4 ms·

A lot more land will become arable, too. It might as well be a net plus, who knows. Africa already imports > 80% of its calories anyway.

pengaru 3y ago
Even if in another hundred years there were a net plus, the interim rebalancing process doesn't occur without prolonged conflict and suffering.
vkou 3y ago
Redistributing the world's wealth by killing all the rich, and taking all their stuff, might[1], just like your opinion of climate change, also turn out to be a 'net plus', yet these kinds of ideas don't currently seem to be in vogue. [1] I say might, because there's uncertainty around this. I do know, with absolute certainty that redistributing - say - your organs to multiple people who need transplants would definitely be a 'net plus', but you don't see me making such bloodless utilitarian arguments.
- gottorf 3y ago
  The difference is that there's a lot of historical precedent against what you described, so we can reasonably expect the outcome of such an idea. Could explain why it's not in vogue, though it does appear more and more popular among the young.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - vkou 3y ago
    > The difference is that there's a lot of historical precedent against what you described, so we can reasonably expect the outcome of such an idea. Whereas we have exactly zero historical precedent to know whether or not climate change will even be a 'net plus'. (I do know that organ redistribution would definitely be a net plus, though. We kill one person, we save the lives of N people, the calculus seems to add up to me...)
    - gottorf 3y ago
      > we have exactly zero historical precedent to know whether or not climate change will even be a 'net plus'. My point exactly! If you respect Chesterton's fence, we shouldn't make radical changes to the status quo without clear and convincing proof that the change is worth the cost. Fossil fuels, as bad as they are, also brought up living standards for literally billions of people. There are still billions of people who have yet to enjoy Western standards of living. We shouldn't handicap their growth by demonizing fossil fuels before alternatives are ready.
      - vkou 3y ago
        It takes incredible mental gymnastics, and a massive ideological blindspot to consider flooding our atmosphere with billions of tons of carbon, and causing a climate catastrophe to be 'the status quo'.
        gottorf 3y ago
        Status quo just means the world as it sits now. It has no bearing on whether it is an ideal state to be. Humanity is indubitably better off now than it was prior to the Industrial Revolution, and there's 10x more of us now to enjoy it, thanks in large part to energy unlocked by fossil fuels. Do you dispute that point, or is your point rather that we should go back to the living standards and world population of the 1700s? At the same time that we've been flooding the atmosphere with carbon with nations around the world industrializing (1970-2019), climate-related deaths around the world shrank to one-third, while the human population doubled[0]. Not one-third in rate, that's one-third in absolute number. Is that the "climate catastrophe" you're talking about? The IPCC released its first report in 1990, and deaths of climate has only decreased since then, mainly due to the improving ability of developing nations to better master their environment -- again, via cheap energy enabled by fossil fuels. I'm not the one with mental gymnastics and blind spots if you cannot acknowledge the instrumental role that fossil fuels have played in getting humanity to this point, and the inability of current renewable energy technology to replace it wholesale. [0]: https://library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?explnum_id=10989 https://library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?explnum_id=10989
gottorf 3y ago
> It might as well be a net plus, who knows. Given that most of the world's land is in the northern two thirds of the globe[0], it seems more likely than not that eventually it will be a net plus in arable land and overall agricultural output. Other commenters, of course, have a good point in how pleasant that transitional period will be. [0]: https://www.ecoclimax.com/2016/08/land-mass-at-each-longitude-and-latitude.html https://www.ecoclimax.com/2016/08/land-mass-at-each-longitud...

pengaru 3y ago

Even if in another hundred years there were a net plus, the interim rebalancing process doesn't occur without prolonged conflict and suffering.

vkou 3y ago

Redistributing the world's wealth by killing all the rich, and taking all their stuff, might[1], just like your opinion of climate change, also turn out to be a 'net plus', yet these kinds of ideas don't currently seem to be in vogue. [1] I say might, because there's uncertainty around this. I do know, with absolute certainty that redistributing - say - your organs to multiple people who need transplants would definitely be a 'net plus', but you don't see me making such bloodless utilitarian arguments.

gottorf 3y ago
The difference is that there's a lot of historical precedent against what you described, so we can reasonably expect the outcome of such an idea. Could explain why it's not in vogue, though it does appear more and more popular among the young.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- vkou 3y ago
  > The difference is that there's a lot of historical precedent against what you described, so we can reasonably expect the outcome of such an idea. Whereas we have exactly zero historical precedent to know whether or not climate change will even be a 'net plus'. (I do know that organ redistribution would definitely be a net plus, though. We kill one person, we save the lives of N people, the calculus seems to add up to me...)
  - gottorf 3y ago
    > we have exactly zero historical precedent to know whether or not climate change will even be a 'net plus'. My point exactly! If you respect Chesterton's fence, we shouldn't make radical changes to the status quo without clear and convincing proof that the change is worth the cost. Fossil fuels, as bad as they are, also brought up living standards for literally billions of people. There are still billions of people who have yet to enjoy Western standards of living. We shouldn't handicap their growth by demonizing fossil fuels before alternatives are ready.
    - vkou 3y ago
      It takes incredible mental gymnastics, and a massive ideological blindspot to consider flooding our atmosphere with billions of tons of carbon, and causing a climate catastrophe to be 'the status quo'.
      - gottorf 3y ago
        Status quo just means the world as it sits now. It has no bearing on whether it is an ideal state to be. Humanity is indubitably better off now than it was prior to the Industrial Revolution, and there's 10x more of us now to enjoy it, thanks in large part to energy unlocked by fossil fuels. Do you dispute that point, or is your point rather that we should go back to the living standards and world population of the 1700s? At the same time that we've been flooding the atmosphere with carbon with nations around the world industrializing (1970-2019), climate-related deaths around the world shrank to one-third, while the human population doubled[0]. Not one-third in rate, that's one-third in absolute number. Is that the "climate catastrophe" you're talking about? The IPCC released its first report in 1990, and deaths of climate has only decreased since then, mainly due to the improving ability of developing nations to better master their environment -- again, via cheap energy enabled by fossil fuels. I'm not the one with mental gymnastics and blind spots if you cannot acknowledge the instrumental role that fossil fuels have played in getting humanity to this point, and the inability of current renewable energy technology to replace it wholesale. [0]: https://library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?explnum_id=10989 https://library.wmo.int/doc_num.php?explnum_id=10989

gottorf 3y ago

> It might as well be a net plus, who knows. Given that most of the world's land is in the northern two thirds of the globe[0], it seems more likely than not that eventually it will be a net plus in arable land and overall agricultural output. Other commenters, of course, have a good point in how pleasant that transitional period will be. [0]: https://www.ecoclimax.com/2016/08/land-mass-at-each-longitude-and-latitude.html https://www.ecoclimax.com/2016/08/land-mass-at-each-longitud...