5fish
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The 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP26, is the 26th United Nations Climate Change conference. It is being held in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom....
I know the conference is good because people get together and hopefully something good comes from it but this one is a joke. We have lost the fight against climate change the earth going to warmer past 2.5 centigrade by century end. The Greenland ice sheet will have melted away and no one has mention what the state of the Antarctica ice sheet will be at century end. If we get to net zero or carbon neutral by century end the world will have three to five hundred years of a dystopian world only few can imagine. We Boomers have hose our grand children and many generation that come after too. We Boomers knew in 1970's climate change was coming even had accurate estimates that are coming true today and did nothing for profits and denied its existence to the world.
Is there hope in Game Theory can save us?
www.theguardian.com
snip...
Game theory is the mathematical study of conflict and cooperation between actors or groups: animals, people, businesses, countries or even computer algorithms. It became a formal topic of study in the 1950s and has since made significant impact on economics, political science and evolutionary biology and ecology.
snip... CO2 means wealth...
The fundamentals of the climate change are simple: the Earth’s finite capacity to absorb additional CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels, and the self-centred motivations of governments, businesses, and people which leads them to try and use as much of this capacity as possible. Simply put, more CO2 produces more wealth. Consequently, what is best for the individual is not best for the group. Somehow these two incentives need to align. One way would be for all 197 nations to cooperate in working out how to allocate carbon emissions. Presumably they would then move onto world peace.
snip...
In game theory speak, man-made climate change can be cast as an iterated game over a common-pool resource that no one owns and everyone has access to. For example, fish in a fishery, trees in a wood, or pasture land grazed by cattle. They regenerate and if sustainably managed, can provide valuable resources for many. Take too much however, and they can collapse.
snip... race to the bottom...
Such collapses cause the ‘tragedy of the commons’, a concept that was popularised by Garret Harding’s 1968 article, in which we find a prescient summary of climate change “… the rational man finds that his share of the cost of the waste he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them”. Everyone would benefit if everyone played ball and cleaned up their mess. But that takes resources and money so the temptation to pollute is often too strong.
snip...
It is possible to avoid a tragedy of the commons if the incentives are setup right – reward cooperation, and limit the benefits of temptation to free ride on others’ contributions. Such temptations can be reduced by punishing free riders. But how can you administer such rules within the largely lawless landscape of international relations? There is no single government that can demand inspections and impose fines. Climate change seems to require a game to facilitate cooperation, but there is nothing to stop any individual nation picking up the board and scattering all the pieces if things aren’t going their way.
snip... Trenches can save us...
One approach is a bootstrapping process. Thinking global while acting local recognises that local interactions are important. It has been shown that cooperation can be enhanced if people repeatedly play the same game with the same set of people. When they do, systems of reciprocity and trust can evolve. This will also allow effective punishment of defection. People trying to free ride either get penalised or thrown out of the group. A classic example of the emergence of such cooperation is the live-and-let-live system that operated in the British and German trenches during the first world war. This involved a number of behaviours that sought to minimise casualties on the opposing side. Soldiers would deliberately shoot high to miss the enemy, or shell the same spot with artillery at the same time of day.
In essence, this is a simple and robust strategy. Along with tit-for-tat. Play nice with someone and they return the favour. Upset or hurt them and expect consequences. Social scientist Robert Axelrod discovered tit-for-tat as an effective strategy in repeated social games in the 1980s. It’s not the best strategy for all interactions, but it’s robust and lends itself to modification.
snip...
If cooperation can emerge in the midst of the horrors of war, then surely we can find the right incentives to combat climate change. Unfortunately, there appears to be a crucial difference. What drove cooperation in the trenches was a realisation that while the uniforms may differ, all the soldiers were in it together. We are not all in this together with respect to climate change. The impacts on the climate and vulnerabilities to climate change vary considerably.
The only solution seems for there to be a big die off of life( mainly human) that will start the reverse of climate change...
