5 ms·

Though I wouldn't accept #5 and #6 exactly as phrased, it does seem like positive effects ought to be balanced against the negative, and the uncertainty of futu

by bjt 11y ago

Though I wouldn't accept #5 and #6 exactly as phrased, it does seem like positive effects ought to be balanced against the negative, and the uncertainty of future technological developments ought to inform our current decision of how much to spend addressing climate change. Does that make me a climate change denier?

primroot 11y ago
> and the uncertainty of future technological developments ought to inform our current decision of how much to spend addressing climate change. Well, that does not necessarily sound like something the author of the grandparent comment would disagree with, especially when you consider that the technological developments may not universally be regarded as solutions (e.g. geoengineering).
Zuider 11y ago
Your position is similar to that of Swedish environmentalist and academic, Bjorn Lomberg who accepts that rising CO2 levels are the cause of warming, and that this is a problem, but argues that the dangers are overstated and resources would be better devoted to mitigation of climate change and addressing other pressing issues such as global poverty. Despite his relatively orthodox views, he was recently run off campus at the University of Western Australia where he had set up a think tank, The Consensus Centre, to which the Australian government had pledged $4 million. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-08/bjorn-lomborg-uwa-consensus-centre-contract-cancelled/6456708 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-08/bjorn-lomborg-uwa-cons...
- drostie 11y ago
  Bjorn Lomborg is a sad case. He titled his book The Skeptical Environmentalist and everyone got the message, without reading the book, that he was a climate-change skeptic -- and for the most part labeled him as an "enemy" and rebuffed him. It was just a public relations disaster. For what it's worth, he's not a "skeptic" in any of the conventional ways. I also remember looking at the IPCC reports once when I was a young physics student and saying, "hey, it's only a couple degrees Celsius over many years?" I was educated enough to realize that you could predict bad storms etc -- what I like to tell people right now is that it's like having a really huge boulder and, right next to it, digging a little ditch, only to cause the boulder to smack you down: the small change in the height of an equilibrium can still have a huge effect if a big enough system is relaxing to the new equilibrium. Someone came up with a memorable name for it: it's less of a concern about "global warming" and more about "global weirding." It took me a while to appreciate that there is a small (but scary) probability that the slope that the boulder is on might have a net incline one or the other way, so that the boulder might not just hit us but roll over us if it gets disturbed far enough from equilibrium. It makes a lot of sense for there to be a big scientific research program about that, even though no IPCC model predicts runaway climate change because the probability is so low and the possible causes are typically unexpected. With that said: though hurricanes, floods and tornadoes certainly can have a massive economic impact, Bjorn has a good point of "the weather disasters that we know will happen due to the warming that we know is happening are important, but let's figure out how this compares to other things which we can predict really well, and see where our money is best spent: climate-change relief efforts, or climate-change mitigation, or general alleviation of poverty, or what?" What I think is most missing from all of this is: we're talking about so little money, especially if we compare to governments' military expenditures, going towards the science. What would be great is if a government said, "hey, we're putting forward this huge grant to climate change research just because we think research is intrinsically good and want to support this huge project of, y'know, knowing more."
themgt 11y ago
It's important to understand that if we completely shut off CO2 production today, the climate would continue to warm significantly for decades/centuries into the future. And that warming might not be completely catastrophic, and could even seem positive in some ways to a minority of world citizens. The 350ppm of 350.org is still way above pre-industrial levels, but is seen by most as safe. However, that's no longer what anyone is arguing about. What is argued about is the continued effect of dumping 40 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere year after year after year with no end in sight, while we're already over 400ppm. Any arguable positive effect, we've already achieved - it's the 4-5C of warming we're currently on track for that scientists claim, with good reason, will be catastrophic for human civilization and the present state of life on earth.
tjradcliffe 11y ago
Yes, it does. I am quite happy saying, "Climate change is a plausibly serious problem and the current best solution is to build nuclear (fission) power plants today to replace base load coal, to shift from income taxes to carbon taxes and tarifs immediately, to build solar power and storage immediately, and to phase in regulations that will make it essentially impossible for new thermal coal development. We should also have public subsidies for nuclear and solar to ensure rapid deployment." When I say that I fequently get called a climate change denier, because that is a label used primarily (not exclusively) by people whose primary goal is smashing global capitalism, and who find climate change a useful stick to beat their political enemies with.
- primroot 11y ago
  > We should also have public subsidies for nuclear and solar to ensure rapid deployment." Can you elaborate on the relation between the nuclear energy industry and insurance companies? Even as someone who sympathizes with the goal of "smashing global capitalism," I would find it interesting to know what the free market has to say in this respect.
pierrec 11y ago
You're certainly not denying climate change, but maybe you're someone who doesn't care about the impact, as long as humanity survives. And why should we care? There are so many reasons not to care. - We're out of touch with nature. - Even for those in touch with nature, the human scale is too short to personally see and feel any change. - The individual's responsibility is extremely diluted with the rest of humanity. It will sound cheesy, but I care because of the beauty of nature. An extinction event is something that destroys biodiversity, and biodiversity is the source of this beauty as I feel it. Maybe the diversity of life will return in another form a few million years later (and maybe not), but simply understanding the act of destruction that is underway does impact me emotionally, and makes me want to stop it.

by bjt 11y ago

primroot 11y ago

> and the uncertainty of future technological developments ought to inform our current decision of how much to spend addressing climate change. Well, that does not necessarily sound like something the author of the grandparent comment would disagree with, especially when you consider that the technological developments may not universally be regarded as solutions (e.g. geoengineering).

