[probinso]

tech industry always serves to first benefit the biggest spenders, and consequently the greatest polluters. there have been efforts to quickly move from big spenders to the general public, but most carry with them The individualistic perspective that tech breeds.

as an example, if you really want to do good by the environment, it is significantly lower cost and significantly better for the environment to set up an efficient bus system and make all busing free for major cities, but the tech response has been individualized electric cars.

things like US military not having to report how much they use in fossil fuels, mean that any measurements we get are always going to be from our observed effects, rather than from our known outputs.

if you don't know where pollutants are coming from, then the likelihood you'll be able to change anything is very low. also if you actually don't know how waste is being treated, you have no measurement of cost. The reason why we have attached pull tabs on the tops of cans, is that soda companies used to be charged for litter associated with their product. that innovation significantly reduced litter, but many of those restrictions and monitors have been lifted. there's no incentive for a company to produce recyclable goods. we also can observe that recycling as has been taught to behave throughout the United States is simply not the case. there is effectively no plastics recycling industry, it has been a sham for decades.

societies will have to start to make intentional economic decisions towards usafrican principles and communally shared resources, rather than planned obsolescence to make a dent. this is probably the most important social change that could be made for the environment that could be made.

Even with all of that most metrics look at atmospheric effects, which is very important for understanding temperature. there is, however, a deep need for more studying of topsoil and deep ocean surveys.

solutions to climate change problems have to be developed with an ecological mindset, and will require significant social change. this is not about individual responsibility. the top polluters vastly outweigh the combined bottom polluters in waste.

there are a lot of people who are trying to solve this problem with data, but That's not a new strategy. many of the national Labs have climate change models. Lawrence Livermore national Labs does fantastic research with great data from a United States perspective, and have been for 30 years. I posit that the problem is not enough great minds on data.