Excellent Article by Bill Gates on Global Warming Tuesday, Jan 26 2010
environmentalism 2:37 pm
In case you hadn’t heard, there is an article by Bill Gates up at Huffington Post, “Why We Need Innovation, Not Just Insulation”. Here’s how it starts:
People often present two timeframes that we should have as goals for CO2 reduction - 30% (off of some baseline) by 2025 and 80% by 2050.
I believe the key one to achieve is 80% by 2050.
But we tend to focus on the first one since it is much more concrete.
We don’t distinguish properly between things that put you on a path to making the 80% goal by 2050 and things that don’t really help.
Most people “concerned” about global warming are caught up in Gaianist nonsense, Al Gore-flavored uneducated alarmism, and eco-bling. They will think whatever a small cadre of politicians and elite academics want them to think.
Stewart Brand, thankfully, has been facing up to the truth that we need nuclear power to permanently lower carbon emissions. Jamais Cascio has been introducing geoengineering to the discussion, and it was recently reported that geoengineering research is being funded by Gates. More radically, J. Storrs Hall has proposed a weather machine which he claims could be built within a few decades.
Unfortunately, even if we ceased all carbon emissions tomorrow, the thermal inertia of the oceans will ensure that warming continues for “a century or more”. Of course, pointing this out at all is considered defeatist in many quarters, but too bad.
As I’ve always said, the easiest ways for people to fight global warming right now are halting meat consumption, traveling less, and moving into smaller houses. Al Gore could do much more to fight global warming if he pushed these lifestyle changes aggressively. Yet Gore keeps living in a big house, traveling all over the place, and eating meat. He sets a bad example and decreases the credibility of the movement as a whole. People concerned about global warming — please spare me your boring essays about the need to reduce emissions. I’m only interested in seeing your latest vegetarian recipes, pictures of your bicycle, and your small, well-insulated apartment. Show, don’t tell.
January 26th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
I appreciate climate science is not your primary field of interest, but you surely are aware the whole global warming thing is pretty rapidly collapsing down around the ears of the IPCC, and making a lot of people look very foolish? http://wattsupwiththat.com is a good starting point for anyone who wants to read an unbiased version of the facts and not just blindly accept UN propaganda on the issue.
There is no independently peer review scientific evidence to indicate that CO2 causes the climate to warm up. Rather, proxies indicate that CO2 levels in the atmosphere have actually followed temperature increases traditionally.
The level of CO2 in the atmosphere has been much, much higher many times throughout the earth’s history, and it managed not to turn into a dust ball then. Even if CO2 was such a strong contributor to warming as is claimed, which is dubious, there must be feedback mechanisms in place in the environment to balance everything out, or we wouldn’t still be here.
I’m not saying that it’s not a commendable pursuit to try and cut down our energy usage or find more renewable sources of power, but let’s do it because it’s a sensible thing to do rather than because of some fervent quasi-science pushed by political agenda.
January 26th, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Here’s what concerns me most about this issue:
http://www.wunderground.com/education/abruptclimate.asp
Notice the very chaotic graph of temperature over the past 100 thousand years, and how anomalous the period since the advent of agriculture has been. If this regime of relatively stable, high temperatures is ending, we’re in for a very rough ride with our current population and agricultural systems. Shifts of 10 degrees+ in a decade are fairly normal — imagine the kind of chaos this would create today! Remember we were nomadic hunter-gatherers during all this previous climate chaos — a slightly more resilient form of civilization than ours, to say the least!
For me the upshot is, regardless of how much we’re affecting the climate, we have to become much more resilient as a species. Major shocks and disasters seem to be getting more and more frequent, yet people just rebuild in the same way as before. It seems quite insane to me, but then I’m one of those crazy people preparing for doomsday and die-off — as far as I’m concerned the non-resilient zombie billions can simply exit the gene pool and we’ll all be better off.
/rant
January 26th, 2010 at 7:27 pm
While I agree with Brand about the horrors of coal, fission isn’t a good solution. We live light-minutes from an immense fusion reactor. Solar is by far and away the best long-term energy solution. Traditional nuclear plants require tremendous resources to get going, produce dangerous radioactive waste, pose a proliferation risk, promote centralization, and can go from asset to liability in an instant. Solar avoids all of these problems.
I second your lifestyle recommendations. As a vegan cyclist who lives in a terribly designed house, I’ve got two out of three down. However, it’s misguided to focus too much on individual choices. We need industrial and community-level change as well to address global warming.
January 27th, 2010 at 1:39 am
Solar has some short term problems. Currently, it is hardly used at all:
http://blog.hmns.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/daniel-graph-1.png
January 27th, 2010 at 1:44 am
Why does Bill Gates think global warming would be bad? Global warming would be a wonderful, positive change. One step further away from the brink of reglaciation. In the current ice age climate, it is hard to take too many of those steps.
January 27th, 2010 at 7:18 am
As Kurzweil has said, use of solar power is on an exponential progression. The current trend suggests tremendous potential. And that analysis, of course, comes within the existing insane capitalist system. In a more rational world we would have moved away from coal and company long ago.
January 28th, 2010 at 11:12 am
Summerspeaker, quite on contrary. Capitlaism IS EMDOBIDMENT of rationality. And that is precisely why it is not exactly the best friend of environment. What is more rational-use of available technology to its limits to produce faster and cheaper, and then-when we will hit final barrier - move to the next tehcnology; or mindlessly jump to new, cost-innefective prototypes constantly?
Nevermind, the most important point of those news is simple: you can’t stop global warming. And I cannot fathom why only a couple of minds on Earth are able to see that since all the data are available for everyone. (Assuming that, of course, GW is a fact, and I would argue that it is rather a political issue, but nevermind that too). It is better to actually produce more in order to build whatever stuff necessary to survive in upcoming world, rather than humpering development of industry which in this scenario-is our only savior… We should invest in thorium reactors, orbital solar power plants and consider geoengineereing. And, on top of that quit with producing meat in old fashion way-and grow it in alboratories from stem cells (I doubt that we would be able to change over a couple of years into vegetarians.). That should do the job.
January 28th, 2010 at 10:12 pm
Capitalism isn’t rational for the common good. It’s incoherent to talk of rationality without establishing the objective, though we do this all the time. If you desire personal benefit for a tiny elite, then chose the market. Selecting capitalism as positive for the whole species implies either a belief in unseen appendages or an admission of incompetence. I can only sympathize with the former view. The market produces demonstrably suboptimal outcomes. While it’s conceivable, though unlikely, that some inherent perversity makes such a backwards approach to general welfare the best we can do with present technology, that’s no excuse for transhumanists. If we humans can’t manage a reasonable system of production and distribution, we should build AIs to do it or enhance ourselves up to the required level.
January 29th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
Agreed.
January 29th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
Capitalism maximizes the productiveness of the factors of production (e.g. labor), where the best use is based upon the utility preferences of consumers. Utility maximization is framed in a specific time-horizon. The question of the right balance between present consumption and future investment is eternal. There is no mathematically correct answer to it.
Summerspeaker is correct. Capitalism is not concerned with the common good. In some models, one person having everything can represent a Pareto-optimal outcome. Thus, economic thought is great, but the question of distribution is very important when using it as a policy tool.
When it comes to climate change, I think longer-term entities such as governments should subsidize the market to develop solutions earlier. This may enhance future generations’ utility at the cost of our own, which is morally acceptable, but politically difficult…