But that's simply not how it works, no matter how much money you throw at it. And you won't even have money to throw at it in the US at least, because belief in climate change is a political opinion.
Which is a strange state of affairs. In the European countries I am familiar with, all the mainstream parties agree with core mainstream science. Their voters largely do as well. They may have more or less credible plans to address the problem but they don't have their own private scientific conclusions.
Why is the US (and maybe Australia?) different? Is it because voters are ignorant or short termist, and politicians follow? Or politicians are corrupted and mislead their voters? Or just a higher level of scientific ignorance all around? Or a heavy dependence on fossil fuel prosperity in key districts?
Can someone suggest the answer? Clearly Europeans are not more intrinsically virtuous or sensible.
I would add Canada to that list as well. The current federal government has been trying to enforce a national carbon tax which has so far been met with siginificant resistance.
> Is it because voters are ignorant or short termist, and politicians follow? Or politicians are corrupted and mislead their voters? Or just a higher level of scientific ignorance all around? Or a heavy dependence on fossil fuel prosperity in key districts?
All of the above? :) And probably also corporate lobbying.
Another theory : if you live closer together you have a more visceral understanding of how you depend on the good behavior of others.
This:
Talk: "We believe in climate change"
Action: "Going to increase fuel mileage standards by 1%, that'll do it"
doesn't cut it.
Enough to mouth belief, not enough to demand action. It’s a smaller difference than it seems.
I can't speak to Australia, but in the US I see two significant factors. The first is the news and the second is the evangelical christian movement. IMO, both are rooted in perverse interpretations of the first amendment.
My understanding is that Reagan struck down laws regarding truth in journalism, which really set the stage. Fox News is particularly egregious in climate denial (as well as fearmongering about Muslim folks, immigrants, etc.), and for many, that's just the start of a slippery slope. Smaller, especially local radio, talk-shows around the country are even more egregious. They use fear-based arguments to significant effect, and because politicians use these arguments, they're "political opinions."
The evangelical movement (which gets a lot of play on Fox and other platforms) has positioned itself as anti-science: anti-climate, anti-vax, anti-evolution, anti-lgbt. So these opinions are elevated beyond "political opinions," they're sitting on the lofty perch of "religious beliefs" and challenging them is an assault on religious liberty.
p.s. pro tip: sell all of your Amazon, Google and Apple stock before we send out that email
No, there aren't. Explaining why would be way beyond the scope of an HN comment, but consider this: if it were really as easy as you imply, don't you think someone who actually knew what they were doing would have put forth a detailed plan by now?
I think it neatly encapsulates the problem. Climate is big. Changes have huge hysteresis. The only real fix is emissions (lack of). What we've already emitted will be causing change for centuries. Any climate engineering is likely to be hilariously easy to over or under-shoot except carbon capture and storage. CCS is almost certainly going to be necessary as we likely need negative emissions now. At least CO2's role in the climate is becoming very well understood, and we know exactly how to fix an overshoot.
They weren't in favor of the general concept, never mind the individual schemes.
Mostly, there's no way to do controlled experiments.
All but the worst of the current IPCC scenarios require some sort of carbon capture even now, and the IPCC reports in general are very optimistic (what we know for sure is less bad than what we suspect might be true).
Carbon capture is classified as a climate engineering technique, and depending on how you do it it is feasible to accurately estimate the consequences. On the other hand, all techniques talked about so far need to be deployed on a massive scale, costing us a lot of resources, space and probably biospheres. The best cost estimates I've seen so far is ~200€/ton CO2 in monetary terms. The problem is that right now the research is not at the level it needs to be (another Manhattan project would be good), since there is no money in it.
Solar management techniques are indeed hard to consider, and would need to be kept up forever, which means that as soon as a war or just recession happens, we'd still be doomed, so this can only be used to buy some time and will probably have severe side-effects.
There you have it: a blockbuster holywood catastrophe plot.