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What is the agenda of taking better care of our environment? Let's suppose for a moment that climate change is a fabrication, what's the harm in taking better

What is the agenda of taking better care of our environment? Let's suppose for a moment that climate change is a fabrication, what's the harm in taking better care of the place we live?

openlyincognito 10y ago
how much money has gore and his fellow scum made off of climate change? i dont recall me disputing the need to take care of the environment. thats not what the above poster was referring to at all.
- dmode 10y ago
  So, you just signed up to comment on this article ? Is there a "climate change article" alert system that sends notifications to troll farms to sign up and flood comment boards ? Would love to learn more about how that works.
  - Mithaldu 10y ago
    > you just signed up to comment on this article? His name indicates that this is a throwaway account he made so he wouldn't risk having posts like that in the history of his usual account.
philh 10y ago
Opportunity costs. For example, we're currently devoting a lot of money and attention to climate change that could instead be devoted to things like malaria and malnutrition. (It should be obvious, but this is not an argument that climate change isn't real. Just that if it weren't real, we'd want to know, and act upon that.)
- tremon 10y ago
  could instead be devoted to things like malaria and malnutrition. You know what is the biggest cause of global malnutrition? Climate change, because it is causing more erratic weather patterns that destroy harvests worldwide. You know what the biggest cause is for the spreading of the malaria mosquitoes beyond the tropics? Climate change again, because it makes some (highly-populated) regions a more favourable habitat. Climate change isn't some hypothetical problem anymore, like it was in 1850. It is here now, and is already causing problems like you mentioned, that we are spending so much money on countering. But we're treating symptoms, not the cause. I fully expect our spend on treating the symptoms of climate change will rise to unmanageable levels in mere decades.
  - philh 10y ago
    I want to be clear that this is not a reply to what I said. I argued that if climate change weren't real, we'd want to know about it, and I made it perfectly clear that I was not saying climate change is not real. You replied that climate change is real and causing problems today. But I'll respond anyway. From http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/: > climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050; 38 000 due to heat exposure in elderly people, 48 000 due to diarrhoea, 60 000 due to malaria, and 95 000 due to childhood undernutrition Meanwhile, today malaria is killing around 600 000 people a year (ten times that number), and malnutrition around 3 million (thirty times). So, while I'm open to convincing, color me skeptical that today, climate change is the "biggest cause" of those things, for any reasonable definition of "biggest cause". (Granted, you said "spreading of the malaria mosquitos beyond the tropics". To the extent that this problem is different from the problem of malaria in general, it's moving the goalposts.) (I also note that even if climate change were the biggest cause of those problems, the best solution to those specific problems might not be to fight climate change. Perhaps instead we should work on growing more resistant wheat, or eradicating mosquitos.) I'm not arguing that climate change isn't real or that we shouldn't try to solve it. But I categorically reject the idea that if it weren't real, we should nevertheless act as though it were.
    - Thnboi666 10y ago
      in which case how do we prove this to be real beyond doubt? what do we do when people treat their opposition as faith, i.e. belief despite lack of evidence. for some people it will never be real. what do we do about that? is that a legitimate thing to take into account? does that faith mean we cannot act as though climate change is largely human-driven?
      - philh 10y ago
        Again, this is not a reply to me. You don't wait until you've proven it beyond doubt. But you say "this is our best model, we're pretty confident it's right in the essentials, and we're going to act on it but remain open to being wrong; here are our policy proposals". You don't say "this is our best model, and here are our policy proposals based on it, but even if our model is wrong we would make the same proposals anyway". I have no particular insights into the other questions.
- Thnboi666 10y ago
  Even if humans cannot affect change in the climate, we are still going to need to prepare for that change. investing in renewables etc affects much more than climate. Good investments for the future tend to overlap with solutions to human-driven climate change.
  - philh 10y ago
