5 ms·

that's true. but to dig a bit deeper, who pays each cost and who benefits from the value? who directly benefits from the value of energy: - australian ene

by shoo 9y ago

that's true. but to dig a bit deeper, who pays each cost and who benefits from the value? who directly benefits from the value of energy: - australian energy consumers - australian energy producers who pays the costs for energy prices: - australian energy consumers who pays the costs for australian emissions *: - people living in australia -- 0.3% of emissions - people living in world excluding australia -- 99.7% of emissions * assuming each person currently alive in world has equal interest in global climate. this is pretty crude as people who arent born yet get to carry the cost too. Clearly we cant account for these shared global costs sensibly unless enough countries reach some kind of global agreement. The current australian federal government is taking a regrettable approach of self-interest and is waiting for the larger/more powerful countries to lead the way. Australia has plenty of coal to sell in the mean time.

jdietrich 9y ago
Failure to act on climate change has a game-theoretic cost. Taking unilateral action massively improves your negotiating position and reduces the cost for other countries to reduce their emissions via economies of scale. One country taking decisive action could trigger a chain reaction of political pressure. Australia has a horrendous wildfire problem. The frequency and severity of wildfires has drastically increased over recent years. A small increase in global temperatures could render vast areas of the country effectively uninhabitable due to the risk of fire. I think that most Australians are willing to act; that will is being subverted by a powerful coal lobby. They see the hellish scenes every summer. They see the immense financial, environmental and human cost. They see the weight of scientific evidence.
- shoo 9y ago
  > Failure to act on climate change has a game-theoretic cost. Taking unilateral action massively improves your negotiating position and reduces the cost for other countries to reduce their emissions via economies of scale Thanks - I wasn't aware of that. Are there any books / articles that go into this in more detail and might be accessible to someone with a decent math + comp sci education but no knowledge of game theory?
  - amygdyl 9y ago
    I'm also appreciating the same as you quoted above. But I keep defaulting to a painfully pessimistic imagination that is the costs are collectively going to be so moot so much sooner than any expectation, due to unforseen extreme results. Am I going through a depression or something manic, maybe, because I don't believe we're not all suppressing contemplation of the outlier worse consequences of climate instability and as a result are walking blindfold in a kind of negotiated but half acceptable death march into a slower extinction and because of this unseen compromise on the range of forecasts that are shorn of the scariest conclusions we're investing in hope and eliminating healthy appreciation of the dangers, and ultimately accommodating skepticism too much for that accommodation to be without inevitable negative effects ? edit: final words arranged for grammatical clarity, no overt meaning altered by edit.
    - shoo 9y ago
      Personally I have found reading both history and philosophy is helpful - not in "solving the problem" but being able to manage emotion and anxiety about climate change. I think learning about previous periods of large-scale ecological change or collapse of civilisations helps to normalise the possible/likely/inevitable upcoming events intellectually. Philosophy helps to figure out a workable emotional response. I think there is some value in stoic philosophy that can be applied in daily living, particularly in terms of managing responses to loss (e.g. loss of one's health, or one's material possessions, or loved one's, or perhaps one's society) There's also this - Roy Scranton's "Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene": https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/learning-how-to-die-in-the-anthropocene/ https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/learning-ho... > The biggest problem climate change poses isn’t how the Department of Defense should plan for resource wars, or how we should put up sea walls to protect Alphabet City, or when we should evacuate Hoboken. It won’t be addressed by buying a Prius, signing a treaty, or turning off the air-conditioning. The biggest problem we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead. The sooner we confront this problem, and the sooner we realize there’s nothing we can do to save ourselves, the sooner we can get down to the hard work of adapting, with mortal humility, to our new reality. i am not sure if you will find any of this helpful but i hope that you can find some peace with time
