Splitting hair between climate change and climate variability seems a bit contrived ,given that we are far from understanding how climate actually works .Touting the desirability of climate engineering is on a par with turning Trump into an intellectual ,and simply Hubris on steroids !
This is an excellent essay, thank you very much. Two keys points are that first, “dangerous climate warming” is tautological, and second, the true danger lies in the lack of adaption to anomalous extreme events.
The narrative of “dangerous climate warming has grown stale. The slow incremental risks of warming have been mischaracterized as urgent, leading to rapid implementation of policies that are not only costly and suboptimal, but arguably reduce societal resilience to weather and climate variability, whatever their causes. The climate has been changing forever, and will continue to do so regardless of human intervention. “Climate change” is not something to be feared, only understood. We need to restore reason and common sense to the narrative if we are to find truly equitable solutions.
Roger Pielke, Jr., has pointed out time and time again that the there is indeed nothing to be found in the reports of the IPCC that suggest that civilization is threatened. Further, the IPCC acknowledges that of fourteen major weather “events,” only five can be attributed to human influence. Given this, is it not better to continue to improve ways of adapting to extreme weather (such as building codes or design features), than to geoengineer the climate? Adaption is controllable, affordable, and well understood. Geoengineering, not so much.
Thank you again, and please keep up the good work.
The earth has had warmer and cooler temperatures before and after humans were on this planet.
Similarly, the level of CO2 has also varied.
The idea that we are experiencing warmer temperatures than in the last 2 million years is not based upon scientific fact but on conjecture and computer models (which depend upon the input and algorithms).
"But what if climate change, as I have suggested elsewhere, is really just a garden variety environmental issue"
What else could it be? Some human activities produce negative effects that are not incorporated in the profit maximizing calculations of the actor. So we get more of negative effect than is optimal. That's the case with net emissions of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. Of course we would try to control the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere. To what degree depends on the costs of emitting less vs costs of adapting to the emissions. When we figure out what the optimal amounts of net CO2 to be emitted, we impose a tax on net emissions to achieve that level at lowest cost.
I appreciate this post and agree it makes sense to research planetary cooling options.
The idea that we will be able to adapt to climate change seems very "global north" focused to me. To me it appears likely many millions in the global south won't have the means to adapt and will be forced to seek refuge in more affluent and temperate regions of the globe.
Something else I am missing the impact of extreme weather on ecosystems. Single extreme events can cause a lot of damage, and some ecosystems, such as the great barrier reef, may completely collapse.
In short, I believe that keeping the climate in check until we have brought down CO2 to safe levels, may save many lives, prevent mass migration, and save ecosystems. I recently wrote a piece about this focusing on the potential of marine cloud brightening:
Why on Earth would you even think of such a thing? Aside from the host of practical objections, who would want some economists and some computer nerds (who probably never go outside) re-modeling the planet we live on? The variability you seek to conquer is among the primary reasons that homo sapiens developed such inherent adaptability. The vast amount of art and music and poetry that this "variability" has inspired in us should give you some idea of how popular your idea is likely to be.
What will it take -- to figure out that all of the past Climate information is not germane to this period of change -- because none of them in the past - had ever increasing amounts and types of "human based pollution" being constantly added to them.
What about eliminating the polluting sections at electric power plants and vehicles with clean electric power.
That can be started today -- but no one seems to be interested in doing that.
Why isn't this front page everywhere? We are going to engineer ourselves into oblivion eventually. Because we airways know what's best, right? Can't wait and see, learn from observation, regard balance. Nope. We are so smart, we're meant to be in total charge; no natural...um, anything. We are specks. What don't we get about that?
We've already geoengineered the atmosphere by vaporizing 200 million years of fossil carbon deposits in the span of a couple centuries (whether we intended to or not). Anthropogenic effects far outweigh natural events like volcanoes. I have no problem with us "specks" trying to reverse engineer some of that.
Splitting hair between climate change and climate variability seems a bit contrived ,given that we are far from understanding how climate actually works .Touting the desirability of climate engineering is on a par with turning Trump into an intellectual ,and simply Hubris on steroids !
