5 ms·

I'm not a game theorist or an economist, but I believe that dealing with climate change will involve, uh, "non-cooperative solutions." People saying, "If we ca

I'm not a game theorist or an economist, but I believe that dealing with climate change will involve, uh, "non-cooperative solutions." People saying, "If we can all just get together and ..." keep forgetting we can't even get humanity to stop stabbing each other in the face. If the "solution" depends on mass cooperation, and worse yet, cooperative mass sacrifice, I just don't think it will happen. Therefore, we need to look at solutions that don't require eighty percent of humanity agreeing on something.

wmf 4y ago
Check out Neal Stephenson's Termination Shock. In fiction you can consider things that are too taboo to discuss seriously.
CM30 4y ago
Yeah. Which is why things like this (limiting sunlight so greenhouse effects are mitigated) mixed with a push to 100% clean energy and carbon capture (both via trees and technology) are probably the way forward. You might get away with pushing to limit non reusable resources if companies were the targeted party though (so instead of asking people to recycle or reuse, governments outright demaded corporations stop providing as much disposable packaging).
- candiodari 4y ago
  And what happens when one realizes that limiting sunlight, of course, is an incredible weapon against your adversaries. Or, god forbid, ampliflying sunlight? And then, when the inevitable happens and it moves from theory to "you know ... actually ... our atellite could actually do that" and then to actually doing it against that really-evil-dude-that-totally-deserves-it du jour? Or we do it first to lessen the economic impact of a cold not-very-well-oiled winter in Europe? Plus, I'd like to point out that even when it goes perfectly smoothly, ironically, fixing climate change will make many climate change effects worse. For instance, currently meltwater is helping offset the draught in California (and in the nearly-1-billion-people Indus valley, and a hundred less important valleys). If we slow down climate change that meltwater contribution stops, today, almost entirely. The same with many other effects. For instance the greening of the Sahara will stop, we will not only see less extreme weather, but less rainfall ... everywhere. And that will do a lot to prevent the countries from growing.
  - awb 4y ago
    Any technology can be weaponized. Nukes seem to be a very strong deterrent against excessive overt aggression.
- mrtnmcc 4y ago
  Wouldn't these sunshade concepts all reduce solar energy available to plants as well as total thermal radiation?
  - splitstud 4y ago
  - nashashmi 4y ago
    This is studied as global dimming. And the effects are bad. Global dimming is happening even now but contradicts the global warming narrative for some reason. In reality, global dimming is worse than global warming. Much of the co2 is absorbed by the ocean planktons powered by sunlight. There are other ramifications too.
    - mrtnmcc 4y ago
      Exactly, that seems underappreciated. It seems you'd want to block infrared where most of the thermal energy is transferred, while letting the shorter wavelengths through for plants/plankton.
fHr 4y ago
Well good luck on that, how will you get to a solution withouth getting money/people on board.
- mort96 4y ago
  You need money/people on board, but not on the order of 80% of the people of the world; you need the leadership of singular countries to decide to do something. Consider how easy it was for individual countries to pour a ton of resources into developing atomic bombs, compared to how difficult it has been for countries to come together and agree to get rid of nuclear weapons. It's easy for a country to do what's in its own self-interest. It's difficult for multiple countries to come together and do things which are in everyone's common interest but which is against each individual country's interest.
esotericsean 4y ago
I sorta disagree. During Covid, the entire world came together. I think the world can work together as long as they're forced to.
- x86x87 4y ago
  Did it though? I remember the whole "muh body! No masks" entitled attitude. I also remember people literally dismissing the vaccine - a tech wonder - because Bill Gates. The world did not come together. It was a shirt show. If the world came together we would have burried Covid sooner and with less people dying.
  - rescripting 4y ago
    Those people were certainly loud, but also certainly in the minority when you look at the % of people who actually got vaccinated. Rage gets engagement, algorithms boost the wild opinions and soon it feels like everyone is taking crazy pillS, but that is just your feed trying to keep you doom scrolling.
    - x86x87 4y ago
      I member a time when most adults would have somewhat reasonable opinions and we could have a discussion about a specific issue without jumping to "you're a <insert political party>" therefore you suck, therefore your opinion is bad. Nowadays I hear straight up batshit crazy things all the time. All the time. It used to be that if you had crazy ideas you would receive feedback that you're crazy and people would not want to associate with you. Nowadays instead of thinking about it you just double down. Other nuts are coming out of the woodwork and all of a sudden "we have to consider all points of view". We cater to the lowest common denominator and entertain things that should be summarily dismissied.
  - daveslash 4y ago
    I don't know where esotericsean and x86x87 are from.... Being from different parts of the world could explain different perspectives. But here in the U.S.....is was a real shit show as x86 said. It was definitely not "coming together" by any stretch. COVID made us feel more divided than we were before the pandemic.
bell-cot 4y ago
Giant "sunshades" at L1, funded/designed/launched/operated by the Pentagon, using SpaceX Starships. Each "shade" consists of thousands of long variable-pitch "slats" (like a mini blind) in a very thin, light framework. The paper-thin slats are slightly curved ("for rigidity"), and the control system is always fiddling with their pitches - to keep the shade's location fixed, without expending rocket fuel, in spite of L1 being unstable, light pressure, the solar wind, etc. And if any other nation down on Earth causes too much trouble? One quick flick of all the slats, and the sun briefly gets 10,000X brighter & hotter for them. (Yes, I know enough optics to know that really wouldn't work. It's still a cool story.)
gnramires 4y ago
All is needed (at least for start?) I think are stronger accords and mechanisms to make demands (or even just give help) for those who don't meet the targets. Don't lose hope :) https://climateactiontracker.org/ https://climateactiontracker.org/ https://ccpi.org/ranking/ https://ccpi.org/ranking/
machina_ex_deus 4y ago
The only scientific connection between climate change and CO2 are global circulation models. I've read the code of several of these. The quality of code is terrible, with so many obvious mistakes, unreadable functions, code copy between different models and what not. The entire narrative controlling trillions of dollars rests on code whose quality wouldn't pass 10$ bug bounty. Quite like how the Fed economic policy which predicted transitory inflation was probably done with similarly bad models. Or how coronavirus spread models overshot and led to terrible decisions. I don't trust centralized decisions done like that. They amplify expected errors into devastating proportions.
- boxed 4y ago
  There are tons of independent lines of evidence. Climate models are but one, and the code quality isn't really relevant. If they can successully simulate past climate, then bad coding practices is irrelevant to their proposed predictive ability. Plus, all the reports have been WAY too optimistic. Year after year there actual measurments come out and it's worse than the climate models.
  - machina_ex_deus 4y ago
    There is other evidence of changes. But the evidence connecting climate change to CO2 is purely these models. If there's so much evidence, surely you can find evidence for this connection that isn't circulation model? Code quality is extremely relevant. These models are nearly untestable. Climate is too chaotic and these models don't predict anything successfully on short timescales, and some of them don't predict anything on large timescale either - look up the term "flux adjustment". So at this point the entire trust in these and the entire narrative comes from a code that any experienced programmer with physics knowledge would never put the faith of the world economy on. Do you know what's even worse than not stopping a human made climate change? Destroying the world economy just to find out that it did not solve anything and still end up with worse climate but without economic power to deal with it. Somewhat similar to coronavirus lockdowns.
    - 4y ago
slowhand09 4y ago
So when different groups assume they have the "correct" answer... And we all take matters into our own hands?
- at_a_remove 4y ago
  Much like most decisions have been made by humanity since the dawn of time, yes.

