Posts by BenWilson
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Bart Janssen,
You keep talking about losing things and I keep trying to talk about using something different or better.
I think we’re talking at cross purposes. I meant what I was saying over short time period, like 5-10 years. But if you’re talking about this kind of change over the next 50 years, then I can hardly disagree. Many more things are possible over such a period. I’m as optimistic as you on that kind of time frame that solutions of many different kinds will be presenting themselves, and that the gradual iterative build of renewable energy will have reached pretty impressive heights compared to what is in place now, and that efficiency and emission reduction will have improved considerably.
Of course I’m not sure what new challenges might also present. That’s a time frame over which the current geopolitical makeup of the world is questionable.
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So there is good reason to believe we can produce the same amount of energy while burning much less fossil fuel – we probably don’t need to go to zero.
OK, but you're talking about transforming the entire way the fuel is used first. That's not something that comes for free.
That’s why the focus is on cars, particularly big-arsed stupid gas guzzling SUVs. They are an incredibly inefficient use of fossil fuel energy.
They are, but anyone who loses their SUV will consider it a drop in their quality of life.
And that’s not even thinking about shitty combustion engines used in the developing world.
Anyone in the developing world who has to lose their shitty combustion engine would most certainly consider that to be a drop in their quality of life, when the alternative is no combustion engine. Or a new improved combustion engine that they can't afford (which is the same as no combustion engine).
So the argument that any reduction in energy use equals a loss of economic or social wealth or wellbeing is not certain at all.
That totally depends how the reduction happens, over what time frame, and with what funding, and at the cost of what other things that could have been done with the money.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But it is not at all certain that the economic losses to society as a whole would be large or even present at all.
You will need be specific about what you mean because that is extremely counterintuitive. Are you not talking about taking out fossil fuel consumption, which accounts for 70-80% of all energy usage on the planet?
There is stuff all evidence that this will occur at all. Either the reduction in energy usage or the reduction in standard of living.
I'm completely confused about what you're saying here. If you take away a massive chunk of the energy supply, then that necessitates that less energy gets used. And that would certainly cause a huge reduction in standards of living, until such a time as that energy shortfall could be replaced, or every usage of it increase in efficiency 5 fold.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Moz,
Replace bridge with, say, nuclear weapon and I think your problem becomes much more obvious. “we’re right, so it’s good when we do things that would be considered awful if other people did them”.
Perhaps. Making things that are actively dangerous, rather than just costly, is something that society should watch closely. But the irony there is that such discussion ARE conducted secretly in all cases. Outsiders don't rain on their nuke parade - they don't even know where it's happening.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Bart Janssen,
What is not happening is the reduction in fossil fuel use we think we need – because at the moment that would have economic and political costs that the people in power are not willing to pay
It's not just people in power who are not willing to pay. There's quite a big sell job over the drop in quality of life that comes from energy usage reduction to everyone currently using it. Our energy footprints are well in excess of what renewables can provide now, and it's not at all clear whether they could ever provide a complete replacement. By "ever" I mean in a future using technology that we do actually know we can make, rather than speculative future tech like fusion power or giant space mirrors. In other words I mean hydro, wind, tidal, biofuel, geothermal.
But I'm also technologically bullish, and on the savings side of the ledger too. Our ability to reduce energy usage without substantial drops in quality of life is very much affected by technology, and there are very big improvements that have been made in that area in the last 20 years.
The part we most need to give away, though, shows very little signs of abating, and that is the neverending need for more of everything. We could very easily increase renewables massively, reduce energy footprints in the biggest using areas, and yet still increase fossil fuel usage. Because people want that too. We don't have an economic organization that can withstand a drop in consumption. Even a flatlining of it causes serious trouble.
And this is not something that affects only elites. Indeed, it affects them least. The inequality that gives them their greatest power is at it's most extreme in the most poverty stricken and backwards places. The economic system destructing can actually benefit a huge part of the elite establishment. The people most affected by economic slumps are the most vulnerable people. These people will really struggle to understand why energy austerity is in their interests.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to Bart Janssen,
I'm not suggesting any of this in order to convert deniers. I agree that's futile. I just want to identify them. Also, along the way, to identify a number of other positions that steadily become less extreme, until you get to the middle ground.
I say this because I don't really believe people denying climate change is even happening are the main cause of inaction. They're extreme enough that people recognize them. The inaction is around what the hell should be done about it, if anything. It might help a great deal to have a realistic idea of the number of people who actually hold these positions, when trying to formulate a strategy about how to convince them of a course of action. I'm not even convinced there is a scientific consensus around questions toward the more practical end of the debate. You seem to be considerably more open to the prospect of technological solutions than others are, for instance.
However, deniers infiltrate these discussions constantly. Wouldn't it be the world's easiest solution to simply bar them from the discussion? Not on any nasty grounds of their fundamental immorality as human beings. Not even for being wrong. But for the simple purpose of expediting practical discussion of alternatives given that they are wrong.
In other words, say you want to build a bridge somewhere. You need a good plan for this bridge in order to convince people that they should pay for this bridge. It's a fairly fundamental idea that people working on the bridge project shouldn't be people who actually don't want the bridge in the first place. Which is not to say that they are even wrong. Maybe the bridge is actually a bad idea. But even if it is a bad idea, people should still be allowed their place to work on their bridge idea, free from others trying to stop them doing at least that. You should even be able to discuss the bridge idea in an open public forum - you just have to make it clear that the discussion is predicated around the intention to build the bridge, not the intention to screw it up. Then moderation is not a moral judgment with massive acrimony. It's not even a judgment of the truth or falsity of the hypothetical question. It's purely a matter of procedure, of debating protocol.
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I'm suggesting a framework to make that much easier.
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Hard News: The Language of Climate, in reply to bmk,
The problem with this question is how do you define ordinary and what time frame.
The solution is to ask a better question. The questions I gave were intended to be a work in progress. So feel free to pose a better question, or series of questions, that gets to the nub of "denying climate change is even happening at all", which was the point of my vaguer question in the first place.
I suggest that if it is not actually possible to ask a series of questions which determine someone's beliefs about climate change, then it is a very vague concept. If that is true, then that is the problem with the debate right there, and the very first place to start with is to firm the damned questions up. Anything else is just people yelling at each other.
Of course there is endless regress in questions, when people are prepared to answer in bad faith, like children who will just ask for the definition of every term in the definition, and then do the same for the definitions of those. But you get around those questions with "You have to answer the question under your own understanding of the words". Because the purpose is to find out what people believe, not to convince them of anything.
It's a divide and conquer approach. Separate out the different kinds of deniers. They may look like they've got little in common in the end. Sic them on each other even - you can have a level 2 denier do all the work of convincing the level 1 deniers that there is actually climate change happening. Get the level 3s to convince the level 2s that it's humans causing it.
Also, we might be able to get a profile of the relative numbers of each kind. The main thing standing in the way of helpful discussion of practical climate change policies might not be the first question, but actually the 4th question, the moral issue of whether we should do anything, given that we could. That's a whole different debate to whether or not ice core samples show sudden jumps in the paleolithic period, or whatever other stuff comes up.
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Hard News: To be expected, in reply to Craig Young,
Excellent comment, Craig.
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Hard News: To be expected, in reply to bmk,
A National-Greens government would be far better for the country than a National-NZF govt.
That's a big call. It might be better during that term, but my feeling is that it would implode by the next election, punishing both parties severely. In National's case, that would be a big hooray, but the destruction of the Green Party is probably not worth the concessions they might wring out in one term.
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