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> The climate will change. That's completely natural and I can't see a reason to stop it (honestly I think it's impossible). Humans and other animals will just

by cryptoz 16y ago

> The climate will change. That's completely natural and I can't see a reason to stop it (honestly I think it's impossible). Humans and other animals will just adapt and the evolution will continue. This is a very weird paragraph. Forgive me if I don't understand properly, but let's look at this carefully: > The climate will change. That's completely natural The climate does change naturally. It also changes due to artificial reasons (unless you consider human pollution to be natural, but that's just word semantics. For now, lets call human-caused climate change "artificial"). So no this is not completely natural. Our activities have had intense repercussions on our planet's climate in a very artificial way. > and I can't see a reason to stop it Really? You can't see any reason at all? If we don't stop polluting and heating up the planet, it's possible that hundreds of millions of people will suffer and perhaps die. Worst case scenarios have terrible food shortages and awful fresh water problems as rain patterns shift and change. Even if none of this happens there is absolutely that risk. How can you say that you see no reason to stop the human-caused climate change? > (honestly I think it's impossible). This makes zero sense to me. We started changing our climate a long time ago and didn't even notice. We're still changing it now. What makes you think it's "impossible" to start going the other way? Dude, we can drive electric cars on the moon. We can develop technologies to help regulate our climate here on Earth just fine. > Humans and other animals will just adapt and the evolution will continue. Not so fast. While evolution will definitely continue, there already are mass extinctions happening due to climate change. We're changing things far faster than most species can react to, far faster than evolution can handle. Life on Earth will most certainly continue and evolve for many millions of years into the future. But at what cost? We don't need to kill off millions of species just 'cause it's cheaper to burn fuel than use other methods. Let's try to keep as many currently-alive species going as long as we can, yeah? What's the harm in that?

grn 16y ago
Your reaction to the risks you've mentioned looks like panic. Maximal possible damage doesn't matter. A meteorite hitting the Earth would definitely cause enormous damage but is very unlikely to happen. What matters is the expected value of the damage. What are the numbers in the case of climate change? I really don't think that trying to preserve as many species as possible is a rational goal. It causes economical harm for example. What's wrong with extinctions? I often hear about the costs of climate change. What I don't hear about is: 1. possible benefits; what we should assess is benefits - costs, not costs alone, 2. possible benefits and costs of so called solutions. For example introducing electric cars will increase demand for batteries and electricity. That means increased demand for coal, gas or nuclear power. What will be the effects of these? I'm just very skeptical about models of so complex systems. My skepticism is increased by the involvement of politics and the hype around the topic.
- cryptoz 16y ago
  > What's wrong with extinctions? We eat a lot of animals. If you mess with this complex system in weird ways like changing the climate, it seems possible that some of the animals we eat will lose their happy place in the food chain. That's a reason to care and a reason to try and not dramatically and immediately shift the Earth's climate. > 1. possible benefits Some places will get more rain. They might like that. The rest of us might get a lot less rain...that would suck. Right now, people live where it rains. If it starts raining in different places...well, that's going to cause trouble. (The rain is an example. There are obviously other examples.) > 2. possible benefits and costs of so called solutions. For example introducing electric cars will increase demand for batteries and electricity. That means increased demand for coal, gas or nuclear power. What will be the effects of these? Long term, this is far far better. Even if these electric cars are powered by dirty coal. The amount of electricity used to power an electric car pollutes far, far less than a gas car per miles driven. But ideally we'd move towards wind, solar, nuclear, etc to make these options even better. If you are scared or upset at the future using solar energy and you don't know what the effects are, will you at least agree that it's likely a much better move than burning things? Your skepticism could be healthy, but I think you are too skeptical and that is damaging your ability to rationally think about our fragile Earth.

by cryptoz 16y ago

grn 16y ago

Your reaction to the risks you've mentioned looks like panic. Maximal possible damage doesn't matter. A meteorite hitting the Earth would definitely cause enormous damage but is very unlikely to happen. What matters is the expected value of the damage. What are the numbers in the case of climate change? I really don't think that trying to preserve as many species as possible is a rational goal. It causes economical harm for example. What's wrong with extinctions? I often hear about the costs of climate change. What I don't hear about is: 1. possible benefits; what we should assess is benefits - costs, not costs alone, 2. possible benefits and costs of so called solutions. For example introducing electric cars will increase demand for batteries and electricity. That means increased demand for coal, gas or nuclear power. What will be the effects of these? I'm just very skeptical about models of so complex systems. My skepticism is increased by the involvement of politics and the hype around the topic.

cryptoz 16y ago
> What's wrong with extinctions? We eat a lot of animals. If you mess with this complex system in weird ways like changing the climate, it seems possible that some of the animals we eat will lose their happy place in the food chain. That's a reason to care and a reason to try and not dramatically and immediately shift the Earth's climate. > 1. possible benefits Some places will get more rain. They might like that. The rest of us might get a lot less rain...that would suck. Right now, people live where it rains. If it starts raining in different places...well, that's going to cause trouble. (The rain is an example. There are obviously other examples.) > 2. possible benefits and costs of so called solutions. For example introducing electric cars will increase demand for batteries and electricity. That means increased demand for coal, gas or nuclear power. What will be the effects of these? Long term, this is far far better. Even if these electric cars are powered by dirty coal. The amount of electricity used to power an electric car pollutes far, far less than a gas car per miles driven. But ideally we'd move towards wind, solar, nuclear, etc to make these options even better. If you are scared or upset at the future using solar energy and you don't know what the effects are, will you at least agree that it's likely a much better move than burning things? Your skepticism could be healthy, but I think you are too skeptical and that is damaging your ability to rationally think about our fragile Earth.