[database_lost]

Honest question: Shouldn't we hedge our bets at this point and also start investing heavily in infrastructure that helps mitigate the worst of the effects? (Flood management, water desalination, cloud seeding, etc.) I feel the race to zero emissions is a trendy topic now in media, but perhaps we are past the "we can still stop bad things from happening" point.

[yongjik]

Rule #1 when you find yourself in a hole: stop digging. Sure, there are other things you could/should do as well, but "to stop digging" should be your #1 priority.

Or, put another way, we're waaaay past "we can stop every bad thing from happening" point, but we're still in the "we can stop even more bad things from happening" range, and we won't be out of that range anytime soon - at least I hope so, I don't want to imagine what it would be like "Everything that can go wrong has already gone wrong so there's no point worrying any more."

[m4x]

It's not quite that simple. It will take decades for us to stop emitting GHGs and destroying the environment. The inertia is too high even in Western nations, and that ignores the problems in China and India.

"stop digging" should be our primary priority, but not at the expense of other solutions which can also be pursued in parallel.

[wsc981]

> Shouldn't we hedge our bets at this point and also start investing heavily in infrastructure that helps mitigate the worst of the effects?

Should have been from the start. There are so many climate change variables outside of human control (sunspots, volcanic eruptions, etc...) that it's better to just be prepared.

[salynchnew]

Mitigation is going to happen no matter what. All of the things you mentioned are already happening as temporary stopgap measures.

The issue is that investing in decarbonization, etc., is both a superior long-term strategy AND it makes all of the mitigation strategies you mention more effective bc the primary effects are not as bad.

[wonderwonder]

This seems to make sense. I very much doubt the US, Russia, China and a large number of emerging economies are going to make large enough changes to have an impact and they are the main drivers. Seems to make sense to just assume at this point that its coming while working to try and stop it.

[coder-3]

I'm no fan of the Chinese government but from what I'm gleaning online, they seem to be leading the charge with adoption of green technologies and are taking climate change relatively seriously.

[coder-3]

Yeah, probably. But we need to be careful about higher order effects of those interventions. Climates and ecosystems are complex systems, thus, perturbations/linear solutions usually cause unexpected behaviour.

Things like desalination where we aren't disturbing the system is fine. Cloud seeding on the other hand I wouldn't be so comfortable with widespread adoption.

[UncleOxidant]

Even some geoengineering like shooting a lot of reflective particulates high into the upper atmosphere - we need to start thinking pretty seriously about how to do this. It won't be without side effects, but the current side effects of continuing to pump CO2 into the atmosphere without restraint are going to force us to consider things like this.

[Sharlin]

Mitigation and adaptation are big topics within the field, and yes, we're going to need a shitload of both even in the best case scenario. Unfortunately, the hundreds of millions of people who are worst affected by climate change are also in the worst position to do anything to improve their situation.

[plutonorm]

Yup, smart money will move in this direction. It’s far too late to try to work against the titanic forces that are in motion. Large scale climate engineering is probably going to be needed.