional, and it doesn't need government involvement -- this an issue non profits can successfully attack.
    - DougWebb 17y ago
      Modern birth control methods cost money; someone's got to pay for them if the third-world people you want to stop making babies aren't going to. I believe that money can be better spent on improving the lives of those people. Better food, water, and housing will help make those people healthier, which will improve the infant mortality rate, which will naturally lead to a reduction in the birth rate. One reason poor people make a lot of babies is because many of the babies don't survive and a higher birthrate is necessary to ensure the survival of the next generation. With a lower infant mortality rate, it becomes an economic burden to have too many babies, so most families cut back to just one or two children. This is a trend that can take a couple of generations to become widespread, but large changes like this should be slow so they're not disruptive.
- sethg 17y ago
  According to an editorial in The Lancet¹, there are 200 million women worldwide who want contraception but don’t have access to it. Simply providing family-planning services is five times cheaper than other carbon-emission-mitigation technologies. I submit this as an excellent example of a policy measure that would help prevent global warming if the scientific consensus is right, and provide a genuine social good even if the consensus turns out to be wrong. ¹cited by the AP, here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/18/tech/main5319878.shtml http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/18/tech/main5319878.s...
anamax 17y ago
> In the case that there is no man made global warming and we act, then the outcome is still good. That actually depends on the "act". Any "analysis" that doesn't have such a dependence is bogus, even if it is in an easy to understand format.
jrmurad 17y ago
> In the case that there is no man made global warming and we act, then the outcome is still good This is the kind of statement that fuels skeptics. If the cost of "we act" exceeds the benefit, it is not "good." Skeptics are suspicious that some are using global warming to advance unrelated causes which (conveniently) require the same actions; namely, higher taxes, more regulation, bigger government. They might further ask why, if, in your possibility space, there is natural warming, are we sure that we should act to reverse it? That is, there is a chance that a slightly warmer planet might itself have more net benefits than costs.
- handelaar 17y ago
  > If the cost of "we act" exceeds the benefit, it is not "good." I think the point is that of the four possible outcomes (in order of costs: no action and no climate change, action and climate change is real, action but no climate change, climate change is real but no action), this is the second worst outcome. All other things being equal it really comes down to a risk assessment. Yes - this, the third option, would be seriously painful from an economic point of view. But the fourth, which is what the overwhelming majority of climate science tells me you're proposing, would be an unmitigated catastrophe. We're being asked to make a bet. My bet goes on spending the money for the same reason I have life and income protection insurance. I don't think it's a waste of money if I fail to die prematurely or incur serious injury. Plus, in real terms, the cost is similar.
  - tedunangst 17y ago
    You would probably think life insurance wasn't such a good bet if the premiums were 90,000 per year for a 100,000 payout. It's silly to talk about whether "climate insurance" is a good bet without assigning numbers to the premium and payout.
yummyfajitas 17y ago
We can make the same matrix for other hazards/mitigation schemes too. For example, we should spend 100 billion dollars on an asteroid defense system! See also Pascal's wager.

by hendler 17y ago

dantheman 17y ago

Your analysis of the 2x2 possibility space is simplistic and wrong. I'll attempt to quickly illustrate this. We assume the desired goal of mitigating global warming is to save the lives of poor of those in poor countries. An argument can be made that the relatively rich will face changes, but will be able to adapt. So the do nothing and no global warming scenario, while on its surface may not seem to have any negative effects, its effects in fact are quite devastating. The money and attention that we are focusing on global warming could be used to address problems that are actually killing people today. Some simple examples, are vaccination, education, disease research, building infrastructure etc. So the question is best phrased as giving what we know now, what can we do to mitigate risk and save the most people. Some solutions are: 0. Family Planning & Birth Control 1. Nuclear power 2. Research into drought resistant crops and crops that can grow in warmer environments. 3. Improved monitoring of the earth 4. Research into new energy technologies, so that they can be deployed when they are mature enough. So I'm not advocating any action over any other, I'm merely pointing out that your analysis is heavily flawed.

