Robert Tulip wrote:I have routinely heard the mantra among geoengineers that carbon dioxide removal is only an adjunct to emission reduction and cannot replace it.
the UN Convention on Biological Diversity has issued a fatwa against geoengineering, illustrating the toxic stupidity that infests this discussion. I follow the discussion at the google group on geoengineering, and am constantly amazed at the brain-dead idiots who argue aggressively that all geoengineering is unethical.
But conservatives have been dissuaded by the zombie methods of the left from seeing that climate is the number one security problem for the world.

What I find completely baffling about this discussion is the notion that "energies" and "framing arguments" matter. If you have a profitable method for private activity, no strategy issue should matter to it. If you are only doing it for the climate, then you need subsidies. If there is profit in it, then the private sector will do it for that motive alone.

To be honest, this sounds like typical engineering discussions. They are used to a context of persuasion within a firm, they tend to see the problem in terms of engineering efficiencies, and they seem helpless to run the numbers and demonstrate profitability. It falls to the finance department to ask the tough questions and see if the optimism holds up.

Have you tried talking to the Koch brothers about this idea? They seem willing to do anything for a buck, and would probably see the advantage of diversifying their portfolio away from coal. Or Rio Tinto. Or Google. There is no shortage of people who are interested in making a profit.

Robert Tulip wrote: We don’t know and are sailing blind.

Not completely blind. We can see there are icebergs, we just don't know exactly how long until we hit one.

Robert Tulip wrote:Again, my understanding of denialism involves some level of psychoanalysis of the unconscious motives of both sides of the climate debate.

Social psychology has shown long ago that people take their views of reality from others who make up "their world". For those who identify with their job, that means the people they work with. Corporate types will engage in motivated reasoning as long as they possibly can to justify their self-interest and perpetuate their myths.

I am quite willing to believe that a demonstration of "no pain" approaches will persuade everyone to jump on board. I just don't think we can wait years to sharpen something that may not work as an ax.

Robert Tulip wrote: It is far easier to convince a stupid mass audience that the science is wrong than to engage in complex arguments about risk.

But it really isn't very complex. Things could drag on for many decades without passing the catastrophe points, or we could be slammed by a sudden surge at any time, but the buildup is inexorable and we can no longer
pretend that its effect is anything that does not involve polar melting.

But equally, the climate lobby has unconscious drivers. By putting all its eggs in the basket of emission reduction, the climate lobby signals an apocalyptic fear that the human footprint on our planet is too big, and needs to just be made smaller. That is a muddled view on several counts.

Robert Tulip wrote:Denial only matters when it prevents practical action. The only things that denial prevents are emission reduction, scientific research, government involvement and public understanding.

Robert Tulip wrote:But none of those are essential for climate protection. That is why formulating a climate strategy that focuses on the profitable private mining of carbon from the air has better prospects of success than emission reduction.

Strategy, schmategy. If it is profitable, then just do it. If it will be profitable with a subsidy, then by all means let us subsidise.

Harry Marks wrote:What I find completely baffling about this discussion is the notion that "energies" and "framing arguments" matter.

Harry, in order to pitch a controversial and difficult idea to investors, it has to be presented in simple and compelling form, so mobilising conservative energies using effective framing arguments is essential.

I do not know if carbon mining can be profitable, but that is my hypothesis that I want to test and develop. I want to get commercial R&D funding to work on it. I am discussing this at booktalk simply because I have not found anywhere else I like. I find that in most places people are too rude, patronising, prejudiced, stupid or impatient. So I do appreciate your constructive responses.

Now, as to ‘energies’. My comment was that “Unfortunately, the liberal answers don’t and won’t work, and we need to mobilise conservative energies to create workable answers.” My view is that any climate agenda that seeks to demonise fossil fuels will fail. Fossil fuels are simply too loved by humans to be abandoned just for scientific reasons.

How can we get around that? My hypothesis is that climate stability is possible in a carbon intensive economy via carbon mining, on the model of sanitation, with all the waste recycled.

Conservative energies include money, time, interest, skill, contacts, personnel, resources, methods, etc. All these are forms of energy, understood in the broadest sense, which must be mobilised for success.

The problem in the climate debate is that the whole topic is subsumed beneath cultural differences. The clash between science and religion illustrates these social conflicts, with the left-right battle of the world between liberal and conservative myths which have very different assumptions about the value of science and reason.

The broad assumption on the left of politics is that the climate can only be saved by creating a scientific world with liberal values. To overgeneralise, that belief in liberal values is supported by the left and opposed by the right. I am trying to get under the bonnet of that clash, aiming to achieve scientific objectives in a way that respects conservative values of tradition and liberty.

A framing argument is necessary for any prospectus. Generally this is part of the business case, but in this case, where the business case conflicts with widespread dominant political assumptions, the framing argument has to be more explicit in order to be persuasive and to discuss the ideological constraints.

Harry Marks wrote: If you have a profitable method for private activity, no strategy issue should matter to it.

The profitability is unproven, and relies on ability to expand to large scale. Implementation will need to be incremental, proving components and methods at desk and laboratory level before trials in sheltered waters followed by open ocean deployment. The safety and efficacy risks involved in an ocean algae trial are akin to pharmaceutical investment, where the difficulties of obtaining private funds for profitable drug trials is notorious.

Today I had a chat with my Ocean Forest colleagues about some related ideas. The whole question of how climate interventions can get private investment is vexed. People apply quite different sets of standards from other topics, leading to a pervasive perverse willingness to metaphorically cut off their nose to spite their face on quasi religious grounds, such as the ludicrous argument that geoengineering projects are like scary horror movies.

