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Your comment equates cost with ease, and obviously that's not necessarily going to be the case. Eg something might be relatively cheap but politically difficult

Your comment equates cost with ease, and obviously that's not necessarily going to be the case. Eg something might be relatively cheap but politically difficult.

hwillis 9y ago
Well yeah, thats why its in the subjuctive. To express that if we would collectively stop chewing our cuds, it would be cheap and simple to do those things. My intended point is about the simplicity of scaling production, the abundance of the necessary resources, and the low cost of existing technology.
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  In multiple comments, you've point blank said it would be really easy. If it's really hard to get the political will to spend the money to do the technically cheap and easy thing, then actually the task is hard.
  - hwillis 9y ago
    Political will is not an engineering complication. It applies to any solution to global warming. Im comparing cutting co2 to other solutions, not as a problem in general. My frustration comes from seeing cutting co2 as somehow harder than seeding chemicals into the atmosphere over the entire planet, or building a tube to the stratosphere, or lanching a sunshield into space. Those solutions are an insane level of difficulty above cutting co2.
    - jamesrcole 9y ago
      > Political will is not an engineering complication Yes. Both need to be addressed.
      - hwillis 9y ago
        I'm not ignoring the political difficulty here, that's specifically what I'm complaining about. Its obviously hard on some level or we would have done it already, like how the ozone layer is being repaired. These unworkable solutions destroy the political credibility of CO2 reduction. Saying "the problem is easy besides the political component" is not the same as saying the problem is easy. It's an intensely hard problem but the focus needs to almost entirely be on politics, because the rest is easy in comparison. I'm not drawing attention away from the political difficulty by emphasizing how easy the technical side is, i'm drawing attention to the difficulty of the political side.
harpiaharpyja 9y ago
At some point we as a species are going to have to start taking responsibility for solving the problem or a solution will never happen. Also, you miss the context of GP's comment by pointing the discussing in this way. They were replying to another comment that claimed cutting emissions was a difficult problem for reasons that are more... physical, I suppose you could say. GP was merely pointing out that technical challenges are not the obstacle holding us in our current predicament. I don't disagree with you in that the real challenge we face is our species' collective insanity, but I hope you see that in asserting this point that we are both in agreement with GP here.
- jamesrcole 9y ago
  > Also, you miss the context of GP's comment by pointing the discussing in this way. They were replying to another comment that claimed cutting emissions was a difficult problem for reasons that are more... physical, I suppose you could say. GP was merely pointing out that technical challenges are not the obstacle holding us in our current predicament. I don't agree with that. I don't see anything in the comment indicating that they saw the problem as anything other than easy to deal with. Have a look at the reply they made to me, where they said "if we would collectively stop chewing our cuds, it would be cheap and simple to do those things". That's still trivialising the social/political component, making it out as if somehow it's just a matter of making a choice as a society. You can't just wish for society to change its attitude, and while it's easy to talk about making such changes, there's the very difficult process of actually making those changes happen. You might as well say "if we would collectively invent an infinite, completely clean source of energy, it would be cheap and simple to solve the problem." Well, sure. But that's just stating a goal. It doesn't mean it's easy to reach that goal.
  - dgreensp 9y ago
    The space sail idea is already designed for a scenario in which global warming becomes an even clearer and more urgent existential threat, causing countries to get together and devote a trillion dollars and a team of scientists to a radical solution. Given that context, I think it's reasonable to point out that in a scenario with money and collective will, we should stop polluting, whatever other steps we take.

Your comment equates cost with ease, and obviously that's not necessarily going to be the case. Eg something might be relatively cheap but politically difficult.

hwillis 9y ago

Well yeah, thats why its in the subjuctive. To express that if we would collectively stop chewing our cuds, it would be cheap and simple to do those things. My intended point is about the simplicity of scaling production, the abundance of the necessary resources, and the low cost of existing technology.

jamesrcole 9y ago
In multiple comments, you've point blank said it would be really easy. If it's really hard to get the political will to spend the money to do the technically cheap and easy thing, then actually the task is hard.
- hwillis 9y ago
  Political will is not an engineering complication. It applies to any solution to global warming. Im comparing cutting co2 to other solutions, not as a problem in general. My frustration comes from seeing cutting co2 as somehow harder than seeding chemicals into the atmosphere over the entire planet, or building a tube to the stratosphere, or lanching a sunshield into space. Those solutions are an insane level of difficulty above cutting co2.
  - jamesrcole 9y ago
    > Political will is not an engineering complication Yes. Both need to be addressed.
    - hwillis 9y ago
      I'm not ignoring the political difficulty here, that's specifically what I'm complaining about. Its obviously hard on some level or we would have done it already, like how the ozone layer is being repaired. These unworkable solutions destroy the political credibility of CO2 reduction. Saying "the problem is easy besides the political component" is not the same as saying the problem is easy. It's an intensely hard problem but the focus needs to almost entirely be on politics, because the rest is easy in comparison. I'm not drawing attention away from the political difficulty by emphasizing how easy the technical side is, i'm drawing attention to the difficulty of the political side.

harpiaharpyja 9y ago

At some point we as a species are going to have to start taking responsibility for solving the problem or a solution will never happen. Also, you miss the context of GP's comment by pointing the discussing in this way. They were replying to another comment that claimed cutting emissions was a difficult problem for reasons that are more... physical, I suppose you could say. GP was merely pointing out that technical challenges are not the obstacle holding us in our current predicament. I don't disagree with you in that the real challenge we face is our species' collective insanity, but I hope you see that in asserting this point that we are both in agreement with GP here.

jamesrcole 9y ago
> Also, you miss the context of GP's comment by pointing the discussing in this way. They were replying to another comment that claimed cutting emissions was a difficult problem for reasons that are more... physical, I suppose you could say. GP was merely pointing out that technical challenges are not the obstacle holding us in our current predicament. I don't agree with that. I don't see anything in the comment indicating that they saw the problem as anything other than easy to deal with. Have a look at the reply they made to me, where they said "if we would collectively stop chewing our cuds, it would be cheap and simple to do those things". That's still trivialising the social/political component, making it out as if somehow it's just a matter of making a choice as a society. You can't just wish for society to change its attitude, and while it's easy to talk about making such changes, there's the very difficult process of actually making those changes happen. You might as well say "if we would collectively invent an infinite, completely clean source of energy, it would be cheap and simple to solve the problem." Well, sure. But that's just stating a goal. It doesn't mean it's easy to reach that goal.
- dgreensp 9y ago
  The space sail idea is already designed for a scenario in which global warming becomes an even clearer and more urgent existential threat, causing countries to get together and devote a trillion dollars and a team of scientists to a radical solution. Given that context, I think it's reasonable to point out that in a scenario with money and collective will, we should stop polluting, whatever other steps we take.