26. A fork in the road
I reached a fork in the road when I completed the last installment. So I decided to pause to decide how to proceed—continuing chronologically didn’t make sense, even though it’s the easiest way to release these reruns, and continuity of thought helps educate.
To condense what I think I’ve learned (and hopefully taught) in the first 25:
The “climate” problem isn’t technological. Technologies exist. It isn’t a political problem. There’s only one “side”. It’s an economics problem.
The formidable challenge of the unavoidable problem is to figure out how to remove already-emitted carbon dioxide without relying on artificial markets. Such markets won’t work in practice because they are self-limiting and don’t address the science. Plus, they can be manipulated and are subject to political winds.
Despite decades of effort, the international community of scientists has mainly remained descriptive rather than prescriptive. This leads to increasingly detailed models of a still-uncertain future and dire warnings to “do something”.
Initially, I thought this last “lesson” was prematurely judgemental. The brain trust of international scientists who author the “Assessment Reports” (Version 6 released in 2022) had released only their first installment, and I hadn’t read the earlier versions except for their summaries. [I know I’m not alone!]
Now, we are trying to do a lot more to “combat” climate change, and the amount of money being directed to fight this battle is astonishing, particularly given that nobody seems quite sure what “victory” looks like.
So, starting this week, I will continue along the IPCC fork, mainly covering the output of “Working Group III”, a series I began after the full report was released, in April 2022.
Here’s the cast of characters (generally speaking) so you know why I’m taking this fork:
Working Group I: “The Physical Science Basis,” in other words, “What do we know about how the Earth’s climate systems behave?” [234 authors; 2,409 pages]
Working Group II: “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability,” in other words, “What might the future look like?” [270 authors; 3,068 pages]]
Working Group III: “Mitigation of Climate Change,” in other words, “What can we do about it?” [278 authors; 2,042 pages]
I’ll return to talk about economics afterward. Stay tuned!