6 ms·

It seems fairly obvious that climate change is going to be solved before the bigger existential risks we face, which are for the most part unknowable or largely

by gfodor 5y ago

It seems fairly obvious that climate change is going to be solved before the bigger existential risks we face, which are for the most part unknowable or largely ignored. There are a lot of people working on climate change now, it's well established in the public's mind, and there are many incentives in place to accelerate solutions.

headmelted 5y ago
there are many incentives in place to accelerate solutions I don't believe this to be true. If you look at the incentives currently in place they're well short of what could be considered the minimum recommendations of any of the previous reports. This is not an indicator of a world that takes climate change seriously: [Saudi oil giant Aramco sees profits soar by almost 300%] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58141607 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58141607
GordonS 5y ago
I presume this is missing a /s ?
hef19898 5y ago
It also seems companies are moving faster than politics. E.g. deprecating ICEs by 2030/35, without any policies forcing them. The mere discussion about increasing CO2 prices triggered coal power plant operators to think about phasing those put before any policy enforced coal exit. The pessimist in me will only believe any of that, and any positive impact, once it happened. Not sooner.
- glogla 5y ago
  2030/35 is a trojan horse because it is far too late. That's 15 years from now, and vehicles easily live for 20 years, so when people born today will be 35, there still be ICE cars around. Thats not a measure to help, thats a fake measure to stop goverments from actually doing something effective.
- gfodor 5y ago
  I think the biggest way we could screw this up is if our governments pick winner technology stacks now, and don't keep the doors open (and ideally fund) paths to breakthrough tech. The panic over climate change (which, arguably, has merit) may lead us to making this kind of error, since we feel we have to put all our chips in now on 2020s era solutions. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that our existing tech stacks just need to be scaled up to solve the problem. We need to keep turning the crank of innovation.
sammalloy 5y ago
Let's optimistically assume you are correct. If you could flip a magic switch right now and stop releasing carbon and fix all the other related problems, you would still have a massive delay of many decades (40 or more years) in bringing down air temperatures. The problem then becomes how do you survive the climate interregnum? This is why governments and private industry need to be working closely together, and nations with other nations. On the one hand, this will probably be the greatest job creation sector in human history, but on the other hand, we aren't all going to make it.
- gfodor 5y ago
  The delay you mention is only the case if you do not presume humans can intervene with counterforces. Yes, we are not Gods, but I think any analysis which does not incorporate the various tech curves that are going vertical right now are falling into the "future is like the past" fallacy. I think that if we got the first set of miracles you hypothesize, we wouldn't just sit on our hands as the 40 year delay unfolds. We'll keep working the problem, and leverage would increase over time to close the gap.
  - sammalloy 5y ago
    No matter what we do, the delay is inevitable, but the time is variable. A lot of PR optimistically claims we won't have to wait more than 20 years, but from what I understand it's more like 40-50 in the scientific literature, and up to 100-200 years with worst case estimates. I'm not an atmospheric physicist, however. > When you emit carbon dioxide, the climate stays altered for a long time," says Solomon Hsiang, a climate scientist who is the co-director at the Climate Impact Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. "And so we kind of have to deal with that baggage no matter what." > Today's adults will be dealing with climate-driven extreme weather for decades to come. But if countries transform their economies to cut heat-trapping emissions sharply, today's kindergartners could inherit a safer world when they reach middle age. > "It's kind of like you're driving a giant train that's very heavy. You slam on the brakes. The train keeps going for a while," Hsiang explains. "There's some amount of heating that we would continue to experience," even with dramatic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. It will take decades for forests, oceans and other natural systems to soak up all the excess greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the atmosphere.
helsinkiandrew 5y ago
> climate change is going to be solved But that's part of the problem - there isn't going to be a magic solution to climate change - it involves lots of changes to the way we do things, some small and some big (the way we travel, and build and consume things), most of which we already know about - but often they'll be economically damaging or a change in the way people live.
leinadho 5y ago
I like your attitude, and would love to hear more about why you think this. It doesn't seem obvious to me that it's something we'll actually "solve" while maintaining our current population/civilization, but maybe I just read too many doom and gloom articles?
- gfodor 5y ago
  I'm looking at this as if I am a historian from the future. From first principles, humanity has the pre-requisites in my mind to solve the problem. This doesn't mean it will be easy or obvious in predicting exactly how it is done. It's just much more likely to me that we solve it over the next several decades than not. We may take a hit along the way. Fusion energy seems relatively imminent, the economics for solar are in a positive feedback loop, and X Prizes for carbon capture are well underway. If we just get practically limitless clean energy (possible given the existence proof of stars) and figure out a way to relocate the carbon in the air at scale ("just" moving a lot of atoms) we have a lot of slack to resolve things. Again: this is just first principles analysis, not a claim it will be easy or that we won't see major consequences along the way. The things that keep me up at night are not climate change, but runaway feedback loops that yield existential civilizational risk on the order of weeks not decades. For example, a COVID-like R0 virus that is highly fatal but spreads asymptomatically for months before killing hosts. Engineering and deploying such a virus seems plausible for a psychopathic individual over the next several decades. Basically anything where a lone actor can unleash a chain reaction to take out civilization are things we should be very concerned about, since they are total random variables. Getting various hedges in place like physical boundaries between cohesive populations (eg, a Martian colony) seem important to clear before one of these tripwires are hit.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tsimionescu 5y ago
The reason you are wrong is that stopping (or even slowing down) climate change goes directly against the way the world economic system is set up. Basically, to stop climate change in the next decade (which is already far too late to stop catastrophic effects, which are already beginning and will only get worse) we must significantly reduce the global economy. There is simply no way to keep growing growing the economy without also growing CO2 emissions in the near future. And of course, global economic recession is not going to be acceptable, in an economic system predicated entirely on eternal growth (where "growing too slow" is already considered unacceptable). So, climate change action will be slow, small, and entirely too little to avoid the most catastrophic scenarios. Better to see 10 more years of economic growth before a massive collapse, instead of 20-40 years of slow economic shrinking to a more manageable, carbon neutral world, right?
- gfodor 5y ago
  No, the economic system doesn't inherently rely upon fossil fuels. It relies upon cheap and abundant energy. If we snapped our fingers and had free clean energy on tap, that would sign the death warrant of climate change, although there may be lots of collateral damage if we don't also try to rewind the clock too.
  - tsimionescu 5y ago
    Sure, but right now, the only source of clean and abundant energy is fossil fuels. Everything else is either much more expensive up-front (hydro, nuclear) or is extremely variable (solar, wind). Nothing other than fossil fuels can travel well (electric cars are nice, but electric trucks are unlikely to be economical, and electric cargo bots are even worse). So, the only current solution to climate change is global economic contraction - especially in the richest nations.

