Comment by godelski
3 years ago
> reducing carbon seems like it should be a much lower priority compared to how hard its pushed
I'm not sure what you mean. The last 50 years (and even 5) have been far more bark than bite.
> incoming nuclear fusion would alleviate a ton of our carbon issues
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. I worked on nuclear in a previous career and still have friends there, including fusion (including the big labs). Being bullish, fusion net gain is still 10 years away. It'll take decades to add to the energy portfolio after that. The case for fusion is worse than the case for fission. We should work on both, but we can't hold out for future technologies (we can say the same about storage). We needed to act decades ago, pushing it off by a few more decades is not going to solve the issue, it is repeating the same mistakes.
> fleshed out cost-benefit analysis
I wouldn't trust any of these. Zero of them. You need to have a pretty good understanding of these systems (highly complex) to even understand if the analyses are good. Every single one has a bias and is highly politicized. The more politicized a topic is, the higher level of expertise you need to understand who is telling the truth (politicization adds large amounts of noise).
> Bjorn Lomborg
Who is a political scientist. He isn't a climate scientist, nor even a scientist. Here's a rather well known scientist, Stefan Rahmstorf (studies physics of oceans) discussing Bjorn[0]. You can check Bjorn's scholar page[1] to even verify that he's not doing actual science bust just writing opinions with no supporting evidence. Please stop supporting hacks.
[0] https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2015/08/bjorn...
[1] https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=HUMF5c0AAAAJ
fusion being decades away isn't a problem, we have time.
the only things in that cost benefit analysis are politicized are what people are currently pushing en masse, what he points out doesn't offer any benefit from a cost perspective. plus you contradict yourself, you say it needs a complex understanding but you dismiss it before analyzing it yourself, he's got books and scientific publications on this, go check for yourself.
all of his strongest suggestions are about preserving biodiversity, curing disease, technological improvements, trade restrictions, and contraception. Where are you getting the politicized part?
and he has a background in political science and is doing macroeconomic research, he's not claiming to have a cure for temperature increases because he works off the IPCC's data, which is the known standard for climate science. he's giving simple policy (oh look political science, its almost like this is a multifaceted conversation, are you trying to shut it down like people did with "the science" over covid?) implementations that can have massive net benefits.
he's not a "hack" (insults are at the bottom of the hierarchy of disagreement, if you want a reason to dismiss someone's opinions its that they do this). he's gone on tons of podcasts having open discussions about these things, if Stefan Rahmstorf can hold an actual discussion with him I'd love to see it.
your link doesn't work. But if all Stefan has it petty insults like calling him a "hack" then I'd guess he's not open to any kind of discussion, which is a red flag.