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The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

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Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#121

Post by tdb7893 »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #87
xyzal wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You work in software, right? Then you can donate some money to enviro orgs.

Not an expert in any of that, but I think overall impact may be greater if people with sufficient means take a more hands-on approach that grants visibility of where money is going. I lean environmentalist be the truth is that there’s a good deal of well-marketed snake oil in the environmental space.

The issue with quibbling over impact is my experience is that people end up doing neither. I recently started a Master's in ecology so I don't have a good idea of what's cost effective right now but I know the field is pretty shockingly underfunded (both for general research and conservation projects). I learned the "fun" fact recently that bird populations in the US are down ~30% in the last 55 years.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#122

Post by Synaesthesia »

mullingitover wrote: post #92
smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…

Americans use a lot of power. Buying big houses means they have higher heating and cooling costs. All this makes a big difference.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#123

Post by pendenthistory »

ctoth wrote: post #93
smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

The concern about climate is well placed. Ripple et al. lay out a serious case that we may be closer to tipping cascades than models predict, with the Greenland Ice Sheet potentially vulnerable to tipping below 2°C warming, well before 2050. But "invest an equal share of the resources currently being pumped into AI into climate" misidentifies the bottleneck. Marine cloud brightening could produce meaningful planetary…

Cooling the planet is neither a technical nor financial problem. The problem is that environmentalists want this to be a moral issue. They already decided on the solution. If the solution is not environmental communism with them in power, they will not have it.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#124

Post by Simbio »

SJC_Hacker wrote: post #104
mullingitover wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…

Its a case of prisoner's dilemma. Individuals making the proposed lifestyle changes in order to make a genuine dent in AGW amount to jumping on the tracks in order to stop a freight train. This is the one issue where I feel some sympathy with the right. I hate "Virtue signaling" about as much as they do. I'm sorry, but if you are going to snap at people over eating beef, while you fly/drive all over the country/world…

Prisoner's dilemma is a bad reference here.

Prisoner's dilemma is about situation when optimal outcome requires cooperation from all participants.

In the situation with climate change, personal decisions of 99% of Earth population do not really matter.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#126

Post by WhompingWindows »

mullingitover wrote: post #92
smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…

If everyone chose to eat veggie burgers and seitan steaks instead of using beef, the climate's trajectory would immediately improve. For all the responsibility of industry, many individual world citizens could, and many have, changed their lifestyle due to the moral issue of climate-changing emissions.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#127

Post by ctoth »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #106
ctoth wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The concern about climate is well placed. Ripple et al. lay out a serious case that we may be closer to tipping cascades than models predict, with the Greenland Ice Sheet potentially vulnerable to tipping below 2°C warming, well before 2050. But "invest an equal share of the resources currently being pumped into AI into climate" misidentifies the bottleneck. Marine cloud brightening could produce meaningful planetary…

> not capital Capital, and by relation the system that centers the idea of Capital as a method for moving around resources is at the very center of this. Since Capital follows near-term incentive, if the "pollute the world" path has a greater near-term incentive, that's where the market will follow. If a single member of the system goes for long-term incentive(not cooking the earth), other near-term incentive chasers…

What you've done here is called a fully-general counterargument. You should be suspicious of these!

If capital inevitably follows destructive local maxima and defectors get eaten, then no coordination problem has ever been solved, right?

But we banned CFCs! We got lead out of gasoline! The Montreal Protocol exists and worked.

What you're describing is the default behavior of uncoordinated markets, not a physical law. The entire history of regulation and international treaties consists of mechanisms that override local incentive gradients. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes they work.

"The system itself is a tight feedback loop" treats the system as fixed rather than something humans have repeatedly modified. The question is whether we'll add the right feedback loops fast enough, not whether adding them is metaphysically impossible.

My original point stands: the bottleneck on MCB isn't that capital won't fund it. It's that the Alameda city council didn't know a field test was happening on their waterfront and NIMBY ... people ... made noise. Governance failure, not capitalism failure.

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#128

Post by rtpg »

mullingitover wrote: post #92
smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…

While arguments can be made at the futility of individual action against a system action, it’s not like companies are making a bunch of product just to throw them in the trash. There are consumers of what is being produced!

Society’s choices and lifestyles are the cause of fossil fuel consumption, at a very high level. The plastic bag exists because it has users.

There are quantitative arguments against many silly consumer-focused initiatives. In aggregate tho companies aren’t burning fossil fuels for fun. Burning fossil fuels costs money, and a lot of people would rather not spend that money!!

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#129

Post by pousada »

Gud wrote: post #114
mullingitover wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…

There is nothing g to “disagree” about. Of course systemic changes are required. But if the individual improve their actions it will have a meaningful impact too

Without systemic change the impact of individuals wont be meaningful. Maybe on a spiritual level but they won’t contribute meaningfully to the climate change (or non-change)

Re: The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

#130

Post by Mordisquitos »

mullingitover wrote: post #92
smartmic wrote: post #18

It is important to keep reminding ourselves that climate change is a real problem for humanity and that each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. It is a problem that requires solutions, but implementing these solutions involves so much inertia that it can sometimes be painful. And let's contrast that with the AI hype. It's more the opposite, a kind of solution t…

> each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions. I have to disagree here. This idea of a consumer-level personal responsibility for the fossil energy industry's externalized costs is a lot like the plastic producers shifting blame for waste by saying that it's the consumers' fault for not recycling. It's transparent blame-shifting. The fossil energy industry pulls the…

I agree with you that consumer-level personal responsibility is absolutely not the way to go. To a certain extent I try to non-dogmatically "do the right thing", but I know it's simply a cute hobby.

The only solution is systemic. The incentives need to be in order for businesses and consumers to do the right thing not because it is the right thing, but because it's cheaper or more convenient. That can only be implemented via legislation and investment of public resources, hence from the political level.

And what determines whether the politicians in charge are ones who will implement the changes needed to mitigate the problem, rather than ones who will keep alive the system which is intensifying it? Well, we're back to square one: each and every one of us contributes to its intensification or mitigation through our decisions.

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