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We do need to urgently discuss the role of the first world towards massive third world calamities. I'm a global warming believer, but I'm starting to question

We do need to urgently discuss the role of the first world towards massive third world calamities. I'm a global warming believer, but I'm starting to question whether the planet warming won't actually be posivite for a lot of first world economies. More solar power, less money spent on heating, less dependent on foreign resources etc etc etc. Meanwhile, poor countries will take the brunt of the disasters due to geography and lack of own resources. If the rich turn out richer and the poor poorer due to man-made global warming, I do believe we owe them help as a restitutive obligation.

IKantRead 3y ago
> I'm starting to question whether the planet warming won't actually be posivite for a lot of first world economies Well this is a fun new twist on climate denial. I have a hard time understanding how you can believe this when we've already seen incredible and costly damage in the US caused by climate change in just the last few years. Insurers are pulling out of Florida because they can't afford the increased risk and the entire insurance industry is at risk of catastrophic failure if extreme events keep getting more extreme [0]. > More solar power, less money spent on heating, less dependent on foreign resources etc etc etc. What? Climate change means less predictable weather, not more sunny days; I think people in Texas would have a hard time buying your argument for "less spent on heating"; less dependent on foreign resources is another way of say "reduced global trade" which has been and continues to be a major part of our economy. 0. https://www.wsj.com/finance/insurance-catastrophe-reinsurance-hurricane-77a69eab https://www.wsj.com/finance/insurance-catastrophe-reinsuranc...
- ziddoap 3y ago
  The term "global warming" being seen as interchangeable with "climate change" has really been troublesome, and I think has led a lot of people to think surface warming is the entirety of what "climate change" is.
  - frob 3y ago
    The term "climate change" was literally created by conservative activist and Bush pollster Frank Luntz to confuse people about global warming and muddy the waters. From his Wikipedia article: > Although Luntz later tried to distance himself from the Bush administration policy, it was his idea that administration communications reframe global warming as climate change since "climate change" was thought to sound less severe.
    - ziddoap 3y ago
      The scientific use of both terms has been around since the 80s, and is pretty well-settled, with climate change evolving from "inadvertent climate modification" which was the go-to term in the 70s. The memo you are referring to happened well over 20 years later. The term was not created by Frank Luntz. >In the 1980s, the terms global warming and climate change became more common. Though the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably,[24] scientifically, global warming refers only to increased surface warming, while climate change describes the totality of changes to Earth's climate system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Terminology https://web.archive.org/web/20100809221926/http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100809221926/http://www.nasa.g...
- selimthegrim 3y ago
  Louisiana, too, has been suffering the same.
- irthomasthomas 3y ago
  Even George Rombio agreed climate change is positive for northern climates. The desserts are retreating and the earth re-greening. The climate winners enjoy longer growing seasons and more arable land. If see levels rise, we can build sea walls and levies. But if you choose to rebuild after disasters, instead of relocating, which used to be the norm, then each time you rebuild you increase your risk from severe weather events. Naturally insurers take a dimm view of that. It is U.S. policy causing your biggest problems.
- rollcat 3y ago
  > less dependent on foreign resources is another way of say "reduced global trade" which has been and continues to be a major part of our economy. TBF I'm growing more and more apathetic to this whole "economy" thing. Unbounded growth is what led us to the present problem in the first place. What about we try to optimize for quality of life instead of quantity of made-up number?
  - Aerroon 3y ago
    >What about we try to optimize for quality of life instead of quantity of made-up number? That's still economic growth. I don't know about you, but I would like there to be treatments for medical issues that aren't curable yet. I would also like to get improvements in life in general like better insulation, better water etc. The sum of all of that improvements is economic growth though.
    - rollcat 3y ago
      You're right, but the current system is full of perverse incentives. Sure someone is looking for a cure to the cancer, but for every scientist/researcher there is a thousand cars each carrying a single person to work an office job they could've done from home, a hundred bitcoin mining rigs running off coal, a dozen private jets, etc. Just look at the mean salary in US vs western EU, but compare healthcare, access to education, public transport. EU still has a very long way to go, but I think it's proof enough that "line go up" is very different from (even if correlated to) actual quality of life.
Aerroon 3y ago
>More solar power Aren't solar cells led efficient at higher temperatures? But the rest of your point does stand. Europe is pretty far north, as is Russia and Canada and even the northern parts of the US.
- 1970-01-01 3y ago
  Almost all electronics are less efficient when 'hot'. Solar systems are not an exception.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
  That's batteries that behave that way, not solar cells.
Workaccount2 3y ago
I'm sure the wealthy coastal elite, rolling in the cash mountains of globalization arbitrage and extolling the virtues of humanitarianism, will be bending over backwards to build refugee camps and in turn permanent housing in their towns to accommodate mass migrations of third world climate refugees.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  The same people that as of today [1] waived 26 Federal laws so they can begin building a border wall after dismantling and selling for pennies on the dollar the previous one that was being built. It’s funny how something considered racist is now considered necessary now that the migrants are being dumped in their front yards. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05/politics/biden-administration-border-wall/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05/politics/biden-administration...
