4 ms·

I'm curious, why do you want to fight it? Some people will suffer from climate change, while others will gain a lot. For example, perhaps folks in Siberia might

by breck 7y ago

I'm curious, why do you want to fight it? Some people will suffer from climate change, while others will gain a lot. For example, perhaps folks in Siberia might see their land become more usable. Some poor people in inland areas will suddenly have waterfront property, while some rich folks in mcmansions on the coast will lose their's. So in a sense fighting climate change is helping certain populations (in many cases, the rich), while hurting others.

lm28469 7y ago
I'm not sure in which category you put the hundreds of million of Africans/south asians who will be forced to migrate north. Sure the whooping 4 dudes living in Siberia will be able to cultivate more things, but for the rest of the world (aka were people actually live) it's a net negative in every aspects. Besides that, even if climate change doesn't exist or if it is positive for some people, fighting pollution will always be a good thing if you care about your lungs or your health in general.
- breck 7y ago
  So you are saying that there are more people living in places that will have negative impacts from climate change than positive impacts. I could see that being a reasonable argument. Should we then compensate those who would otherwise benefit if we reversed climate change? > even if climate change doesn't exist From what I've read climate change very much exists and it's due to the increase in co2. But I haven't seen people put out forecasts they are confident in on what the impacts will be. I'm not kidding, a few times per year here in Hawaii the forecast for rain is 0% while it is raining. And this is a place with very advanced military and atmospheric stations. I think scientists have made an overwhelming convincing case climate change is real and it's from an increase in co2, but I have seen no models that I can play with specifically predicting how it will affect certain regions. Instead people say "it will be bad". If you think because scientists say something is good or bad without showing you all the underlying data and allowing you to reproduce things yourself at home, I've got some government approved pain pills to sell you. > fighting pollution will always be a good thing if you care about your lungs or your health in general. I agree with this. I guess my point is the first step is better forecasting and modeling tools. Otherwise we really don't know what we are fighting, other than higher temperatures.
  - acesubido 7y ago
    > I think scientists have made an overwhelming convincing case climate change is real and it's from an increase in co2, but I have seen no models that I can play with specifically predicting how it will affect certain regions..... I guess my point is the first step is better forecasting and modeling tools. Crop yields per region: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aab63b https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aab63b Also, this might help direct you in the right contacts for that first step: https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/impacts-climate-change-one-point-five-degrees-two-degrees/ https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/impacts-climate-change-o... > Otherwise we really don't know what we are fighting, other than higher temperatures. Pretty important to fight higher temperatures too though, wet-bulb heatwaves can kill even under shade. "Some people" won't "suffer"; they'll actually die. https://www.pnas.org/content/114/33/8746 https://www.pnas.org/content/114/33/8746
  - lm28469 7y ago
    > If you think because scientists say something is good or bad without showing you all the underlying data and allowing you to reproduce things yourself at home, I've got some government approved pain pills to sell you. You can't reproduce everything at home, especially things happening on very long timescales. If you deny things you can't reproduce at home you can basically forget any scientific progress of the last 30 years. The underlying data is available and pretty clear.
    - breck 7y ago
      > You can't reproduce everything at home Yes, you can, if it's reproducible science. If you can't figure out an experiment at home that could prove the validity of a recommendation made by a "government" or "institution" it is not science they are selling you. It's marketing.
trumbitta2 7y ago
I recently watched a BBC Earth documentary about native people of Siberia dramatically struggling to move their reindeers from winter to summer pastures due to climate change. Wrong example, I guess. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05y4d2z https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05y4d2z
- breck 7y ago
  Touche! Thanks for the link. Interesting.
rubinelli 7y ago
Some people also gain a lot from plague and war, but we still fight them. Climate change also doesn't just mean average temperatures are higher; when you put more energy into a system, it becomes more volatile. Climate change makes atypical seasons and extreme weather much more likely.
- breck 7y ago
  > Some people also gain a lot from plague and war, but we still fight them. It's a good analogy. Though it goes both ways: some people make money (or preserve more of it) by preventing plague and war. > Climate change makes atypical seasons and extreme weather much more likely. Are people betting real money on this? I haven't seen any specific predictions predicting how many hurricanes there will be in 5, 10 years, etc. People are quick to blame every cat 5 hurricane on climate change, but if it were truly science than they would be predicting, not blaming. My general point is our "scientific" tools are laughably bad for big complex systems. I work in medical research. It's a bad joke, and I'm dead serious. I don't think people understand how primitive our tools are (as far as they've come, still primitive compared to the challenges). So the OP might want to look at companies tackling that problem, the Observables or Wikipedias or Palantirs or NYTimes data team, etc.
  - rubinelli 7y ago
    > I work in medical research Then there is a good analogy: tobacco. You believe smoking drastically increases the risk of cancer, right? Yet for years, tobacco companies argued that the evidence was inconclusive. After all, if a doctor can't predict which of their patients will respond well to a certain medication, how can they say that exposure to this or that substance was responsible for the cancer?
    - breck 7y ago
      Tobacco is a great analogy. Yes, I believe smoking drastically increases the risk of cancer (1). I'm not arguing the evidence of climate change or co2 is inconclusive. I think it's very conclusive: global warming is happening and it's man made. What I am arguing is that climate change is not good or bad. It just is. I think we need better tools to understand climate change, and hopefully control it. However, I think "fighting climate change" is a partisan approach, and not scientific at all. For example, assume we are able to figure out how to reverse global warming, and in effect cool the planet. How cool should we go? By your statement "when you put more energy into a system, it becomes more volatile", we should keep going lower, and perhaps make it cooler than it was 100 years ago, which might be deadly for people living in colder northern climates or mountain towns. So any action on climate will have winners and losers. And "fighting climate change" means fighting the people who just happen to live in a different geographic region. What I'm saying is the issue is complex, the numbers are massively bigger than even the type of data Google handles, and we need much better tools to tackle this set of very complicated problems. (1) I also believe in the future we may learn that smoking is very healthy for a small fraction of people.
psv1 7y ago
> So in a sense fighting climate change is helping certain populations (in many cases, the rich) Not only is this wrong, but the exact opposite is true.