by gfodor 5y ago

headmelted 5y ago

there are many incentives in place to accelerate solutions I don't believe this to be true. If you look at the incentives currently in place they're well short of what could be considered the minimum recommendations of any of the previous reports. This is not an indicator of a world that takes climate change seriously: [Saudi oil giant Aramco sees profits soar by almost 300%] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58141607 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58141607

GordonS 5y ago

I presume this is missing a /s ?

hef19898 5y ago

It also seems companies are moving faster than politics. E.g. deprecating ICEs by 2030/35, without any policies forcing them. The mere discussion about increasing CO2 prices triggered coal power plant operators to think about phasing those put before any policy enforced coal exit. The pessimist in me will only believe any of that, and any positive impact, once it happened. Not sooner.

glogla 5y ago
2030/35 is a trojan horse because it is far too late. That's 15 years from now, and vehicles easily live for 20 years, so when people born today will be 35, there still be ICE cars around. Thats not a measure to help, thats a fake measure to stop goverments from actually doing something effective.
gfodor 5y ago
I think the biggest way we could screw this up is if our governments pick winner technology stacks now, and don't keep the doors open (and ideally fund) paths to breakthrough tech. The panic over climate change (which, arguably, has merit) may lead us to making this kind of error, since we feel we have to put all our chips in now on 2020s era solutions. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced that our existing tech stacks just need to be scaled up to solve the problem. We need to keep turning the crank of innovation.

sammalloy 5y ago

Let's optimistically assume you are correct. If you could flip a magic switch right now and stop releasing carbon and fix all the other related problems, you would still have a massive delay of many decades (40 or more years) in bringing down air temperatures. The problem then becomes how do you survive the climate interregnum? This is why governments and private industry need to be working closely together, and nations with other nations. On the one hand, this will probably be the greatest job creation sector in human history, but on the other hand, we aren't all going to make it.

