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> Also, I thought climate change was pretty much a problem of social coordination. What exactly do we gain from building better model of climate change? Knowing
by yojo 6y ago
> Also, I thought climate change was pretty much a problem of social coordination. What exactly do we gain from building better model of climate change? Knowing where it's going to hit us hard? I supposed that could be useful, but even more pressing was how to motivate the people of Earth to make the necessary changes.
It's not either or. Knowing the impact is valuable for mitigating damage. You can allocate capital for mitigation more effectively if you have a more accurate model of the threats. Presumably at some levels funding more accurate models are net cost-saving, by increasing the efficiency of spend. I have no idea if we have or have not passed that level.
Similarly, a better model might provide a better understanding of different strategies for curtailing climate change. e.g. planting trees takes carbon out of the air directly (easy to estimate), but also changes the albedo of the underlying terrain. The impact of the albedo change is less clear, particularly as to how it changes regional weather patterns. It might benefit from better models to guide the most impactful locations to reforest. Again, I'm not an expert/maybe this is a solved problem, but I can see how these cases might exist.