wmf 4y ago

Check out Neal Stephenson's Termination Shock. In fiction you can consider things that are too taboo to discuss seriously.

CM30 4y ago

Yeah. Which is why things like this (limiting sunlight so greenhouse effects are mitigated) mixed with a push to 100% clean energy and carbon capture (both via trees and technology) are probably the way forward. You might get away with pushing to limit non reusable resources if companies were the targeted party though (so instead of asking people to recycle or reuse, governments outright demaded corporations stop providing as much disposable packaging).

candiodari 4y ago
And what happens when one realizes that limiting sunlight, of course, is an incredible weapon against your adversaries. Or, god forbid, ampliflying sunlight? And then, when the inevitable happens and it moves from theory to "you know ... actually ... our atellite could actually do that" and then to actually doing it against that really-evil-dude-that-totally-deserves-it du jour? Or we do it first to lessen the economic impact of a cold not-very-well-oiled winter in Europe? Plus, I'd like to point out that even when it goes perfectly smoothly, ironically, fixing climate change will make many climate change effects worse. For instance, currently meltwater is helping offset the draught in California (and in the nearly-1-billion-people Indus valley, and a hundred less important valleys). If we slow down climate change that meltwater contribution stops, today, almost entirely. The same with many other effects. For instance the greening of the Sahara will stop, we will not only see less extreme weather, but less rainfall ... everywhere. And that will do a lot to prevent the countries from growing.
- awb 4y ago
  Any technology can be weaponized. Nukes seem to be a very strong deterrent against excessive overt aggression.
mrtnmcc 4y ago
Wouldn't these sunshade concepts all reduce solar energy available to plants as well as total thermal radiation?
- splitstud 4y ago
- nashashmi 4y ago
  This is studied as global dimming. And the effects are bad. Global dimming is happening even now but contradicts the global warming narrative for some reason. In reality, global dimming is worse than global warming. Much of the co2 is absorbed by the ocean planktons powered by sunlight. There are other ramifications too.
  - mrtnmcc 4y ago
    Exactly, that seems underappreciated. It seems you'd want to block infrared where most of the thermal energy is transferred, while letting the shorter wavelengths through for plants/plankton.