by breck 7y ago

lm28469 7y ago

I'm not sure in which category you put the hundreds of million of Africans/south asians who will be forced to migrate north. Sure the whooping 4 dudes living in Siberia will be able to cultivate more things, but for the rest of the world (aka were people actually live) it's a net negative in every aspects. Besides that, even if climate change doesn't exist or if it is positive for some people, fighting pollution will always be a good thing if you care about your lungs or your health in general.

breck 7y ago
So you are saying that there are more people living in places that will have negative impacts from climate change than positive impacts. I could see that being a reasonable argument. Should we then compensate those who would otherwise benefit if we reversed climate change? > even if climate change doesn't exist From what I've read climate change very much exists and it's due to the increase in co2. But I haven't seen people put out forecasts they are confident in on what the impacts will be. I'm not kidding, a few times per year here in Hawaii the forecast for rain is 0% while it is raining. And this is a place with very advanced military and atmospheric stations. I think scientists have made an overwhelming convincing case climate change is real and it's from an increase in co2, but I have seen no models that I can play with specifically predicting how it will affect certain regions. Instead people say "it will be bad". If you think because scientists say something is good or bad without showing you all the underlying data and allowing you to reproduce things yourself at home, I've got some government approved pain pills to sell you. > fighting pollution will always be a good thing if you care about your lungs or your health in general. I agree with this. I guess my point is the first step is better forecasting and modeling tools. Otherwise we really don't know what we are fighting, other than higher temperatures.
- acesubido 7y ago
  > I think scientists have made an overwhelming convincing case climate change is real and it's from an increase in co2, but I have seen no models that I can play with specifically predicting how it will affect certain regions..... I guess my point is the first step is better forecasting and modeling tools. Crop yields per region: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aab63b https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aab63b Also, this might help direct you in the right contacts for that first step: https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/impacts-climate-change-one-point-five-degrees-two-degrees/ https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/impacts-climate-change-o... > Otherwise we really don't know what we are fighting, other than higher temperatures. Pretty important to fight higher temperatures too though, wet-bulb heatwaves can kill even under shade. "Some people" won't "suffer"; they'll actually die. https://www.pnas.org/content/114/33/8746 https://www.pnas.org/content/114/33/8746
- lm28469 7y ago
  > If you think because scientists say something is good or bad without showing you all the underlying data and allowing you to reproduce things yourself at home, I've got some government approved pain pills to sell you. You can't reproduce everything at home, especially things happening on very long timescales. If you deny things you can't reproduce at home you can basically forget any scientific progress of the last 30 years. The underlying data is available and pretty clear.
  - breck 7y ago
    > You can't reproduce everything at home Yes, you can, if it's reproducible science. If you can't figure out an experiment at home that could prove the validity of a recommendation made by a "government" or "institution" it is not science they are selling you. It's marketing.

