There are some brick walls out there, we're just not sure how or when they'll arrive. Nonlinear, sudden events like ice shelf destruction, clathrate evolution or thermohaline current disruption are unpredictable and potentially catastrophic.
There's an argument that models of the Earth's climate can <i>not</i> be made especially accurate. This is because of chaotic behaviour in the underlying differential equations, and the likely presence of unknown factors that influence the Earth's climate but are not present in these models.<p>But this is actually an argument in <i>favour</i> of reducing carbon emissions. If we're dealing with a system we can't understand, where messing with it could cause immense damage to humankind, then maybe that's enough of a reason to stop messing with it.<p>In general, whenever you're taking a risk with a potentially massive downside, where the outcome is hard to predict (because of chaos, "unknown unknowns"), then you should stop taking that risk.<p>_________________________________________<p>Regarding what to do about climate change, Taleb has a theory called "minority rule" that could help here. It says that an intransigent minority, maybe around ~1% of people, can force a passive majority to do the things they want. A good example of this is kosher / halal food in the US / Europe, where an intransigent minority of people have forced a large percentage of food to be certified kosher / halal, perhaps unintentionally. As such, the solution to reducing emissions might be to set up an environmental "beth din" which certifies whether a product is "environmentally kosher" or not. If an intransigent minority only consumes products that are certified environmentally kosher, the passive majority will fall in line.
Greenhouse output reduction is an approach that is very obviously failing. It requires too many conflicted parties to align and devote resources.<p>We have to start viewing climate change mitigation as an engineering problem. We need aggressive investment in carbon and methane capture. If it can't be a profitable endeavor then governments need to make the investment for the public good.
My opinion about why governments/corporations seem apathetic towards climate change can be summed up with this quote<p>> It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.
I think the whole point of putting a "wall" on it, is to create a sense of urgency. It's more effective psychologically to say, fix it by X date, than it is to say, well, you know, just do what you can.
I'm pretty sure that if given the chance, the majority of the human population will continue to delay acting for as long as possible. I think basic psychology backs this up, as we all tend to value immediate gains over long term ones, and one example of procrastination is the delay of action due to fear.<p>Personally I expect the worst. I don't have faith that the body of humanity will seriously act to save itself. I think we should start planning on how to survive a very hot planet.
This is the second post of this type that I posted that has been removed from the front page (I think, or below the point threshold but unlikely with 32 points and 27 comments at 1 hour).<p>Can someone shed some light on that?
The facts are irrelevant at this stage this is purely politics. The poor and middle class do not want to be penalized for climate change (French yellow jacket protests are most visible example of this).
This is just bluffing between economic groups.