4 ms·

Should we seriously ignore the most serious issue facing humanity?

by tsherr 7y ago

pcdoodle 7y ago
When did climate change get promoted to the most serious issue? I think we might have other things to worry about and I don't come here for the fear porn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8455KEDitpU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8455KEDitpU
- lopmotr 7y ago
  Nevermind the video, but you're right to doubt climate change being the most serious issue. Nobody even knows if it will be as bad as World War II, and that itself was not as bad as 20th century communism when measured in deaths. So maybe unknowable future wars or political changes are a more serious issue. Or maybe all the people dying from disease, especially in the 3rd world. Or peak population where the world begins to run out of useful young people? Antibiotic resistance? Declining IQs? Society and culture making people suffer emotionally all their lives? There are so many candidates.
  - imtringued 7y ago
    Why would you care about something that only affects a handful of generations? Progress in the middle ages ground to a halt for multiple centuries but once we revisited ancient knowledge during the renaissance we started progressing at full speed again. The impact of climate change is not limited to a few generations. You can't just reverse it by reading a book and teaching everyone about how people solved problems 1000 years ago. Our modern world is barely 200 years old. It can be reinvented in no time but only if there is nothing standing in our way.
- imtringued 7y ago
  I'm not sure why someone created a whole video that didn't even talk about the basics. No mention of CO2 levels or global average temperature. Instead the focus is on some random cherry picked statistics that only have local impact. Wildfires don't matter to the average person because they are living in urban centers far away from a forest that could burn their house down. The thing about CO2 is that it gets worse the more you have in the atmosphere. If you argue today that fear of climate change is merely alarmism then there is nothing standing in the way of burning coal or gasoline. So if we follow that logic to its conclusion we end up burning all fossil fuels and all of that carbon will be in the atmosphere one day. Maybe today's CO2 levels are not dangerous to us but what about in 80 years? Will it still be safe if we keep burning more and more fossil fuels as the people in India and China enter the middle class? If you want to avoid burning all fossil fuels then you will need an alternative energy source and if you want to reduce the total emissions then you will need to start as soon as possible. If you overreact and reduce your CO2 emissions too early people may not appreciate your help. If you act too late then the future generation will blame everything on you. It's impossible to find a good solution for everyone.
  - ximeng 7y ago
    That video is really talking mostly about EPA report on impacts in the US, and doesn't particularly deny the science. But it doesn't have much to do with the article posted here, which talks about a very specific point regarding modelling likely impact of temperature changes on electricity consumption. I actually agree that the report and the science in general could be a lot better presented. It's not clear exactly why they've picked those ranges for the presentations referenced in the video, and it leaves it open to accusations of bias. The summary referenced in the opening of the PDF is at https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/downloads/NCA4_Report-in-Brief.pdf https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/downloads/NCA4_Report-in-Br... page 28 - an unwieldy PDF, with difficult to follow and vague references. (E.g. "Sources: (a) adapted from Vose et al. 2017, (b) EPA, (c–f and h–l) adapted from EPA 2016, (g and center infographic) EPA and NOAA.") - I can't immediately see the source data in that reference. It doesn't exactly make it easy to understand what's going on and why. And another source he references https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/ https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/ mentions the increase in heat waves in the 1930s without suggesting a reason. It would be more helpful if the video actually referenced the source as a link in the description of the video rather than forcing interested watchers to copy out the link. Basically - poor presentation in the video and in the reports it references. Furthermore, it's clear that the examples analysed in the video have also been picked out to make a point. Not very encouraging from either side really. The answer is more science and better presented science, and the fact that this video, like much of the sceptical analysis about climate change opens with a political point shows the motivation clearly.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ximeng 7y ago
  Not sure about the most serious issue, but by all appearances it is a very serious issue - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_ch... suggests on the order of a few percentage of global GDP, which means it could easily be a multi-trillion dollar issue (as well as the indirect impacts that we're already seeing in terms of damage to ecosystems, human impact on health and livelihood, and political dysfunction). Even if you only assign a very minimal risk of 1% to all the scientific predictions being correct, you're still talking about an issue of the order of 10s of billions of dollars, so worth presumably some research. It is hard to think of many issues that have a similar potential magnitude of impact. Most of these are political issues or wars - e.g. Brexit could cause an impact of a few percent of UK GDP by 2030, US-China trade war is perhaps of the order of 1-2% of US GDP impact on the US. But - this doesn't really relate to the current article. The accepted approach to articles you don't think are relevant is to flag and hide, not to complain.

