Promoters of Climate Anxiety
cliffmass.blogspot.com
cliffmass.blogspot.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
It is very easy to blame the Koch Brothers or Exxon but just watch what the Yellow Jackets do when you tell them you'll raise the price of gas.
People will try to frame it in a partisan way ("e.g. our government is now a weak state thanks to the Koch Brothers") but it's a tough problem no matter how you slice it. One "holdout" can always keep everyone else from making a meaningful commitment. If the U.S. suddenly becomes "climate friendly" you will find that now Germany or China or some other country is the blocker.
If Mike Bloomberg actually wanted to do something about climate change he'd allocate $5 billion a year to iron fertilization and dispersing sulfur aerosol in the upper atmosphere. Only the threat of an "independent" taking control of the climate if the rest of us don't act can break the impasse.
Honestly, I don't even think that would force the world to act. Human caused climate change is the largest collective action problem the world has ever seen. Its made worse by the fact that the effect lags the cause by multiple generations (or more), so all the people who were responsible will be (or already are) dead.
I'm not optimistic about people choosing to pay more money or significantly change their lives (for the "worse") to help avoid future climate effects that will only come fully to fruition after they are dead. I just don't see the economics working out here.
Right now oil is around $59/barrel and each barrel emits .43 tons of carbon. There are credible claims of carbon capture for $100/ton today, and that’s without a clear payoff or scale. So that means that enacting a carbon tax that is at parity with the cost of avoiding emissions ($100/ton) would less than double the raw material cost of oil and still keep the price well below the highs we saw in the 00s. The effect on consumers would be even less on a percentage wise basis, as the tax shouldn’t effect transport, processing, marketing, or other costs much. Not only could we manage pricing in carbon emissions in our economy, we’ve done so in the past.
Perhaps as importantly very low carbon and carbon neutral energy and transportation options are becoming cost competitive with fossil fuels right now, without subsidies, and look to be continuing efficiency gains. It’s not inconceivable that carbon free becomes the standard for new vehicles and power plants purely on economic factors in the near-ish future. As that happens, the political constituencies that benefit from carbon tax and other emissions reducing schemes grow and you get a positive feedback loop.
I know I sound a bit Pollyanna ish, but I wasn’t always- I actually expected the word to keep emitting because the near term human costs were high.Recent data on the cost of these options coming down has convinced me otherwise.
This, of course, raises the question: what, precisely _is_ the view of the future painted by the best science?
I see the same news articles as everyone else, but, when applicable, I've been hunting down the papers they're based on and at least reading the abstracts. I've noticed some articles exaggerating or getting details wrong (such is the state of science journalism since forever), but nothing that gives me very much confidence that there will be a future for civilization in 60-100 years. Am I getting the right idea, or am I reading the wrong papers?
It is a fact that CMOS uses twice the transistors per logic gate. It is proper to say that it would fit less processing power in an area than other doping options. However when power dissipation is the defacto limit then even higher power hardware will use CMOS.
Apocalyptic views are both the best and worst prediction right now simply because they are the easiest prediction in how human civilizations react to great external threat/change. (The other draw to Asimov's Foundation novels being that they include several relative apocalypses, of course, which were unavoidable even when predictively modelling them, with the bonus optimism that maybe smart people could help make such situations at least somewhat better and more bearable through preparation.)
Ultimately it seems like the only predictive thing science can tell us about how apocalyptic things will get has a lot less to do with the raw facts of climate models and a lot more with the heavy open questions about how civilization and society intends to react, and that has so many strange and open questions about people and future leadership.
Even the IPCC is quietly and unofficially gearing up for a major collapse in the global human population by 2050. And not a blip, either, but - by their _conservative_ estimates - a whopping 20+% _at minimum_.
Fear can motivate a lot of people. Massive changes in culture and in history have arisen out of mass (and often unjustified) fear. I say we _need_ this fear, and a lot more of it, too. We just need to impart it more accurately, and less bombastically (which is great for clicks and eyeballs, but often gives the wrong impression).
"Global warming is a very serious issue, but most of the impacts are in the future. There is much we can do to address global warming, both in terms of adaptation and mitigation. There is, in fact, much reason for optimism."
(I do agree that there much we can do, but most of these things are hard problems of collective action)
Quote: "He has published over 120 articles in peer-reviewed scientific venues, and served on the board of over a dozen regional and national meteorological committees, conferences, and scientific journals."
That's as prominent as it gets. Sorry he doesn't exactly tow your particular party line on all this.
Actually 120 papers (by late career) and a few board memberships is fairly median on the prominence scale.
Nowhere near "as prominent as gets".
- H. L. Mencken
(No I'm not a climate change denier)
Is that your point?