I suspect that you hit the nail on the head regarding "rent-seeking". AFAICT most of the people showing any real interest in climate beyond a vague "government should do SOMETHING" are the people with a significant financial stake in what that something will be: NGOs fundraising off of alarmism , "Green" sector businesses demanding subsidies, etc.
I remember a big part of the pitch for "green" tech the last few years was that the investments were supposed to produce a lot of good paying jobs and make us a 'world leader' in the field who could then export the tech to other countries at a profit. As usual, it hasn't worked out that way, but it's telling that the consultant class focus group mind meld concluded that the best way to sell a solution to the public was to emphasize that we could ultimately make money and maybe some international prestige off of it.
The cheap, easy solutions can't readily be rebranded as a jobs program, export to market, or technological triumph over international adversaries... Politics runs on pork and there just isn't enough money involved here for everybody to hide earmarks for their constituents when it comes time to slice the pie.
In a strange way, they have the same problem in lacking prestige. There's a certain drama in "saving the planet" and inherent narrative assumption that great victories can only be won at correspondingly great costs by great heroes. A cheap, easy solution pretty much any country can do is anticlimactic. It's depressingly mundane. It makes everyone involved in the alarmism look like idiots for being so worried in the first place. Weirdly, the only way forward I see here that might work is for people to just start doing the experiments in direct defiance of the governments of the world. Having a few 'martyrs' literally on trial for trying to save the planet might give it that 'underdog' appeal that audiences love and trial arguments might pressure the news into providing serious coverage and analysis ordinary people might read and give some credence.
Maybe the right solution in this case is to search out the people who have a stake in the green revolution failing/being suppressed? I bet an oil company would be happy for this to work, and they have large green wings already.
The problem with people building business cases on transition stuff is that all of it is predicated on a tech/semiconductor/software cost and growth model that just doesn’t work with energy systems. Physics is a real pain… The ARC Invest S curve stuff is just so tantalizing, so a sucker is born every minute but most of it is pure fluff.
In general the massively expensive transition stuff is never going to get funded outside of a few pilot projects. Wind and Solar have been subsidized to astounding amounts and it is becoming clear they don’t really have the effects people thought they would. So as the ZIRP/money collapses and we continue to not make progress, the inexpensive stuff will be what comes to the fore. So give it time…
I would say that the primary issue is that both “strong political sides”, at least in the U.S., have reasons to be opposed to geoengineering. Left-wing experts oppose it not just because it seems “impure” and risky, but also because there are legitimate concerns of higher CO2 in the atmosphere aside from warming, especially in ocean acidification. I don’t think (?) there’s a way to fix that without changing our carbon emissions, and it might not have as high costs as warming, I think that experts on the left don’t want to geoengineer because they think that might take away the incentive to fix ocean acidification and changes in plant composition which will be part of atmospheric CO2 changes. On the right, the general political consensus has become “the climate is outside of our control”, and therefore as geoenginnering contradicts that idea, it’s also a fake solution (see https://azmirror.com/2025/01/15/as-climate-change-intensifies-gop-bill-would-bar-geoengineering-to-combat-it/).
The thing about geoengineering though, is that it really is so cheap, and any country can do it. I think in about 10-15 years, we’re going to see a country seriously threatened by climate change “go rogue” and begin a geoengineering program, likely to international rebuke. A few years from then, the effect will become clear, and people will begin to accept the necessity of it, beginning a new global agreement which still includes vague decarbonization targets to attempt to maintain the oceans, but also includes geoengineering as a key part of the solution, with probably an expected net-zero date around 2075-2100 and plans to deal with ocean acidication.
Always feel it's important to distinguish clearly between the reasons people *give* for opposing these techniques and the real reasons. I think greens have very limited insight into the underlying reason these ideas give them the heebie-jeebies, which is the reason I write about it all the time.
FWIW, Claude says there might technically be a solution to ocean acidification by using Olvine to accelerate natural weathering processes, but it would be a truly massive operation using about 1-2% of all current global energy usage including a massive mining operation about 20% the size of the entire global industry.
