Comment by jsdalton | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jsdalton | Hacker News Reader

I agree with his premise, though I don't entirely agree with his conclusions.

I've come to think that the problem with our approach to global warming right now is that it's been yoked to environmentalism as a broader, and in many ways, spiritual cause. Many of us are guilty of using the threat of global warming to shepherd other goals in there...e.g. renewable or alternative energy, resource conservation etc.

I happen to be inclined toward spiritual environmentalism myself, but if the earth is REALLY warming up due to human caused carbon inputs, we are fucked if we think a few extra wind farms and energy-conscious homes are going to solve anything.

The only solution I think mankind is even capable of undertaking is a technology solution...i.e. we need to find a way of getting carbon out of the air and into the ground. It may not be pretty, cheap, or some nirvana of holistic living, but it's actually how the problem will get solved.

Don't know if I'm making sense, but this is just what I was thinking about recently.

One of the proofs that the advocacy has become spiritual is precisely that engineering solutions are verboten. You can't engineer your way to spirituality, you can only suffer you way to it. (And if the poor must suffer twice as much, well, that's the price of my spirituality.)

If CO2 were a real problem and we were actually interested in solving it, engineering solutions are not a option, they are the only option if the alarmists are correct. We must not only stop putting so much out there, we must actively take out what we have put in.

Yes, I use the word "alarmist" and I'm basically a "doubter"; I'll self-label so there's no need to accuse. A small-but-significant portion of the reason why is the fundamental unseriousness of the alarmists on this point; if it's a problem, then let's fix it, not use global warming as an excuse to implement a whole raft of policies that oh-so-coincidentally you wanted even before it's was a problem and not-so-coincidentally aren't all that effective against global warming.

(The whole "we can't afford to take engineering risks we don't understand" is complete nonsense. Apparently we know with 100% certainty what is coming down the pike with our current emissions, and that is Complete Doom. It's hard to beat a negative like that and... frankly, engineering isn't exactly unfamiliar with that condition anyhow. Apparently we can predict the climate with 100% certainty unless we actually try to use this knowledge to fix the problem, and we must instead only engage in actions that by the IPCC's own admission and models will cost trillions and do next-to-nothing. See, I just have trouble wrapping my head around this whole meme-complex as an engineer; either we have a real problem and engineering solutions should be on the table, or engineering solutions shouldn't be on the table because we don't have a real problem, but trying to split the difference is just inconsistent. BTW, if you believe in AGW but you also believe that engineering solutions should be on the table then I would not label you an alarmist; I reserve the term for those who are using nakedly using AGW as a means of advancing all-but-unrelated political agendas, not those who honestly believe there's a problem that should be solved in the most effective manner possible, whatever that may turn out to be. I don't really agree that this is a problem (there are great problems but they lie elsewhere and don't have one nice catch-phrase), but if I'm wrong, hey, let's fix it! It's worth saying again.)

On spirituality: Yes, a lot of thinking about global warming resembles apocalypticism and moral panic. Some of it is downright horrifying. But that people argue for something incorrectly doesn't make it incorrect. (And apocalypticism and moral panic are presumably adaptive behaviors.)

On acceptance of engineering solutions: Are they really verboten among more than a few factions? Do you have numbers on how many people are an in the alarmist category v. AGW believers like me who accept or encourage engineering solutions? I don't, but I bet it's not as bad as you suggest. Alarmists, like all borderline kooks, are overrepresented in the press because they're fun to read about. I think almost all of us are sane enough that we want the best solution to what we think is a serious problem.

On environmentalism pork in AGW policy: This is a problem. Some of that ethanol stuff, for example, is reminiscent of the rumors that drafts of the Patriot Act had been sitting on a shelf for hears. But for some other measures, there's a more charitable interpretation of the fact that environmentaists were asking for them before we were at the point of crisis.

An engineering solution we could build today: nuclear power. Ask any mainstream environmentalist what they think about it. See also opposition to GM food.