Should we seriously ignore the most serious issue facing humanity?

by tsherr 7y ago

Should we seriously ignore the most serious issue facing humanity?

When did climate change get promoted to the most serious issue? I think we might have other things to worry about and I don't come here for the fear porn. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8455KEDitpU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8455KEDitpU

lopmotr 7y ago
Nevermind the video, but you're right to doubt climate change being the most serious issue. Nobody even knows if it will be as bad as World War II, and that itself was not as bad as 20th century communism when measured in deaths. So maybe unknowable future wars or political changes are a more serious issue. Or maybe all the people dying from disease, especially in the 3rd world. Or peak population where the world begins to run out of useful young people? Antibiotic resistance? Declining IQs? Society and culture making people suffer emotionally all their lives? There are so many candidates.
- imtringued 7y ago
  Why would you care about something that only affects a handful of generations? Progress in the middle ages ground to a halt for multiple centuries but once we revisited ancient knowledge during the renaissance we started progressing at full speed again. The impact of climate change is not limited to a few generations. You can't just reverse it by reading a book and teaching everyone about how people solved problems 1000 years ago. Our modern world is barely 200 years old. It can be reinvented in no time but only if there is nothing standing in our way.
imtringued 7y ago
I'm not sure why someone created a whole video that didn't even talk about the basics. No mention of CO2 levels or global average temperature. Instead the focus is on some random cherry picked statistics that only have local impact. Wildfires don't matter to the average person because they are living in urban centers far away from a forest that could burn their house down. The thing about CO2 is that it gets worse the more you have in the atmosphere. If you argue today that fear of climate change is merely alarmism then there is nothing standing in the way of burning coal or gasoline. So if we follow that logic to its conclusion we end up burning all fossil fuels and all of that carbon will be in the atmosphere one day. Maybe today's CO2 levels are not dangerous to us but what about in 80 years? Will it still be safe if we keep burning more and more fossil fuels as the people in India and China enter the middle class? If you want to avoid burning all fossil fuels then you will need an alternative energy source and if you want to reduce the total emissions then you will need to start as soon as possible. If you overreact and reduce your CO2 emissions too early people may not appreciate your help. If you act too late then the future generation will blame everything on you. It's impossible to find a good solution for everyone.
- ximeng 7y ago
  That video is really talking mostly about EPA report on impacts in the US, and doesn't particularly deny the science. But it doesn't have much to do with the article posted here, which talks about a very specific point regarding modelling likely impact of temperature changes on electricity consumption. I actually agree that the report and the science in general could be a lot better presented. It's not clear exactly why they've picked those ranges for the presentations referenced in the video, and it leaves it open to accusations of bias. The summary referenced in the opening of the PDF is at https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/downloads/NCA4_Report-in-Brief.pdf https://nca2018.globalchange.gov/downloads/NCA4_Report-in-Br... page 28 - an unwieldy PDF, with difficult to follow and vague references. (E.g. "Sources: (a) adapted from Vose et al. 2017, (b) EPA, (c–f and h–l) adapted from EPA 2016, (g and center infographic) EPA and NOAA.") - I can't immediately see the source data in that reference. It doesn't exactly make it easy to understand what's going on and why. And another source he references https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/ https://science2017.globalchange.gov/chapter/6/ mentions the increase in heat waves in the 1930s without suggesting a reason. It would be more helpful if the video actually referenced the source as a link in the description of the video rather than forcing interested watchers to copy out the link. Basically - poor presentation in the video and in the reports it references. Furthermore, it's clear that the examples analysed in the video have also been picked out to make a point. Not very encouraging from either side really. The answer is more science and better presented science, and the fact that this video, like much of the sceptical analysis about climate change opens with a political point shows the motivation clearly.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
ximeng 7y ago
Not sure about the most serious issue, but by all appearances it is a very serious issue - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_change https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impacts_of_climate_ch... suggests on the order of a few percentage of global GDP, which means it could easily be a multi-trillion dollar issue (as well as the indirect impacts that we're already seeing in terms of damage to ecosystems, human impact on health and livelihood, and political dysfunction). Even if you only assign a very minimal risk of 1% to all the scientific predictions being correct, you're still talking about an issue of the order of 10s of billions of dollars, so worth presumably some research. It is hard to think of many issues that have a similar potential magnitude of impact. Most of these are political issues or wars - e.g. Brexit could cause an impact of a few percent of UK GDP by 2030, US-China trade war is perhaps of the order of 1-2% of US GDP impact on the US. But - this doesn't really relate to the current article. The accepted approach to articles you don't think are relevant is to flag and hide, not to complain.