Harry Marks wrote: If you are only doing it for the climate, then you need subsidies. If there is profit in it, then the private sector will do it for that motive alone.

The ideal would be a purely commercial business proposition, to minimize the corruption and delay that come from politics. But comparing to medical drug trials, there is a large public good involved in climate stability which means governments should invest to speed up implementation and provide public blessing.

For TB and malaria, which are diseases of the poor, the threshold problem of lack of paying customers makes trials uneconomic without subsidy, even though the produced drugs could have massive health benefit. I actually think that for negative emission technology we will need a war type footing like the perils that led to the Manhattan project or the vision and space race competition of the Apollo moon program in the 1960s.

Harry Marks wrote:To be honest, this sounds like typical engineering discussions.

Ocean Foresters have been working on related ideas for many years, and engineering is the least of the worries. The problems are political and ideological, that when it boils down people don’t actually want to do anything effective to reverse climate change.

Harry Marks wrote: They are used to a context of persuasion within a firm, they tend to see the problem in terms of engineering efficiencies, and they seem helpless to run the numbers and demonstrate profitability. It falls to the finance department to ask the tough questions and see if the optimism holds up.

Yes, and that typical engineering discussion is a necessary precursor to detailed financial analysis. There are a series of big new ideas involved in growing algae at sea for profit which need to have a workable engineering combination. For example, hydrothermal liquefaction, compressing organic matter to a mile deep pressure and heating it to 300 degrees will cause the cells to collapse into crude oil. Algae is the best feedstock because it is half fat. Once we prove the concepts of working at sea, HTL will be a game changer to make algae oil commercial. But the engineering proof of concept is needed before a financial investment prospectus can be prepared.

Harry Marks wrote: Have you tried talking to the Koch brothers about this idea? They seem willing to do anything for a buck, and would probably see the advantage of diversifying their portfolio away from coal. Or Rio Tinto. Or Google. There is no shortage of people who are interested in making a profit.

I have tried to talk to Chevron and Shell, but they were not interested, even though their LNG projects on Australia’s North West Shelf are ideal places for this to be tested up since they have vast quantities of CO2 co-produced with hydrocarbon that they need to bury at high cost. I would like to use their CO2 as feedstock to grow algae, but I am not in a position to talk to these companies until I find other people who can help me discuss the concepts.

Harry Marks wrote:
Social psychology has shown long ago that people take their views of reality from others who make up "their world". For those who identify with their job, that means the people they work with. Corporate types will engage in motivated reasoning as long as they possibly can to justify their self-interest and perpetuate their myths.

Yes, those sort of ideas were central to my philosophy studies, especially how Heidegger used ‘being in the world’ as the only source of meaning. World and planet are different. World is the constructed concept of human culture and planet is the real scientific object. Ultimately planet and world must reconcile as the same, but we are a long way from that today. The measure of this distance between world and planet is the scale of human spiritual alienation from nature.

The motivated reasoning of climate denial is the major example of the high risk alienation of world from planet. My analysis of the psychology is that people are desperate to reject what Al Gore called inconvenient truth, and so latch on to doubt about science, in much the same evil way the tobacco and sugar industries have fomented doubt about how their poisons cause cancer.

What I am trying to do in suggesting a private sector profitable path for algae energy and carbon mining is to formulate a climate response that could be attractive to denialists, suggesting they don’t need to buy into the catastrophic science in order to see investment opportunities in climate stability.

Harry Marks wrote: I am quite willing to believe that a demonstration of "no pain" approaches will persuade everyone to jump on board.

There are substantial issues of risk and safety around large scale ocean farming. Scientific proof of concept is needed before field deployments. But the key thing, as my friend Russ George has argued in relation to his proposals for ocean iron fertilization, is that the benefits so vastly outweigh the risks that the reasons for preventing field trials are actually insane. People are saying they want to keep the ocean pristine and non-industrial, despite the massive impacts of industrial fishing, plastics, acid, heat and nutrient, all of which have to be cleaned up by active geoengineering intervention.

Harry Marks wrote: I just don't think we can wait years to sharpen something that may not work as an ax.

Emission reduction will not work as a method to stop climate change. The science on that is settled, despite the crazy lies of the climate lobby. So your comment that we can’t afford to wait is the main reason we have to get on with mining carbon. The Paris Agreement to reduce emissions is the worst imaginable example of sharpening an ax which will break as soon as it tries to chop down a tree.

Harry Marks wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote: It is far easier to convince a stupid mass audience that the science is wrong than to engage in complex arguments about risk.

But it really isn't very complex.

You may be taking my risk comment out of context. My point was that the fossil fuel industry has a vested interest in climate denial because changing its business model is perceived as highly risky for shareholder value. That business risk is the complex argument. The nature of political spin is that an incorrect claim that gets social traction will beat a correct claim that people don’t understand, hence the pervasive debates about fake news.

In Trumpville, all ideas must be simplified to reality TV level. Rather than engage on literal terms about climate denial, it is better to sidestep the explicit wrong argument and explore what motivates people to advance those wrong views.

Harry Marks wrote: Things could drag on for many decades without passing the catastrophe points, or we could be slammed by a sudden surge at any time, but the buildup is inexorable and we can no longer pretend that its effect is anything that does not involve polar melting.

