6 ms·

Reasonable environmentalists aren't advocating that we prevent climate change. The earth's climate changes. It always has and always will. There is nothing w

Reasonable environmentalists aren't advocating that we prevent climate change. The earth's climate changes. It always has and always will. There is nothing we can do to prevent the natural cycles the earth goes through. What we need to adjust is our unnatural, unbalanced effect on the earth's climate.

krschultz 15y ago
Why do we need to? Just because it is unnatural and you are philosophically opposed to it? Or are you saying something about the fact that the temperature change is driven by humans rather than nature makes it a problem?
- anigbrowl 15y ago
  Because we're likely to suffer a great deal if it changes too much or too fast. Stop projecting stereotypes onto other posters.
  - krschultz 15y ago
    I wasn't actually projecting anything, just asking for clarification on his position. But while I'm at it, how do you know we will suffer a great deal? I am sure the climate is changing, I can read a graph of temperatures as well as the next guy. I am sure that humans are causing it, how could we not be considering our emissions? But how are we so damn sure that this is going to be a massive catastrophy? There are predictions of doom and gloom in agriculture - but compare agriculture in 1750 to 1850 to 1950 to today. Would the farmers of 1750 even recognize the farms we have today? Technology is an amazing thing. We're not talking about making Earth 150 degrees, we're taking a 1-10 degree increase in average temperatures. That will definitely change our weather patterns, but how do we know we will starve to death? So what if the rain patterns change, you can't imagine some solar powered desalination plants and irrigation systems that rival how we move oil in pipelines today? You can't imagine genetically engineering crops to withstand slightly higher temperature changes or wet weather? As for rising sea levels, so some property will be destroyed. It won't come as a breached levee or a tsunami, it will be gradual over years. Some people will have to move. At the end of the day, the populated areas will get levees. It seems to me that we already have plenty of people suffering now due to natural disasters from earthquakes to hurricanes to tornados. If we are so willing to spend billions or trillions of dollars on preventing people from being hurt by the climate, why don't we fix some of the more pressing issues. Let's build homes in Haiti, China and Iran to Japan level earthquake standards. Why don't we move everyone out of trailer homes in tornado alley? Why don't we build massive tsunami walls in the Pacific? Those natural disasters kill hundreds of thousands of people. I don't see anyone saying climate change will kill hundreds of thousands of people, but we are far more willing to put into effect a tax on our economy to prevent that but not a tax on our economy to build new homes in other countries, or even to move people in our own out of unsafe homes. Why do we care that humans caused climate change and not mother nature?
    - onemoreact 15y ago
      The problem is not as simple as just temperature change. There is a huge worldwide investment based around rainfall following existing patterns. Exchanging 100+million acres of grassland for 100+ million acres of dessert might seem ok if just as much tundra becomes grassland, however rebuilding existing cities in new locations quickly become trillion dollar projects. IMO, preventing climate change is less about protecting the ecosystem as it is protecting existing investments in roads, bridges, dams, houses and factory’s. PS: Toss in even stronger and more frequent extreme weather and dumping CO2 is unlikely to end up as a good thing. At some point in the near future we are simply going to run out of oil so doing nothing does not mean we get to keep up our current approaches for all that long anyway.
    - anigbrowl 15y ago
      I wasn't actually projecting anything, just asking for clarification on his position. 'Just because it is unnatural and you are philosophically opposed to it?' is very much a projection of what you think the grandparent's underlying message is. But while I'm at it, how do you know we will suffer a great deal? I don't know, I speculate that there is a high probability of such because accelerated climate change seems to increase the probability of extreme weather events, both sudden and seasonal. Tornadoes and hurricanes fall into the former category, things like droughts or extended rainy seasons fall into the latter. While I don't think current weather events should be held up as evidence of climate change, we can look at current weather events to gain an idea of the potential costs and difficulties if the probability forecasts are accurate. I don't see anyone saying climate change will kill hundreds of thousands of people, but we are far more willing to put into effect a tax on our economy to prevent that but not a tax on our economy to build [...] You can't be paying much attention if you don't see warnings about increased loss of life. This is a major risk over the long term, from extreme weather as described above to damaged agricultural prospects, to intensified competition for access to shrinking resources such as land or clean water. We do not know the exact outcome or the costs, but we can form reasonable estimates and weight them in accordance with the known predictive ability of our models to do a cost-benefit analysis. It strikes me as odd that those who are most skeptical of predictions about climate change are also the most sure of themselves when making statements about the economic impact, insisting that all 'green' expenditure constitutes a tax as if there were no positive externalities to be had from energy efficiency or less polluting forms of power generation.