This doesn't even get into the horrified reactions you hear when you bring up geoengineering. Climate models (which we trust, right?) tell us that careful geoengineering can prevent reverse AGW.

Side note: the idea that the Patriot act was sitting on the shelf for years is more than just a rumor. Joe Biden confirmed that he wrote the original version of it in 1995.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-10024163-38.html?tag=newsL...

Nuclear power is not an option. There are about three companies in the world that have the know-how to build a nuclear power plant. And they are already at the limit of their building-capacity.

Also, some people argue that the nuclear fuel resources are rather limited and will support even the existing plants for less than 100 years. For a significant reduction (10%-20%. No idea if that is enough to fight global warming) of CO2 emissions, it would be necessary to build at least three times as many nuclear plants as there are today.

WRT your third paragraph, you seem to be lumping a whole load of very diverse opinions together then criticising them as a whole, when in fact many environmentalists don't want the measures which governments are advocating. Governments and politicians want them because (a) they don't want to take bold action, because that might backfire at the polls, and (b) if they get a chance to surreptitiously increase their power over other people, well, that's what politicians do, isn't it? There's also (c) the issue of corporate manipulation of the so-called "green agenda", to the point where profits are more important than environmental problems, however serious they might look.

Engineering solutions are, or are not, a solution depending on who you talk to. I'm worried that too many people want to cash in on the problem by offering snake-oil solutions which can't be tested in advance, like this one:

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/02/geoengineering.ht...

If you can't test it, don't kid yourself that a big roll of the dice is going to help in any way. (And remember, I live here too, so the fact that you like to gamble should take into account the fact that I don't :)

As an engineer, surely you can appreciate that making a change, any change, is relatively easy, but making the correct change can be very difficult. In damaging the environment, we've moved the dials on a very complex machine, and we could do something else and move them again. Maybe we'll even get lucky and set them back to where we started, but of course getting them back to where we started probably won't fix the problem.

Lovelock has always been a radical, and I've never taken his Gaia theory seriously. I think he was quoted a few years ago as saying that nuclear energy was the only viable immediate solution, but now he seems to have changed his mind. It doesn't matter; what matters is making sound decisions based around the scientific analysis, ignoring the personalities and the near-religious fanaticism of some campaigners. In the final analysis, I think there is a real problem because (although I'm not a scientist) I can't see why so many people who are would lie so deliberately, so persistently, and about such a serious issue.

"you seem to be lumping a whole load of very diverse opinions together then criticising them as a whole" - well, duh. No HN post can possibly tease apart all the possibilities. That's really a null criticism unless you want everyone to be typing books back and forth at each other.

You seem to work off the assumption that engineers won't be interested in testing the solutions before implementing them on the large scale. I think you may have them confused with scientists on that point. Engineers are well aware of the issues of complexity and inability to predict... hell, half the reason I have a hard time buying what climate scientists are selling is precisely because I am an engineer, I do have that understanding, and I am completely unconvinced that they do!

Any real engineer would be religious about testing. Each plan would be phased in, with observations taken after each phase to make sure we're going in the right direction, and if at all possible, plans on how to undo what we just did if it becomes obvious it's really not working. (That may not be possible, but any plan for which it is possible would be that much more preferred.)

I'm serious about this: The biggest bioengineering risk would ultimately not be about the bioengineering at all. It would be that a politician (probably egged on by scientists) would overrule the good judgment of engineers. How many times have we read that story in a programming context? It's not unique to programming engineers, we just lack the authority to tell our bosses to go to hell, we're not doing it that unsafely. (The one good thing we'd get from a programmer certification process. I'm broadly against it, but it does have its good points.) Politicians could and probably would blow right past that.

By the way: I don't hate scientists (a stupid position for an engineer). The opinions expressed in this post are based on observations of climate scientists "in the wild". Scientists in general are far more humble before the face of a complicated universe, as well they should be, as is ultimately the entire point of the scientific process.

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