  - danShumway 3y ago
    If you're trying to make an argument that mass climate refugees will be resettled humanely and won't be turned away to die, then saying "look, cruelty to migrants is a bipartisan problem" is not really doing you any favors.
badcppdev 3y ago
I think you're right but I don't think the majority of the population in first world countries will be getting richer... so are the people who did get richer going to pay? I also worry that hardening the infrastructure in first world countries is going to be very expensive. Especially if the developing countries are so badly affected that they can't provide the normal supplies of food, minerals, ores, etc.
ramesh31 3y ago
>I'm a global warming believer, but I'm starting to question whether the planet warming won't actually be posivite for a lot of first world economies. It's not about whether it will be good or bad to live in a warmer climate. Maybe it would be better. But the rate of change is the danger. If we were slowly warming over the course of millenia, it'd be a different story. But 2C of warming over less than 100 years is something the planet has never seen before, and that we are ill equipped to deal with.
- linuxftw 3y ago
  The geological record can't state that the pace of warming we're seeing hasn't happened before. And our real-time measured data prior to digital electronics is laughably imprecise.
  - useless999 3y ago
    Yes, and absence of edvidence is not edvidence of absence. Which is why you need to posit a causal mechanism. To say current climate models are overly narrowing the problem domain as to exclude purely natural factors (assuming humanity is not part of nature, but that’s an ontological discussion) you would need to provide an alternative one which can predict past and future pathways. It would also need to be at least as good and not rely on improbable assumptions… which is one reason climate scientists favor the anthropogenic models.
    - linuxftw 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - ramesh31 3y ago
        >Prove that the earth has never warmed faster than it has in the last 100 years. Obviously, you cannot, the data lacks that sort of granularity. This is silly. We know the precise chemical makeup of earth's atmosphere, and by extension its' climate, going back hundreds of thousands of years through antarctic ice core samples, which can be dated to a resolution of less than a hundred years. We are in an absolutely unprecedented time of change right now in the entire history of our species existence. https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-and-climate-change/ https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-an...
i_am_jl 3y ago
>More solar power, less money spent on heating, less dependent on foreign resources etc etc etc. If you care more about the price of energy than the price of bread, sure.
tetris11 3y ago
Average warmer, with much higher SD.
leaveyou 3y ago
The good news is that we can start helping right away, there is no need to wait for these long debates about the role of the first world towards the second and the third. That will take way too long. We can each pick 2 or three persons from the third world and send them money to aquire the means of surviving the coming crisis. How much have you thought donating monthly/yearly? I can put you in touch with people ready to act.
Uehreka 3y ago
The entire biosphere (forests, forest-dwelling animals, ocean life, the crops we grow, us) as well as most human infrastructure rests on an equilibrium so precarious that a couple degrees in mean temperature change is going to have first, second and third order effects we can barely predict. No one and nowhere will be “sheltered” in any broad sense. Like, increased heat is already causing rails to heat up, forcing railroad delays[1], which will eventually translate into more expensive shipping for everything. And if we start getting Wet Bulb 95 conditions[2] then an afternoon power outage in any American city will lead to a million dead (the homeless will die either way in these conditions). [1] https://ggwash.org/view/90938/summer-heat-means-longer-amtrak-trips-delays https://ggwash.org/view/90938/summer-heat-means-longer-amtra... [2] https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3151/too-hot-to-handle-how-climate-change-may-make-some-places-too-hot-to-live/#:~:text=Blood%20rushes%20to%20your%20skin,operating%20temperature%2C”%20Raymond%20said https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3151/too-h....
- zosima 3y ago
  > The entire biosphere (forests, forest-dwelling animals, ocean life, the crops > we grow, us) as well as most human infrastructure rests on an equilibrium so > precarious that a couple degrees in mean temperature change is going to have > first, second and third order effects we can barely predict. No one and nowhere > will be “sheltered” in any broad sense. This is complete speculation. And the annual variation in temperature of ~50 degrees C many places on earth, does not really support it.
  - rando_dfad 3y ago
    > And the annual variation in temperature of ~50 degrees C many places on earth does not really support it. Ummm, hello? so "most anomalously hot month ever" does not suggest a change in the underlying system?? Would you predict that handrails in Arizona now can give 3rd degree burns? https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/24/health/arizona-heat-burns-er/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/24/health/arizona-heat-burns-er/... Because I remember conversations like this when I was growing up: "Mommy, can I go to the playground?" "No, Johnny, the slide will fry your ass"
leaveyou 3y ago
What do you think should be the role of the first world ?
mcculley 3y ago
More solar power? Global warming does not mean we get more solar power. It means we trap more of the Sun's energy in our atmosphere. Solar panels are not going to be getting more light.

