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>Lastly, what's even the big issue with changes in global temperatures? Even without humans, this planet would go in and out of ice ages on semi-regular interva

>Lastly, what's even the big issue with changes in global temperatures? Even without humans, this planet would go in and out of ice ages on semi-regular intervals. We can't really control that. Life adapts. In the interest of our descendants, we had better develop technology to deal with a tougher climate, rather than cut down on emissions so that maybe ten or twenty generations can live with a somewhat smaller fallout of manmade climate change. False dichotomy. Why not do both?

ThomPete 7y ago
Because we don't actually have any realistic alternatives yet and the ones proposed would be much more expensive than just dealing with the issues as they arrive. Can you mention one scientifically demonstrated consequences of climate change that we don't know how to deal with with todays let alone future technologies?
- eesmith 7y ago
  (As a clarification, that's "global warming causing climate change".) When you write "deal with", do you mean to include mass migrations, loss of populated areas, and civil unrest? Because that's how we dealt with, for example, the Dust Bowl. One example is that there does not seem any way to save Miami in its current form, using today's technology or any realistic technology we could develop. Quoting https://www.businessinsider.com/miami-floods-sea-level-rise-solutions-2018-4?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/miami-floods-sea-level-rise-... : > “Miami as we know it today — there’s virtually no scenario under which you can imagine it existing at the end of the century,” Goodell said. “It may be some smaller version of Miami that incorporates platform houses and floating structures.” ... > And while there is much that Florida can learn from these other places, no one has answers to looming threats like water rising through the ground underneath. “The solutions that are going to be used to save cities like Miami Beach probably haven’t been developed yet,” Mowry said. Or from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170403-miamis-fight-against-sea-level-rise https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170403-miamis-fight-aga... : > But the question isn’t whether this work will save every community: it won’t. Even those tasked with making their cities resilient admit that, at some point in the future, certain areas here will no longer be “viable” places to live. Rather, the challenge is to do enough to ensure that the economy as a whole continues to thrive and that tourists still come to enjoy the sun, sand – and swelling sea. We can "deal with" that by mass migration to move. Or letting them die. But I don't think that's what you mean?
  - ThomPete 7y ago
    I mean we have had to deal with climate change in all of human history and we have only become increasingly better. We also live places today which wasn't possible 100 year ago. Migration have always been a fact of life and we have always managed to deal with it. We are better at that today than any other time in history. So the question I am trying to get answered is what have been scientifically demonstrated to be the case with climate change that we cant deal with if we don't "do anything" today? Climate is always changing yes, the temperature have been rising yes, that will have consequences on us yes, but which changes have been demonstrated that would be worth the cost of upending the current use of ex fossil fuels to help modern civilization deliver goods and services to it's growing population and to reduce the amount of funding for new scientific discoveries or R&D in Molten or fusion? It sounds like a Pascals wager to me but without the upside and instant damnation of the existing people inhabiting the planet.
    - eesmith 7y ago
      I want to pin you down on what "deal with" means. It appears that your "deal with" accepts mass migration, mass starvation, and civil unrest, as those are some of the historic ways humans have addressed things before. If so, I don't see a difference between your view and "just let things happen - some people will survive, and I don't care who." (Actually, your "worth the cost" suggests that you care less about the world's poorest people, whose deaths have the least economic impact.) If your view is anything at all like that, then of course we can "deal with" the effects climate change. But it's not a humane approach.
      - ThomPete 7y ago
        The human approach is the one that gets most people out of poverty and into the middle class so they can deal with the consequences of the climate which we always will have to deal with and always have had to deal with. The most predictable way of doing that is allowing them to use cheap reliable energy. Mass starvation happens when you don't have cheap reliable energy, pesticides and other modern technologies to deal with the always ongoing consequences of climate change. Civil unrest is what happens when people don't have access to food, right now the only societies that can ensure that are rich societies using capitalism, technology, and energy (mostly fossil fuels) to deal with that. Mass migration happens all the time but again it's more likely to happen when you don't have the means to defend you against the always occuring challenges of the climate. It's anti-human to hinder poor people getting access to the very resource that allow them to fight the consequences of climate change like we are able to in modern societies. Nature doesn't give us a safe and friendly environment we make unsafe, it gives us a hostile and dangerous enviroment we make safe through the use of energy. My approach is pro human flourishing. So "deal with" means allowing humans to deal the challenges of nature.

