Thread by @Pinboard

Our response to covid has a lot of bad implications for the fight against climate change, a far tougher collective action problem. Among the worst is the exposure of "trust the science" as a kind of secular faith, not a genuine defense of scientific thinking. This took many forms

There was a failure to understand time-critical decision making under uncertainty, a totemistic belief in peer-reviewed publication as the only fount of truth, an ongoing campaign of moralizing outrage against dissenting positions and thinkers who were later vindicated

Despite heroic efforts, many countries seemed incapable of learning from one another, and there was no ability to coordinate an adequate international response. Difficult concepts and dilemmas were never (in the US, at least) communicated in a way the public could understand

I find it extremely surprising that this experience does not appear to have colored people's beliefs on the correct policy response to climate change, or our chances of success on that front. This was a dress rehearsal that failed in every imaginable dimension

Climate science is far more complex than virology, the time scales are too long, the field is by necessity full of guesswork, and the only effective interventions have to be transnational. Our political system and our journalists are not up to the task of getting this right

Step one of somehow fixing this has to be communicating the core idea of science—that you repeatedly change your mind based on evidence (or lack of evidence!), that you do this rigorously, and that finding out you were wrong about something is a sign that you're winning

Realistically, though, it's time to start thinking harder about climate mitigation and be more honest in communicating the inevitability of what is coming. Say goodbye to Miami and hello to Canadian beach vacations. Maybe fund some weird science projects at large scale.

Space mirror, ocean seeding, reforestation, mass electrification, setting off a volcano or two—we should go to town. Humanity can at least go out with a bang, and we have a much better shot at solutions that involve building things than ones that require restraining ourselves

Probably a good idea to leave a note on the Moon explaining what we tried, unless we're have some plan to use that as planetary sunscreen