3 ms·
>Why does it matter what the cause is? Are you being serious? The cause is a key part of choosing the most efficient response. Responses can potentially involv
by xoa 6y ago
>Why does it matter what the cause is?
Are you being serious? The cause is a key part of choosing the most efficient response. Responses can potentially involve both reactionary measures to climate forcing and reductionary measures trying to reduce forcing. If the cause was, say, the sun getting brighter by 15% for some reason, well we can't just turn down the sun, so while yes we'd having just a much motivation to respond our range of actions would be purely on the reaction side, reducing incoming solar insolation maybe. And that'd further just be bringing things back into the comfortable range we and everything else have been living in.
But since instead the cause is human driven fossil carbon emissions, both different reaction measures and reducing the cause in the first place are possible and important. To take the above example, solar shading would be a bad idea because while yes it'd lower thermal input, it'd also reduce critical wavelengths used by primary producers below normal levels as well. That's a major side effect that's different from if the cause was different. And while we can mess with the sun, we certainly can treat net atmospheric carbon increases as the externality it is.
But if you don't accept greenhouse gas emissions are an externality, why would you support internalizing those costs? If they weren't the cause after all it'd be uneconomic and pointless to go after them.
I mean, I'm genuinely astonished to even be writing this on HN. Like if my "computer broke", well if the cause is a dead SSD that's quite different then a dead mobo or fried PSU or "5 year old knocked a potted plant onto it then 7 year old poured seltzer water on it to clean it off". Would you be saying "what does it matter what the cause was" there?
- mhb 6y agoWe have a problem and need to find the best way to fix it. Understanding the cause in order to find one possible fix is an obvious thing to do. So is looking for any other possible solutions. It is an unnecessary constraint that we need to solve the problem only by reversing its cause. If the cause of the problem was a brighter sun but we could save the planet by internalizing the cost of our emissions, it seems like it would be wise to do that regardless of whether an earth umbrella might address the root cause more directly.