ThomPete 7y ago

Because we don't actually have any realistic alternatives yet and the ones proposed would be much more expensive than just dealing with the issues as they arrive. Can you mention one scientifically demonstrated consequences of climate change that we don't know how to deal with with todays let alone future technologies?

eesmith 7y ago
(As a clarification, that's "global warming causing climate change".) When you write "deal with", do you mean to include mass migrations, loss of populated areas, and civil unrest? Because that's how we dealt with, for example, the Dust Bowl. One example is that there does not seem any way to save Miami in its current form, using today's technology or any realistic technology we could develop. Quoting https://www.businessinsider.com/miami-floods-sea-level-rise-solutions-2018-4?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/miami-floods-sea-level-rise-... : > “Miami as we know it today — there’s virtually no scenario under which you can imagine it existing at the end of the century,” Goodell said. “It may be some smaller version of Miami that incorporates platform houses and floating structures.” ... > And while there is much that Florida can learn from these other places, no one has answers to looming threats like water rising through the ground underneath. “The solutions that are going to be used to save cities like Miami Beach probably haven’t been developed yet,” Mowry said. Or from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170403-miamis-fight-against-sea-level-rise https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170403-miamis-fight-aga... : > But the question isn’t whether this work will save every community: it won’t. Even those tasked with making their cities resilient admit that, at some point in the future, certain areas here will no longer be “viable” places to live. Rather, the challenge is to do enough to ensure that the economy as a whole continues to thrive and that tourists still come to enjoy the sun, sand – and swelling sea. We can "deal with" that by mass migration to move. Or letting them die. But I don't think that's what you mean?
- ThomPete 7y ago
  I mean we have had to deal with climate change in all of human history and we have only become increasingly better. We also live places today which wasn't possible 100 year ago. Migration have always been a fact of life and we have always managed to deal with it. We are better at that today than any other time in history. So the question I am trying to get answered is what have been scientifically demonstrated to be the case with climate change that we cant deal with if we don't "do anything" today? Climate is always changing yes, the temperature have been rising yes, that will have consequences on us yes, but which changes have been demonstrated that would be worth the cost of upending the current use of ex fossil fuels to help modern civilization deliver goods and services to it's growing population and to reduce the amount of funding for new scientific discoveries or R&D in Molten or fusion? It sounds like a Pascals wager to me but without the upside and instant damnation of the existing people inhabiting the planet.
  - eesmith 7y ago
    I want to pin you down on what "deal with" means. It appears that your "deal with" accepts mass migration, mass starvation, and civil unrest, as those are some of the historic ways humans have addressed things before. If so, I don't see a difference between your view and "just let things happen - some people will survive, and I don't care who." (Actually, your "worth the cost" suggests that you care less about the world's poorest people, whose deaths have the least economic impact.) If your view is anything at all like that, then of course we can "deal with" the effects climate change. But it's not a humane approach.
    - ThomPete 7y ago
      The human approach is the one that gets most people out of poverty and into the middle class so they can deal with the consequences of the climate which we always will have to deal with and always have had to deal with. The most predictable way of doing that is allowing them to use cheap reliable energy. Mass starvation happens when you don't have cheap reliable energy, pesticides and other modern technologies to deal with the always ongoing consequences of climate change. Civil unrest is what happens when people don't have access to food, right now the only societies that can ensure that are rich societies using capitalism, technology, and energy (mostly fossil fuels) to deal with that. Mass migration happens all the time but again it's more likely to happen when you don't have the means to defend you against the always occuring challenges of the climate. It's anti-human to hinder poor people getting access to the very resource that allow them to fight the consequences of climate change like we are able to in modern societies. Nature doesn't give us a safe and friendly environment we make unsafe, it gives us a hostile and dangerous enviroment we make safe through the use of energy. My approach is pro human flourishing. So "deal with" means allowing humans to deal the challenges of nature.