Many decades of business as usual would be a high risk strategy of Marvin the Martian kaboom proportions. I don’t think we have crossed irreversible climate thresholds since we can still mine the extra carbon we have added and use it for building infrastructure in a new expanded world economy. But if we let the pole completely melt then the loss of albedo from ice and snow will cause feedback loops making it much harder to get back to an icy pole.

The idea that reducing emissions might stop the north pole from melting is like pushing on a string.

Harry Marks wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:Denial only matters when it prevents practical action. The only things that denial prevents are emission reduction, scientific research, government involvement and public understanding.

Okay, maybe I am putting that a bit too extremely. For my analysis, the conundrum of climate is that liberal politics has subverted the problem by placing big governments at the centre. Conservative people do not trust that solution, and so do not trust the science.

There has been a steady creep up of government intrusion and control in society, with liberals depending on nanna state. There is a genuine economic argument, which I agree with, that reducing the scope of government is a public good, creating resilience and competitiveness.

To get investor trust into climate action, the better prejudice is to limit government role to steering rather than rowing. We will need mobilisation on the scale of the Manhattan and Apollo Projects to address climate security, but with the crucial difference that government role will be to mobilise private investment rather than to directly invest tax dollars.

Robert Tulip wrote:Harry, in order to pitch a controversial and difficult idea to investors, it has to be presented in simple and compelling form, so mobilising conservative energies using effective framing arguments is essential.

Well, good luck with it.

Robert Tulip wrote:I do appreciate your constructive responses.

I am not too shocked that most others care only about ideology, but I am disappointed. There is far too much at stake.

Robert Tulip wrote:Conservative energies include money, time, interest, skill, contacts, personnel, resources, methods, etc. All these are forms of energy, understood in the broadest sense, which must be mobilised for success.

This is the "visible hand" in bold face type. What we teach students is that if something is profitable, free enterprise will find its way to doing it. I guess that's a bit oversimplified.

Robert Tulip wrote:The broad assumption on the left of politics is that the climate can only be saved by creating a scientific world with liberal values. To overgeneralise, that belief in liberal values is supported by the left and opposed by the right. I am trying to get under the bonnet of that clash, aiming to achieve scientific objectives in a way that respects conservative values of tradition and liberty.

The Economist magazine, hardly a bastion of leftism, still argues strongly for putting in place incentives to deal with the market failures of externalities. Conservatives are in sad shape indeed if they think that conflicts with liberty or tradition.

The Economist argues for "liberal values" in the British sense: free market, equal treatment before the law, openness to debate and ideas. Those are not always supported by the left, nor opposed by the right. Carbon Cap and Trade was proposed by what used to be an intellectual arm of American conservatism. These days the pretense of an intellectual wing is impossible.

Robert Tulip wrote:The profitability is unproven, and relies on ability to expand to large scale. Implementation will need to be incremental, proving components and methods at desk and laboratory level before trials in sheltered waters followed by open ocean deployment. The safety and efficacy risks involved in an ocean algae trial are akin to pharmaceutical investment, where the difficulties of obtaining private funds for profitable drug trials is notorious.

Well, then you can plainly see why the rest of us are loath to put all our climate eggs in your basket. You would not expect your investors to invest every penny at their disposal, and not diversify at all. You should not expect the public to, either.

Robert Tulip wrote:People apply quite different sets of standards from other topics, leading to a pervasive perverse willingness to metaphorically cut off their nose to spite their face on quasi religious grounds, such as the ludicrous argument that geoengineering projects are like scary horror movies.

Well, we now have it in our power to switch almost entirely to renewables and nuclear. Solar thermal gives much of the same scalability that fossil fuels always had. I have seen the argument that geoengineering projects simply postpone facing the truth about fossil fuels, and I have some sympathy with the argument.

But my main point would be that it is not necessary to choose. We can add to the CO2 budget with geoengineering and respond to the full cost of fossil fuels with one and the same incentive change.

Robert Tulip wrote:comparing to medical drug trials, there is a large public good involved in climate stability which means governments should invest to speed up implementation and provide public blessing.

Yes, there is a safety argument for long clinical trials for drugs. Some of the same issues may be present with geoengineering trials, but we can monitor things like the ecosystem much more intrusively, and I expect the risks can be managed.

Robert Tulip wrote:For TB and malaria, which are diseases of the poor, the threshold problem of lack of paying customers makes trials uneconomic without subsidy, even though the produced drugs could have massive health benefit.

Bill Gates, who is smarter than me but still no great mind, saw through that one. The benefits that the usual market process will pay for are only to people who contract the disease. Everyone else has some incentive to see that the disease does not spread, except, interestingly enough, the company selling treatment for it. So it is exceedingly short-sighted to treat only diseases which are mainly found in rich countries - the ones that fester in poor countries have a way of breaking out of that boundary. This is an example of market failure.

Robert Tulip wrote: There are a series of big new ideas involved in growing algae at sea for profit which need to have a workable engineering combination. For example, hydrothermal liquefaction, compressing organic matter to a mile deep pressure and heating it to 300 degrees will cause the cells to collapse into crude oil. Algae is the best feedstock because it is half fat. Once we prove the concepts of working at sea, HTL will be a game changer to make algae oil commercial. But the engineering proof of concept is needed before a financial investment prospectus can be prepared.

HTL sounds fine, although I tend to think of "fixing carbon" into oil to burn again as only a slight improvement on digging fossil fuel out of the ground and burning it. As shown for biofuels in general, it is easy for the costs of transport and refinement to eat up the carbon savings from fixing atmospheric CO2. Maybe you all don't deserve a subsidy after all.