- tominous 9y ago
  Paradoxically, more frequent fires can often mean less severe fires. That's the rationale behind controlled burns and traditional aboriginal land management practices. And because this is Hacker News, have a play with the simulation hosted at Fourmilab: http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/rules.html#Forest http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/rules.html#Forest
  - jacobolus 9y ago
    Some places getting dramatically hotter drier weather all the time does not lead to less severe fires.
  - roel_v 9y ago
    Having written (as in, programmed, based on process knowledge from fire departments) a model for forest fires in Australia myself over the last few months, I feel that I can say that while a fine demo application of CA based modeling, this model is not an accurate description of forest fir behaviour (well unless it's just to illustrate how planned burns interact with their crude approximation of fuel load). E.g. it doesn't even consider slope and wind direction, or vegetation type.
  - owebmaster 9y ago
    Not paradoxically. No tree burns two times, so in the next fire you'll have less burning material. This is obvious, and bad.
  - FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
    I know that some trees have adapted to fires. Some pine cones are held closed by a resin that is sensitive to high temperatures. These cones will not open to release their seeds until the critical temperature is reached, out with the old and in with the new and such. However, if there's nothing left ot burn and the whole ecosystem is destroyed, that's a problem
- LoSboccacc 9y ago
  Works the other way too. First country footing the massive startup bill will have an economy slowdown compared to other that can be dirty a decade or more while the tech and the solution become commodity. Besides countries won't really change until it's in their economic interest. Taking from your example until the cost of fighting bush fires (and other climate change related stuff) is greater than the cost of implementing a national plan on the whole economy, things won't change. That's why the hop production crisis is a better predictor on government action than bushfires or heat strokes deaths.
  - trhway 9y ago
    >First country footing the massive startup bill will have an economy slowdown compared to other not in the modern R&D driven economy. As an example, Silicon Valley is regularly footing the massive startup bill :) >that can be dirty a decade or more while the tech and the solution become commodity. and so lacking their own technology they would be naturally buying it from the "first countries" while the first countries will be reinvesting those money into development of even better tech thus ever increasing their lead.
    - LoSboccacc 9y ago
      if you think China is going to "buy" the technology, you're not paying attention
      - keganunderwood 9y ago
        Yup, just look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Railways_CRH380A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Railways_CRH380A Although I see it as a positive. The money spent to "buy" technology is essentially wasted money.
        adwn 9y ago
        > Although I see it as a positive. The money spent to "buy" technology is essentially wasted money. Is money spent to buy software also "wasted money"? How are you going to pay the engineers developing this technology?
wklauss 9y ago
> who pays the costs for australian emissions *: > - people living in australia -- 0.3% of emissions > - people living in world excluding australia -- 99.7% of emissions Not that straightforward. Effects of emissions is global, yes, but there are also local effects due to pollution, certain chemical byproducts, etc... meaning the local cost is higher than the average worldwide cost.
- fosco 9y ago
  While travelling in south east Asia I spent 4 days in Saigon (Hó Chi Minh City). Air impacts locals immediately, it may have an effect everywhere long term but immediately for wife and I was pretty harsh irritation of each breath by the last day. We may have been sensitive to it (guess the US air comes at a price) but it was worse than I imagined.

