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what if i don’t care? many of these worries are alarmist. from the IPCC report it seems like some coral will die and the temperature will raise a few degrees. w

what if i don’t care? many of these worries are alarmist. from the IPCC report it seems like some coral will die and the temperature will raise a few degrees. which is bad, sure, but not apocalyptic. i doubt my children’s life will change unless i buy ocean front property and refuse to move for 100 years

tom_wilde 7y ago
What about their children and their children's children and ... (you get the idea) It s a bit myopic no?
- alkibiades 7y ago
  1. you really don’t think in 100 years we’ll have better technology? look where we were 100 years ago. 2. once again it seems like they’ll just adapt as humans always have. my point is this apocalyptic behavior by activists is counter productive and offputting. it means we can’t have a reasonable discussion about solutions and trade offs because “the world is ending in 12 years”. this led to me just giving up because we can’t have conversation
  - tom_wilde 7y ago
    Well.. for both your points here there are no guarantees. Progress isn't linear and just because we can adapt doesn't mean we will. What is known is that our entire eco-system is failing to adapt fast enough to keep up with the rate of change - what makes you think we can beat it? Its disappointingly reductive to throw the towel in and, really, that point of view is no better than 'the world is ending in 12 years' To deal with a problem you must first acknowledge that it exists - any action is clearly going to beat sticking ones head in the sand.
    - pdonis 7y ago
      > any action is clearly going to beat sticking ones head in the sand Not if the action makes things worse than they would have been if you'd done nothing. And given our very poor understanding of how the climate and ecosystems work, any action we take that is not an obvious benefit (like "bring more people out of poverty" or "make our infrastructure more robust", both of which are things we certainly should be doing) is much more likely to make things worse than to make things better.
      - tom_wilde 7y ago
        Reduce / Recycle / Reuse Tell me which of those is going to make the situation worse?
        pdonis 7y ago
        Reduce makes it harder for people to come out of poverty. Recycle costs energy. Reuse should be ok, as long as whatever it is is in fact reusable. But these three hardly cover all possible actions.
  - yifanl 7y ago
    That's putting the cart before the horse. If we're here in 100 years then of course we'll have solved the problem... but we're not going to here in 100 years if we just decided it'd be solved in 100 years.
SolarNet 7y ago
A 100 million people in the developing world are probably going to die as a result, that number ticks higher ever year as the impact becomes more severe. Climates changing means ecosystems are going to change. Food stuffs will disappear, lowering food diversity. Natural ecosystems will disappear lowering natural beauty. Rising sea levels and failing water cycles will cause cities to migrate. You aren't wrong that your children will probably not be very affected in a life and death sort of way, but they will lack the quality of life you do and many other people's children will die.
fzeroracer 7y ago
What if you live in an area with no AC because for hundreds of years the weather has been consistent enough to not need it? Or what if you start experiencing massive wildfires because the seasons get dryer and dryer? How about if you care about eating Salmon or any number of seafood dying off as a result of a warming ocean and massive overfishing?
- alkibiades 7y ago
  it’s not like this happens overnight. you can buy an AC sometimes in the next 100 years hopefully and sure salmon thing is bad but doesn’t mean the world is ending in 12 years. which is what the activists pretend. i just want a real conversation about solutions but neither side is reasonable
  - mturmon 7y ago
    If you want a real conversation, you don't start off with your original comment. The original comment was mocking the scale of the changes we face in a completely un-informed way. So, you might want to consider what kind of discussion you really want?
  - arbitrary_name 7y ago
    very few people are pretending the world is ending in 12 years. However, many people are talking about the fact that the world as we know it (fish stocks, stability of weather patterns for growing crops, intensity of storms, lack of snowmelt to irrigate crops in summer, and many many more) will change significantly. That includes you. If you live in the US, you are suffering the political side effects of climate change indirectly as thousands of central American coffee farmers leave their lands and look to the north for opportunity. If you live in Europe, you are suffering the political side effects of increasing instability and resource scarcity in north and east africa, the levant and other locales. Picture that but with millions more people; your rich country will have to divert more and more resources to either building walls or integrating the poor, all while food prices increase, natural resources are depleted, etc. If you think living in the Bay Area, London, NY, or anywhere like that is going to insulate you from the consequences, you are really sadly mistaken. I live in a wealthy city in Australia; we face flooding which is driving up property and insurance costs, fire which is wiping out farming land and causing air quality issues, while depleting fish stocks increase the cost of other food sources. Storm intensity is also on the rise which is causing more flooding and damaging arable land. We can handle it, but it's more and more a cost and deadweight effect on our lives. I urge you to isolate "what you want to happen" from "what will actually happen given the science being presented".
seren 7y ago
I think you might lack some imagination on how things could go bad quickly. (but maybe I am on the paranoid side of things) Last week, there were reports on water shortage in India because too much ground water is used. At the same time, Himalayan glaciers are melting, so all in all, at some point less water flowing. Global warming will increase droughts and torrential rains (that could further damage crops). Do you think that 1 billion people will sit tight until they die from thirst or starvation ? If there is no mass migration, there is also a real danger of war. And India is a nuclear power, as are Pakistan and China. So it could get ugly very fast with repercussions on the whole world, even if your part of the world still feels safe.
mywittyname 7y ago
You're life is already changing. Billions of dollars in tax payer relief efforts need to be deployed to clean up the devastation caused by an increasing number of extreme weather events due to climate change. Crop yields in the US have been on the decline since 2012. Numerous crop failures across the world have accelerated the pace of civil strife all over the world as famines become more severe and common. The result of this strife has led to mass migrations from affected areas and this has directly influenced US policies. You are not immune, regardless of whether you continue pretending these events are not the result of climate change. You may have the luxury of insulating yourself from the near-term implications, but the world cares nothing of your ignorance and will eventually punish you all the same. It will be a death of a thousand cuts. Food gets more expensive, perhaps items disappear from grocery shelves more often. Gas and electricity shortages happen occasionally. Migration happens as people can't rebuild because insurance won't cover the repeated damage to their housing. Year by year life will get a little more miserable for most people.
- pdonis 7y ago
  > an increasing number of extreme weather events due to climate change This is not correct; the number of extreme weather events is not increasing. The damage they do is increasing, but that's because the human population in areas exposed to such events, and the value of the property build in such areas, is increasing.
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    "New data confirm increased frequency of extreme weather events, European national science academies urge further action on climate change adaptation" https://easac.eu/press-releases/details/new-data-confirm-increased-frequency-of-extreme-weather-events-european-national-science-academies/ https://easac.eu/press-releases/details/new-data-confirm-inc...
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - 7y ago

