"The biggest problem that we have right now is that we have a breakdown in the market system. Now, I'm ordinarily quite a big believer in the market, because the market is just the sum of individuals' decisions, but when there's a breakdown in the information system of the market, that's where things go awry. And so, because there's no price on carbon emissions, it makes things that are carbon-producing very rewarding, because the true price is not being paid. So, if you're a petro-chemical engineer, you can earn a tremendous amount of money, but you really shouldn't be earning that huge amount of money, because it's...you know...anyway, the market mechanism is broken. It's a classic economic problem: the tragedy of the commons."
- Elon Musk
In keeping with the spirit of yesterday's post, that we need to innovate our way out of this mess in order to preserve our modern and technological way of life, I think it's appropriate to hear from one of the most famous and innovative entrepreneurs alive, Elon Musk. He has, after all, released Tesla's patents in order to bring about an industry-wide acceleration of electric vehicle (EV) technology, though his outlook on our prospects as an industrious species may be less than sanguine.
I gotta admit he makes a strong point. We are facing an uphill battle due in large part to the strange way our oil-based economy is orchestrated and analyzed, with little or no recognition or factorization of externalities, and it will only get steeper the more we procrastinate. The dirty "secret" in the climate science community is that no one really talks about a 2C increase in temperature anymore. Many climatologists are contemplating a 4C increase by 2100, and that quite frankly, folks, all but guarantees a shitstorm of despair for future generations.
The research indicates that fewer clouds form as the planet warms, meaning less sunlight is reflected back into space, driving temperatures up further still. The way clouds affect global warming has been the biggest mystery surrounding future climate change.
Professor Steven Sherwood, at the University of New South Wales, in Australia, who led the new work, said: "This study breaks new ground twice: first by identifying what is controlling the cloud changes and second by strongly discounting the lowest estimates of future global warming in favour of the higher and more damaging estimates."
"4C would likely be catastrophic rather than simply dangerous," Sherwood told the Guardian. "For example, it would make life difficult, if not impossible, in much of the tropics, and would guarantee the eventual melting of the Greenland ice sheet and some of the Antarctic ice sheet", with sea levels rising by many metres as a result.
Having said/posted all that, let's make something very clear here. There is a massive and glaring difference between Musk's pessimism, in light of the difficulties we may be facing, and your average denier. Musk is not asking that we don't even discuss the problem and just throw our hands up in inept despair. He has instead decided to do what he can within the confines of our economic system, both by manufacturing EVs rather than crying over technical hurdles and by attempting to stimulate the industry with the release of his patents. Again, the idea is not to voluntarily return to caves in the mountains, or to sit around and wait until business as usual forces us to do so. The idea is to do whatever we can to preserve the rather advanced society we enjoy at the moment.
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