    When preparing for a change, it's good to know whether or not you're leaning on a button that makes the change happen faster. If you are, you can try to lean less hard on that button, and buy more time to prepare. If you're not, then attempting to lean less hard is wasted effort. (It might accidentally have some benefits, but you could have gotten those benefits anyway, if you thought they were worth it.) It would be really surprising if our best-value course of action, relating to climate change, was exactly the same regardless of whether climate change were human-influenced or not.
    - Thnboi666 10y ago
      I don't see anything anywhere to show that the way carbon emissions increase global temperature to be false. greenhouse effect is a commonly observed phenomenon, and it's a plain fact that we emit carbon at extreme rates compared to pre-industry civilizations. we know that pushing this button has coincided with a change in climate trends over the last 200 years. what we have to prove is then that a. this is not a natural change, and b. this change can be slowed down or reversed. would you say that if science proved we are past the tipping point that nothing should be done to reverse the effect we've already had?
      - philh 10y ago
        You seem to be arguing that climate change is real and human-caused. I do not understand why you're arguing this, when I have repeatedly said that I am not arguing against it. I'm merely arguing that we want to know, contra the user who suggested it didn't matter if it was true or not because we should act the same in either case.
- antisthenes 10y ago
  Ironically, solving malnutrition and malaria will lead to an increase in population, which makes solving the problem of Global Warming even harder (and if you don't think overpopulation is one of the key issues when it comes to climate change, then I'm not sure you're able to have a rational discourse on the matter) In interconnected systems, there's an opportunity cost to opportunity cost.
  - philh 10y ago
    You're not wrong, but I hope we can all agree that "let millions of people die to slightly reduce global warming" is very far down on our list of things to try.
  - Mithaldu 10y ago
    Depends on the timeframe you're looking at. Within a single generation you're correct. Once you step into more generations though, fertility rates drop as child survivability rises, as it becomes much more viable to rely on a few children as insurance for old age. Source: Hans Rosling, Gapminder
nickff 10y ago
If climate change is not happening/harmful, resources spent on addressing it are wasted (to the extent they affect CC), and cannot be used to address other issues such as biodiversity, disease, and human suffering.
- Thnboi666 10y ago
  This is to imply that the resources spent on it have no effect other than to the extent that they affect climate change. which is WRONG.
  - nickff 10y ago
    The actions taken to mitigate or counter-act climate change could have 'collateral benefits', but be less effective than other environmental remediation or human charity. The 'loss' would be (the benefits of the best alternative program) - (the benefits of the ACC mitigation/counter-action). If your priority is to save a few endangered species, the best way to do it is to go out and save those species, not to 'try to reduce or offset anthropogenic climate change'; there are many species which are extremely endangered, and for a great intro to the topic, I suggest Douglas Adam's brilliant book.[1] We are faced with tough choices, and should acknowledge them to be difficult; I don't know that I could bear telling parents that their children will die because I see climate change as a higher priority than disease. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See
    - malnourish 10y ago
      > I don't know that I could bear telling parents that their children will die because I see climate change as a higher priority than disease. Could you bear to tell parents that their children or grand children will die because our climate will be irrevocably damaged?
      - nickff 10y ago
        I'd have trouble with that too, and don't particularly want to live on neo-Venus either. I was trying to make the point that even if you favor a given course of action, the costs and benefits should be assessed, and neither should be dismissed.
objectivistbrit 10y ago
No-one would be opposed to "taking better care of the place we live". This is a strong indication that this is not an honest way to frame the dispute. Cuts in emissions (e.g., the 80% cuts the EU is pushing for) will require major cuts in energy usage. We know what a low-energy economy looks like - it looks like a pre-industrial economy. We might not need to go back to the middle ages, but we'd need to reverse many advances of the industrial revolution. In contrast, we're facing a maximum of 59cm of sea level rise by 2100. (IPCC estimate). That's not desirable but it is manageable - at least if we maintain our technological, industrial civilisation.