tom_wilde 7y ago

What about their children and their children's children and ... (you get the idea) It s a bit myopic no?

alkibiades 7y ago
1. you really don’t think in 100 years we’ll have better technology? look where we were 100 years ago. 2. once again it seems like they’ll just adapt as humans always have. my point is this apocalyptic behavior by activists is counter productive and offputting. it means we can’t have a reasonable discussion about solutions and trade offs because “the world is ending in 12 years”. this led to me just giving up because we can’t have conversation
- tom_wilde 7y ago
  Well.. for both your points here there are no guarantees. Progress isn't linear and just because we can adapt doesn't mean we will. What is known is that our entire eco-system is failing to adapt fast enough to keep up with the rate of change - what makes you think we can beat it? Its disappointingly reductive to throw the towel in and, really, that point of view is no better than 'the world is ending in 12 years' To deal with a problem you must first acknowledge that it exists - any action is clearly going to beat sticking ones head in the sand.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    > any action is clearly going to beat sticking ones head in the sand Not if the action makes things worse than they would have been if you'd done nothing. And given our very poor understanding of how the climate and ecosystems work, any action we take that is not an obvious benefit (like "bring more people out of poverty" or "make our infrastructure more robust", both of which are things we certainly should be doing) is much more likely to make things worse than to make things better.
    - tom_wilde 7y ago
      Reduce / Recycle / Reuse Tell me which of those is going to make the situation worse?
      - pdonis 7y ago
        Reduce makes it harder for people to come out of poverty. Recycle costs energy. Reuse should be ok, as long as whatever it is is in fact reusable. But these three hardly cover all possible actions.
- yifanl 7y ago
  That's putting the cart before the horse. If we're here in 100 years then of course we'll have solved the problem... but we're not going to here in 100 years if we just decided it'd be solved in 100 years.