Robert Tulip wrote: I would like to use their CO2 as feedstock to grow algae, but I am not in a position to talk to these companies until I find other people who can help me discuss the concepts.

I wish you well.

Robert Tulip wrote: World and planet are different. World is the constructed concept of human culture and planet is the real scientific object. Ultimately planet and world must reconcile as the same, but we are a long way from that today. The measure of this distance between world and planet is the scale of human spiritual alienation from nature.

Interesting. There are several ideas worth exploring in that. I trust you enjoyed the Sebastian Junger discussion. Still on my list to read, I fear.

Robert Tulip wrote: What I am trying to do in suggesting a private sector profitable path for algae energy and carbon mining is to formulate a climate response that could be attractive to denialists, suggesting they don’t need to buy into the catastrophic science in order to see investment opportunities in climate stability.

It might work, but there is a significant chance that it would be workable with measures to address the market failure but fail commercially as a standalone proposition. For now, you all and the governments can walk down the same road of exploring feasibilities. But if it comes to time to search for a plan B, do keep market failure in mind as a source of profit.

Robert Tulip wrote: the key thing, as my friend Russ George has argued in relation to his proposals for ocean iron fertilization, is that the benefits so vastly outweigh the risks that the reasons for preventing field trials are actually insane.

I can sort of imagine the Amory Lovins-type skepticism, which endeavors to conjure up nasty threats out of far-fetched scenarios, as a stand-in for the "unknown unknowns." I once argued in a paper that such scenarios should be encouraged by corporations since, as long as they have an incentive to avoid damaging others, they will respond to that by making an earnest effort to foresee such damage.

There was a cogent response to the effect that the legal system actually works against that by holding corporations responsible only for risks they have actually foreseen and assessed, and I think that is a fair point. When it comes to looking into the future, we have a system biased toward blindness.

Robert Tulip wrote:People are saying they want to keep the ocean pristine and non-industrial, despite the massive impacts of industrial fishing, plastics, acid, heat and nutrient, all of which have to be cleaned up by active geoengineering intervention.

I was aghast at the attacks from the left on the Washington State proposal for a revenue neutral carbon tax. They may have sabotaged it - one never really knows what causes these ballot measures to fail. In economics we talk about the problem of the second best, in which holding out for the theoretical optimum can indeed make things much worse by sabotaging the second best approach.

Robert Tulip wrote:Emission reduction will not work as a method to stop climate change. The science on that is settled, despite the crazy lies of the climate lobby.

I think you misrepresent the matter by claiming that it comes down to science and that the climate lobby lies.

Robert Tulip wrote:My point was that the fossil fuel industry has a vested interest in climate denial because changing its business model is perceived as highly risky for shareholder value.

A much more accurate statement of the situation.

Robert Tulip wrote: I don’t think we have crossed irreversible climate thresholds since we can still mine the extra carbon we have added and use it for building infrastructure in a new expanded world economy. But if we let the pole completely melt then the loss of albedo from ice and snow will cause feedback loops making it much harder to get back to an icy pole.

The idea that reducing emissions might stop the north pole from melting is like pushing on a string.

I think I see your point: the CO2 is already too high to keep us from passing the lost albedo threshold, so we need carbon mining or sequestration to get us back below that threshold. This seems reasonable to me, but not sufficient reason to avoid using both approaches.

Robert Tulip wrote:There is a genuine economic argument, which I agree with, that reducing the scope of government is a public good, creating resilience and competitiveness.

Sorry, but you cannot get a plausible set of numbers that will show such a public good to outweigh the cost of trashing the climate through lack of appropriate incentives to address market failure. Conservatives already have made themselves into a caricature of unreason, greed and manipulation in the eyes of young people. If, by the time they are the majority of voters, the damage has become irreversible, then conservatives will have quite literally made themselves into the moral equivalent of the slaveholders of the old South, irredeemable in moral discourse. So they should very much hope that your efforts to find a way to undo the damage actually work.

Albedo loss is already very high. Might be too late already.

Trump exposes Paris Climate Farce: Bjorn Lomborg

In an article published in USA Today on March 29, Danish political scientist Bjorn Lomborg explains why President Trump was morally, politically, scientifically, ecologically and economically correct to issue his executive order eliminating President Obama’s standards for power plants.

Those who disagree can't count. The entire liberal theory of emission reduction as the be-all and end-all of climate response is nothing but a corrupt farce, with zero prospect of stabilising the world climate. Trump and Tillerson offer far better prospects of delivering climate results, paradoxically despite their withering scepticism about climate science.

Lomborg explains that accepting the scientific climate consensus does not justify the U.S. promise to cut CO2 emissions. I really wish that more people had the logical smarts to grasp this simple numerical argument. Unfortunately, the climate lobby believes its own fantasies, and is incapable of serious dialogue outside its corrupted assumptions.

Obama’s Clean Power Plan, fully enacted, would have achieved a third of the U.S. promises under the Paris Agreement. Lomborg’s peer reviewed research using United Nations climate change models found the CPP would have reduced temperature rises by 0.023° Fahrenheit over the 83 years to 2100 AD. Read it and weep. Converting to the Celsius target of 1.5°, that means all the expense and effort of the CPP would have delivered about 0.01° C, basically nothing. This is stupid, a waste of time and effort and money, and worse, a crazy diversion from urgently needed climate security priorities.

