What should we do about climate change? (1 Viewer)

[loquasagacious]

Given the healthy margin of climate change acceptance in Shane's thread I think it is worth discussing what we should do with this knowledge. As I see it there are three main options:

• Do Nothing: self explannatory.
• Halt/Reverse it: reduce emissions to avert the potentially serious effects - e.g. rising sea levels, droughts, etc.
• Prepare for it: Essentially we prepare to batten down the hatches and live with it. Raise the foreshore height in major cities, accept withdrawal from some coastal areas, engineer food crops which will thrive in the expected conditions.

Yes in reality a balance of two and three would probably be best but to keep things interesting lets consider which is the more important even if they were used in combination.

Two me two-factors really govern the choice here;

Whether we can even stop climate change. To be honest I don't think that the required emissions levels are achievable. 90% of 1990 levels by 2050 or something like that. Unless we somehow force developing counties backwards or invent clean energy it doesn't seem achievable to have less emissions than currently but a world population many times larger than it currently is.

Whether we can cooperate. It is a prisoners dilemma it makes no sense for countries in isolation to cut emissions, everyone needs to otherwise those that do are hobbling themselves. We don't have a great record for cooperation at the best of times...​

To be honest I think that while we should reduce emissions where possible (Nuclear Power) we should treat it as inevitable and focus our attention on how to manage. Early action could put us in an excellent position as 'climate change survivors', who knows maybe we will even prosper as a result of our preparedness...

PS: to debate your feelings about Climate Change please click here.

 

[Freedom_]

Nothing - The market will fix it.

 

[Groucho Marxist]

Pretend it doesn't exist and go about our daily lives

 

[Tangent]

Reducing carbon emitions wont have any effect on climate change at all, atleast not a marked change. What we really need to do is get rid of the biggest greenhouse gas to make a difference... cya later water vapour.

I think it is stupid building so close to the beach though, because eventually coastal errosion processes will wash away the land underneath, and itll all wash out to sea. Hence why we have to build rock walls between the houses and the sea (we do this already), because we stuffed up most of the coastal dune systems.

 

[Iron]

 

[ComingUpForAir]

It's virtually impossible to answer this question.
Allthough its clear that CO2 has had some effect on the increasing mean temperatures, there is no empirically sound way of evaluating the utility of reducing emmisions, (i.e to what extent is 'climate change' inexorable, a question that is both unfalsifiable and consequential)

And the answer is the precise information needed in the cost/benefit analysis, as it's really a question of whether its cheaper to act now or adapt later. i.e unless we know the exact environmental consequences of reducing emmisions, there is no way of saying it will be cheaper/more expensive to merely adapt in the future (even if one takes into account the positive externailities associated with reducing emmisions, i.e diversified enegry sources/cleaner air).

 

[boris]

Reducing carbon emitions wont have any effect on climate change at all, atleast not a marked change. What we really need to do is get rid of the biggest greenhouse gas to make a difference... cya later water vapour.

I think it is stupid building so close to the beach though, because eventually coastal errosion processes will wash away the land underneath, and itll all wash out to sea. Hence why we have to build rock walls between the houses and the sea (we do this already), because we stuffed up most of the coastal dune systems.

lol what

 

[katie tully]

We should have less of those 'turn off your lights for an hour', whereby everybody turns off their lights and then uses a shitload more electricity when a million or so people suddenly turn their lights back on. Also, the burning of candles cannot be helping the CO2 cause.

This is my contribution.

 

[niloony]

We should have less of those 'turn off your lights for an hour', whereby everybody turns off their lights and then uses a shitload more electricity when a million or so people suddenly turn their lights back on. Also, the burning of candles cannot be helping the CO2 cause.

This is my contribution.

That is only the case if you use fluroscent lights and you only turn them off for about 20 seconds

Sabotaging heavy industry and shooting livestock is the only fix!

 

[Mu5hi]

algore inveneted climate change it doesnt exist.

 

[Serius]

batten down the hatches! Theres going to be climate change no matter what the world does, even if every country bands together to try and prevent it, the best we can get is it wont be as severe.

The truth is, that Australia can do very little in the scheme of things, even if we all stopped using electricity, cars, and started living in huts made of sticks and dung effectively reducing our carbon emmisions to zero, we wouldnt have reduced global emmisions by even 1%

Its unfortunate, but this game is going to be decided by the big players , China, India, USA and parts of Europe. We arent even a drop of water in the ocean compared to the crap they pump out. Because of this, my idea is that the only thing we can do is either prepare for it, or do nothing and hope the problem vanishes. Unless the USA discovers some fantabulous technology sometime soon, the problem isnt going to go away, so its time to start preparing. Let us build some underground vaults and take shelter.

