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@siam said in Climate Change #3 & Other Environmental Issues:
@jc in your humble opinion mate, is he very trustworthy?
I really like what he presents and it seems very logical, but authenticity is such a fickle resource when it comes to learning things these days
I believe him. As I say, I'm hardly qualified to hazard an opinion on the science, but I believe he's undeniably correct that the amounts of money needed to halt climate change are such that it warrants a rational debate about whether or not that is the best thing to spend that money on.
His book "The Skeptical Environmentalist" makes the argument very well that there is no definitive evidence that anything we do will make any discernible difference on the climate, but in the meantime the trillions of dollars involved in doing so would make a material difference in the quality of life of practically everyone in the world. Clean water, disease eradication, ecology, education. And there's a very good chance that technology will advance alongside that at a pace so that we can effect climate impact modification when we need to. But he got caned hard by the climate establishment for suggesting it. Despite that he's stuck to his guns and his arguments are lucid and compelling.
To be clear he's never said there is no climate change, he's said that it may not be the most important thing to spend all that money on right now and it deserves careful analysis of the cost/benefit of doing other things instead.
see if you can get the book. It's a very easy read.
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@JC thanks I will definitely have a read.
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Here's the TED Talk Lomborg gave on the same topic in 2005 - 17 minutes instead of 90
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Lomborg was supposed to set up a dept at an Aus university, but the Greenie screamers drove him out of town. He was demonised when the hysteria was at it's peak. Ultimately he believes the theory, but thinks there are much better ways of spending money to mitigate the effects. Says everything about the climate hysteria industry that even a guy like him is literally Hitler.
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@rancid-schnitzel said in Climate Change #3 & Other Environmental Issues:
Lomborg was supposed to set up a dept at an Aus university, but the Greenie screamers drove him out of town. He was demonised when the hysteria was at it's peak. Ultimately he believes the theory, but thinks there are much better ways of spending money to mitigate the effects. Says everything about the climate hysteria industry that even a guy like him is literally Hitler.
It's amazing how many people tell you that the science is settled and you should believe them, until someone points out we'd probably be better off solving a problem an entirely different way. All of a sudden replicable facts and figures are nonsense.
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While that 2005 talk I posted is obviously a decade out of date, Lomborg poses an interesting question: what is life worth?
He has been widely criticised of course - he's actually not an economist, but has engaged with economists. He has a history of misrepresenting climate change data according to expert scientists, and breaking things down into discrete packets rather than considering the relationships between the problems he highlights.
EDIT: his presentation puts climate change at the bottom of the list, but is he saying this is all-or-nothing? I don't necessarily think so, but the price tag he's putting on climate action is an all-or-nothing approach, which is the same approach put forward by the gammon who say "We're only 2% of emissions so why bother doing anything?"
He briefly mentions in that 2005 link that people who are freed from the threat of malaria will have the power to assist in other areas. But if climate change is going to aggravate the threat of malaria, is the cart before the horse? Climate change is causing migration, and conflict. Are we then going to see his priorities change?
Thankfully the plummeting cost of renewables, and the rise of electrification of transport, is taking care of some of the issues we face in decarbonising the economy. In 2005 it would have been difficult to see the rise of a company like Tesla, and continued emissions regulation, forcing big manufacturers to pivot to EV manufacturing by 2020-2025. Solar and wind costs have likewise dropped dramatically at all scales.
At the core of it, he isn't a denier. He's just focussed on what is (in his opinion) most important, and what the numbers say.
I had to chuckle when I thought about knocking HIV/AIDS on the head tho: we've got people who don't fucking believe in vaccines in 2018 so how are you going to get that message through?
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@antipodean check this one out - pretty snazzy
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@nta his summation in the podcast of " climate change spending effectiveness " was to spend on development of renewable sources.
But yeah he put his argument in terms of priority spending ( just like we do with household budgets) and never stated climate change wasn't an issue.
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@siam said in Climate Change #3 & Other Environmental Issues:
@nta his summation in the podcast of " climate change spending effectiveness " was to spend on development of renewable sources.
But yeah he put his argument in terms of priority spending ( just like we do with household budgets) and never stated climate change wasn't an issue.
The cost-benefit shift since he first appeared on the scene is also down to the changes in models. No, back in 2005 we didn't have as much data on the rate of change (well... Shell and other oil companies did, but kept it to themselves). Now things appear to be a bit more rapid than we first thought, I reckon the price is looking better every day.
Rapid decarbonisation at a local level is probably going to cause as many problems as it fixes, and in that Lomborg is right e.g. closing down the local coalfired power station will put people out of work and lower the town's economic profile significantly. Knock on effects to health, education, community, etc.
If you plan that out for the EOL of that station and start brining commensurate renewables online, you can transition the skills of that workforce to support it.
Liddell in NSW is going to transition to a renewables hub, rather than refurb into coal. The High Voltage infrastructure has been invested, so keep getting the most out of it. Probably a lot of sites of existing coal can do that as part of their rehab as well.
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@nta said in Climate Change #3 & Other Environmental Issues:
@siam said in Climate Change #3 & Other Environmental Issues:
@nta his summation in the podcast of " climate change spending effectiveness " was to spend on development of renewable sources.
But yeah he put his argument in terms of priority spending ( just like we do with household budgets) and never stated climate change wasn't an issue.
The cost-benefit shift since he first appeared on the scene is also down to the changes in models. No, back in 2005 we didn't have as much data on the rate of change (well... Shell and other oil companies did, but kept it to themselves). Now things appear to be a bit more rapid than we first thought, I reckon the price is looking better every day.
And that was actually part of his argument originally. That tech would change and make the impossible affordable, and the world would change and make something impossible. So do what makes sense in the short - medium run and adapt as you go. Instead we've ended up with a bunch of people demanding all or nothing now and anything else is a heresy. Its smart economics but in it will always lose politically because you're arguing against people who are trying to sell you the problem with themselves as the solution.
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This reel is almost a year old, but I just saw it posted by Scott Adams, and if anybody cares it’s 5 minutes of blasphemy from a really-really old guy who just Does Not Get It.
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“End Times Religion”
Joe Rogan talks to Howard Bloom:
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We had 9 days over 40 in January with a monthly average of 36.3 which is 4.4 degrees hotter than average. If this becomes the new norm summer will be pretty unbearable.
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This is a really interesting article from a guy that has been right at the heart of pushing for investment into renewable energy sources like solar and wind, which lead to the Obama government investing $150 billion into the technology. Basically says it's not going to happen, and the only way we can effectively cut CO2 emissions is through nuclear power
Makes a very strong case for it, to be honest I'm sold.
Further to that, this announcement which sounds very promising:
Interested in the Ferns thoughts?
Climate Change