trumbitta2 7y ago

I recently watched a BBC Earth documentary about native people of Siberia dramatically struggling to move their reindeers from winter to summer pastures due to climate change. Wrong example, I guess. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05y4d2z https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p05y4d2z

breck 7y ago
Touche! Thanks for the link. Interesting.

rubinelli 7y ago

Some people also gain a lot from plague and war, but we still fight them. Climate change also doesn't just mean average temperatures are higher; when you put more energy into a system, it becomes more volatile. Climate change makes atypical seasons and extreme weather much more likely.

breck 7y ago
> Some people also gain a lot from plague and war, but we still fight them. It's a good analogy. Though it goes both ways: some people make money (or preserve more of it) by preventing plague and war. > Climate change makes atypical seasons and extreme weather much more likely. Are people betting real money on this? I haven't seen any specific predictions predicting how many hurricanes there will be in 5, 10 years, etc. People are quick to blame every cat 5 hurricane on climate change, but if it were truly science than they would be predicting, not blaming. My general point is our "scientific" tools are laughably bad for big complex systems. I work in medical research. It's a bad joke, and I'm dead serious. I don't think people understand how primitive our tools are (as far as they've come, still primitive compared to the challenges). So the OP might want to look at companies tackling that problem, the Observables or Wikipedias or Palantirs or NYTimes data team, etc.
- rubinelli 7y ago
  > I work in medical research Then there is a good analogy: tobacco. You believe smoking drastically increases the risk of cancer, right? Yet for years, tobacco companies argued that the evidence was inconclusive. After all, if a doctor can't predict which of their patients will respond well to a certain medication, how can they say that exposure to this or that substance was responsible for the cancer?
  - breck 7y ago
    Tobacco is a great analogy. Yes, I believe smoking drastically increases the risk of cancer (1). I'm not arguing the evidence of climate change or co2 is inconclusive. I think it's very conclusive: global warming is happening and it's man made. What I am arguing is that climate change is not good or bad. It just is. I think we need better tools to understand climate change, and hopefully control it. However, I think "fighting climate change" is a partisan approach, and not scientific at all. For example, assume we are able to figure out how to reverse global warming, and in effect cool the planet. How cool should we go? By your statement "when you put more energy into a system, it becomes more volatile", we should keep going lower, and perhaps make it cooler than it was 100 years ago, which might be deadly for people living in colder northern climates or mountain towns. So any action on climate will have winners and losers. And "fighting climate change" means fighting the people who just happen to live in a different geographic region. What I'm saying is the issue is complex, the numbers are massively bigger than even the type of data Google handles, and we need much better tools to tackle this set of very complicated problems. (1) I also believe in the future we may learn that smoking is very healthy for a small fraction of people.

psv1 7y ago

> So in a sense fighting climate change is helping certain populations (in many cases, the rich) Not only is this wrong, but the exact opposite is true.