DougWebb 17y ago
I agree with everything you say, except for "Family Planning & Birth Control". The last thing we want is government enforcement of birth rates; prosperity takes care of that without taking away anyone's freedom. Most prosperous nations have lower-than-replacement birth rates among the wealthy citizens, and that's actually going to become a serious problem unless we can make more poor people wealthy. By 'wealth', I don't mean just money, I mean everything that goes into a better quality of life: Freedom, food, water, housing, education, and energy. In my opinion the first and last are the keys: people must be free to pursue activities which will improve their lot in life, and energy must be abundant and inexpensive to enable people to act on their freedom. With plentiful energy, food can be produced with minimal labor, water can be cleaned, materials for housing can be produced cheaply, and all of the above can raise people up from struggling for subsistance so that they have the time to devote to education. Finally, in a world full of industrious, well-educated, and free people who have plenty of energy at their disposal, the problems caused by global warming can be tackled and solved whatever they may be. Dikes can be built, farms can be moved, even whole populations can be relocated.
- dantheman 17y ago
  I completely agree with you that the government enforcement of birth rates is immoral and should not be attempted. When speaking of birth control, I'm talking about mitigating the population explosion that's happening in the third world by providing, making accessible for little or no money, modern birth control methods. Providing free or low cost birth control is relatively inexpensive and would have significant increases on quality of life and on the overall state of humanity in the world. Of course it should be optional, and it doesn't need government involvement -- this an issue non profits can successfully attack.
  - DougWebb 17y ago
    Modern birth control methods cost money; someone's got to pay for them if the third-world people you want to stop making babies aren't going to. I believe that money can be better spent on improving the lives of those people. Better food, water, and housing will help make those people healthier, which will improve the infant mortality rate, which will naturally lead to a reduction in the birth rate. One reason poor people make a lot of babies is because many of the babies don't survive and a higher birthrate is necessary to ensure the survival of the next generation. With a lower infant mortality rate, it becomes an economic burden to have too many babies, so most families cut back to just one or two children. This is a trend that can take a couple of generations to become widespread, but large changes like this should be slow so they're not disruptive.
sethg 17y ago
According to an editorial in The Lancet¹, there are 200 million women worldwide who want contraception but don’t have access to it. Simply providing family-planning services is five times cheaper than other carbon-emission-mitigation technologies. I submit this as an excellent example of a policy measure that would help prevent global warming if the scientific consensus is right, and provide a genuine social good even if the consensus turns out to be wrong. ¹cited by the AP, here: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/18/tech/main5319878.shtml http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/09/18/tech/main5319878.s...

anamax 17y ago

> In the case that there is no man made global warming and we act, then the outcome is still good. That actually depends on the "act". Any "analysis" that doesn't have such a dependence is bogus, even if it is in an easy to understand format.

jrmurad 17y ago

> In the case that there is no man made global warming and we act, then the outcome is still good This is the kind of statement that fuels skeptics. If the cost of "we act" exceeds the benefit, it is not "good." Skeptics are suspicious that some are using global warming to advance unrelated causes which (conveniently) require the same actions; namely, higher taxes, more regulation, bigger government. They might further ask why, if, in your possibility space, there is natural warming, are we sure that we should act to reverse it? That is, there is a chance that a slightly warmer planet might itself have more net benefits than costs.

handelaar 17y ago
> If the cost of "we act" exceeds the benefit, it is not "good." I think the point is that of the four possible outcomes (in order of costs: no action and no climate change, action and climate change is real, action but no climate change, climate change is real but no action), this is the second worst outcome. All other things being equal it really comes down to a risk assessment. Yes - this, the third option, would be seriously painful from an economic point of view. But the fourth, which is what the overwhelming majority of climate science tells me you're proposing, would be an unmitigated catastrophe. We're being asked to make a bet. My bet goes on spending the money for the same reason I have life and income protection insurance. I don't think it's a waste of money if I fail to die prematurely or incur serious injury. Plus, in real terms, the cost is similar.
- tedunangst 17y ago
  You would probably think life insurance wasn't such a good bet if the premiums were 90,000 per year for a 100,000 payout. It's silly to talk about whether "climate insurance" is a good bet without assigning numbers to the premium and payout.

yummyfajitas 17y ago

We can make the same matrix for other hazards/mitigation schemes too. For example, we should spend 100 billion dollars on an asteroid defense system! See also Pascal's wager.