IKantRead 3y ago

> I'm starting to question whether the planet warming won't actually be posivite for a lot of first world economies Well this is a fun new twist on climate denial. I have a hard time understanding how you can believe this when we've already seen incredible and costly damage in the US caused by climate change in just the last few years. Insurers are pulling out of Florida because they can't afford the increased risk and the entire insurance industry is at risk of catastrophic failure if extreme events keep getting more extreme [0]. > More solar power, less money spent on heating, less dependent on foreign resources etc etc etc. What? Climate change means less predictable weather, not more sunny days; I think people in Texas would have a hard time buying your argument for "less spent on heating"; less dependent on foreign resources is another way of say "reduced global trade" which has been and continues to be a major part of our economy. 0. https://www.wsj.com/finance/insurance-catastrophe-reinsurance-hurricane-77a69eab https://www.wsj.com/finance/insurance-catastrophe-reinsuranc...

ziddoap 3y ago
The term "global warming" being seen as interchangeable with "climate change" has really been troublesome, and I think has led a lot of people to think surface warming is the entirety of what "climate change" is.
- frob 3y ago
  The term "climate change" was literally created by conservative activist and Bush pollster Frank Luntz to confuse people about global warming and muddy the waters. From his Wikipedia article: > Although Luntz later tried to distance himself from the Bush administration policy, it was his idea that administration communications reframe global warming as climate change since "climate change" was thought to sound less severe.
  - ziddoap 3y ago
    The scientific use of both terms has been around since the 80s, and is pretty well-settled, with climate change evolving from "inadvertent climate modification" which was the go-to term in the 70s. The memo you are referring to happened well over 20 years later. The term was not created by Frank Luntz. >In the 1980s, the terms global warming and climate change became more common. Though the two terms are sometimes used interchangeably,[24] scientifically, global warming refers only to increased surface warming, while climate change describes the totality of changes to Earth's climate system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Terminology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change#Terminology https://web.archive.org/web/20100809221926/http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html https://web.archive.org/web/20100809221926/http://www.nasa.g...
selimthegrim 3y ago
Louisiana, too, has been suffering the same.
irthomasthomas 3y ago
Even George Rombio agreed climate change is positive for northern climates. The desserts are retreating and the earth re-greening. The climate winners enjoy longer growing seasons and more arable land. If see levels rise, we can build sea walls and levies. But if you choose to rebuild after disasters, instead of relocating, which used to be the norm, then each time you rebuild you increase your risk from severe weather events. Naturally insurers take a dimm view of that. It is U.S. policy causing your biggest problems.
rollcat 3y ago
> less dependent on foreign resources is another way of say "reduced global trade" which has been and continues to be a major part of our economy. TBF I'm growing more and more apathetic to this whole "economy" thing. Unbounded growth is what led us to the present problem in the first place. What about we try to optimize for quality of life instead of quantity of made-up number?
- Aerroon 3y ago
  >What about we try to optimize for quality of life instead of quantity of made-up number? That's still economic growth. I don't know about you, but I would like there to be treatments for medical issues that aren't curable yet. I would also like to get improvements in life in general like better insulation, better water etc. The sum of all of that improvements is economic growth though.
  - rollcat 3y ago
    You're right, but the current system is full of perverse incentives. Sure someone is looking for a cure to the cancer, but for every scientist/researcher there is a thousand cars each carrying a single person to work an office job they could've done from home, a hundred bitcoin mining rigs running off coal, a dozen private jets, etc. Just look at the mean salary in US vs western EU, but compare healthcare, access to education, public transport. EU still has a very long way to go, but I think it's proof enough that "line go up" is very different from (even if correlated to) actual quality of life.

Aerroon 3y ago

>More solar power Aren't solar cells led efficient at higher temperatures? But the rest of your point does stand. Europe is pretty far north, as is Russia and Canada and even the northern parts of the US.

1970-01-01 3y ago
Almost all electronics are less efficient when 'hot'. Solar systems are not an exception.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK 3y ago
That's batteries that behave that way, not solar cells.