Zuider 11y ago

Your position is similar to that of Swedish environmentalist and academic, Bjorn Lomberg who accepts that rising CO2 levels are the cause of warming, and that this is a problem, but argues that the dangers are overstated and resources would be better devoted to mitigation of climate change and addressing other pressing issues such as global poverty. Despite his relatively orthodox views, he was recently run off campus at the University of Western Australia where he had set up a think tank, The Consensus Centre, to which the Australian government had pledged $4 million. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-08/bjorn-lomborg-uwa-consensus-centre-contract-cancelled/6456708 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-05-08/bjorn-lomborg-uwa-cons...

drostie 11y ago
Bjorn Lomborg is a sad case. He titled his book The Skeptical Environmentalist and everyone got the message, without reading the book, that he was a climate-change skeptic -- and for the most part labeled him as an "enemy" and rebuffed him. It was just a public relations disaster. For what it's worth, he's not a "skeptic" in any of the conventional ways. I also remember looking at the IPCC reports once when I was a young physics student and saying, "hey, it's only a couple degrees Celsius over many years?" I was educated enough to realize that you could predict bad storms etc -- what I like to tell people right now is that it's like having a really huge boulder and, right next to it, digging a little ditch, only to cause the boulder to smack you down: the small change in the height of an equilibrium can still have a huge effect if a big enough system is relaxing to the new equilibrium. Someone came up with a memorable name for it: it's less of a concern about "global warming" and more about "global weirding." It took me a while to appreciate that there is a small (but scary) probability that the slope that the boulder is on might have a net incline one or the other way, so that the boulder might not just hit us but roll over us if it gets disturbed far enough from equilibrium. It makes a lot of sense for there to be a big scientific research program about that, even though no IPCC model predicts runaway climate change because the probability is so low and the possible causes are typically unexpected. With that said: though hurricanes, floods and tornadoes certainly can have a massive economic impact, Bjorn has a good point of "the weather disasters that we know will happen due to the warming that we know is happening are important, but let's figure out how this compares to other things which we can predict really well, and see where our money is best spent: climate-change relief efforts, or climate-change mitigation, or general alleviation of poverty, or what?" What I think is most missing from all of this is: we're talking about so little money, especially if we compare to governments' military expenditures, going towards the science. What would be great is if a government said, "hey, we're putting forward this huge grant to climate change research just because we think research is intrinsically good and want to support this huge project of, y'know, knowing more."

themgt 11y ago

It's important to understand that if we completely shut off CO2 production today, the climate would continue to warm significantly for decades/centuries into the future. And that warming might not be completely catastrophic, and could even seem positive in some ways to a minority of world citizens. The 350ppm of 350.org is still way above pre-industrial levels, but is seen by most as safe. However, that's no longer what anyone is arguing about. What is argued about is the continued effect of dumping 40 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere year after year after year with no end in sight, while we're already over 400ppm. Any arguable positive effect, we've already achieved - it's the 4-5C of warming we're currently on track for that scientists claim, with good reason, will be catastrophic for human civilization and the present state of life on earth.

tjradcliffe 11y ago

Yes, it does. I am quite happy saying, "Climate change is a plausibly serious problem and the current best solution is to build nuclear (fission) power plants today to replace base load coal, to shift from income taxes to carbon taxes and tarifs immediately, to build solar power and storage immediately, and to phase in regulations that will make it essentially impossible for new thermal coal development. We should also have public subsidies for nuclear and solar to ensure rapid deployment." When I say that I fequently get called a climate change denier, because that is a label used primarily (not exclusively) by people whose primary goal is smashing global capitalism, and who find climate change a useful stick to beat their political enemies with.

primroot 11y ago
> We should also have public subsidies for nuclear and solar to ensure rapid deployment." Can you elaborate on the relation between the nuclear energy industry and insurance companies? Even as someone who sympathizes with the goal of "smashing global capitalism," I would find it interesting to know what the free market has to say in this respect.

pierrec 11y ago

You're certainly not denying climate change, but maybe you're someone who doesn't care about the impact, as long as humanity survives. And why should we care? There are so many reasons not to care. - We're out of touch with nature. - Even for those in touch with nature, the human scale is too short to personally see and feel any change. - The individual's responsibility is extremely diluted with the rest of humanity. It will sound cheesy, but I care because of the beauty of nature. An extinction event is something that destroys biodiversity, and biodiversity is the source of this beauty as I feel it. Maybe the diversity of life will return in another form a few million years later (and maybe not), but simply understanding the act of destruction that is underway does impact me emotionally, and makes me want to stop it.