Hey, welcome to the forum and thanks for posting this! (And for Kelly’s interview on Volts—it seems complementary to this report).
Some observations and questions -
. There is an interesting parallel between the “portfolio approach” discussed in the interview (as to the role of SRM) and Johannes Ackva’s line of thought re: “hedges” in his interview on Volts.
. It seems to me that the report’s audience / approach is to advocate for increased federal funding of very specific science program areas.
What roles do you see, if any, for private philanthropy to fill gaps until federal funding is available?
Have you identified any areas in the Appendix’s recommendations that are more or less “shovel ready”? Any labs/PIs already ready?
If you had to prioritize, which areas would you fund first?
Concretely, how do you think about funding your recommendations vs. additional funding for mitigation (as measured by reduced climate damages)? “2x more effective up to a point and then stops?”, “8x in an RCP3.4 world, 1x in RCP1.9″? something else? Or do you evaluate your recommendations differently?
Thanks!
Coming back to this—I made a transcript of this conversation for folks who’d like to read it / prefer text—https://ops101.org/archives/000353.html
I found this conversation pretty enlightening - +1 to the takeaways above; many of them are applicable to any problem where technical solutions need to both be developed and deployed.
It’s pretty important to remember the marginal utility of dollars is not constant (contrast GiveWell’s health interventions); that damage can be highly non-linear (again contrast health interventions); and that small but smart philanthropy can have outside impacts by considering time/intervening early (contrast patient philanthropy).