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Just google the "Scott Adams rule of slow moving disasters". Even if the climate is changing, it won't happen overnight, and there are many ways to either adjus

Just google the "Scott Adams rule of slow moving disasters". Even if the climate is changing, it won't happen overnight, and there are many ways to either adjust to climate change, or to adjust the climate itself.

graeme 8y ago
"Adjust to climate change" or "adjust the climate" are signs someone has really thought through the likely outcomes or climate change. If we keep burning carbon, adjustment would mean "abandoning all coastal cities and ports". That....is not a cost we can easily pay. "Adjusting the climate" is hubris. Unless it means lowering CO2. Because otherwise, each change has sode effects. Eg a light shade would still leave disastrous ocean acidification, and have other side effects from the shade. We might still figure a way out, but it would involve carbon free or carbon neutral energy, and a way to suck it from the sky.
- marcus_holmes 8y ago
  couple things: 1. There's still a lot of uncertainty in the science. I'm not denying climate change, I'm saying that newspapers love to report the worst of all possible scenarios as fact. I used to work in one, I know how they think. Go read the actual papers and take note of the error bars. Try looking at the best of all possible outcomes (which is just as likely), and see where that would leave us. 2. If everything you fear is true, it will happen over a hundred plus years, not the next 10. We will have plenty of time to knock down the building that is now flooding and convert the next one behind it to be the new coast. If you doubt we can do this, go visit Venice. Every building there is built on the one beneath it that sank. If you can find some, talk to some people who have lived through a war. They coped with things that we think of as intolerable. Humans are very adaptable. Finally, you still have to live your life. Make climate change your life's purpose, or shrug and accept it, your life will carry on. You will live another day, and you have to decide what to do in that day. Just keep breathing.
  - graeme 8y ago
    Do you have a source on Venice? That seems totally false. I’ve been there and seen 500 year old buildings. This aeticle indicates that some steps have submerged, but doesn’t mention building on top: https://www.climatechangepost.com/news/2017/9/21/historic-palaces-venice-provide-clue-sea-level-ris/ https://www.climatechangepost.com/news/2017/9/21/historic-pa... As for best case outcome, I don’t see how that is equally likely to all other outcomes. It would just be one case among many, no?
    - marcus_holmes 8y ago
      I may have been exaggerating for effect about Venice ;) But it is a city built in a swamp, and is slowly sinking (still), and has been for hundreds of years. People adapt to the strangest conditions... I meant that the "best-case" outcome is as likely as the "worst-case" outcome, which is usually the one reported in the papers. Obviously there's a bell-curve of probably outcomes, and the most likely is somewhere in the middle. But given the perverse incentives of reporting, both in the scientific and general press, you really need to read the papers themselves to get an idea of what the "middle" really is.

graeme 8y ago

"Adjust to climate change" or "adjust the climate" are signs someone has really thought through the likely outcomes or climate change. If we keep burning carbon, adjustment would mean "abandoning all coastal cities and ports". That....is not a cost we can easily pay. "Adjusting the climate" is hubris. Unless it means lowering CO2. Because otherwise, each change has sode effects. Eg a light shade would still leave disastrous ocean acidification, and have other side effects from the shade. We might still figure a way out, but it would involve carbon free or carbon neutral energy, and a way to suck it from the sky.

marcus_holmes 8y ago
couple things: 1. There's still a lot of uncertainty in the science. I'm not denying climate change, I'm saying that newspapers love to report the worst of all possible scenarios as fact. I used to work in one, I know how they think. Go read the actual papers and take note of the error bars. Try looking at the best of all possible outcomes (which is just as likely), and see where that would leave us. 2. If everything you fear is true, it will happen over a hundred plus years, not the next 10. We will have plenty of time to knock down the building that is now flooding and convert the next one behind it to be the new coast. If you doubt we can do this, go visit Venice. Every building there is built on the one beneath it that sank. If you can find some, talk to some people who have lived through a war. They coped with things that we think of as intolerable. Humans are very adaptable. Finally, you still have to live your life. Make climate change your life's purpose, or shrug and accept it, your life will carry on. You will live another day, and you have to decide what to do in that day. Just keep breathing.
- graeme 8y ago
  Do you have a source on Venice? That seems totally false. I’ve been there and seen 500 year old buildings. This aeticle indicates that some steps have submerged, but doesn’t mention building on top: https://www.climatechangepost.com/news/2017/9/21/historic-palaces-venice-provide-clue-sea-level-ris/ https://www.climatechangepost.com/news/2017/9/21/historic-pa... As for best case outcome, I don’t see how that is equally likely to all other outcomes. It would just be one case among many, no?
  - marcus_holmes 8y ago
    I may have been exaggerating for effect about Venice ;) But it is a city built in a swamp, and is slowly sinking (still), and has been for hundreds of years. People adapt to the strangest conditions... I meant that the "best-case" outcome is as likely as the "worst-case" outcome, which is usually the one reported in the papers. Obviously there's a bell-curve of probably outcomes, and the most likely is somewhere in the middle. But given the perverse incentives of reporting, both in the scientific and general press, you really need to read the papers themselves to get an idea of what the "middle" really is.