The objections to cost effective solutions that serve to preserve our way of life make little sense to those who assume that the goal of the climate activists is to solve the problem of climate change. Once you understand that the real goal is to instead find a pretext to overthrow capitalism, install a global world government, drastically reduce the size of the human population and return us to some idyllic, romanticized lifestyle where we live in harmony with nature, then the objections to easy and obvious solutions to the “climate problem” begin to make sense.
I think the people who are most passionate about things climate are also:
• uncomfortable with ‘tech’ solutions. They love windmills and solar panels that directly engage with the natural, but boats with mist canons are a bit Frankenstein and
• geoengineering is ‘intrusive in nature’ in a way that sets off their ‘purity/sacred ick’ response.
The main driver over time is if and when actual climate effects cause voters to really want these fixed, politicians will act. For myself, I think they will balk at the multi-trillion dollar solutions, and that is when the salt and iron will be sprayed.
I don’t think that two washing machines are good or accurate analogy for climate change.
You said that nobody can give you an exact number, which is clearly wrong - there is never an exact number. But there has been a lot of work done in costs of not doing anything, Stern Review for one. “Central estimates of the annual costs of achieving stabilisation between 500 and 550ppm CO2e are around 1% of global GDP....without action, the overall costs of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) each year, now and forever.”
The review was published in 2006 and according to Stern his data was vindicated in later IPCC reports and that he may have been too conservative.
It more seems to be a lack of imagination or else an unwillingness by research administrators to try simple solutions that are possibly below their august dignity: if it does not cost a lot, it cannot offer a high quality or useful solution, else someone would already have invented it. Edison's team tested thousands of ideas before arriving at the incandescent light bulb made from coiled titanium filament in vacuo. The necessitated wartime inventiveness of the Ukrainians is showing how effective such means can be. It may be that quick and dirty wins the race - now called the fail fast method. Explained, my five solutions look mundane - as Steven below indicates. We need those inexpensive experiments to winnow the wheat from the chaff!
I suspect that you hit the nail on the head regarding "rent-seeking". AFAICT most of the people showing any real interest in climate beyond a vague "government should do SOMETHING" are the people with a significant financial stake in what that something will be: NGOs fundraising off of alarmism , "Green" sector businesses demanding subsidies, etc.
I remember a big part of the pitch for "green" tech the last few years was that the investments were supposed to produce a lot of good paying jobs and make us a 'world leader' in the field who could then export the tech to other countries at a profit. As usual, it hasn't worked out that way, but it's telling that the consultant class focus group mind meld concluded that the best way to sell a solution to the public was to emphasize that we could ultimately make money and maybe some international prestige off of it.
The cheap, easy solutions can't readily be rebranded as a jobs program, export to market, or technological triumph over international adversaries... Politics runs on pork and there just isn't enough money involved here for everybody to hide earmarks for their constituents when it comes time to slice the pie.
In a strange way, they have the same problem in lacking prestige. There's a certain drama in "saving the planet" and inherent narrative assumption that great victories can only be won at correspondingly great costs by great heroes. A cheap, easy solution pretty much any country can do is anticlimactic. It's depressingly mundane. It makes everyone involved in the alarmism look like idiots for being so worried in the first place. Weirdly, the only way forward I see here that might work is for people to just start doing the experiments in direct defiance of the governments of the world. Having a few 'martyrs' literally on trial for trying to save the planet might give it that 'underdog' appeal that audiences love and trial arguments might pressure the news into providing serious coverage and analysis ordinary people might read and give some credence.
Maybe the right solution in this case is to search out the people who have a stake in the green revolution failing/being suppressed? I bet an oil company would be happy for this to work, and they have large green wings already.
The problem with people building business cases on transition stuff is that all of it is predicated on a tech/semiconductor/software cost and growth model that just doesn’t work with energy systems. Physics is a real pain… The ARC Invest S curve stuff is just so tantalizing, so a sucker is born every minute but most of it is pure fluff.
