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Sign me up for some climate shaming. I'm for whatever works at this point.

cies 6y ago
That's my problem, I expect the climate shaming approach is (1) a total waste of effort, (2) does not hurt the heavy polluters and (3) does not consider hidden pollution (plastic straws vs flowers or meat). Hence I think the only way out fair and square taxation. It's not a new idea, and thus has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
ben_w 6y ago
15 years ago I would’ve agreed 100%. Growth of green energy, and the cost reductions of the same, mean I now think this particular war is won, even if some specific metaphorical battles have yet to begin. There’s still nitrogen, phosphate, biodiversity, and antibiotics abuse to care about, but I’m confident greenhouse gases are a solved problem and that people will get rich by reducing emissions by at least half by December 2030.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  I'm going to use the car off a cliff metaphor here because I think it's appropriate. We're still in a car that's headed off the cliff. We've only just reached the point where when people want to press the accelerator harder it reliably causes widespread yelling from those convinced that hurtling off a cliff is a bad idea. We not only aren't steering away from the cliff edge, we haven't even checked the brakes work, maybe this car doesn't have brakes, and if we only finally try them after we go off the cliff I can assure you they won't help then. But yes, these days most calls to accelerate faster are getting shouted down, if you think that's enough I hope we both live long enough for you to find out how wrong that was.
  - adrianN 6y ago
    Yep exactly, so far we haven't even gotten the second derivative of what we're trying to stabilize to go in the right direction. Global carbon emissions are still rising!
    - ben_w 6y ago
      Second derivative has been negative 22 years out of the 44 I can calculate it for with this data set: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by-year/ https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by... More importantly, exponential growth of the solution is much faster than the sub-exponential growth of the problem. Indeed, faster than almost everything else in the technological world — so far as I am aware, only Moore’s law and the cost of gene reading/writing have been improving faster for any length of time.
      - adrianN 6y ago
        I only count 9 years with a negative change in emissions (6 of which are probably due to the oil crisis?). The number that matters for warming is the total CO2 concentration. Emissions are the first derivative, change in emissions is the second derivative.
        ben_w 6y ago
        Ah, gotcha. I was doing second derivative of emissions. Still sub-exponential, which is why I’m still optimistic.
        pmiller2 6y ago
        > Still sub-exponential, which is why I’m still optimistic. If you said that about an algorithm you were considering introducing into production code, I'd say you had a lot of optimization to go. Or, maybe you need to improve your proof. :P
        6y ago

cies 6y ago

That's my problem, I expect the climate shaming approach is (1) a total waste of effort, (2) does not hurt the heavy polluters and (3) does not consider hidden pollution (plastic straws vs flowers or meat). Hence I think the only way out fair and square taxation. It's not a new idea, and thus has a name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgism

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

ben_w 6y ago

15 years ago I would’ve agreed 100%. Growth of green energy, and the cost reductions of the same, mean I now think this particular war is won, even if some specific metaphorical battles have yet to begin. There’s still nitrogen, phosphate, biodiversity, and antibiotics abuse to care about, but I’m confident greenhouse gases are a solved problem and that people will get rich by reducing emissions by at least half by December 2030.

tialaramex 6y ago
I'm going to use the car off a cliff metaphor here because I think it's appropriate. We're still in a car that's headed off the cliff. We've only just reached the point where when people want to press the accelerator harder it reliably causes widespread yelling from those convinced that hurtling off a cliff is a bad idea. We not only aren't steering away from the cliff edge, we haven't even checked the brakes work, maybe this car doesn't have brakes, and if we only finally try them after we go off the cliff I can assure you they won't help then. But yes, these days most calls to accelerate faster are getting shouted down, if you think that's enough I hope we both live long enough for you to find out how wrong that was.
- adrianN 6y ago
  Yep exactly, so far we haven't even gotten the second derivative of what we're trying to stabilize to go in the right direction. Global carbon emissions are still rising!
  - ben_w 6y ago
    Second derivative has been negative 22 years out of the 44 I can calculate it for with this data set: https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by-year/ https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-by... More importantly, exponential growth of the solution is much faster than the sub-exponential growth of the problem. Indeed, faster than almost everything else in the technological world — so far as I am aware, only Moore’s law and the cost of gene reading/writing have been improving faster for any length of time.
    - adrianN 6y ago
      I only count 9 years with a negative change in emissions (6 of which are probably due to the oil crisis?). The number that matters for warming is the total CO2 concentration. Emissions are the first derivative, change in emissions is the second derivative.
      - ben_w 6y ago
        Ah, gotcha. I was doing second derivative of emissions. Still sub-exponential, which is why I’m still optimistic.
        pmiller2 6y ago
        > Still sub-exponential, which is why I’m still optimistic. If you said that about an algorithm you were considering introducing into production code, I'd say you had a lot of optimization to go. Or, maybe you need to improve your proof. :P
        6y ago