Workaccount2 3y ago

I'm sure the wealthy coastal elite, rolling in the cash mountains of globalization arbitrage and extolling the virtues of humanitarianism, will be bending over backwards to build refugee camps and in turn permanent housing in their towns to accommodate mass migrations of third world climate refugees.

nemo44x 3y ago
The same people that as of today [1] waived 26 Federal laws so they can begin building a border wall after dismantling and selling for pennies on the dollar the previous one that was being built. It’s funny how something considered racist is now considered necessary now that the migrants are being dumped in their front yards. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05/politics/biden-administration-border-wall/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/05/politics/biden-administration...
- danShumway 3y ago
  If you're trying to make an argument that mass climate refugees will be resettled humanely and won't be turned away to die, then saying "look, cruelty to migrants is a bipartisan problem" is not really doing you any favors.

badcppdev 3y ago

I think you're right but I don't think the majority of the population in first world countries will be getting richer... so are the people who did get richer going to pay? I also worry that hardening the infrastructure in first world countries is going to be very expensive. Especially if the developing countries are so badly affected that they can't provide the normal supplies of food, minerals, ores, etc.

ramesh31 3y ago

>I'm a global warming believer, but I'm starting to question whether the planet warming won't actually be posivite for a lot of first world economies. It's not about whether it will be good or bad to live in a warmer climate. Maybe it would be better. But the rate of change is the danger. If we were slowly warming over the course of millenia, it'd be a different story. But 2C of warming over less than 100 years is something the planet has never seen before, and that we are ill equipped to deal with.

linuxftw 3y ago
The geological record can't state that the pace of warming we're seeing hasn't happened before. And our real-time measured data prior to digital electronics is laughably imprecise.
- useless999 3y ago
  Yes, and absence of edvidence is not edvidence of absence. Which is why you need to posit a causal mechanism. To say current climate models are overly narrowing the problem domain as to exclude purely natural factors (assuming humanity is not part of nature, but that’s an ontological discussion) you would need to provide an alternative one which can predict past and future pathways. It would also need to be at least as good and not rely on improbable assumptions… which is one reason climate scientists favor the anthropogenic models.
  - linuxftw 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - ramesh31 3y ago
      >Prove that the earth has never warmed faster than it has in the last 100 years. Obviously, you cannot, the data lacks that sort of granularity. This is silly. We know the precise chemical makeup of earth's atmosphere, and by extension its' climate, going back hundreds of thousands of years through antarctic ice core samples, which can be dated to a resolution of less than a hundred years. We are in an absolutely unprecedented time of change right now in the entire history of our species existence. https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-and-climate-change/ https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-an...

i_am_jl 3y ago

>More solar power, less money spent on heating, less dependent on foreign resources etc etc etc. If you care more about the price of energy than the price of bread, sure.

tetris11 3y ago

Average warmer, with much higher SD.

leaveyou 3y ago

The good news is that we can start helping right away, there is no need to wait for these long debates about the role of the first world towards the second and the third. That will take way too long. We can each pick 2 or three persons from the third world and send them money to aquire the means of surviving the coming crisis. How much have you thought donating monthly/yearly? I can put you in touch with people ready to act.

Uehreka 3y ago

The entire biosphere (forests, forest-dwelling animals, ocean life, the crops we grow, us) as well as most human infrastructure rests on an equilibrium so precarious that a couple degrees in mean temperature change is going to have first, second and third order effects we can barely predict. No one and nowhere will be “sheltered” in any broad sense. Like, increased heat is already causing rails to heat up, forcing railroad delays[1], which will eventually translate into more expensive shipping for everything. And if we start getting Wet Bulb 95 conditions[2] then an afternoon power outage in any American city will lead to a million dead (the homeless will die either way in these conditions). [1] https://ggwash.org/view/90938/summer-heat-means-longer-amtrak-trips-delays https://ggwash.org/view/90938/summer-heat-means-longer-amtra... [2] https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3151/too-hot-to-handle-how-climate-change-may-make-some-places-too-hot-to-live/#:~:text=Blood%20rushes%20to%20your%20skin,operating%20temperature%2C”%20Raymond%20said https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3151/too-h....

zosima 3y ago
> The entire biosphere (forests, forest-dwelling animals, ocean life, the crops > we grow, us) as well as most human infrastructure rests on an equilibrium so > precarious that a couple degrees in mean temperature change is going to have > first, second and third order effects we can barely predict. No one and nowhere > will be “sheltered” in any broad sense. This is complete speculation. And the annual variation in temperature of ~50 degrees C many places on earth, does not really support it.
- rando_dfad 3y ago
  > And the annual variation in temperature of ~50 degrees C many places on earth does not really support it. Ummm, hello? so "most anomalously hot month ever" does not suggest a change in the underlying system?? Would you predict that handrails in Arizona now can give 3rd degree burns? https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/24/health/arizona-heat-burns-er/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/24/health/arizona-heat-burns-er/... Because I remember conversations like this when I was growing up: "Mommy, can I go to the playground?" "No, Johnny, the slide will fry your ass"

leaveyou 3y ago

What do you think should be the role of the first world ?

mcculley 3y ago

More solar power? Global warming does not mean we get more solar power. It means we trap more of the Sun's energy in our atmosphere. Solar panels are not going to be getting more light.