- manux 15y ago
  We need to because we are aware of the detrimental effects our environmental behavior has not only on nature, but on ourselves too. (And we like preserving ourselves right?)
  - krschultz 15y ago
    That doesn't actually answer my question at all. The GP said that the earth has natural temperature swings and we can't/shouldn't do anything about them. But we need (emphasis mine) to do something about unnatural temperature swings. Why is there a distinction between temperature changes caused by man and temperature changes caused by nature? If nature were to cause the Earth to warm by the same amount as humans are going to, we would face the same detrimental impacts on the environment that you mentioned (that I don't deny will happen). But given those effects we have 3 and only 3 choices. We can die off. We can adapt to the changes. Or we can force the Earth back to the temperature it is now. Obviously we will ignore the idea of dieing off. But given that our response to a natural temperature increase of the same magnitude as the one caused by humans is either A) Adapt or B) Force cool the climate, why aren't these options considered when we are talking about human derived climate change? Then really the question becomes, is it cheaper/better for us to fix the climate now? Or is it cheaper for us to adapt/change it back later? That really become an economic question, one of net present value. To say that we need to do it now without addressing the other options is a philosophical position, one that puts keeping nature the way it is today at a higher value than anything else.
    - tedsuo 15y ago
      As for the cost of adaption, floods and hurricanes are the most costly disasters we face. In addition to that, moving infrastructure around on a short timescale (50 years) to deal with changing climate involves a massive, massive output of effort. In short, it is far more inefficient to move a large part of our infrastructure and deal with increasingly damaging weather than it is to clean up our emissions. Also, what makes human generated forcings special is their outsized impact on climate: they appear to be moving the climate an much faster that than other forcings. The earth is currently in a cooling cycle, but is now heating rapidly as a result of industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. Because we have such an outsized impact, we need to regulate our behavior. It would be just as terrible if a thousand new volcanos suddenly opened up and started spewing out carbon, but that's not what we're dealing with.
- ajb 15y ago
  The distinction is one of knowledge. We have evidence that that the environment as it exists now, is a relatively stable regime. The climate has changed throughout history, but not, obviously, to the extent of rendering us extinct. If, however, we act to bring the climate out of the regime for which we have this evidence (for example, by raising the CO2 level to its highest value for 800,000 years), then with our present rudimentary understanding of the climate, we cannot predict what will happen with any great confidence. And, there is evidence that climatic changes can cause tremendous damage. So, the burden of proof should be on those who say that these changes are safe.
  - zeteo 15y ago
    >We have evidence that that the environment as it exists now, is a relatively stable regime. Umm.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth ?!
  - DougWebb 15y ago
    <quote>The climate has changed throughout history, but not, obviously, to the extent of rendering us extinct.</quote> It's come pretty close, and that's typical. Most species that have ever existed on this planet went extinct ages ago, often during periods of drastic climate change (as far as we can tell from the archeological record.) Our own fairly recent past is the same. The latest research on the 'flood' that gave rise to flood myths in every civilization in Southern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, suggests that the Mediterranean Sea was a fertile populated valley during the last ice age. But when the ice age ended due to natural climate change, the rising Atlantic broke through the natural dam at Gibraltar and flooded the valley, and into the Black and Red seas, up the Nile, etc. That's a massive natural disaster that must have wiped out a pretty big chunk of humanity. It was probably repeated on a smaller scale around the world too, as seaside villages were flooded out by the rising oceans and likely increase in the number of storms as the world warmed up.
    - jamii 15y ago
      Even more dramatic, a number of genetic studies suggest that hominids faced near extinction more than once eg http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=early-human-population-size-genetic-diversity http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=early-human... estimates a total population of around 50k.
- grannyg00se 15y ago
  We need to because we are likely to unbalance the natural cycle and cause change that is more severe and more rapid than ever before. This is difficult to deal with, and dangerous to our survival.
