[mcguire]

I mostly agree with his paragraph above. But from your link,

"No. Healthy societies do not fall apart over slow, widely predicted, relatively small economic adjustments of the sort painted by climate analysis. Societies do fall apart from war, disease or chaos. Climate policy must compete with other long-term threats for always-scarce resources."

"Small economic adjustments?" How many large scale resources does preventing war or pandemics require? Is chaos a real threat?

Most of what he lists are effects, not causes. Here's an economic question for him: what happens when the area between the Mississippi and the Rockies returns to being an unusable semidesert? (That's not an if. It is all irrigated.)

And I'll just leave this comment here: "As I favor a uniform VAT in place of the idiotically complex income and corporate tax system."

[jessaustin]

what happens when the area between the Mississippi and the Rockies returns to being an unusable semidesert? (That's not an if. It is all irrigated.)

Here in Missouri, there is actually fairly little irrigation. There's a 1.5 hour drive through rural farmland I take regularly, and I see one irrigation setup on the whole trip. The other irrigation I can think of off the top of my head is just north of Jefferson City, 100 yards from the Missouri River, and that's for a sod factory that turns its fields over every couple of months.

This year the rain has been fantastic. We put up more hay than we ever have. July was hot, as July often is, but the first week of August will be our coolest in memory. If this is climate change, I vote for more of it. b^)

[mcguire]

I was being hyperbolic. :)

But a large part of that region was known as the Great American Desert before the invention of suitable irrigation. And water is being removed from the aquifer much faster than it is being replaced.

[jessaustin]

Yes, things that can't continue forever, won't. Eventually much of the Great Plains will be native grassland again. That is its natural condition. The parts of Arizona and California that currently host alfalfa fields will be actual desert again, and the dairy industry will return to the Midwest where it belongs.

Even when being hyperbolic, however, you could move your border west a whole state. I doubt Minnesota, Iowa, Arkansas, or Louisiana are any more worried about the next Dust Bowl than we are. My impression is that Missouri is the driest of the states on our longitude.

[pm90]

Climate change would affect rainfall patterns as well (I assume).

[mcguire]

The last projection I saw had the Midwest becoming drier once things stabilize.

[ABCLAW]

His argument is almost tautological, because it is conditional on the basis that the society is healthy.

Societies fall apart over slow, widely predicted economic adjustments all the time, because healthy societies have buffering homeostatic functions.

Once the adjustment exceeds the ability of the society to buffer, the adjustment rapidly moves from the 'slow and widely predicted' bucket to the 'war, disease and chaos' bucket. One might note that this process leaves the society looking healthy until the moment when suddenly it isn't.

[mseebach]

Relatively small. Compared to "war, disease or chaos", keeping "the area between the Mississippi and the Rockies" irrigated will be (is) expensive, but it's a relatively small expense.

[mcguire]

Total war between large nations is very bad. Large scale pandemics on the order of the medieval black death are catestrophic.

But how much do you spend to prevent war? How much do you dump into the CDC? Is there a Bureau for the Prevention of Chaos?

And how do you irrigate the Midwest once the aquifers get low? Piping desalination water from the Gulf?

[mseebach]

> Is there a Bureau for the Prevention of Chaos?

Decent government. Stable institutions and mostly fair and equitable justice and law enforcement. The US and Europe have their challenges, to put it mildly, but have been fairly successful in averting chaos, and things are going pretty damn well, judging by even relatively recent historical standards.

> But how much do you spend to prevent war? How much do you dump into the CDC?

A lot. So that means that things can be very expensive and still be relatively cheap.

> And how do you irrigate the Midwest once the aquifers get low? Piping desalination water from the Gulf?

I don't know. Perhaps. Or perhaps redirecting water from the Hudson Bay drainage basin. Human ingenuity is pretty great.