I wrote the 80,000 Hours problem profile on climate change. Thank you so much for this feedback! I’m genuinely really grateful to see such engagement with the things I write—and criticism is always a welcome contribution to making sure that I’m saying the right things.
Just to be clear, when I said “we think it’s potentially harmful to do work that could advance solar geoengineering”, I meant that (with a fair degree of uncertainty), it could be harmful to do work that advances the technology (which I think you agree with) not that all research around the topic seems bad! It definitely seems plausible that some research on the topic might be good—but I was trying to recommend the very best things to do to mitigate climate change. My reviewers pretty much all agreed that, partly as a result of potential harmful effects, it doesn’t seem like SRM research would be one of those very best things, and so suggested that we stop recommending working in the area. In large part I’m deferring to this consensus among the reviewers on this.
Hi Gideon,
I wrote the 80,000 Hours problem profile on climate change. Thank you so much for this feedback! I’m genuinely really grateful to see such engagement with the things I write—and criticism is always a welcome contribution to making sure that I’m saying the right things.
Just to be clear, when I said “we think it’s potentially harmful to do work that could advance solar geoengineering”, I meant that (with a fair degree of uncertainty), it could be harmful to do work that advances the technology (which I think you agree with) not that all research around the topic seems bad! It definitely seems plausible that some research on the topic might be good—but I was trying to recommend the very best things to do to mitigate climate change. My reviewers pretty much all agreed that, partly as a result of potential harmful effects, it doesn’t seem like SRM research would be one of those very best things, and so suggested that we stop recommending working in the area. In large part I’m deferring to this consensus among the reviewers on this.
Hope that helps!
Benjamin