gfodor 5y ago
The delay you mention is only the case if you do not presume humans can intervene with counterforces. Yes, we are not Gods, but I think any analysis which does not incorporate the various tech curves that are going vertical right now are falling into the "future is like the past" fallacy. I think that if we got the first set of miracles you hypothesize, we wouldn't just sit on our hands as the 40 year delay unfolds. We'll keep working the problem, and leverage would increase over time to close the gap.
- sammalloy 5y ago
  No matter what we do, the delay is inevitable, but the time is variable. A lot of PR optimistically claims we won't have to wait more than 20 years, but from what I understand it's more like 40-50 in the scientific literature, and up to 100-200 years with worst case estimates. I'm not an atmospheric physicist, however. > When you emit carbon dioxide, the climate stays altered for a long time," says Solomon Hsiang, a climate scientist who is the co-director at the Climate Impact Lab at the University of California, Berkeley. "And so we kind of have to deal with that baggage no matter what." > Today's adults will be dealing with climate-driven extreme weather for decades to come. But if countries transform their economies to cut heat-trapping emissions sharply, today's kindergartners could inherit a safer world when they reach middle age. > "It's kind of like you're driving a giant train that's very heavy. You slam on the brakes. The train keeps going for a while," Hsiang explains. "There's some amount of heating that we would continue to experience," even with dramatic cuts to greenhouse gas emissions. It will take decades for forests, oceans and other natural systems to soak up all the excess greenhouse gases that have accumulated in the atmosphere.

helsinkiandrew 5y ago

> climate change is going to be solved But that's part of the problem - there isn't going to be a magic solution to climate change - it involves lots of changes to the way we do things, some small and some big (the way we travel, and build and consume things), most of which we already know about - but often they'll be economically damaging or a change in the way people live.

leinadho 5y ago

I like your attitude, and would love to hear more about why you think this. It doesn't seem obvious to me that it's something we'll actually "solve" while maintaining our current population/civilization, but maybe I just read too many doom and gloom articles?

gfodor 5y ago
I'm looking at this as if I am a historian from the future. From first principles, humanity has the pre-requisites in my mind to solve the problem. This doesn't mean it will be easy or obvious in predicting exactly how it is done. It's just much more likely to me that we solve it over the next several decades than not. We may take a hit along the way. Fusion energy seems relatively imminent, the economics for solar are in a positive feedback loop, and X Prizes for carbon capture are well underway. If we just get practically limitless clean energy (possible given the existence proof of stars) and figure out a way to relocate the carbon in the air at scale ("just" moving a lot of atoms) we have a lot of slack to resolve things. Again: this is just first principles analysis, not a claim it will be easy or that we won't see major consequences along the way. The things that keep me up at night are not climate change, but runaway feedback loops that yield existential civilizational risk on the order of weeks not decades. For example, a COVID-like R0 virus that is highly fatal but spreads asymptomatically for months before killing hosts. Engineering and deploying such a virus seems plausible for a psychopathic individual over the next several decades. Basically anything where a lone actor can unleash a chain reaction to take out civilization are things we should be very concerned about, since they are total random variables. Getting various hedges in place like physical boundaries between cohesive populations (eg, a Martian colony) seem important to clear before one of these tripwires are hit.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

tsimionescu 5y ago

The reason you are wrong is that stopping (or even slowing down) climate change goes directly against the way the world economic system is set up. Basically, to stop climate change in the next decade (which is already far too late to stop catastrophic effects, which are already beginning and will only get worse) we must significantly reduce the global economy. There is simply no way to keep growing growing the economy without also growing CO2 emissions in the near future. And of course, global economic recession is not going to be acceptable, in an economic system predicated entirely on eternal growth (where "growing too slow" is already considered unacceptable). So, climate change action will be slow, small, and entirely too little to avoid the most catastrophic scenarios. Better to see 10 more years of economic growth before a massive collapse, instead of 20-40 years of slow economic shrinking to a more manageable, carbon neutral world, right?

gfodor 5y ago
No, the economic system doesn't inherently rely upon fossil fuels. It relies upon cheap and abundant energy. If we snapped our fingers and had free clean energy on tap, that would sign the death warrant of climate change, although there may be lots of collateral damage if we don't also try to rewind the clock too.
- tsimionescu 5y ago
  Sure, but right now, the only source of clean and abundant energy is fossil fuels. Everything else is either much more expensive up-front (hydro, nuclear) or is extremely variable (solar, wind). Nothing other than fossil fuels can travel well (electric cars are nice, but electric trucks are unlikely to be economical, and electric cargo bots are even worse). So, the only current solution to climate change is global economic contraction - especially in the richest nations.