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While we're talking about this, I just listened to an older Freakonomics about climate change (http://freakonomics.com/podcast/save-the-planet/ http://freakonom

While we're talking about this, I just listened to an older Freakonomics about climate change (http://freakonomics.com/podcast/save-the-planet/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/save-the-planet/) One of the guests was Nathan Myhrvold, who was advocating for geoengineering. I'm wondering why geoengineering is not being seriously considered as a solution at this point. Perhaps your understanding of both camps might help explain this.

Diederich 7y ago
Many of those in the 'doubt climate change' camp are deeply suspicious of anything any government body wants to do. I've also widely engaged people who doubt or deny climate change, trying hard to approach in an open handed, friendly way, and mostly succeeding. In my opinion, a big chunk of the people who doubt climate change are and will remain extremely opposed to any kind of geoengineering. Perhaps violently so. In people's minds, there's a huge leap between trusting scientists' saying that the earth is warming fast, fucking things up in the future, and trusting scientists' saying that we need to actively change the world right now in response to climate change. And I appreciate that distinction. In truth, I think quite a few people unconsciously push back against climate change because they are afraid of the possibility of active geoengineering in response.
- whamlastxmas 7y ago
  I am extremely skeptical of climate change arguments because I overwhelmingly hear it from politicians who lie through their teeth about virtually everything and typically for their own gain. I want to believe but my bullshit meter just goes off so strongly whenever I hear a politician say anything
  - lukifer 7y ago
    Look at it this way: if an ideologue, or otherwise motivated actor, can accomplish their goal or spin their story using facts that happen to be true, why wouldn't they? If someone is politically motivated, for example, to tighten border security, it's surely possible they'll fudge numbers about criminal immigrants to tell their story; but if a real, un-p-hacked statistic tells that story, why bother bullshitting when you can shout the truth from the rooftops? I don't trust politicians, but I have some trust in nerds. While scientists and engineers are far from immune to groupthink or perverse incentives, there is so much clout to be gained (not to mention a feel-good pro-growth story), if the case for AGW wasn't strong, I think we'd be seeing a stronger contrarian pushback from within scientific communities (including taking their case to the public through TED talks, podcasts, YouTube, etc) [1]. Be it string theory, or the lipid hypothesis, or OOP-vs-FP, how rare is it to actually get 95%+ of nerds to agree on anything? [1] For an example in action, see physicist Richard Muller, who spent years as a skeptic and founded an organization to debunk climate change, only to change his mind after examining the results: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth
User23 7y ago
> I'm wondering why geoengineering is not being seriously considered as a solution at this point. Because an overshoot in the other direction would be even worse than a couple degrees of warming. Feedback loops can work both ways. We are currently in an ice age[1] and glaciation covering most of the northern hemisphere could happen in about a decade[2]. Reducing emissions is just tuning a known activity and second order effects aside is perfectly safe, but geoengineering is a giant unknown that could cause catastrophic consequences. [1]https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cause-ice-age/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cause-ice-age/ [2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC34297/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC34297/
- marmaduke 7y ago
  > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC34297/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC34297/ That was an interesting read. It suggests that really abrupt changes in warming are possible. The downside seems that only one good data source exists. Are you aware of any computational modeling of the large scale mechanisms? I'm coming from computational neuroscience and bayesian modeling and found this data pretty interesting
  - User23 7y ago
    I don't, but the data quality really is impressive, so it would be interesting to see if anyone has tried to develop a model using it, especially since you could test it by taking other cores.
    - marmaduke 7y ago
      I started reading a bit and found CESM but it seems like a lot of these models require supercomputers. It's not clear that simulation of many years (ie predicting what a core might look like) is feasible.

Diederich 7y ago

Many of those in the 'doubt climate change' camp are deeply suspicious of anything any government body wants to do. I've also widely engaged people who doubt or deny climate change, trying hard to approach in an open handed, friendly way, and mostly succeeding. In my opinion, a big chunk of the people who doubt climate change are and will remain extremely opposed to any kind of geoengineering. Perhaps violently so. In people's minds, there's a huge leap between trusting scientists' saying that the earth is warming fast, fucking things up in the future, and trusting scientists' saying that we need to actively change the world right now in response to climate change. And I appreciate that distinction. In truth, I think quite a few people unconsciously push back against climate change because they are afraid of the possibility of active geoengineering in response.

whamlastxmas 7y ago
I am extremely skeptical of climate change arguments because I overwhelmingly hear it from politicians who lie through their teeth about virtually everything and typically for their own gain. I want to believe but my bullshit meter just goes off so strongly whenever I hear a politician say anything
- lukifer 7y ago
  Look at it this way: if an ideologue, or otherwise motivated actor, can accomplish their goal or spin their story using facts that happen to be true, why wouldn't they? If someone is politically motivated, for example, to tighten border security, it's surely possible they'll fudge numbers about criminal immigrants to tell their story; but if a real, un-p-hacked statistic tells that story, why bother bullshitting when you can shout the truth from the rooftops? I don't trust politicians, but I have some trust in nerds. While scientists and engineers are far from immune to groupthink or perverse incentives, there is so much clout to be gained (not to mention a feel-good pro-growth story), if the case for AGW wasn't strong, I think we'd be seeing a stronger contrarian pushback from within scientific communities (including taking their case to the public through TED talks, podcasts, YouTube, etc) [1]. Be it string theory, or the lipid hypothesis, or OOP-vs-FP, how rare is it to actually get 95%+ of nerds to agree on anything? [1] For an example in action, see physicist Richard Muller, who spent years as a skeptic and founded an organization to debunk climate change, only to change his mind after examining the results: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkeley_Earth

User23 7y ago

> I'm wondering why geoengineering is not being seriously considered as a solution at this point. Because an overshoot in the other direction would be even worse than a couple degrees of warming. Feedback loops can work both ways. We are currently in an ice age[1] and glaciation covering most of the northern hemisphere could happen in about a decade[2]. Reducing emissions is just tuning a known activity and second order effects aside is perfectly safe, but geoengineering is a giant unknown that could cause catastrophic consequences. [1]https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cause-ice-age/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/cause-ice-age/ [2]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC34297/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC34297/

marmaduke 7y ago
> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC34297/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC34297/ That was an interesting read. It suggests that really abrupt changes in warming are possible. The downside seems that only one good data source exists. Are you aware of any computational modeling of the large scale mechanisms? I'm coming from computational neuroscience and bayesian modeling and found this data pretty interesting
- User23 7y ago
  I don't, but the data quality really is impressive, so it would be interesting to see if anyone has tried to develop a model using it, especially since you could test it by taking other cores.
  - marmaduke 7y ago
    I started reading a bit and found CESM but it seems like a lot of these models require supercomputers. It's not clear that simulation of many years (ie predicting what a core might look like) is feasible.