 

[Tangent]

I'm all for cleaner air. Lets get rid of those coal burning power stations and replace with something effective, except there really isnt anything as effective as that. I would suggest solar and wond, but we cant rely totally on them (they dont produce enough electricity), and nuclear is alittle dangerous.

And im all for a lower elecetricity bill aswell, so saving electricity is good, but climate change isnt caused by greenhouse gases, and it isnt having that big of an effect on it either. Like i said before, the biggest greenhouse gas is water vapour (and we cant get rid of that, and why would we want to if we could), and humans only produce about half of CO2 emitions, the other half is produced by nature - volcanoes, ocean life etc.

 

[Tully B.]

So we should build a big boat?

 

[volition]

Here are some of my comments on what "we" should do about climate change.

1. I think it is important to be clear about what you mean when you say 'we'. I'd prefer if people didn't use the word 'we' to mean government actions - since this tends to give responsibility for what the government does to private individuals.

eg. "We" didn't make the decision to go to Iraq, the Australian government did. I had no part in this decision and accept zero responsibility for all the deaths that the 'coalition of the willing' caused. Money was coerced from me against my will to fund it and I was given no direct choice in the matter.

2. Here is an interesting free market perspective on climate change. The Economics of Climate Change by Rob Murphy.

He points out that a lot of these projections are resting on certain assumptions, such as the choice of discount rate. This is especially relevant when a lot of the talk of cutting emissions is based on people theorising about what the correct discount rate is - when the market gives us actual rates of return on investments. Hayek's "pretense of knowledge" criticism also applies here - it is impossible for one or a few people to know the outcome of an entire market because the relevant information is just distributed so widely.

I think this paragraph is particularly interesting to think about:

Many critics have raised this objection before, but it bears repeating: We have no idea what the world economy will be like in the 22nd century. Had people in 1909 adopted analogous policies to "help" us, they might have imposed a tax on buggies or a cap on manure, needlessly raising the costs of transportation while the U.S. economy switched to motor vehicles. This is not a mere joke; "serious" people were worried about population growth, and the ability of large cities to support the growing traffic from horses. Had someone told them not to worry, because Henry Ford's new Model T would soon transform personal locomotion without any central direction from D.C., these ideas would probably have been dismissed as wishful thinking. As famed physicist Freeman Dyson has mused, future generations will likely have far cheaper means of reducing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide, if the more alarming scenarios play out.

So is it really worth it to cripple the economy (by imposing govt regulations) and make our descendants poorer than what they would have otherwise been? So even if we were to just assume, "Climate change is occurring, and it is being caused by man" - the solution is still not more govt.

 

[Tangent]

I dont see any dinosaurs there.

What are the people who are allowed on this boat going to eat?

Oooooo, rainbow

 

[loquasagacious]

A vote for preparation not prevention then I take it?

 

[Kwayera]

I think it is stupid building so close to the beach though, because eventually coastal errosion processes will wash away the land underneath, and itll all wash out to sea. Hence why we have to build rock walls between the houses and the sea (we do this already), because we stuffed up most of the coastal dune systems.

You realise that the coastal zone extends up to 200m inland from the nominal coast? And that rock walls interfere with coastal progradational processes, removing beach instead of building it?

 

[Kwayera]

So is it really worth it to cripple the economy (by imposing govt regulations) and make our descendants poorer than what they would have otherwise been? So even if we were to just assume, "Climate change is occurring, and it is being caused by man" - the solution is still not more govt.

Some would argue that it is better to be poorer than dead or permanantly displaced.

 

[Tangent]

You realise that the coastal zone extends up to 200m inland from the nominal coast? And that rock walls interfere with coastal progradational processes, removing beach instead of building it?

Not when there is a huge row of houses 20m away from the beach front. I can understand that the rock walls arent doing any good to the beach, but it is trying to stop the land behind it from getting washed away, regardless of the land infront of it

 

[Kwayera]

Not when there is a huge row of houses 20m away from the beach front. I can understand that the rock walls arent doing any good to the beach, but it is trying to stop the land behind it from getting washed away, regardless of the land infront of it

Uh, no. What do you think those rock walls sit on? Eroding beach.

The dune systems protect the land behind it. Ideally, the houses built on the beach (such as in Narrabeen) should be removed to allow the dune system to recover and protect the other houses further back.