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This is a false economy. Several studies have demonstrated that it is cheaper to avert climate change than to deal with the effects. Switching to low- and zero

This is a false economy. Several studies have demonstrated that it is cheaper to avert climate change than to deal with the effects. Switching to low- and zero-carbon fuels, achieving greater efficiencies and so on, is expensive, but still a lot cheaper than e.g. moving coastal cities or engineering mega-projects to combat flooding, dealing with huge numbers of migrants, dealing with massive changes in agriculture, worse natural disasters, and so on. Plus even if you deal with the effects for decades, your problem has not gone away. The situation is worse, and the planet is still heating.

pdonis 7y ago
> Several studies have demonstrated that it is cheaper to avert climate change than to deal with the effects. Studies based on climate models that are overpredicting warming, plus economic and sociological models that have even less predictive power. > moving coastal cities or engineering mega-projects to combat flooding If your coastal city has a problem with sea level rising a couple of feet, your coastal city has already had a problem for a century or more, and you ignored it. How is that all of a sudden a climate emergency? > your problem has not gone away I've already said climate change is something we're always going to have to deal with, just as humans have had to deal with it during all of human history. The idea that we can magically stop the climate from changing ever again is ridiculous.
- chimprich 7y ago
  > Studies based on climate models that are overpredicting warming Models in general haven't overpredicted warming, as several people in this discussion have tried to educate you. > If your coastal city has a problem with sea level rising a couple of feet, your coastal city has already had a problem for a century or more, and you ignored it. I'm not at all clear what your point is here. It looks like you're arguing that because something is changing over the course of several decades it's not as much as a problem. Surely that can't be it though, because that makes no logical sense. From an economic sense it's just as expensive. > The idea that we can magically stop the climate from changing ever again is ridiculous. A strawman argument. That is not what I wrote. The climate is changing faster by far than it has in all human history, and probably in the history of our planet. Dealing with the effects is also much more difficult now compared to most of human history. When you have 7 or 8 billion people living on the planet, largely in huge cities, it's far more challenging. It's just a lot easier and cheaper to avoid breaking something in the first place than it is to try to fix it afterwards.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    > Models in general haven't overpredicted warming Yes, they have. We're obviously not going to agree on this point. > It looks like you're arguing that because something is changing over the course of several decades it's not as much as a problem. No, I'm arguing that the problem is not new, and it's not a climate problem. It's a problem of misgovernment and has been around for quite a while. But that doesn't stop cities and countries to try to get the rest of us to pay for fixing it by trying to claim that it's a cimate problem. > The climate is changing faster by far than it has in all human history, and probably in the history of our planet. This is ludicrous. Nobody has the data to back this up, and there is plenty of data contradicting it. > When you have 7 or 8 billion people living on the planet, largely in huge cities, it's far more challenging. When the "problem" you're talking about is a degree of so of temperature rise and a foot or two of sea level rise over the course of a century, to call dealing with it "challenging" is an egregious misuse of language. This is simply not that big a deal compared to all the other things we humans have to deal with. And the things we will need to do anyway to deal with those far more challenging problems--like how to bring billions of people out of poverty and how to make our infrastructure more robust--will end up adapting us to the change anyway. If we're going to spend trillions of dollars on something, let's at least spend it on something that benefits everybody regardless of what happens with the climate, instead of on a huge CO2 mitigation boondoggle that will transfer a lot of money from your and my pockets to the pockets of politicians and "green" business executives, but won't actually help much of anything.
    - chimprich 7y ago
      > This is ludicrous. Nobody has the data to back this up, and there is plenty of data contradicting it. The data on this are so clear I don't really know where to start if you don't believe it. I feel your opposition on this issue is ideological, and there's no data that will change your mind. > If we're going to spend trillions of dollars on something, let's at least spend it on something that benefits everybody Given I think there's no arguing data with you, I'll try some arguments that might be more in line with what I guess your beliefs are. Switching from fossil fuels brings huge benefits. Solar, wind, hydro, small nuclear plants etc. are much better for society. Energy security increases if energy is produced locally. Democracies have less pressure to prop up dictatorships. Smaller countries are less at risk of getting bullied by larger countries. Decentralisation of energy production makes the world more stable, less fragile. Energy policy can be set locally rather than centrally. Regions, communities, even individuals, can decide for themselves how to source their power. You can do that with e.g. solar power, but you can't do that with huge gas- or oil-powered plants. Renewables are actually getting more cost-effective to use than fossil fuels. Government subsidies, direct and indirect, are distorting the market. End government support for fossil fuels and let the market free. There are huge opportunities for private enterprise in switching society to use the better technologies. Air pollution is a huge killer. A study I saw yesterday showed dramatic increases in death from COVID-19 where air pollution was worse. Even in normal times, life expectancy and health quality is adversely affected by air pollution. A switch to electric transport improves air pollution massively. There are also technical advantages to electric vehicles, such as improved reliability.