by shoo 9y ago

jdietrich 9y ago

Failure to act on climate change has a game-theoretic cost. Taking unilateral action massively improves your negotiating position and reduces the cost for other countries to reduce their emissions via economies of scale. One country taking decisive action could trigger a chain reaction of political pressure. Australia has a horrendous wildfire problem. The frequency and severity of wildfires has drastically increased over recent years. A small increase in global temperatures could render vast areas of the country effectively uninhabitable due to the risk of fire. I think that most Australians are willing to act; that will is being subverted by a powerful coal lobby. They see the hellish scenes every summer. They see the immense financial, environmental and human cost. They see the weight of scientific evidence.

shoo 9y ago
> Failure to act on climate change has a game-theoretic cost. Taking unilateral action massively improves your negotiating position and reduces the cost for other countries to reduce their emissions via economies of scale Thanks - I wasn't aware of that. Are there any books / articles that go into this in more detail and might be accessible to someone with a decent math + comp sci education but no knowledge of game theory?
- amygdyl 9y ago
  I'm also appreciating the same as you quoted above. But I keep defaulting to a painfully pessimistic imagination that is the costs are collectively going to be so moot so much sooner than any expectation, due to unforseen extreme results. Am I going through a depression or something manic, maybe, because I don't believe we're not all suppressing contemplation of the outlier worse consequences of climate instability and as a result are walking blindfold in a kind of negotiated but half acceptable death march into a slower extinction and because of this unseen compromise on the range of forecasts that are shorn of the scariest conclusions we're investing in hope and eliminating healthy appreciation of the dangers, and ultimately accommodating skepticism too much for that accommodation to be without inevitable negative effects ? edit: final words arranged for grammatical clarity, no overt meaning altered by edit.
  - shoo 9y ago
    Personally I have found reading both history and philosophy is helpful - not in "solving the problem" but being able to manage emotion and anxiety about climate change. I think learning about previous periods of large-scale ecological change or collapse of civilisations helps to normalise the possible/likely/inevitable upcoming events intellectually. Philosophy helps to figure out a workable emotional response. I think there is some value in stoic philosophy that can be applied in daily living, particularly in terms of managing responses to loss (e.g. loss of one's health, or one's material possessions, or loved one's, or perhaps one's society) There's also this - Roy Scranton's "Learning How to Die in the Anthropocene": https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/learning-how-to-die-in-the-anthropocene/ https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/learning-ho... > The biggest problem climate change poses isn’t how the Department of Defense should plan for resource wars, or how we should put up sea walls to protect Alphabet City, or when we should evacuate Hoboken. It won’t be addressed by buying a Prius, signing a treaty, or turning off the air-conditioning. The biggest problem we face is a philosophical one: understanding that this civilization is already dead. The sooner we confront this problem, and the sooner we realize there’s nothing we can do to save ourselves, the sooner we can get down to the hard work of adapting, with mortal humility, to our new reality. i am not sure if you will find any of this helpful but i hope that you can find some peace with time
tominous 9y ago
Paradoxically, more frequent fires can often mean less severe fires. That's the rationale behind controlled burns and traditional aboriginal land management practices. And because this is Hacker News, have a play with the simulation hosted at Fourmilab: http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/rules.html#Forest http://www.fourmilab.ch/cellab/manual/rules.html#Forest
- jacobolus 9y ago
  Some places getting dramatically hotter drier weather all the time does not lead to less severe fires.
- roel_v 9y ago
  Having written (as in, programmed, based on process knowledge from fire departments) a model for forest fires in Australia myself over the last few months, I feel that I can say that while a fine demo application of CA based modeling, this model is not an accurate description of forest fir behaviour (well unless it's just to illustrate how planned burns interact with their crude approximation of fuel load). E.g. it doesn't even consider slope and wind direction, or vegetation type.
- owebmaster 9y ago
  Not paradoxically. No tree burns two times, so in the next fire you'll have less burning material. This is obvious, and bad.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 9y ago
  I know that some trees have adapted to fires. Some pine cones are held closed by a resin that is sensitive to high temperatures. These cones will not open to release their seeds until the critical temperature is reached, out with the old and in with the new and such. However, if there's nothing left ot burn and the whole ecosystem is destroyed, that's a problem
LoSboccacc 9y ago
Works the other way too. First country footing the massive startup bill will have an economy slowdown compared to other that can be dirty a decade or more while the tech and the solution become commodity. Besides countries won't really change until it's in their economic interest. Taking from your example until the cost of fighting bush fires (and other climate change related stuff) is greater than the cost of implementing a national plan on the whole economy, things won't change. That's why the hop production crisis is a better predictor on government action than bushfires or heat strokes deaths.
- trhway 9y ago
  >First country footing the massive startup bill will have an economy slowdown compared to other not in the modern R&D driven economy. As an example, Silicon Valley is regularly footing the massive startup bill :) >that can be dirty a decade or more while the tech and the solution become commodity. and so lacking their own technology they would be naturally buying it from the "first countries" while the first countries will be reinvesting those money into development of even better tech thus ever increasing their lead.
  - LoSboccacc 9y ago
    if you think China is going to "buy" the technology, you're not paying attention
    - keganunderwood 9y ago
      Yup, just look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Railways_CRH380A https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Railways_CRH380A Although I see it as a positive. The money spent to "buy" technology is essentially wasted money.
      - adwn 9y ago
        > Although I see it as a positive. The money spent to "buy" technology is essentially wasted money. Is money spent to buy software also "wasted money"? How are you going to pay the engineers developing this technology?

wklauss 9y ago

> who pays the costs for australian emissions *: > - people living in australia -- 0.3% of emissions > - people living in world excluding australia -- 99.7% of emissions Not that straightforward. Effects of emissions is global, yes, but there are also local effects due to pollution, certain chemical byproducts, etc... meaning the local cost is higher than the average worldwide cost.

fosco 9y ago
While travelling in south east Asia I spent 4 days in Saigon (Hó Chi Minh City). Air impacts locals immediately, it may have an effect everywhere long term but immediately for wife and I was pretty harsh irritation of each breath by the last day. We may have been sensitive to it (guess the US air comes at a price) but it was worse than I imagined.