There are many decisions that need to be made around climate change. Is it worth the cost (financial, lifestyle, environmental) to mitigate it by reducing energy consumption and therefore reducing growth? How much warming is acceptable? Is geo-engineering a reasonably option? Should the countries that created the existing CO^2 bear the majority of the income costs?
These are reasonably questions to be asked by those who will be affected by the change, i.e. everyone. However this debate can only happen when there's an acknowledgement that climate change is happening. Sadly there appears to be a politically influential group who deny the science out of fear of a potential outcome.
(Not implying that I agree with the article, just that exploring these questions is a good thing)
The comments on the spectator website get to the point, but 'Scientific Consensus' isn't one single person reviewing a dozen papers and deciding climate change isn't a big deal.
Cherry-picking a few areas where humans will benefit doesn't just negate the rest of the (mostly unknown) impacts. Fewer people will die in the cold? The presence of cold doesn't kill people, it's the lack of protection from the cold caused by failed governments and failed economic systems. Flooding doesn't matter since we can just build dykes? Ugh.
There are actual existential threats (looking at you ocean acidification) to the survival of humanity, but it'll be warmer and we can build dams, so NBD.
You could have just stopped at "mostly unknown impacts", or rather "unpredictable effects". Because the heart of the problem, and I think the debates between pro and anti climate change perfectly illustrates it, is that we don't exactly know what will happen if we push the ecosystem too far from the current equilibrium.
For US readers : the Spectator is a well regarded but self consciously right wing magazine, most famously edited by the current London Mayor Boris Johnson.
The article is a rehash of the arguments proposed by (cited) Bjorn Lomborg - who rose to fame / notoriety with "The environmental Skeptic" (not sure if have title right there).
He is a economist who does make sensible arguments about needing to take into account the costs and benefits of climate change - which I do agree with. I only am suspicious of who said the reasonable and sensible comment - it's like the difference between Lech Walensa saying the workers should organise and Lenin saying it.
I am however, heartened by the fact that right wing magazines in the UK accept climate warming, accept it as human caused, merely argue if we need to do something. Which apparently puts us a long way ahead of the Republicans.
The IPCC reports say pretty much the exact same thing, if you filter out the spin. In particular, the "impact" part of their reports says the next 1-3 degrees of warming will on-net increase agricultural productivity - it'll be easier to feed the world. If you look at the underlying studies the biggest positive impacts seem to be: (1) In the northern regions that currently produce the most food, warming means longer growing seasons means more food. (2) Near the equator where it's too hot to grow most crops, extra CO2 makes growing trees much more productive.
The good news is that gives us about a century, and if we don't break the world economy today with our attempts at premature optimization, our technological capabilities then will be unimaginably greater than they are now.
Roughly one century ago - around the year 1900 - cities of the world had a huge problem - horses. The problem of hauling away the horse manure and dead horses was a bigger and bigger job and throwing more horses at the problem was not doing the trick. The cities smelled and bred disease and there was just nowhere to put the stuff. The situation was unsustainable. People drew line charts with hockey sticks. There were conferences where people gnashed their teeth and wrung their hands over how horrible it was - and getting worse - and how would we ever survive?
Then the problem went away. Not because the professional worriers came up with a solution, but because technology changed.
That will happen this time too. The one thing we can be ABSOLUTELY SURE of is that our biggest problem a century from now will be something ELSE, probably something we haven't even encountered as an issue yet. It is an amazing luxury that we can afford to worry about such trivial matters. I think there must be a "conservation of worry" law - as the world gets safer, as fewer people are starving or dying of dysentery or whatever, we still need to worry the same amount, so we find new things to worry about - no matter how arcane and obscure they have to be - and invest them with undue importance.
So... hypothetical question for the climate change activists: What if tomorrow we found conclusive evidence that global warming was completely natural? (I'm not suggesting it is, this is just a hypothetical.)
Would we still try to enact legislation to alter the projected change?
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 36.0 ms ] threadEither way, such claptrap
These are reasonably questions to be asked by those who will be affected by the change, i.e. everyone. However this debate can only happen when there's an acknowledgement that climate change is happening. Sadly there appears to be a politically influential group who deny the science out of fear of a potential outcome.
(Not implying that I agree with the article, just that exploring these questions is a good thing)
The comments on the spectator website get to the point, but 'Scientific Consensus' isn't one single person reviewing a dozen papers and deciding climate change isn't a big deal.
Cherry-picking a few areas where humans will benefit doesn't just negate the rest of the (mostly unknown) impacts. Fewer people will die in the cold? The presence of cold doesn't kill people, it's the lack of protection from the cold caused by failed governments and failed economic systems. Flooding doesn't matter since we can just build dykes? Ugh.
There are actual existential threats (looking at you ocean acidification) to the survival of humanity, but it'll be warmer and we can build dams, so NBD.
The article is a rehash of the arguments proposed by (cited) Bjorn Lomborg - who rose to fame / notoriety with "The environmental Skeptic" (not sure if have title right there).
He is a economist who does make sensible arguments about needing to take into account the costs and benefits of climate change - which I do agree with. I only am suspicious of who said the reasonable and sensible comment - it's like the difference between Lech Walensa saying the workers should organise and Lenin saying it.
I am however, heartened by the fact that right wing magazines in the UK accept climate warming, accept it as human caused, merely argue if we need to do something. Which apparently puts us a long way ahead of the Republicans.
Roughly one century ago - around the year 1900 - cities of the world had a huge problem - horses. The problem of hauling away the horse manure and dead horses was a bigger and bigger job and throwing more horses at the problem was not doing the trick. The cities smelled and bred disease and there was just nowhere to put the stuff. The situation was unsustainable. People drew line charts with hockey sticks. There were conferences where people gnashed their teeth and wrung their hands over how horrible it was - and getting worse - and how would we ever survive?
Then the problem went away. Not because the professional worriers came up with a solution, but because technology changed.
That will happen this time too. The one thing we can be ABSOLUTELY SURE of is that our biggest problem a century from now will be something ELSE, probably something we haven't even encountered as an issue yet. It is an amazing luxury that we can afford to worry about such trivial matters. I think there must be a "conservation of worry" law - as the world gets safer, as fewer people are starving or dying of dysentery or whatever, we still need to worry the same amount, so we find new things to worry about - no matter how arcane and obscure they have to be - and invest them with undue importance.
Would we still try to enact legislation to alter the projected change?