pdonis 7y ago

> Several studies have demonstrated that it is cheaper to avert climate change than to deal with the effects. Studies based on climate models that are overpredicting warming, plus economic and sociological models that have even less predictive power. > moving coastal cities or engineering mega-projects to combat flooding If your coastal city has a problem with sea level rising a couple of feet, your coastal city has already had a problem for a century or more, and you ignored it. How is that all of a sudden a climate emergency? > your problem has not gone away I've already said climate change is something we're always going to have to deal with, just as humans have had to deal with it during all of human history. The idea that we can magically stop the climate from changing ever again is ridiculous.

chimprich 7y ago
> Studies based on climate models that are overpredicting warming Models in general haven't overpredicted warming, as several people in this discussion have tried to educate you. > If your coastal city has a problem with sea level rising a couple of feet, your coastal city has already had a problem for a century or more, and you ignored it. I'm not at all clear what your point is here. It looks like you're arguing that because something is changing over the course of several decades it's not as much as a problem. Surely that can't be it though, because that makes no logical sense. From an economic sense it's just as expensive. > The idea that we can magically stop the climate from changing ever again is ridiculous. A strawman argument. That is not what I wrote. The climate is changing faster by far than it has in all human history, and probably in the history of our planet. Dealing with the effects is also much more difficult now compared to most of human history. When you have 7 or 8 billion people living on the planet, largely in huge cities, it's far more challenging. It's just a lot easier and cheaper to avoid breaking something in the first place than it is to try to fix it afterwards.
- pdonis 7y ago
  > Models in general haven't overpredicted warming Yes, they have. We're obviously not going to agree on this point. > It looks like you're arguing that because something is changing over the course of several decades it's not as much as a problem. No, I'm arguing that the problem is not new, and it's not a climate problem. It's a problem of misgovernment and has been around for quite a while. But that doesn't stop cities and countries to try to get the rest of us to pay for fixing it by trying to claim that it's a cimate problem. > The climate is changing faster by far than it has in all human history, and probably in the history of our planet. This is ludicrous. Nobody has the data to back this up, and there is plenty of data contradicting it. > When you have 7 or 8 billion people living on the planet, largely in huge cities, it's far more challenging. When the "problem" you're talking about is a degree of so of temperature rise and a foot or two of sea level rise over the course of a century, to call dealing with it "challenging" is an egregious misuse of language. This is simply not that big a deal compared to all the other things we humans have to deal with. And the things we will need to do anyway to deal with those far more challenging problems--like how to bring billions of people out of poverty and how to make our infrastructure more robust--will end up adapting us to the change anyway. If we're going to spend trillions of dollars on something, let's at least spend it on something that benefits everybody regardless of what happens with the climate, instead of on a huge CO2 mitigation boondoggle that will transfer a lot of money from your and my pockets to the pockets of politicians and "green" business executives, but won't actually help much of anything.
  - chimprich 7y ago
    > This is ludicrous. Nobody has the data to back this up, and there is plenty of data contradicting it. The data on this are so clear I don't really know where to start if you don't believe it. I feel your opposition on this issue is ideological, and there's no data that will change your mind. > If we're going to spend trillions of dollars on something, let's at least spend it on something that benefits everybody Given I think there's no arguing data with you, I'll try some arguments that might be more in line with what I guess your beliefs are. Switching from fossil fuels brings huge benefits. Solar, wind, hydro, small nuclear plants etc. are much better for society. Energy security increases if energy is produced locally. Democracies have less pressure to prop up dictatorships. Smaller countries are less at risk of getting bullied by larger countries. Decentralisation of energy production makes the world more stable, less fragile. Energy policy can be set locally rather than centrally. Regions, communities, even individuals, can decide for themselves how to source their power. You can do that with e.g. solar power, but you can't do that with huge gas- or oil-powered plants. Renewables are actually getting more cost-effective to use than fossil fuels. Government subsidies, direct and indirect, are distorting the market. End government support for fossil fuels and let the market free. There are huge opportunities for private enterprise in switching society to use the better technologies. Air pollution is a huge killer. A study I saw yesterday showed dramatic increases in death from COVID-19 where air pollution was worse. Even in normal times, life expectancy and health quality is adversely affected by air pollution. A switch to electric transport improves air pollution massively. There are also technical advantages to electric vehicles, such as improved reliability.