What is the agenda of taking better care of our environment? Let's suppose for a moment that climate change is a fabrication, what's the harm in taking better care of the place we live?

openlyincognito 10y ago

how much money has gore and his fellow scum made off of climate change? i dont recall me disputing the need to take care of the environment. thats not what the above poster was referring to at all.

dmode 10y ago
So, you just signed up to comment on this article ? Is there a "climate change article" alert system that sends notifications to troll farms to sign up and flood comment boards ? Would love to learn more about how that works.
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  > you just signed up to comment on this article? His name indicates that this is a throwaway account he made so he wouldn't risk having posts like that in the history of his usual account.

philh 10y ago

Opportunity costs. For example, we're currently devoting a lot of money and attention to climate change that could instead be devoted to things like malaria and malnutrition. (It should be obvious, but this is not an argument that climate change isn't real. Just that if it weren't real, we'd want to know, and act upon that.)

tremon 10y ago
could instead be devoted to things like malaria and malnutrition. You know what is the biggest cause of global malnutrition? Climate change, because it is causing more erratic weather patterns that destroy harvests worldwide. You know what the biggest cause is for the spreading of the malaria mosquitoes beyond the tropics? Climate change again, because it makes some (highly-populated) regions a more favourable habitat. Climate change isn't some hypothetical problem anymore, like it was in 1850. It is here now, and is already causing problems like you mentioned, that we are spending so much money on countering. But we're treating symptoms, not the cause. I fully expect our spend on treating the symptoms of climate change will rise to unmanageable levels in mere decades.
- philh 10y ago
  I want to be clear that this is not a reply to what I said. I argued that if climate change weren't real, we'd want to know about it, and I made it perfectly clear that I was not saying climate change is not real. You replied that climate change is real and causing problems today. But I'll respond anyway. From http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/ http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/: > climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050; 38 000 due to heat exposure in elderly people, 48 000 due to diarrhoea, 60 000 due to malaria, and 95 000 due to childhood undernutrition Meanwhile, today malaria is killing around 600 000 people a year (ten times that number), and malnutrition around 3 million (thirty times). So, while I'm open to convincing, color me skeptical that today, climate change is the "biggest cause" of those things, for any reasonable definition of "biggest cause". (Granted, you said "spreading of the malaria mosquitos beyond the tropics". To the extent that this problem is different from the problem of malaria in general, it's moving the goalposts.) (I also note that even if climate change were the biggest cause of those problems, the best solution to those specific problems might not be to fight climate change. Perhaps instead we should work on growing more resistant wheat, or eradicating mosquitos.) I'm not arguing that climate change isn't real or that we shouldn't try to solve it. But I categorically reject the idea that if it weren't real, we should nevertheless act as though it were.
  - Thnboi666 10y ago
    in which case how do we prove this to be real beyond doubt? what do we do when people treat their opposition as faith, i.e. belief despite lack of evidence. for some people it will never be real. what do we do about that? is that a legitimate thing to take into account? does that faith mean we cannot act as though climate change is largely human-driven?
    - philh 10y ago
      Again, this is not a reply to me. You don't wait until you've proven it beyond doubt. But you say "this is our best model, we're pretty confident it's right in the essentials, and we're going to act on it but remain open to being wrong; here are our policy proposals". You don't say "this is our best model, and here are our policy proposals based on it, but even if our model is wrong we would make the same proposals anyway". I have no particular insights into the other questions.
Thnboi666 10y ago
Even if humans cannot affect change in the climate, we are still going to need to prepare for that change. investing in renewables etc affects much more than climate. Good investments for the future tend to overlap with solutions to human-driven climate change.
- philh 10y ago
  When preparing for a change, it's good to know whether or not you're leaning on a button that makes the change happen faster. If you are, you can try to lean less hard on that button, and buy more time to prepare. If you're not, then attempting to lean less hard is wasted effort. (It might accidentally have some benefits, but you could have gotten those benefits anyway, if you thought they were worth it.) It would be really surprising if our best-value course of action, relating to climate change, was exactly the same regardless of whether climate change were human-influenced or not.
  - Thnboi666 10y ago
    I don't see anything anywhere to show that the way carbon emissions increase global temperature to be false. greenhouse effect is a commonly observed phenomenon, and it's a plain fact that we emit carbon at extreme rates compared to pre-industry civilizations. we know that pushing this button has coincided with a change in climate trends over the last 200 years. what we have to prove is then that a. this is not a natural change, and b. this change can be slowed down or reversed. would you say that if science proved we are past the tipping point that nothing should be done to reverse the effect we've already had?
    - philh 10y ago
      You seem to be arguing that climate change is real and human-caused. I do not understand why you're arguing this, when I have repeatedly said that I am not arguing against it. I'm merely arguing that we want to know, contra the user who suggested it didn't matter if it was true or not because we should act the same in either case.
antisthenes 10y ago
Ironically, solving malnutrition and malaria will lead to an increase in population, which makes solving the problem of Global Warming even harder (and if you don't think overpopulation is one of the key issues when it comes to climate change, then I'm not sure you're able to have a rational discourse on the matter) In interconnected systems, there's an opportunity cost to opportunity cost.
- philh 10y ago
  You're not wrong, but I hope we can all agree that "let millions of people die to slightly reduce global warming" is very far down on our list of things to try.
- Mithaldu 10y ago
  Depends on the timeframe you're looking at. Within a single generation you're correct. Once you step into more generations though, fertility rates drop as child survivability rises, as it becomes much more viable to rely on a few children as insurance for old age. Source: Hans Rosling, Gapminder

nickff 10y ago

If climate change is not happening/harmful, resources spent on addressing it are wasted (to the extent they affect CC), and cannot be used to address other issues such as biodiversity, disease, and human suffering.

Thnboi666 10y ago
This is to imply that the resources spent on it have no effect other than to the extent that they affect climate change. which is WRONG.
- nickff 10y ago
  The actions taken to mitigate or counter-act climate change could have 'collateral benefits', but be less effective than other environmental remediation or human charity. The 'loss' would be (the benefits of the best alternative program) - (the benefits of the ACC mitigation/counter-action). If your priority is to save a few endangered species, the best way to do it is to go out and save those species, not to 'try to reduce or offset anthropogenic climate change'; there are many species which are extremely endangered, and for a great intro to the topic, I suggest Douglas Adam's brilliant book.[1] We are faced with tough choices, and should acknowledge them to be difficult; I don't know that I could bear telling parents that their children will die because I see climate change as a higher priority than disease. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See
  - malnourish 10y ago
    > I don't know that I could bear telling parents that their children will die because I see climate change as a higher priority than disease. Could you bear to tell parents that their children or grand children will die because our climate will be irrevocably damaged?
    - nickff 10y ago
      I'd have trouble with that too, and don't particularly want to live on neo-Venus either. I was trying to make the point that even if you favor a given course of action, the costs and benefits should be assessed, and neither should be dismissed.

objectivistbrit 10y ago

No-one would be opposed to "taking better care of the place we live". This is a strong indication that this is not an honest way to frame the dispute. Cuts in emissions (e.g., the 80% cuts the EU is pushing for) will require major cuts in energy usage. We know what a low-energy economy looks like - it looks like a pre-industrial economy. We might not need to go back to the middle ages, but we'd need to reverse many advances of the industrial revolution. In contrast, we're facing a maximum of 59cm of sea level rise by 2100. (IPCC estimate). That's not desirable but it is manageable - at least if we maintain our technological, industrial civilisation.