{"id":29,"date":"2009-12-16T13:46:56","date_gmt":"2009-12-16T02:46:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tstarling.com\/blog\/?p=29"},"modified":"2010-06-17T12:10:09","modified_gmt":"2010-06-17T01:10:09","slug":"response-about-climate-change-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tstarling.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/response-about-climate-change-action\/","title":{"rendered":"Response to mailing list posts about climate change action"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[Update: Aryeh has asked me to change instances of his well-known full name to his Wikipedia handle &#8220;Simetrical&#8221;, to reduce the impact on Google.]<\/p>\n<p>Simetrical has taken up an opposing position to my foundation-l post, which was copied to this blog under the title <a href=\"https:\/\/tstarling.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/should-wikimedia-buy-recs\/\">Should Wikimedia buy RECs<\/a>. In the interests of avoiding offence to denizens of foundation-l, I am attempting to move that rather heated debate to here.<\/p>\n<p>Simetrical attacks my views on multiple fronts, arguing (in my own words):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>That Wikimedia should not spend money on causes unrelated to its mission;<\/li>\n<li>That Wikimedia has no moral responsibility to take action on climate change, since it does not directly or voluntarily contribute to it;<\/li>\n<li>That anthropogenic global warming (AGW) won&#8217;t have any significant effects for decades yet;<\/li>\n<li>That AGW won&#8217;t directly cause human deaths, rather mere economic harm;<\/li>\n<li>That future research may well make any present efforts redundant and, in hindsight, wasteful;<\/li>\n<li>That action now may prove to be pointless since the impact of AGW may be catastrophic whatever we do;<\/li>\n<li>That climate scientists do not understand the economics of mitigation and that serious economists, such as those behind the so-called <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Copenhagen_Consensus\">Copenhagen Consensus<\/a>, advocate alternative technologies such as <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Solar_radiation_management\">albedo modification<\/a> over mainstream approaches such as abatement and reforestation.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Quite a barrage. I&#8217;ve been taking these on point-by-point. Here are the archive links where you can read the full text of this debate:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/lists.wikimedia.org\/pipermail\/foundation-l\/2009-December\/056407.html\">Tim #1<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/lists.wikimedia.org\/pipermail\/foundation-l\/2009-December\/056408.html\">Simetrical #1<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/lists.wikimedia.org\/pipermail\/foundation-l\/2009-December\/056409.html\">Tim #2<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/lists.wikimedia.org\/pipermail\/foundation-l\/2009-December\/056415.html\">Simetrical #2<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/lists.wikimedia.org\/pipermail\/foundation-l\/2009-December\/056419.html\">Tim #3<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/lists.wikimedia.org\/pipermail\/foundation-l\/2009-December\/056448.html\">Simetrical #3<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I&#8217;ll post my latest response as a comment below. Let&#8217;s see if I can coax WordPress into presenting a comment interface that&#8217;s usable for this purpose.<\/p>\n<div id=\"_mcePaste\" style=\"overflow: hidden; position: absolute; left: -10000px; top: 0px; width: 1px; height: 1px;\">\n<h2><a title=\"Permanent Link to Should Wikimedia buy RECs?\" rel=\"bookmark\" href=\"..\/2009\/12\/should-wikimedia-buy-recs\/\">Should Wikimedia buy RECs?<\/a><\/h2>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[Update: Aryeh has asked me to change instances of his well-known full name to his Wikipedia handle &#8220;Simetrical&#8221;, to reduce the impact on Google.] Simetrical has taken up an opposing position to my foundation-l post, which was copied to this blog under the title Should Wikimedia buy RECs. In the interests of avoiding offence to &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/tstarling.com\/blog\/2009\/12\/response-about-climate-change-action\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading &lsquo;Response to mailing list posts about climate change action&rsquo; &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tstarling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tstarling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tstarling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tstarling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tstarling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/tstarling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39,"href":"https:\/\/tstarling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29\/revisions\/39"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tstarling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tstarling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tstarling.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}