- rsynnott 15y ago
  More because it's extremely rapid, and potentially very dangerous. Major climatic change would endanger the food supply.

krschultz 15y ago

Why do we need to? Just because it is unnatural and you are philosophically opposed to it? Or are you saying something about the fact that the temperature change is driven by humans rather than nature makes it a problem?

anigbrowl 15y ago
Because we're likely to suffer a great deal if it changes too much or too fast. Stop projecting stereotypes onto other posters.
- krschultz 15y ago
  I wasn't actually projecting anything, just asking for clarification on his position. But while I'm at it, how do you know we will suffer a great deal? I am sure the climate is changing, I can read a graph of temperatures as well as the next guy. I am sure that humans are causing it, how could we not be considering our emissions? But how are we so damn sure that this is going to be a massive catastrophy? There are predictions of doom and gloom in agriculture - but compare agriculture in 1750 to 1850 to 1950 to today. Would the farmers of 1750 even recognize the farms we have today? Technology is an amazing thing. We're not talking about making Earth 150 degrees, we're taking a 1-10 degree increase in average temperatures. That will definitely change our weather patterns, but how do we know we will starve to death? So what if the rain patterns change, you can't imagine some solar powered desalination plants and irrigation systems that rival how we move oil in pipelines today? You can't imagine genetically engineering crops to withstand slightly higher temperature changes or wet weather? As for rising sea levels, so some property will be destroyed. It won't come as a breached levee or a tsunami, it will be gradual over years. Some people will have to move. At the end of the day, the populated areas will get levees. It seems to me that we already have plenty of people suffering now due to natural disasters from earthquakes to hurricanes to tornados. If we are so willing to spend billions or trillions of dollars on preventing people from being hurt by the climate, why don't we fix some of the more pressing issues. Let's build homes in Haiti, China and Iran to Japan level earthquake standards. Why don't we move everyone out of trailer homes in tornado alley? Why don't we build massive tsunami walls in the Pacific? Those natural disasters kill hundreds of thousands of people. I don't see anyone saying climate change will kill hundreds of thousands of people, but we are far more willing to put into effect a tax on our economy to prevent that but not a tax on our economy to build new homes in other countries, or even to move people in our own out of unsafe homes. Why do we care that humans caused climate change and not mother nature?
  - onemoreact 15y ago
    The problem is not as simple as just temperature change. There is a huge worldwide investment based around rainfall following existing patterns. Exchanging 100+million acres of grassland for 100+ million acres of dessert might seem ok if just as much tundra becomes grassland, however rebuilding existing cities in new locations quickly become trillion dollar projects. IMO, preventing climate change is less about protecting the ecosystem as it is protecting existing investments in roads, bridges, dams, houses and factory’s. PS: Toss in even stronger and more frequent extreme weather and dumping CO2 is unlikely to end up as a good thing. At some point in the near future we are simply going to run out of oil so doing nothing does not mean we get to keep up our current approaches for all that long anyway.
  - anigbrowl 15y ago
    I wasn't actually projecting anything, just asking for clarification on his position. 'Just because it is unnatural and you are philosophically opposed to it?' is very much a projection of what you think the grandparent's underlying message is. But while I'm at it, how do you know we will suffer a great deal? I don't know, I speculate that there is a high probability of such because accelerated climate change seems to increase the probability of extreme weather events, both sudden and seasonal. Tornadoes and hurricanes fall into the former category, things like droughts or extended rainy seasons fall into the latter. While I don't think current weather events should be held up as evidence of climate change, we can look at current weather events to gain an idea of the potential costs and difficulties if the probability forecasts are accurate. I don't see anyone saying climate change will kill hundreds of thousands of people, but we are far more willing to put into effect a tax on our economy to prevent that but not a tax on our economy to build [...] You can't be paying much attention if you don't see warnings about increased loss of life. This is a major risk over the long term, from extreme weather as described above to damaged agricultural prospects, to intensified competition for access to shrinking resources such as land or clean water. We do not know the exact outcome or the costs, but we can form reasonable estimates and weight them in accordance with the known predictive ability of our models to do a cost-benefit analysis. It strikes me as odd that those who are most skeptical of predictions about climate change are also the most sure of themselves when making statements about the economic impact, insisting that all 'green' expenditure constitutes a tax as if there were no positive externalities to be had from energy efficiency or less polluting forms of power generation.
manux 15y ago
We need to because we are aware of the detrimental effects our environmental behavior has not only on nature, but on ourselves too. (And we like preserving ourselves right?)
