[Foundation-l] Wikimedia and Environment

[Aryeh Gregor]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 8:13 PM, Tim Starling <tstarling at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> It's a big deal already, and by the time it becomes an even bigger
> deal, it will be too late to act. The global climate takes decades to
> respond to changes in forcing factors. Even if we stopped all
> greenhouse gas emissions now, the earth would continue to warm for
> decades because the heat capacity of the ocean slows down the lower
> atmosphere's response to increased radiation.

Then we agree that cutting greenhouse gases is not a very effective solution?

> The World Health Organisation disagrees:
>
> http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/
> <http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2007/9789241595674_eng.pdf>

I said "directly".  Militaries kill people directly.  Global warming
kills people indirectly.

> You just sound gullible when you recycle such claims without showing
> any awareness the opposing viewpoint.

I don't think I'm recycling claims.  I have a fairly unusual view on
global warming, actually.

> Like what? Nuclear fusion? Talk about pie in the sky.

Or just more effective photovoltaic cells.  Or, well, anything other
than fossil fuels.  Solar and wind power, for instance, are much more
viable now than they were thirty years ago.  Wikipedia says global
photovoltaic power production was 500 kW in 1977.  It's not a stretch
to suppose that they or other energy sources will be much more viable
thirty years from now.  In fact, it would be very surprising if we
didn't have much better alternatives to fossil fuels by then than we
have now.

> And cause famine due to a reduction in tropical rainfall?
>
> http://edoc.mpg.de/376757

Sure, maybe.  Maybe not.  Everything has costs and benefits.  Blocking
sunlight is a scheme that can be deployed very quickly and cheaply,
and could not just completely stop future warming, but reverse warming
that's already occurred before deployment.  Cutting CO2 is immensely
more expensive, slower, and less effective.  You were just telling me
how cutting carbon will never stop warming, and many people will die
to famine if warming doesn't stop.  Doesn't that imply people will die
of famine either way?  The costs need to be weighed against the
benefits.

Of course, the experts at large-scale cost-benefit analysis are
economists, not climatologists.  One panel of economists that set out
to systematically examine the issue based on data provided by
climatologists is the Copenhagen Consensus:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_Consensus
http://fixtheclimate.com/

The Copenhagen Consensus' Climate Change Project asked a panel of five
economists (three of them Nobel laureates) to consider the costs and
benefits of various schemes to mitigate or prevent global warming.
They took climatologists' predictions for granted, and all agreed that
anthropogenic global warming is occurring.  The number one solution
was to reflect more sunlight (by cloud whitening).  Seven of the
fifteen schemes involved carbon-cutting; they placed at positions nine
through fifteen.

The Copenhagen Consensus was and is controversial, of course.  But the
issue is far from open-and-shut.  Even if cutting GHG emission is part
of the solution, it's not at all clear that it makes sense to spend
money on it now, rather than invest in alternative energy so we can
make larger-scale cuts later.

Are you aware of any groups of experts that have done a systematic
cost-benefit analysis on the various options, and reached opposite
conclusions to the Copenhagen Consensus?  "Experts" here means, say,
economists, not climatologists.  (And preferably not political
appointees either.)  Climatologists are experts at predicting climate
outcomes, not evaluating the quality-of-life effects of those
outcomes.  They have no expertise in that.  Economics is the
discipline concerned with welfare assessment.


By the way, you didn't actually address the point of my last post.  If
involuntarily releasing greenhouse gases creates a moral obligation to
undo the harm caused by that, why doesn't involuntarily paying taxes
create the same moral obligation?  This is independent of whether
cutting GHGs is actually effective (which isn't something I meant to
get into, but oh well).