I know the conference is good because people get together and hopefully something good comes from it but this one is a joke. We have lost the fight against climate change the earth going to warmer past 2.5 centigrade by century end. The Greenland ice sheet will have melted away and no one has mention what the state of the Antarctica ice sheet will be at century end. If we get to net zero or carbon neutral by century end the world will have three to five hundred years of a dystopian world only few can imagine. We Boomers have hose our grand children and many generation that come after too. We Boomers knew in 1970's climate change was coming even had accurate estimates that are coming true today and did nothing for profits and denied its existence to the world.
Is there hope in Game Theory can save us?
Can game theory help solve the problem of climate change?
Applying the mathematical principle of studying models of conflict and cooperation between groups could help us rein in global warming
www.theguardian.com
snip...
Game theory is the mathematical study of conflict and cooperation between actors or groups: animals, people, businesses, countries or even computer algorithms. It became a formal topic of study in the 1950s and has since made significant impact on economics, political science and evolutionary biology and ecology.
snip... CO2 means wealth...
The fundamentals of the climate change are simple: the Earth’s finite capacity to absorb additional CO2 produced by burning fossil fuels, and the self-centred motivations of governments, businesses, and people which leads them to try and use as much of this capacity as possible. Simply put, more CO2 produces more wealth. Consequently, what is best for the individual is not best for the group. Somehow these two incentives need to align. One way would be for all 197 nations to cooperate in working out how to allocate carbon emissions. Presumably they would then move onto world peace.
snip...
In game theory speak, man-made climate change can be cast as an iterated game over a common-pool resource that no one owns and everyone has access to. For example, fish in a fishery, trees in a wood, or pasture land grazed by cattle. They regenerate and if sustainably managed, can provide valuable resources for many. Take too much however, and they can collapse.
snip... race to the bottom...
Such collapses cause the ‘tragedy of the commons’, a concept that was popularised by Garret Harding’s 1968 article, in which we find a prescient summary of climate change “… the rational man finds that his share of the cost of the waste he discharges into the commons is less than the cost of purifying his wastes before releasing them”. Everyone would benefit if everyone played ball and cleaned up their mess. But that takes resources and money so the temptation to pollute is often too strong.
snip...
It is possible to avoid a tragedy of the commons if the incentives are setup right – reward cooperation, and limit the benefits of temptation to free ride on others’ contributions. Such temptations can be reduced by punishing free riders. But how can you administer such rules within the largely lawless landscape of international relations? There is no single government that can demand inspections and impose fines. Climate change seems to require a game to facilitate cooperation, but there is nothing to stop any individual nation picking up the board and scattering all the pieces if things aren’t going their way.
snip... Trenches can save us...
One approach is a bootstrapping process. Thinking global while acting local recognises that local interactions are important. It has been shown that cooperation can be enhanced if people repeatedly play the same game with the same set of people. When they do, systems of reciprocity and trust can evolve. This will also allow effective punishment of defection. People trying to free ride either get penalised or thrown out of the group. A classic example of the emergence of such cooperation is the live-and-let-live system that operated in the British and German trenches during the first world war. This involved a number of behaviours that sought to minimise casualties on the opposing side. Soldiers would deliberately shoot high to miss the enemy, or shell the same spot with artillery at the same time of day.
In essence, this is a simple and robust strategy. Along with tit-for-tat. Play nice with someone and they return the favour. Upset or hurt them and expect consequences. Social scientist Robert Axelrod discovered tit-for-tat as an effective strategy in repeated social games in the 1980s. It’s not the best strategy for all interactions, but it’s robust and lends itself to modification.
snip...
If cooperation can emerge in the midst of the horrors of war, then surely we can find the right incentives to combat climate change. Unfortunately, there appears to be a crucial difference. What drove cooperation in the trenches was a realisation that while the uniforms may differ, all the soldiers were in it together. We are not all in this together with respect to climate change. The impacts on the climate and vulnerabilities to climate change vary considerably.
The only solution seems for there to be a big die off of life( mainly human) that will start the reverse of climate change...