- krschultz 15y ago
  That doesn't actually answer my question at all. The GP said that the earth has natural temperature swings and we can't/shouldn't do anything about them. But we need (emphasis mine) to do something about unnatural temperature swings. Why is there a distinction between temperature changes caused by man and temperature changes caused by nature? If nature were to cause the Earth to warm by the same amount as humans are going to, we would face the same detrimental impacts on the environment that you mentioned (that I don't deny will happen). But given those effects we have 3 and only 3 choices. We can die off. We can adapt to the changes. Or we can force the Earth back to the temperature it is now. Obviously we will ignore the idea of dieing off. But given that our response to a natural temperature increase of the same magnitude as the one caused by humans is either A) Adapt or B) Force cool the climate, why aren't these options considered when we are talking about human derived climate change? Then really the question becomes, is it cheaper/better for us to fix the climate now? Or is it cheaper for us to adapt/change it back later? That really become an economic question, one of net present value. To say that we need to do it now without addressing the other options is a philosophical position, one that puts keeping nature the way it is today at a higher value than anything else.
  - tedsuo 15y ago
    As for the cost of adaption, floods and hurricanes are the most costly disasters we face. In addition to that, moving infrastructure around on a short timescale (50 years) to deal with changing climate involves a massive, massive output of effort. In short, it is far more inefficient to move a large part of our infrastructure and deal with increasingly damaging weather than it is to clean up our emissions. Also, what makes human generated forcings special is their outsized impact on climate: they appear to be moving the climate an much faster that than other forcings. The earth is currently in a cooling cycle, but is now heating rapidly as a result of industrial emissions of greenhouse gases. Because we have such an outsized impact, we need to regulate our behavior. It would be just as terrible if a thousand new volcanos suddenly opened up and started spewing out carbon, but that's not what we're dealing with.
ajb 15y ago
The distinction is one of knowledge. We have evidence that that the environment as it exists now, is a relatively stable regime. The climate has changed throughout history, but not, obviously, to the extent of rendering us extinct. If, however, we act to bring the climate out of the regime for which we have this evidence (for example, by raising the CO2 level to its highest value for 800,000 years), then with our present rudimentary understanding of the climate, we cannot predict what will happen with any great confidence. And, there is evidence that climatic changes can cause tremendous damage. So, the burden of proof should be on those who say that these changes are safe.
- zeteo 15y ago
  >We have evidence that that the environment as it exists now, is a relatively stable regime. Umm.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth ?!
- DougWebb 15y ago
  <quote>The climate has changed throughout history, but not, obviously, to the extent of rendering us extinct.</quote> It's come pretty close, and that's typical. Most species that have ever existed on this planet went extinct ages ago, often during periods of drastic climate change (as far as we can tell from the archeological record.) Our own fairly recent past is the same. The latest research on the 'flood' that gave rise to flood myths in every civilization in Southern Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa, suggests that the Mediterranean Sea was a fertile populated valley during the last ice age. But when the ice age ended due to natural climate change, the rising Atlantic broke through the natural dam at Gibraltar and flooded the valley, and into the Black and Red seas, up the Nile, etc. That's a massive natural disaster that must have wiped out a pretty big chunk of humanity. It was probably repeated on a smaller scale around the world too, as seaside villages were flooded out by the rising oceans and likely increase in the number of storms as the world warmed up.
  - jamii 15y ago
    Even more dramatic, a number of genetic studies suggest that hominids faced near extinction more than once eg http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=early-human-population-size-genetic-diversity http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=early-human... estimates a total population of around 50k.
grannyg00se 15y ago
We need to because we are likely to unbalance the natural cycle and cause change that is more severe and more rapid than ever before. This is difficult to deal with, and dangerous to our survival.
rsynnott 15y ago
More because it's extremely rapid, and potentially very dangerous. Major climatic change would endanger the food supply.