SolarNet 7y ago

A 100 million people in the developing world are probably going to die as a result, that number ticks higher ever year as the impact becomes more severe. Climates changing means ecosystems are going to change. Food stuffs will disappear, lowering food diversity. Natural ecosystems will disappear lowering natural beauty. Rising sea levels and failing water cycles will cause cities to migrate. You aren't wrong that your children will probably not be very affected in a life and death sort of way, but they will lack the quality of life you do and many other people's children will die.

fzeroracer 7y ago

What if you live in an area with no AC because for hundreds of years the weather has been consistent enough to not need it? Or what if you start experiencing massive wildfires because the seasons get dryer and dryer? How about if you care about eating Salmon or any number of seafood dying off as a result of a warming ocean and massive overfishing?

alkibiades 7y ago
it’s not like this happens overnight. you can buy an AC sometimes in the next 100 years hopefully and sure salmon thing is bad but doesn’t mean the world is ending in 12 years. which is what the activists pretend. i just want a real conversation about solutions but neither side is reasonable
- mturmon 7y ago
  If you want a real conversation, you don't start off with your original comment. The original comment was mocking the scale of the changes we face in a completely un-informed way. So, you might want to consider what kind of discussion you really want?
- arbitrary_name 7y ago
  very few people are pretending the world is ending in 12 years. However, many people are talking about the fact that the world as we know it (fish stocks, stability of weather patterns for growing crops, intensity of storms, lack of snowmelt to irrigate crops in summer, and many many more) will change significantly. That includes you. If you live in the US, you are suffering the political side effects of climate change indirectly as thousands of central American coffee farmers leave their lands and look to the north for opportunity. If you live in Europe, you are suffering the political side effects of increasing instability and resource scarcity in north and east africa, the levant and other locales. Picture that but with millions more people; your rich country will have to divert more and more resources to either building walls or integrating the poor, all while food prices increase, natural resources are depleted, etc. If you think living in the Bay Area, London, NY, or anywhere like that is going to insulate you from the consequences, you are really sadly mistaken. I live in a wealthy city in Australia; we face flooding which is driving up property and insurance costs, fire which is wiping out farming land and causing air quality issues, while depleting fish stocks increase the cost of other food sources. Storm intensity is also on the rise which is causing more flooding and damaging arable land. We can handle it, but it's more and more a cost and deadweight effect on our lives. I urge you to isolate "what you want to happen" from "what will actually happen given the science being presented".

seren 7y ago

I think you might lack some imagination on how things could go bad quickly. (but maybe I am on the paranoid side of things) Last week, there were reports on water shortage in India because too much ground water is used. At the same time, Himalayan glaciers are melting, so all in all, at some point less water flowing. Global warming will increase droughts and torrential rains (that could further damage crops). Do you think that 1 billion people will sit tight until they die from thirst or starvation ? If there is no mass migration, there is also a real danger of war. And India is a nuclear power, as are Pakistan and China. So it could get ugly very fast with repercussions on the whole world, even if your part of the world still feels safe.

mywittyname 7y ago

You're life is already changing. Billions of dollars in tax payer relief efforts need to be deployed to clean up the devastation caused by an increasing number of extreme weather events due to climate change. Crop yields in the US have been on the decline since 2012. Numerous crop failures across the world have accelerated the pace of civil strife all over the world as famines become more severe and common. The result of this strife has led to mass migrations from affected areas and this has directly influenced US policies. You are not immune, regardless of whether you continue pretending these events are not the result of climate change. You may have the luxury of insulating yourself from the near-term implications, but the world cares nothing of your ignorance and will eventually punish you all the same. It will be a death of a thousand cuts. Food gets more expensive, perhaps items disappear from grocery shelves more often. Gas and electricity shortages happen occasionally. Migration happens as people can't rebuild because insurance won't cover the repeated damage to their housing. Year by year life will get a little more miserable for most people.

pdonis 7y ago
> an increasing number of extreme weather events due to climate change This is not correct; the number of extreme weather events is not increasing. The damage they do is increasing, but that's because the human population in areas exposed to such events, and the value of the property build in such areas, is increasing.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  "New data confirm increased frequency of extreme weather events, European national science academies urge further action on climate change adaptation" https://easac.eu/press-releases/details/new-data-confirm-increased-frequency-of-extreme-weather-events-european-national-science-academies/ https://easac.eu/press-releases/details/new-data-confirm-inc...
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - 7y ago