Jocko
This is an excellent essay, thank you very much. Two keys points are that first, “dangerous climate warming” is tautological, and second, the true danger lies in the lack of adaption to anomalous extreme events.
The narrative of “dangerous climate warming has grown stale. The slow incremental risks of warming have been mischaracterized as urgent, leading to rapid implementation of policies that are not only costly and suboptimal, but arguably reduce societal resilience to weather and climate variability, whatever their causes. The climate has been changing forever, and will continue to do so regardless of human intervention. “Climate change” is not something to be feared, only understood. We need to restore reason and common sense to the narrative if we are to find truly equitable solutions.
Roger Pielke, Jr., has pointed out time and time again that the there is indeed nothing to be found in the reports of the IPCC that suggest that civilization is threatened. Further, the IPCC acknowledges that of fourteen major weather “events,” only five can be attributed to human influence. Given this, is it not better to continue to improve ways of adapting to extreme weather (such as building codes or design features), than to geoengineer the climate? Adaption is controllable, affordable, and well understood. Geoengineering, not so much.
Thank you again, and please keep up the good work.
The earth has had warmer and cooler temperatures before and after humans were on this planet.
Similarly, the level of CO2 has also varied.
The idea that we are experiencing warmer temperatures than in the last 2 million years is not based upon scientific fact but on conjecture and computer models (which depend upon the input and algorithms).
"But what if climate change, as I have suggested elsewhere, is really just a garden variety environmental issue"
What else could it be? Some human activities produce negative effects that are not incorporated in the profit maximizing calculations of the actor. So we get more of negative effect than is optimal. That's the case with net emissions of CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. Of course we would try to control the amount of CO2 going into the atmosphere. To what degree depends on the costs of emitting less vs costs of adapting to the emissions. When we figure out what the optimal amounts of net CO2 to be emitted, we impose a tax on net emissions to achieve that level at lowest cost.
Nothing coud be more garden variety than that.
A very well thought out and presented article - very thought provoking!
I appreciate this post and agree it makes sense to research planetary cooling options.
The idea that we will be able to adapt to climate change seems very "global north" focused to me. To me it appears likely many millions in the global south won't have the means to adapt and will be forced to seek refuge in more affluent and temperate regions of the globe.
Something else I am missing the impact of extreme weather on ecosystems. Single extreme events can cause a lot of damage, and some ecosystems, such as the great barrier reef, may completely collapse.
In short, I believe that keeping the climate in check until we have brought down CO2 to safe levels, may save many lives, prevent mass migration, and save ecosystems. I recently wrote a piece about this focusing on the potential of marine cloud brightening:
https://tychohuussen.substack.com/p/the-burden-of-being-alive-in-the
Why on Earth would you even think of such a thing? Aside from the host of practical objections, who would want some economists and some computer nerds (who probably never go outside) re-modeling the planet we live on? The variability you seek to conquer is among the primary reasons that homo sapiens developed such inherent adaptability. The vast amount of art and music and poetry that this "variability" has inspired in us should give you some idea of how popular your idea is likely to be.
As William Happer has shown, infrared radiation absorption by CO2 is nearly saturated, and all the emphasis on reducing CO2 is wasted effort.
Geoengineering will kill us all and quickly.
What will it take -- to figure out that all of the past Climate information is not germane to this period of change -- because none of them in the past - had ever increasing amounts and types of "human based pollution" being constantly added to them.
What about eliminating the polluting sections at electric power plants and vehicles with clean electric power.
That can be started today -- but no one seems to be interested in doing that.
wow!
Why isn't this front page everywhere? We are going to engineer ourselves into oblivion eventually. Because we airways know what's best, right? Can't wait and see, learn from observation, regard balance. Nope. We are so smart, we're meant to be in total charge; no natural...um, anything. We are specks. What don't we get about that?
We've already geoengineered the atmosphere by vaporizing 200 million years of fossil carbon deposits in the span of a couple centuries (whether we intended to or not). Anthropogenic effects far outweigh natural events like volcanoes. I have no problem with us "specks" trying to reverse engineer some of that.
Interesting article!!