3 ms·
Yeah, there’s a lot of evidence that we may have grossly underestimated the feedback effects. On the flip side, we also underestimated the ability to switch to
by addicted 3y ago
Yeah, there’s a lot of evidence that we may have grossly underestimated the feedback effects.
On the flip side, we also underestimated the ability to switch to renewable sources (predictions of the cost and spread of renewable energy have been far too pessimistic going back 2 decades even though these estimates over the past decade or so adjusted for the fact that they were too pessimistic). Further, we’ve already started showing growth without using more energy which shows the tremendous efficiency improvements we’ve been able to make, and was something that wasn’t even considered possible.
IOW, global warming is likely worse than we thought, but our ability to fight global warming and the actions we’ve already taken are also much better than most imagined. Which is why it’s so frustrating that we continue to not go big on many of the options to fight global warming that we have available to us.
- acdha 3y agoI’d also add that many of the changes have enormous clear wins for other reasons: fossil fuels are nasty, so even if global warming just disappeared in some sci-fi miracle we’d still save millions of lives annually and improve quality of life by not having internal combustion engines or methane gas appliances. Improving bike & transit infrastructure would make large populations healthier and save everyone a ton of money, etc.