The Paris treaty is not the ultimate deal to fix climate change. It is a corrupt device to enable rent-seeking by the climate bandwagon. As Lomborg says, “In truth, Trump’s action just exposes what we have known for a while: The Paris Agreement is not the way to solve global warming. The U.N. itself has estimated that even if every country lived up to every single promised carbon cut between 2016 and 2030, emissions would be cut by 1% of what is needed to keep temperature rises below 2° C.”

All the Paris commitments, even though they are politically and economically impossible, can only reduce temperature rises by a trivial 1% of what would otherwise occur, which might be four or six degrees Celsius. The UN ideas of decarbonising the economy and emission reduction are therefore utterly irrelevant to any real solution to climate stability, and should be junked as obsolete and dangerous.

For more detail on Lomborg's analysis of the tragic climate facts, read http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1 ... 12295/full In summary, "current climate policy promises will do little to stabilize the climate and their impact will be undetectable for many decades."

Poor nations only signed at Paris to get cash. Taxpayers from wealthy nations won’t pay, and that will be the end of the Paris climance.
The corrupt UN system is just rehashing the failed Kyoto Protocol with its corrupt diversion of effort away from effective solutions to climate change. I hope Nikki Haley gets a chance to focus on this problem. Haley rightly told the Senate Committee in January “the climate change issue should always be on the table, but we don’t want the Paris agreement to interfere with our economy.”

Solar and wind technology is useless at the only thing needed for climate repair, namely removing carbon from the air. Solar and wind crowd out R&D by soaking up hundreds of billions in annual subsidies.

Lomborg claims the annual global price tag of all the Paris promises could be two trillion dollars – that is twelve zeros — through slower growth from higher energy costs. The unstated Paris theory is that putting sand in the gears of the world economy will cause a grinding halt to activity, saving the world by inducing mass poverty. Do you really think Trump would support that? The US really dodged a climate bullet by keeping Clinton out.

Instead, climate policy should focus on energy research and development. It is unfortunate that the liberal left claims ownership of climate policy, since the stupidity of the left polarises the debate and makes it harder for carbon mining to be a keystone for Trump’s turn to infrastructure as a growth strategy.

Robert Tulip wrote:Trump and Tillerson offer far better prospects of delivering climate results, paradoxically despite their withering scepticism about climate science.

This is your own escape from logic, one that you'd be better off admitting to. What you've said is equivalent to choosing the politicians who want to build more nuclear weapons as the best path to disarmament. If Trump and Tillerson think climate change is bunk, they're not going move toward any means of addressing warming. Why would they?

Solar and wind technology is useless at the only thing needed for climate repair, namely removing carbon from the air. Solar and wind crowd out R&D by soaking up hundreds of billions in annual subsidies.

No one ever said that solar and wind need be seen as "the only thing needed for climate repair." Both technologies happen to be means that are currently practical and rapidly expanding. In some areas and countries, they are making a huge difference. To move toward carbon neutrality will take several different technologies. You appear to offer a carbon-mining panacea. While the technology, unproven though it is, should be pursued, to screen out all other technologies suggests an agenda of a different sort. There is simply no reason to not embrace solar/wind. Yes, both have drawbacks, even environmentally, but a totally benign, cost-free source of energy is nowhere in sight. Advocates might claim carbon-mining will provide such a source, but with the technology at such an early stage, that is just a guess.

Instead, climate policy should focus on energy research and development. It is unfortunate that the liberal left claims ownership of climate policy, since the stupidity of the left polarises the debate and makes it harder for carbon mining to be a keystone for Trump’s turn to infrastructure as a growth strategy.

I would think that R & D should heavily invest in nuclear fusion as well. This is a goal Trump could embrace, but he hasn't had the incentive. Where he'd find incentive to do what you want him to is extremely unclear.

DWill wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:Trump and Tillerson offer far better prospects of delivering climate results, paradoxically despite their withering scepticism about climate science.

This is your own escape from logic, one that you'd be better off admitting to.

I appreciate why you and the entire climate lobby consider my view to be wrong, but in agreeing with the climate pariah Lomborg on his proposed paradigm shift in climate science, I can only fall back on Einstein’s comment in defence of relativity against the hundred scientists, which is to study the numbers. When a paradigm shifts, the emotional commitment to the old way of thinking prevents adherents from studying the numbers and the theory of change. The scientific paradigm shift in climate science from emission reduction to carbon mining is based on the premise that if we mine twice as much carbon as we emit then we can save the fossil fuel industry. That is something that should be very attractive to the Trump administration. But people have not even studied or discussed it as a real prospect, precisely because it destroys the emission reduction paradigm beloved by the climate lobby.

DWill wrote:What you've said is equivalent to choosing the politicians who want to build more nuclear weapons as the best path to disarmament.

No, the equivalence is to Trump seeing nuclear weapons as the basis of peace and stability and security through strength. Disarmament is not an end in itself, whereas peace and stability and security are ends. And disarmament is not a means to the end of peace, despite the communist advocacy of that piece of illogic. Weakness leads to war. The good comparison here is how liberal politics confuses emission reduction and climate stability, very similar to how they also confuse nuclear disarmament and world peace. Liberals have convinced themselves of their own delusional moral propaganda and become incapable of discussing facts.

DWill wrote:If Trump and Tillerson think climate change is bunk, they're not going move toward any means of addressing warming. Why would they?

They don’t have to. It is not up to governments. What is needed is private investment in research and development. Governments should steer not row, so should set a technology-neutral regulatory framework for business investment. My view is that recycling carbon emissions from coal powered energy using ocean based algae factories is going to be the only economic thing that will save the coal industry.