fHr 4y ago

Well good luck on that, how will you get to a solution withouth getting money/people on board.

mort96 4y ago
You need money/people on board, but not on the order of 80% of the people of the world; you need the leadership of singular countries to decide to do something. Consider how easy it was for individual countries to pour a ton of resources into developing atomic bombs, compared to how difficult it has been for countries to come together and agree to get rid of nuclear weapons. It's easy for a country to do what's in its own self-interest. It's difficult for multiple countries to come together and do things which are in everyone's common interest but which is against each individual country's interest.

esotericsean 4y ago

I sorta disagree. During Covid, the entire world came together. I think the world can work together as long as they're forced to.

x86x87 4y ago
Did it though? I remember the whole "muh body! No masks" entitled attitude. I also remember people literally dismissing the vaccine - a tech wonder - because Bill Gates. The world did not come together. It was a shirt show. If the world came together we would have burried Covid sooner and with less people dying.
- rescripting 4y ago
  Those people were certainly loud, but also certainly in the minority when you look at the % of people who actually got vaccinated. Rage gets engagement, algorithms boost the wild opinions and soon it feels like everyone is taking crazy pillS, but that is just your feed trying to keep you doom scrolling.
  - x86x87 4y ago
    I member a time when most adults would have somewhat reasonable opinions and we could have a discussion about a specific issue without jumping to "you're a <insert political party>" therefore you suck, therefore your opinion is bad. Nowadays I hear straight up batshit crazy things all the time. All the time. It used to be that if you had crazy ideas you would receive feedback that you're crazy and people would not want to associate with you. Nowadays instead of thinking about it you just double down. Other nuts are coming out of the woodwork and all of a sudden "we have to consider all points of view". We cater to the lowest common denominator and entertain things that should be summarily dismissied.
- daveslash 4y ago
  I don't know where esotericsean and x86x87 are from.... Being from different parts of the world could explain different perspectives. But here in the U.S.....is was a real shit show as x86 said. It was definitely not "coming together" by any stretch. COVID made us feel more divided than we were before the pandemic.

bell-cot 4y ago

Giant "sunshades" at L1, funded/designed/launched/operated by the Pentagon, using SpaceX Starships. Each "shade" consists of thousands of long variable-pitch "slats" (like a mini blind) in a very thin, light framework. The paper-thin slats are slightly curved ("for rigidity"), and the control system is always fiddling with their pitches - to keep the shade's location fixed, without expending rocket fuel, in spite of L1 being unstable, light pressure, the solar wind, etc. And if any other nation down on Earth causes too much trouble? One quick flick of all the slats, and the sun briefly gets 10,000X brighter & hotter for them. (Yes, I know enough optics to know that really wouldn't work. It's still a cool story.)

gnramires 4y ago

All is needed (at least for start?) I think are stronger accords and mechanisms to make demands (or even just give help) for those who don't meet the targets. Don't lose hope :) https://climateactiontracker.org/ https://climateactiontracker.org/ https://ccpi.org/ranking/ https://ccpi.org/ranking/

machina_ex_deus 4y ago

The only scientific connection between climate change and CO2 are global circulation models. I've read the code of several of these. The quality of code is terrible, with so many obvious mistakes, unreadable functions, code copy between different models and what not. The entire narrative controlling trillions of dollars rests on code whose quality wouldn't pass 10$ bug bounty. Quite like how the Fed economic policy which predicted transitory inflation was probably done with similarly bad models. Or how coronavirus spread models overshot and led to terrible decisions. I don't trust centralized decisions done like that. They amplify expected errors into devastating proportions.

boxed 4y ago
There are tons of independent lines of evidence. Climate models are but one, and the code quality isn't really relevant. If they can successully simulate past climate, then bad coding practices is irrelevant to their proposed predictive ability. Plus, all the reports have been WAY too optimistic. Year after year there actual measurments come out and it's worse than the climate models.
- machina_ex_deus 4y ago
  There is other evidence of changes. But the evidence connecting climate change to CO2 is purely these models. If there's so much evidence, surely you can find evidence for this connection that isn't circulation model? Code quality is extremely relevant. These models are nearly untestable. Climate is too chaotic and these models don't predict anything successfully on short timescales, and some of them don't predict anything on large timescale either - look up the term "flux adjustment". So at this point the entire trust in these and the entire narrative comes from a code that any experienced programmer with physics knowledge would never put the faith of the world economy on. Do you know what's even worse than not stopping a human made climate change? Destroying the world economy just to find out that it did not solve anything and still end up with worse climate but without economic power to deal with it. Somewhat similar to coronavirus lockdowns.
  - 4y ago

slowhand09 4y ago

So when different groups assume they have the "correct" answer... And we all take matters into our own hands?

at_a_remove 4y ago
Much like most decisions have been made by humanity since the dawn of time, yes.