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> That's not to say that some things about climate change aren't beneficial, it's that, on balance, most of climate change is bad, at least from a peaceful huma

> That's not to say that some things about climate change aren't beneficial, it's that, on balance, most of climate change is bad, at least from a peaceful human civilization perspective. I think it’s hard to know what ‘bad’ means here. I think that the truth is climate change presents a great uncertainty and it could be quite bad or it could not be so bad as we think. We have no real idea, we just have projections and estimates of physical phenomena that are based on our understanding of science and the world. These projections will likely come true to a degree and they’ll also likely be wrong to a degree, and we have no idea how that will change humanity in the process. That’s really scary and it’s the first time that humanity has ever faced such a large and unavoidable uncertainty. All that said, I don’t think we have the computational models to predict what happens when you increase the temperature on earth for a century. We have no idea if other reactions will trigger and cause unforeseen effects. Each rung of uncertainty presents potential for mass death, but not certainty of it. Only uncertainty.

jandrese 2y ago
There are several effects of climate change that are undeniably "bad" for human civilization. Rising sea levels that wipe out coastal communities. Increased intensity of the biggest storms. Temperatures in some areas of the globe exceeding human tolerance for ever lengthening periods in the summer. Coral reefs dying off. Even with a few silver linings here and there we should be doing what we can to reduce and even reverse climate change.
rozap 2y ago
> I think it’s hard to know what ‘bad’ means here I think with how slow evolution happens, bad is anything that isn't the status quo. Yes, some species that are more adaptable will survive and could even thrive as competitors die off, but many more species will go extinct. It's hard to imagine any path here (at least on a short to medium term timescale) where biodiversity increases. And given that biodiversity is what got us to where we are, I think it's easy to agree that it's a good thing, so anything that threatens it is bad. > All that said, I don’t think we have the computational models to predict what happens when you increase the temperature on earth for a century. This definitely seems true. As a layman it seems like this is a classic case where chaos theory comes into play. Even tiny errors in our projections will lead to wildly different outcomes, so the only thing that we can say for sure is that we don't know. That's scary.
- purpleblue 2y ago
  > And given that biodiversity is what got us to where we are Mass extinctions also is what got us to where we are. If dinosaurs were still around when humans started to evolve, it might have been a Bad Thing. Many species are supposed to go extinct, all the time. That's is how nature and evolution works. If we become extinct, then it paves the way for human++. This is neither good nor bad, it's just how life has evolved for billions of years. I think if we try to stop this and maintain status quo, that is ethically and morally wrong.
  - taylodl 2y ago
    > Many species are supposed to go extinct, all the time. True, but what are called "mass extinction events" actually took place over tens of thousands of years, which is "quick" when talking about geological time. We're potentially talking about a mass extinction event taking place over hundreds of years. The problem is that's a long time compared to a human lifespan, but an extremely short time from a geological standpoint. We have nothing from the past to analyze what the effects of this exceedingly fast extinction event will be - including whether it will lead to such ecological collapse that complex land animals such as humans can continue to exist. We simply don't know. One would think we should proceed with caution, but instead we're hitting the accelerator.
hn_throwaway_99 2y ago
>I think it’s hard to know what ‘bad’ means here. Strong disagree. I really dislike this "well, we just don't know what's going to happen!" take just because there is some uncertainty around the edges. Just take one dead simple example that we know with a quite high degree of certainty - sea level rise. Coastal communities just happen to be where most of humanity lives (here is a nice map from the Map Porn subreddit, showing areas of equal population in the US, where the areas along the coast basically contain the same population as everything else: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fs95t9lyuipfd1.jpeg https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fs...). It's not hard to game out how much devastation there will be with 2, 4, 8 meters of sea level rise, and if anything we've been finding recently that our calculations of ice melt have been too conservative.
- bumby 2y ago
  >there is some uncertainty around the edges. I'm not a climate scientist so take this in the curious vein that it is intended, but do we know that the uncertainty is only around the "edges"? From what I know about weather forecasting, relatively small changes in initial conditions can lead to rather dramatic differences in outcomes. It's my understanding this is how they get to the probabilistic estimates like "40% chance of rain"...they run a bunch of different models with slightly different initial conditions and 40% show rain. Genuine question: if there is relatively large uncertainty at the small geographic and temporal scales, why wouldn't that also propagate to even larger amounts of uncertainty at larger scale models? (FWIW, I'm not trying to wordsmith around the word "bad" but rather pin down the uncertainty aspect of the claim.)
  - twelfthnight 2y ago
    The larger scale models aren't necessarily built on the smaller models, they are independent and generally less specific. They are probably even inputs to the more specific models. So, like rising sea levels and increased temps (on average) is basically guaranteed, the _exact_ change for a particular place is more uncertain. Neil deGrasse Tyson in his Cosmos show described it like a person walking a dog. We don't know where the dog will be exactly, but we can see the person with the leash is moving in one direction, and the dog isn't going to ever get too far from him (because of the leash).
marcosdumay 2y ago
> I think it’s hard to know what ‘bad’ means here. We have an entire civilization completely optimized for the climate of the late 20th century. It's hard to know exactly how it will be bad, but it's an incredibly safe bet that global warming is bad.
sofixa 2y ago
> I think it’s hard to know what ‘bad’ means here * Rising sea levels * Rising water temperatures decimating marine life * increased temperature swings, including higher highs. The ways things are going, there are going to be vast areas which become uninhabitable by humans as they are today in places with tens of millions of inhabitants like Iraq, Pakistan, India. Those are prety obvious, already in progress, and universally bad.