DWill wrote:

Solar and wind technology is useless at the only thing needed for climate repair, namely removing carbon from the air. Solar and wind crowd out R&D by soaking up hundreds of billions in annual subsidies.

No one ever said that solar and wind need be seen as "the only thing needed for climate repair."

You have misread my statement. I said “at” not “as”. My point was that solar and wind do nothing to repair the climate. So they could hardly be the only things working to repair the climate. To do that we need carbon mining.

DWill wrote:Both technologies happen to be means that are currently practical and rapidly expanding. In some areas and countries, they are making a huge difference.

And that is a great thing, a source of clean innovative energy, as long as it does not get politicised through subsidy. I understand that solar has reached the takeoff point where it is economic without subsidy. That Moore’s Law result is a superb thing, but we should not pretend that solar or wind have any prospect of helping stop climate change, given the numbers I have quoted from Lomborg. You may not be familiar with the fiasco in the state of South Australia, where wind subsidies have destroyed energy security and are driving investment away. It is disgusting.

DWill wrote:To move toward carbon neutrality will take several different technologies. You appear to offer a carbon-mining panacea.

As I said, investment and regulation should proceed on a level playing field. I am an advocate for my own inventions, which is perfectly fair enough. I only criticise other technologies when they make false claims, such as the false idea that a shift to solar and wind power can help with climate stability this century. Over the longer term they are essential, but we have things butt-about, pushing on a string by pretending wind and solar are the main game to address warming. They are not, as the numbers from Lomborg prove.

DWill wrote:While the technology, unproven though it is, should be pursued, to screen out all other technologies suggests an agenda of a different sort.

I am very glad and appreciative DWill that you say algae technology should be pursued, since (to only mildly exaggerate) that is the opposite of the mad fatwa issued by the United Nations, who seem to class all “marine geoengineering” as a devilish denialist plot, and are actively dissuading investment through their corrupt focus on wind and solar alone. I am looking forward to Ambassador Haley draining that swamp.

DWill wrote:There is simply no reason to not embrace solar/wind.

”Embrace” is such a romantic word. The only reason that our embrace should be less intense is that there are things we want to do (eg stop global warming) which other commercial technologies may be able to do better than solar and wind.

DWill wrote:Yes, both have drawbacks, even environmentally, but a totally benign, cost-free source of energy is nowhere in sight. Advocates might claim carbon-mining will provide such a source, but with the technology at such an early stage, that is just a guess.

Sure, it is just a guess. Guesses can be tested. That is all I am suggesting. Industrial algae production is the best way to save biodiversity, and also save the coal industry.

DWill wrote:

Instead, climate policy should focus on energy research and development. It is unfortunate that the liberal left claims ownership of climate policy, since the stupidity of the left polarises the debate and makes it harder for carbon mining to be a keystone for Trump’s turn to infrastructure as a growth strategy.

I would think that R & D should heavily invest in nuclear fusion as well. This is a goal Trump could embrace, but he hasn't had the incentive. Where he'd find incentive to do what you want him to is extremely unclear.

The incentive for President Trump to support carbon mining is in its capacity to save the coal industry. Building infrastructure from plastic made from recycled carbon emissions will help to make America great again.

DWill wrote: If Trump and Tillerson think climate change is bunk, they're not going move toward any means of addressing warming. Why would they?

Tillerson quite clearly thinks climate change is man-made. The apparent concession by Pruitt that the finding of harm would win in court if he challenged it means that climate change now has U.S. government acceptance (applying the term "think" to Trump is an exercise in futility). The real question becomes how involved the government will be in keeping the U.S. competitive at clean energy technology.

DWill wrote:

Solar and wind technology is useless at the only thing needed for climate repair, namely removing carbon from the air. Solar and wind crowd out R&D by soaking up hundreds of billions in annual subsidies.

To move toward carbon neutrality will take several different technologies.

Robert is technically correct that sequestration or carbon mining will be needed to roll back the unsafe levels of carbon already present. A proper incentive based on externalities would, of course, make it much more likely that such a process would be economical. Since such incentives are easily foreseeable, we will not be held back by the reluctance of free-market extremists like Robert to include them in the calculations.

DWill wrote:I would think that R & D should heavily invest in nuclear fusion as well. This is a goal Trump could embrace, but he hasn't had the incentive.

It appears the French are the only ones with sufficient trust in big, top-down governmental solutions to pursue fusion. So far their trust in fission has been amply rewarded. Maybe they will score big again.

Robert Tulip wrote: You may not be familiar with the fiasco in the state of South Australia, where wind subsidies have destroyed energy security and are driving investment away. It is disgusting.

My curiousity is piqued. If only because this does not sound plausible. More wind power seems unlikely to destroy energy security, and the investment it might drive away seems likely to be competing sources of energy, which is more or less the point.

Robert Tulip wrote:As I said, investment and regulation should proceed on a level playing field.

Well, no, actually. Investment with a large uncompensated benefit, or with a large unbilled cost, should have the playing field tilted to make up for these.

Robert Tulip wrote:

DWill wrote:While the technology, unproven though it is, should be pursued, to screen out all other technologies suggests an agenda of a different sort.

I only criticise other technologies when they make false claims, such as the false idea that a shift to solar and wind power can help with climate stability this century. Over the longer term they are essential,

I have to say it looks like DWill made the more telling point here. You set up some kind of straw man about the need to reduce CO2, which is fair enough on its own, to then argue that renewables are making false claims.

