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>But pandemic is milder in every imaginable way Ok, sorry, but this is just hysteria. A deadly pandemic is in absolutely no way milder than climate change. Cl
by twomoretime 6y ago
>But pandemic is milder in every imaginable way
Ok, sorry, but this is just hysteria. A deadly pandemic is in absolutely no way milder than climate change.
Climate change will see the occasionally bad storm, gradually more frequent flooding, and displacement of a minority of the global population from the coast over a period of >1 century.
People will gradually move inland and rebuild. Economies may shift over time, power structures wax and wane, etc - the point is it will feel mild because it will happen on a large timescale.
This is far less deserving of early mitigation strategies than a global pandemic which is killing potentially millions of people in the span of a few months. The two levels of danger are simply incomperable.
>Both cause major systemic economic damage, with long lasting consequences.
I hear this perspective a lot, but I think it's flawed fearmongering. The gradual nature of climate change is such that the "damage" will be indiscernible from normal turnover maybe increased by a couple percent on average per year as storms and floodings increase in frequency. If anything, this could be a perpetual infrastructure stimulus. That's even if it happens on a short enough scale to matter. The anticipated timeline (and carnage) is not and cannot be proven and given that we are dealing with geologic timescales, it will likely be at hundreds of years at an absolute minimum.
- paulintrognon 6y agoIf it is hysteria, why do you think most world countries signed the Paris agreement to keep global warming below 2° Celsius?
- twomoretime 6y agoThe fact that it's a consensus does not mean that it's not hysterical. How can anyone have faith in these governments/organizations after we just watched this global failure to deal with covid?
- cmarschner 6y agoI think we haven‘t seen global failure, we have seen how different governments have come up with different solutions to protect their people. It seems that those with recent experience of handling epidemics (like MERS) have fared much better than those who haven‘t. This is simply a learning curve effect - if a pandemic were to happen again in the next 10 years, responses would be much more swift and also more consistent; it is dependent on the resistence if the healthcare system - state-run systems have much scarcer resources than other systems, decentralized systems are more resistant than centralized ones; it seems dependent on how much policy is influenced by science; populist leaders seem to fare quite badly; and finally it‘s probably a good thing to have a female leader on top.
- hkeide 6y agoDo you think emissions are increasing in an exponential manner or a linear manner?
- Retric 6y agoLet’s suppose unmitigated COVID-19 kills 1 in x people over the next 2 years. The specifics matter a lot, but it’s still over a relatively short period. Unmitigated climate change on the other hand may kill say far less than that per year, but it doesn’t simply go away. People in 2120 are still going to be dealing in with the effects. Covid is like a car crash it’s obvious, but climate change is like obesity it’s kills in a great many ways not just storms but also things like migration of tropical diseases. The good news, is we have already done much to mitigate both.
- james-mcelwain 6y agoA minority of the global population is still a huge number. You're much more optimistic than me about Western democracy's ability to cope with 100s of millions of climate refugees without things falling apart.
- jbay808 6y agoI don't think this reflects the runaway warming scenarios that people are concerned about.