4 ms·

I think you've missed the point that I was making, so I'm a little puzzled as to why you're spending all the time to do a line by line takedown. My main point i

by jeremyt 13y ago

I think you've missed the point that I was making, so I'm a little puzzled as to why you're spending all the time to do a line by line takedown. My main point is that I think any money that we are thinking about spending to mitigate global warming now could probably be better used solving world hunger or malaria or something. I don't KNOW that for a fact, and I'm open to arguments one way or the other. Just, to me, real people dying today is just more urgent than hypothetical people dying in the future.

thaumaturgy 13y ago
I was just responding to the things you said. If that's your main point, I already replied to it. Efforts are already underway by governments, scientists, companies, non-profits, foundations, and even somewhat poor individuals like myself to resolve the other issues facing people around the world. Why do you believe that money spent on environmental technology is slowing the progress in other areas? Do you really think that if countries would just stop building wind power for a few years, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would cure malaria more quickly? Even if that were true, aren't there, I dunno, dozens of other sources of funding that would make more sense to borrow from? The thing is, your objection here is a really common one, and it always takes the same form: don't spend money on environmental technology, it would be better spent doing (anything at all other than environmental technology) instead. But nobody ever justifies it. Nobody ever bothers to figure out what the relative impacts on human life of environmental technology vs., say, increased funding for malaria research are. The Dust Bowl disaster in the 1930s was directly caused by human activity. It displaced hundreds of thousands of people (or millions, depending on how you count) and contributed to starvation conditions in large parts of the country. It caused dust pneumonia, which killed people (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcript/dustbowl-transcript/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcri...). A single typhoon in the Phillipines last year killed thousands and left millions more homeless (http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/08/us/typhoon-haiyan-one-month/ http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/08/us/typhoon-haiyan-one-month/). The pollution in Beijing might be taking as much as 16 years off of the average resident's life span there (http://www.businessinsider.com/beijing-air-quality-hits-life-expectancy-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/beijing-air-quality-hits-life...). Drought, extreme weather (both hot and cold), tropical storms, hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, bad air quality -- these things are not hypothetically affecting people. While we can't altogether stop these disasters any time in the near future, we can start doing things now to make them less severe. Real people have been dying for, at least, close to a hundred years because of human impacts on the environment.
- jeremyt 13y ago
  Well, after searching, it appears there is a book that does exactly this. I'm going to read it, and then maybe I will have a better idea of what the relative cost benefits are. https://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/fiona/thank-you?ie=UTF8&a=A9F39MHJ0I7K9&action=&asin=B00DGY4D78&badDebtOrders=&cor=US&eoi=A1Z09KSRPAY4C3&giftSentNow=&homeMarketplaceId=ATVPDKIKX0DER&isExtendedMarketplace=&o=D01-8225960-4150420&offerListingID=7nq2hFqXdBGBPldjNPnMV4oDkPyvmJuRF%252FLJlvHOjcrB%252FaAeeU7vaTzlhAkmQouTxpB5sWdVcMNcnHiRhiiLqGgnyO1jGzsdO7dSmpTNjAuZONmxR3aWvjdaJ3ZwcSShanoj3UBp2Ou1AD0ZR6%252FuEls8pdVy6oE0&originSessionId=&paymentInstrumentType=&rateQuoteID=&selectedPriceName= https://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/fiona/thank-you?ie=UTF8&a=...
  - thaumaturgy 13y ago
    Link's busted.
    - jeremyt 13y ago
      "How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place" - I'm about halfway through, but according to this Copenhagen consensus group, which appears to be made up of Nobel prize-winning scientists, the ROI for global warming mitigation is negative (using the same methodology they applied to the other items they were considering).

by jeremyt 13y ago

thaumaturgy 13y ago

I was just responding to the things you said. If that's your main point, I already replied to it. Efforts are already underway by governments, scientists, companies, non-profits, foundations, and even somewhat poor individuals like myself to resolve the other issues facing people around the world. Why do you believe that money spent on environmental technology is slowing the progress in other areas? Do you really think that if countries would just stop building wind power for a few years, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation would cure malaria more quickly? Even if that were true, aren't there, I dunno, dozens of other sources of funding that would make more sense to borrow from? The thing is, your objection here is a really common one, and it always takes the same form: don't spend money on environmental technology, it would be better spent doing (anything at all other than environmental technology) instead. But nobody ever justifies it. Nobody ever bothers to figure out what the relative impacts on human life of environmental technology vs., say, increased funding for malaria research are. The Dust Bowl disaster in the 1930s was directly caused by human activity. It displaced hundreds of thousands of people (or millions, depending on how you count) and contributed to starvation conditions in large parts of the country. It caused dust pneumonia, which killed people (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcript/dustbowl-transcript/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/transcri...). A single typhoon in the Phillipines last year killed thousands and left millions more homeless (http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/08/us/typhoon-haiyan-one-month/ http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/08/us/typhoon-haiyan-one-month/). The pollution in Beijing might be taking as much as 16 years off of the average resident's life span there (http://www.businessinsider.com/beijing-air-quality-hits-life-expectancy-2014-1 http://www.businessinsider.com/beijing-air-quality-hits-life...). Drought, extreme weather (both hot and cold), tropical storms, hurricanes, typhoons, tornadoes, bad air quality -- these things are not hypothetically affecting people. While we can't altogether stop these disasters any time in the near future, we can start doing things now to make them less severe. Real people have been dying for, at least, close to a hundred years because of human impacts on the environment.

jeremyt 13y ago
Well, after searching, it appears there is a book that does exactly this. I'm going to read it, and then maybe I will have a better idea of what the relative cost benefits are. https://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/fiona/thank-you?ie=UTF8&a=A9F39MHJ0I7K9&action=&asin=B00DGY4D78&badDebtOrders=&cor=US&eoi=A1Z09KSRPAY4C3&giftSentNow=&homeMarketplaceId=ATVPDKIKX0DER&isExtendedMarketplace=&o=D01-8225960-4150420&offerListingID=7nq2hFqXdBGBPldjNPnMV4oDkPyvmJuRF%252FLJlvHOjcrB%252FaAeeU7vaTzlhAkmQouTxpB5sWdVcMNcnHiRhiiLqGgnyO1jGzsdO7dSmpTNjAuZONmxR3aWvjdaJ3ZwcSShanoj3UBp2Ou1AD0ZR6%252FuEls8pdVy6oE0&originSessionId=&paymentInstrumentType=&rateQuoteID=&selectedPriceName= https://www.amazon.com/gp/digital/fiona/thank-you?ie=UTF8&a=...
- thaumaturgy 13y ago
  Link's busted.
  - jeremyt 13y ago
    "How to Spend $75 Billion to Make the World a Better Place" - I'm about halfway through, but according to this Copenhagen consensus group, which appears to be made up of Nobel prize-winning scientists, the ROI for global warming mitigation is negative (using the same methodology they applied to the other items they were considering).