An unnecessarily conflictual approach, whether by environmental alarmists or by advocates of a CO2 reduction approach, will always undermine credibility. Given your position attempting to persuade major power brokers to spend billions and to steer trillions, I would think you would be very sensitive to the need for that credibility. The fact that you are not suggests to me that the ones you see yourself persuading are the free-market extremists, like the Koch brothers, who are not trusted, for good reason, by the rest of us.

Robert Tulip wrote:I am very glad and appreciative DWill that you say algae technology should be pursued, since (to only mildly exaggerate) that is the opposite of the mad fatwa issued by the United Nations, who seem to class all “marine geoengineering” as a devilish denialist plot, and are actively dissuading investment through their corrupt focus on wind and solar alone.

That's an interesting story, but difficult for us outsiders to assess. In my experience the "environmental lobby" is a little paranoid about any new technology and any acceptance of large-scale, high-affluence solutions. They seem convinced that we should all live like the people of the Victorian age.

On the other hand, their warnings have proved prescient often enough that I have begun to assume that all large-scale, high-affluence solutions will impose major environmental costs, and it is important to anticipate these if we are going to live sustainably affluent lives. So, until I know the nature of the environmental downsides of carbon-mining, and what kinds of regulations and modifications are needed to manage these, it is pretty difficult for me to assess the "fatwa".

Harry Marks wrote:Tillerson quite clearly thinks climate change is man-made.

Tillerson’s former role as ExxonMobil CEO meant he had to have a practical approach to real problems. While EM is notorious for its funding of denialists, I expect their thinking is driven by the need not to follow Kodak into oblivion. Enduring value means working with new technology instead of against it.

Finding ways that fossil fuels can be compatible with CO2 removal is the only thing that will protect shareholder value and profit for oil, coal and gas.

We should think of denialism as a placeholder ideology, an attitude that just rejects the renewable attack on the old economy, not based on facts but based on vested motives. Denialists clutch at the simplest popular traction to protect their investment value, and that political traction has come from denial of reality and distrust of the policy prescriptions of liberals. But such denial is not sustainable, as Tillerson’s evolving views reflect.

Harry Marks wrote:(applying the term "think" to Trump is an exercise in futility).

Trump operates at a mythic level, engaging with language that delivers base political support. So his concept of cause and effect operates within a political rather than a scientific framework. That is still thinking, even if its consequences are dangerous.

Harry Marks wrote: The real question becomes how involved the government will be in keeping the U.S. competitive at clean energy technology.

Whilever clean energy uses the language of decarbonisation and emission reduction, it remains on a collision path with the fossil industry. My suggestion is to sidestep that debate by focus on how fossil fuels can become sustainable by using their carbon pollution as a major infrastructure and energy resource, by treating the oceans as the new frontier for pioneers and inventors through industrial algae mining.

Once Moore’s Law kicks in to make carbon mining profitable, coal will be back in a big way.

The involvement of government should not be to subsidise operations but to subsidise research and development. Subsidising the operation of private companies is socialism, and is a path to stagnation, tyranny and corruption.

It is very wrong to consider the whole of neoliberal capitalist economics to be extreme, from Smith, Friedmann and Hayek. Their ideas provide the market dynamism that has built modern wealth and prosperity and innovation.

Harry Marks wrote: Robert is technically correct that sequestration or carbon mining will be needed to roll back the unsafe levels of carbon already present.

”Technically correct” is one of those faint praise weasel compliments, delivered grudgingly from the attitude of the corrupt UN which sees emission reduction as the holy grail. ‘Technically correct’ means ‘actually correct’ since emission reduction can’t work to deliver climate stability.

The last time we had 400 ppm CO2 was in the Pliocene three million years ago when the sea level was thirty feet higher. It is a simple obvious matter of numbers that we have created the driver to lift sea level by thirty feet, and we have to remove that physical forcing or the world will flood, possibly in a few centuries, possibly tomorrow with a dramatic ice sheet collapse.

Reducing emissions does not remove the driver of climate change but only slows the pace at which it worsens.

Harry Marks wrote: A proper incentive based on externalities would, of course, make it much more likely that such a process would be economical. Since such incentives are easily foreseeable, we will not be held back by the reluctance of free-market extremists like Robert to include them in the calculations.

Very funny Harry, I am not an extremist. The real extremists in this space are the Canute Chavistoids of the misnamed UN Convention on Biological Diversity who think ideology can defeat markets.

Your phrase “incentive based on externalities” looks like economese for sustainable profit. Incentives are not “based on” externalities but should be regulated by government to take all externalities into account, which are two different things.

The proper role of government is to steer not row, to set regulatory policy with a level playing field without technological bias, and to invest in de-risking innovation within a strategic policy framework focussed on security and stability and prosperity. (I will come back to your latest comment about the meaning of level playing field, which has to be set according to rules of the game).

Only socialists think it is extreme to oppose the model of state owned enterprises, even though SOEs are a recipe for corruption and poverty. That socialist policy is the inevitable path of subsidising unprofitable technology.

At the moment, the externalities of fossil industry are socialised by treating the air as an open sewer. That externality can be removed by carbon mining.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Harry Marks wrote:Tillerson quite clearly thinks climate change is man-made.

Tillerson’s former role as ExxonMobil CEO meant he had to have a practical approach to real problems.... Enduring value means working with new technology instead of against it....Finding ways that fossil fuels can be compatible with CO2 removal is the only thing that will protect shareholder value and profit for oil, coal and gas.

There is no reason the debate needs to happen at a level of "this technology" vs. "that technology." Markets are "technology neutral" and just want to deliver value so as to get paid for it.