In general the massively expensive transition stuff is never going to get funded outside of a few pilot projects. Wind and Solar have been subsidized to astounding amounts and it is becoming clear they don’t really have the effects people thought they would. So as the ZIRP/money collapses and we continue to not make progress, the inexpensive stuff will be what comes to the fore. So give it time…
What are the radically cheap solutions referred to in the article? I would like to know. Thanks
Funny you should ask...
https://www.onepercentbrighter.com/p/self-replicating-co2-eating-nanobots
I would say that the primary issue is that both “strong political sides”, at least in the U.S., have reasons to be opposed to geoengineering. Left-wing experts oppose it not just because it seems “impure” and risky, but also because there are legitimate concerns of higher CO2 in the atmosphere aside from warming, especially in ocean acidification. I don’t think (?) there’s a way to fix that without changing our carbon emissions, and it might not have as high costs as warming, I think that experts on the left don’t want to geoengineer because they think that might take away the incentive to fix ocean acidification and changes in plant composition which will be part of atmospheric CO2 changes. On the right, the general political consensus has become “the climate is outside of our control”, and therefore as geoenginnering contradicts that idea, it’s also a fake solution (see https://azmirror.com/2025/01/15/as-climate-change-intensifies-gop-bill-would-bar-geoengineering-to-combat-it/).
The thing about geoengineering though, is that it really is so cheap, and any country can do it. I think in about 10-15 years, we’re going to see a country seriously threatened by climate change “go rogue” and begin a geoengineering program, likely to international rebuke. A few years from then, the effect will become clear, and people will begin to accept the necessity of it, beginning a new global agreement which still includes vague decarbonization targets to attempt to maintain the oceans, but also includes geoengineering as a key part of the solution, with probably an expected net-zero date around 2075-2100 and plans to deal with ocean acidication.
Always feel it's important to distinguish clearly between the reasons people *give* for opposing these techniques and the real reasons. I think greens have very limited insight into the underlying reason these ideas give them the heebie-jeebies, which is the reason I write about it all the time.
FWIW, Claude says there might technically be a solution to ocean acidification by using Olvine to accelerate natural weathering processes, but it would be a truly massive operation using about 1-2% of all current global energy usage including a massive mining operation about 20% the size of the entire global industry.
The objections to cost effective solutions that serve to preserve our way of life make little sense to those who assume that the goal of the climate activists is to solve the problem of climate change. Once you understand that the real goal is to instead find a pretext to overthrow capitalism, install a global world government, drastically reduce the size of the human population and return us to some idyllic, romanticized lifestyle where we live in harmony with nature, then the objections to easy and obvious solutions to the “climate problem” begin to make sense.
I think the people who are most passionate about things climate are also:
• uncomfortable with ‘tech’ solutions. They love windmills and solar panels that directly engage with the natural, but boats with mist canons are a bit Frankenstein and
• geoengineering is ‘intrusive in nature’ in a way that sets off their ‘purity/sacred ick’ response.
The main driver over time is if and when actual climate effects cause voters to really want these fixed, politicians will act. For myself, I think they will balk at the multi-trillion dollar solutions, and that is when the salt and iron will be sprayed.
I don’t think that two washing machines are good or accurate analogy for climate change.
You said that nobody can give you an exact number, which is clearly wrong - there is never an exact number. But there has been a lot of work done in costs of not doing anything, Stern Review for one. “Central estimates of the annual costs of achieving stabilisation between 500 and 550ppm CO2e are around 1% of global GDP....without action, the overall costs of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) each year, now and forever.”
The review was published in 2006 and according to Stern his data was vindicated in later IPCC reports and that he may have been too conservative.
It more seems to be a lack of imagination or else an unwillingness by research administrators to try simple solutions that are possibly below their august dignity: if it does not cost a lot, it cannot offer a high quality or useful solution, else someone would already have invented it. Edison's team tested thousands of ideas before arriving at the incandescent light bulb made from coiled titanium filament in vacuo. The necessitated wartime inventiveness of the Ukrainians is showing how effective such means can be. It may be that quick and dirty wins the race - now called the fail fast method. Explained, my five solutions look mundane - as Steven below indicates. We need those inexpensive experiments to winnow the wheat from the chaff!