Author Topic: Technical Solutions - CO2 Removal  (Read 1363 times)

0 Members and 3 Guests are viewing this topic.

Offline TimG

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 2616
Re: Technical Solutions - CO2 Removal
« on: November 27, 2017, 02:04:52 am »
I have to say it would have been nice if we were able to have an actual democratic discussion about adaption vs prevention, but we are (at) so far several decades where the discussion is jammed by people who have spread abject lies (ie. ice age) and so this rather high-risk decision has been made by default.
The trouble with any rational cost-benefit analysis is it depends on so many economic and technological assumptions and outright guesses that they are meaningless. So when someone says it is more cost effective to spend a trillions reducing the increase CO2 emissions by 5% than it would be to to pay for various measures needed to adaptation I can say with confidence that they are basing their claim on nothing but guesses and if these guesses were made by someone with an agenda then those guesses are nothing but ideological propaganda.

To be clear, the meaningless of cost benefit analyses also applies to analyses that say adaptation is a better option. I prefer adaption because:

1) Adaptation is local - no global agreements required and no problem with freeloaders/cheaters;
2) Adaptation only requires deployment of tech that we already use to protect against the vagaries of weather - so it is lower risk;
3) Adaptation is incremental. Every little bit helps. CO2 mitigation is all or nothing - i.e. if we don't cut CO2 by enough we will still need to spend on adaption.
4) Many specific examples of CO2 mitigation are virtue signalling exercises that have no chance of achieving their stated goal - this means I have little confidence that governments are capable providing incentives that actually reduce *global* CO2 emissions.

« Last Edit: November 27, 2017, 02:10:30 am by TimG »