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I wager that over the next century, more human lives will be harmed by efforts to counter climate change than will be by the changing climate itself. The WMO e

I wager that over the next century, more human lives will be harmed by efforts to counter climate change than will be by the changing climate itself. The WMO estimates[0] that over the 50 years from 1970 to 2019, global climate-related deaths dropped to one-third. Not one-third per capita; one-third in absolute number of deaths, even as the world population more than doubled. This can be mostly attributed to the rising standard of living in developing countries, through the use of cheap energy from fossil fuels, which lets people better master their environment. On the other side, we have the example of Sri Lanka, which banned chemical fertilizer (produced from fossil fuels) and pesticides partly out of environmental concerns[1], and is now undergoing widespread hunger. [0]: https://library.wmo.int/viewer/57564/download?file=1267_Atlas_of_Mortality_en.pdf&type=pdf https://library.wmo.int/viewer/57564/download?file=1267_Atla... [1]: https://fee.org/articles/sri-lanka-s-food-crisis-is-man-made-and-demonstrates-the-danger-of-faux-environmentalism/ https://fee.org/articles/sri-lanka-s-food-crisis-is-man-made...

Daishiman 3y ago
I cannot imagine a more intellectually dishonest position than this one which willfully ignoring the vast and accelerating scale of change in the global climate system.
- gottorf 3y ago
  A "vast and accelerating scale of change" that heretofore, as evidenced by data, yielded no climate-related burden on humanity. Atmospheric CO2 went from ~280ppm pre-Industrial Revolution to ~325ppm in 1970 to ~410ppm in 2019[0], during which time we 10x'd the number of humans and as I stated, reduced the human toll on the climate by over 6x in the past 50 years. But sure, call me intellectually dishonest in the absence of any evidence; without which your position is just another Malthusian or Ehrlichian doomsday prediction. [0]: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/atmospheric-concentration-of-carbon-dioxide-5/download.table https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/atmospheric-co...
  - Daishiman 3y ago
    The idea that there is no climate-related burden on humanity is more intellectual fallacy. Extreme weather events have been ocurring more frequently and we have hit record-high global temperatures and record-low Antactic ice surfaces. Ocean acidification has real and quantifiable effects on plankton and mollusks which are the base of the global food chain. You're suddenly shifting the conversation as though doubling the proportion of a gas responsible for global warming in the span of a century was not a concerning thing in geological timescales. So yeah, not just an intellectual fake but also a willful liar.

Daishiman 3y ago

I cannot imagine a more intellectually dishonest position than this one which willfully ignoring the vast and accelerating scale of change in the global climate system.

gottorf 3y ago
A "vast and accelerating scale of change" that heretofore, as evidenced by data, yielded no climate-related burden on humanity. Atmospheric CO2 went from ~280ppm pre-Industrial Revolution to ~325ppm in 1970 to ~410ppm in 2019[0], during which time we 10x'd the number of humans and as I stated, reduced the human toll on the climate by over 6x in the past 50 years. But sure, call me intellectually dishonest in the absence of any evidence; without which your position is just another Malthusian or Ehrlichian doomsday prediction. [0]: https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/atmospheric-concentration-of-carbon-dioxide-5/download.table https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/daviz/atmospheric-co...
- Daishiman 3y ago
  The idea that there is no climate-related burden on humanity is more intellectual fallacy. Extreme weather events have been ocurring more frequently and we have hit record-high global temperatures and record-low Antactic ice surfaces. Ocean acidification has real and quantifiable effects on plankton and mollusks which are the base of the global food chain. You're suddenly shifting the conversation as though doubling the proportion of a gas responsible for global warming in the span of a century was not a concerning thing in geological timescales. So yeah, not just an intellectual fake but also a willful liar.