jandrese 2y ago

There are several effects of climate change that are undeniably "bad" for human civilization. Rising sea levels that wipe out coastal communities. Increased intensity of the biggest storms. Temperatures in some areas of the globe exceeding human tolerance for ever lengthening periods in the summer. Coral reefs dying off. Even with a few silver linings here and there we should be doing what we can to reduce and even reverse climate change.

rozap 2y ago

> I think it’s hard to know what ‘bad’ means here I think with how slow evolution happens, bad is anything that isn't the status quo. Yes, some species that are more adaptable will survive and could even thrive as competitors die off, but many more species will go extinct. It's hard to imagine any path here (at least on a short to medium term timescale) where biodiversity increases. And given that biodiversity is what got us to where we are, I think it's easy to agree that it's a good thing, so anything that threatens it is bad. > All that said, I don’t think we have the computational models to predict what happens when you increase the temperature on earth for a century. This definitely seems true. As a layman it seems like this is a classic case where chaos theory comes into play. Even tiny errors in our projections will lead to wildly different outcomes, so the only thing that we can say for sure is that we don't know. That's scary.

purpleblue 2y ago
> And given that biodiversity is what got us to where we are Mass extinctions also is what got us to where we are. If dinosaurs were still around when humans started to evolve, it might have been a Bad Thing. Many species are supposed to go extinct, all the time. That's is how nature and evolution works. If we become extinct, then it paves the way for human++. This is neither good nor bad, it's just how life has evolved for billions of years. I think if we try to stop this and maintain status quo, that is ethically and morally wrong.
- taylodl 2y ago
  > Many species are supposed to go extinct, all the time. True, but what are called "mass extinction events" actually took place over tens of thousands of years, which is "quick" when talking about geological time. We're potentially talking about a mass extinction event taking place over hundreds of years. The problem is that's a long time compared to a human lifespan, but an extremely short time from a geological standpoint. We have nothing from the past to analyze what the effects of this exceedingly fast extinction event will be - including whether it will lead to such ecological collapse that complex land animals such as humans can continue to exist. We simply don't know. One would think we should proceed with caution, but instead we're hitting the accelerator.

hn_throwaway_99 2y ago

>I think it’s hard to know what ‘bad’ means here. Strong disagree. I really dislike this "well, we just don't know what's going to happen!" take just because there is some uncertainty around the edges. Just take one dead simple example that we know with a quite high degree of certainty - sea level rise. Coastal communities just happen to be where most of humanity lives (here is a nice map from the Map Porn subreddit, showing areas of equal population in the US, where the areas along the coast basically contain the same population as everything else: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fs95t9lyuipfd1.jpeg https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fi.redd.it%2Fs...). It's not hard to game out how much devastation there will be with 2, 4, 8 meters of sea level rise, and if anything we've been finding recently that our calculations of ice melt have been too conservative.

bumby 2y ago
>there is some uncertainty around the edges. I'm not a climate scientist so take this in the curious vein that it is intended, but do we know that the uncertainty is only around the "edges"? From what I know about weather forecasting, relatively small changes in initial conditions can lead to rather dramatic differences in outcomes. It's my understanding this is how they get to the probabilistic estimates like "40% chance of rain"...they run a bunch of different models with slightly different initial conditions and 40% show rain. Genuine question: if there is relatively large uncertainty at the small geographic and temporal scales, why wouldn't that also propagate to even larger amounts of uncertainty at larger scale models? (FWIW, I'm not trying to wordsmith around the word "bad" but rather pin down the uncertainty aspect of the claim.)
- twelfthnight 2y ago
  The larger scale models aren't necessarily built on the smaller models, they are independent and generally less specific. They are probably even inputs to the more specific models. So, like rising sea levels and increased temps (on average) is basically guaranteed, the _exact_ change for a particular place is more uncertain. Neil deGrasse Tyson in his Cosmos show described it like a person walking a dog. We don't know where the dog will be exactly, but we can see the person with the leash is moving in one direction, and the dog isn't going to ever get too far from him (because of the leash).

marcosdumay 2y ago

> I think it’s hard to know what ‘bad’ means here. We have an entire civilization completely optimized for the climate of the late 20th century. It's hard to know exactly how it will be bad, but it's an incredibly safe bet that global warming is bad.

sofixa 2y ago

> I think it’s hard to know what ‘bad’ means here * Rising sea levels * Rising water temperatures decimating marine life * increased temperature swings, including higher highs. The ways things are going, there are going to be vast areas which become uninhabitable by humans as they are today in places with tens of millions of inhabitants like Iraq, Pakistan, India. Those are prety obvious, already in progress, and universally bad.