"The experts don't agree on climate change, so we shouldn't do anything about it yet"

glennmagusharvey

This is not the attitude of someone open-minded to both "sides" of climate change as a political issue.

This is the attitude of someone looking for an excuse to not do anything about it.

Sure, there are some scientists who disagree with the existence of climate change, or disagree with its being anthropogenic.  Okay.

1. Have you ever asked how many scientists disagree with a finding that a certain food reduces risk of cancer or helps people lose weight?

2. When 95% or more of thousands of climate scientists all agree that climate change is happening and is anthropogenic, and you're a responsible policymaker, shouldn't you not dismiss them?

ClockworkUniverse

>responsible policymaker



I don't think those words can be used like that.

RedEyedAbyss

"1. Have you ever asked how many scientists disagree with a finding that a certain food reduces risk of cancer or helps people lose weight?"

To be fair, there are a buttload of cranks out there in that regard, especially since it's overall diet and activity that matters more than individual foods.

And yeah, when "some" is 5%, with a significant portion being cranks with industry ties, that's a definite case of false balance. Speaking of which, it's morbidly amusing that oil companies can get away with so many cases of obvious fraud, yet a manufactured controversy like Climategate is enough to turn people against climate change research.

glennmagusharvey

Well, one of the problems with climate change is that its scope is huge, both in causes and impacts as well as geographically, and it's not easily actionable without some amount of thinking about it.

With the ozone hole problem, the scope of causes was a certain relatively small set of technologies (used for spray cans and cooling systems) that used certain chemicals.  With climate change, the scope of causes is pretty much anything that contributes to the net increase in carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere.  Now, I know some winger ideologues who are like "OMG TEH ENVIRONMENTALISTS WANT YOU TO NOT BREATHE", but the rest of us sane people know that the cause of this is the burning of large stocks of long-buried carbon in the form of fossil fuels.  (Those of us who are even better-informed know that deforestation is another significant cause.)

But what exactly do you do about this?  There's no realistic way to suddenly up and tell the world economy to stop using fossil fuels for energy and transportation needs.

So basically you need to do several major things:

• promote energy efficiency in transportation fuel use, electricity generation, and electricity use (and transportation use if possible)


• develop non-carbon-dioxide-emitting energy sources, and then phase them in gradually to replace carbon-dioxide-emitting energy sources


• limit, or preferably stop, or even more preferably reverse, deforestation


• figure out what to do about the extra carbon dioxide that's already in the atmosphere


• figure out what to do about the effects that extra carbon dioxide will have, including global average temperature increase, local climate change (temperature increase, weather disasters, changing precipitation patterns, etc.), sea level rise, ocean acidification, and more

None of these are easy to solve.  Pretty much all of these require the coordinated efforts of a whole bunch of people working together, in various capacities.  The closest you can come to a silver bullet is that fourth point--if you can develop an efficient air-capture technology for carbon dioxide and couple it with an efficient means of long-term (like, ten-thousand- or hundred-thousand-year timescales) storage, then you suddenly have a way to deal with all the carbon dioxide and just have to deal with present-day warming-effects.  That's your best-case scenario right there.  And that's something for scientists and engineers to work on.  What do the rest of us do?

That's a damn good question.

 

And let's not even get into the conundrums of philosophy, such as "what is the role of government in society" and "how much ethical blame should humanity assume" or that sort of nonsense.

RedEyedAbyss

"What do the rest of us do?"

The thing is, convincing people to not have children or cut meat from their diet isn't particularly something most people want to do. Heck, I don't do the latter myself even though I tell myself I should. And of course, because of city structure and the pace of life, not everyone can be told to walk everywhere or even take transit (though the "big cars" culture really does have to go). And thus, climate change advice gets watered down into relatively inconsequential stuff in the big picture like "recycle" or "buy fluorescent lightbulbs" (admittedly, that isn't bad, but they are too often treated as ends in themselves).

In regards to carbon capture, the trouble is that the carbon dioxide isn't just going to stay in the ground. Even if you discount the gas that seeps out, it gets dissolved into groundwater and becomes carbonic acid. In essence, it's just an attempt to dodge the issue.

Really, the energy efficiency part is what scientists and engineers should really be focused on. Actually, everyone should be more involved in that aspect since a lot of energy goes to waste in the current developed world society (addressed in the aforementioned "solutions").

glennmagusharvey

Carbon can stay in the ground if you can speed up the weathering reaction and incorporate it into minerals.

RedEyedAbyss

I guess you'd know better than I since you've had chemical engineering experience, but I am curious as to the details of this process.

glennmagusharvey

I just know that the reaction is chemically favored equilibrium-wise but has a very, very slow rate.  Forgot the exact reaction, but I think it involves oxide minerals being transformed into carbonate minerals.

Apart from that, I don't know much about it.

LouieW

The "people disagree therefore do nothing/consider the issue a complete open question" logic bugs me quite a bit, mostly because it seems to ignore the fact that people can be wrong. I feel like being accurate and having good evidence is more important than having a complete consensus or really having anyone agree with you at all.

I find the type of logic mentioned earlier especially inappropriate when used to support moral relativism since people disagreeing about something does not necessitate that none of them are right about it.