RE: ECO: Saying Nay to the Doomsayers

From: Clinton Alexander (clinton@clintonalexander.com)
Date: Thu Jul 25 2002 - 16:22:44 MDT


You two speak as if there is nothing that can be done. Isn't global
warming caused by greenhouse gases?
http://www.epa.gov/globalwarming/emissions/index.html Haven't you heard
about the 'Microbes that can scrub greenhouse gases from the air ..."?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20020723/sc_nm/science
_genome_dc_1

Concerning business opportunities: There are only two ways to make
money. The first way is to solve problems and the second way is to
invest in people that solve problems.

Clinton

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-extropians@extropy.org [mailto:owner-extropians@extropy.org]
On Behalf Of Anders Sandberg
Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2002 11:21 PM
To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: Re: ECO: Saying Nay to the Doomsayers

On Tue, Jul 23, 2002 at 02:11:40PM -0600, Doctor Logic wrote:
>
> [quote from: Mike on 2002-07-22 at 14:31:24]
> As resources get scarcer, their market value rises, thus the market
> incentivises conservation technologies and techniques. The market will

> signal the appropriate amount of capital to direct at such solutions
> as they become economically feasible. Pushing fiat money at
> non-problems when they are not cost effective wastes more resources
> than they save.
>
>
> When high sea levels put most coastal cities under water, are we
> suddenly going to stop burning fossil fuels? Of course not. There's
> no constituency for this, and no vendor who will provide a fix for
> global warming.
>
> If sea levels rise, we'll throw up our hands and say, "Darn!". We'll
> blame the politicians that stood by and did nothing, but there's no
> one who will be able to sell us a global warming antidote that we will

> realistically pay for.

Aha! Business opportunity! I think that if global warming gets bad I
will buy up all available supergun mortars and large amounts of
fine-grained reflective dust. According to the calculations in Martyn
Fogg's _Terraforming_ it seems quite doable to reduce solar incidence
this way to ameliorate the problem (sure, I would like to use a solar
shade at L1, but it is not as cost-effective). Then I would convince
rich, low-lying countries like Denmark and the Netherlands to pay for
the project.

Seriously, I think you have a point about supply-demand not solving
second order interactions. If activity A causes effect B which raises
costs for some people then there won't be an automatic negative feedback
causing A to lessen or people to develop new tech to do A better; in
fact people might go for fixing B - which in some cases might be a
better idea! Cars are actually a quite good idea, so the solution to
exhausts isn't to remove the cars but to build non-polluting cars. Takes
time and is not always feasible, of course.

> So a free market approach doesn't prevent global warming. It raises
> the rent/property values in areas that are unaffected by global
> warming. It makes alternative civil engineering practices possible by

> raising the price of conventional practices.

As others have pointed out, the problem is that under the current
non-free market handling of the atmosphere you can pollute for free as
long as you are friends with the local kleptocrat.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y


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