I was not contradicting the evidence about E-M funding denialism, but rather observing that at the level of thinking, Tillerson understands reality.

Robert Tulip wrote:We should think of denialism as a placeholder ideology, an attitude that just rejects the renewable attack on the old economy, not based on facts but based on vested motives. Denialists clutch at the simplest popular traction to protect their investment value, and that political traction has come from denial of reality and distrust of the policy prescriptions of liberals. But such denial is not sustainable, as Tillerson’s evolving views reflect.

Denial is not just unsustainable, it is toxic. It attacks the nervous system of society, degrading the ability to gather information and respond appropriately to it. The best thing to be said for denial is that it sometimes protects against total shutdown, but that only applies when the nervous system is already overwhelmed.

Robert Tulip wrote:My suggestion is to sidestep that debate by focus on how fossil fuels can become sustainable by using their carbon pollution as a major infrastructure and energy resource, by treating the oceans as the new frontier for pioneers and inventors through industrial algae mining.

Sounds fine, but anyone using garbage as a resource, like recyclers, will be more likely to prosper if the cost savings from not having to haul the garbage to a landfill becomes a financial input to their recycling process. This is the implication of a Pigovian response to externalities.

Robert Tulip wrote:Once Moore’s Law kicks in to make carbon mining profitable, coal will be back in a big way.

A sort of generalized Moore's Law (the original was about density of switches doubling) would suggest that learning curves in big new technologies are steep for a long time. I think it is fairly likely that this is true for oceanic "farming" of all types, where we do not have the millennia of experience that land-based farming has, and one learning contributes to finding more technical fixes. I frankly do not care one way or another about whether coal comes back, and I find it curious that you do.

Robert Tulip wrote:The involvement of government should not be to subsidise operations but to subsidise research and development.

There is a strong public goods problem with R&D, leading to market failure. Government has a role to play. That does not negate the role government has to play in addressing externalities.

Robert Tulip wrote: Subsidising the operation of private companies is socialism, and is a path to stagnation, tyranny and corruption.

It doesn't matter what label you put on it or what path you discern. Public education was a really good idea, and clearly the foundation of modern society and the essential infrastructure of market performance. Whether it was also socialism is quite irrelevant to its rationale and its performance.

Robert Tulip wrote:It is very wrong to consider the whole of neoliberal capitalist economics to be extreme, from Smith, Friedmann and Hayek.

Milton Friedman was a strong advocate of addressing externalities with incentives. While he also recognized the dangers of government involvement, he could see when those were secondary issues. Adam Smith's insights came before the recognition of externalities (though I am told he has some discussion that essentially responds to the issue). Alfred Marshall, who created the Supply and Demand analysis on which modern economics is based, pointed out the problem of externalities, and his student, Arthur Pigou, recognized that a tax or subsidy could internalize the externality and lead to appropriate behavior by private producers and consumers. Hayek was an extremist, and belongs in the category of political economists, analyzing political processes rather than economic processes.

Robert Tulip wrote:Their ideas provide the market dynamism that has built modern wealth and prosperity and innovation.

In my view none of Hayek's ideas has proved to be accurate or insightful. In particular, every major intervention by liberal democratic governments has provided for improvement in the economy, even when major mistakes were involved (such as with nationalization of heavy industries). Much more helpful insights have come from analysis of government failure by James Buchanan and company, and of the anti-competitive effects of government interventions by Friedman.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Harry Marks wrote: Robert is technically correct that sequestration or carbon mining will be needed to roll back the unsafe levels of carbon already present.

”Technically correct” is one of those faint praise weasel compliments, delivered grudgingly from the attitude of the corrupt UN which sees emission reduction as the holy grail. ‘Technically correct’ means ‘actually correct’ since emission reduction can’t work to deliver climate stability.

The backhanded use of "technically correct" was a response to your rhetoric around this point, which mistakenly concludes that an approach which cannot solve the problem is not to be promoted even though it obviously can help a ton to keep the problem from getting even worse.

Robert Tulip wrote:Reducing emissions does not remove the driver of climate change but only slows the pace at which it worsens.

Well, I expect Rex Tillerson is also very clear that slowing the slide is of value. Reversing it is even better, but reversing it takes time, and we don't have a lot.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Harry Marks wrote: A proper incentive based on externalities would, of course, make it much more likely that such a process would be economical. Since such incentives are easily foreseeable, we will not be held back by the reluctance of free-market extremists like Robert to include them in the calculations.

Very funny Harry, I am not an extremist. The real extremists in this space are the Canute Chavistoids of the misnamed UN Convention on Biological Diversity who think ideology can defeat markets.

In my view you are an extremist. Externalities are a market failure, demonstrably, and when government addresses them (as for example with the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act in the U.S.) it creates value. Insisting that government cannot improve the situation because gummint is a nefarious force is free market extremism.

Robert Tulip wrote:Your phrase “incentive based on externalities” looks like economese for sustainable profit. Incentives are not “based on” externalities but should be regulated by government to take all externalities into account, which are two different things.

I don't see the difference. "Regulated by government to take all externalities into account" looks to me like being more detailed and complete about "incentive based on externalities."

Robert Tulip wrote: That socialist policy {SOEs} is the inevitable path of subsidising unprofitable technology.

Not really. Agriculture is subsidized in nearly every industrialized country. It's basis in the private sector is still very secure. Education is a state-owned enterprise, and competes effectively with private education in places where they co-exist. The Interstate Highway system was governmental, and it sustains an industry with a strong private basis.