[flash_zombie]

> I’ve always found climate scepticism strange, because of its emphasis on refusing to accept the connection between rising temperatures and CO2.

The connection isn't disputed, the causality is. Look at this graph:

https://totheleftofcentre.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/400000...

You can see that most of the time, temperature rises lead increases in CO2. This implies that rising temperature increases CO2 levels, but not necessarily the other way around.

If you zoom out even further, the correlation isn't clear anymore at all:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Cx5-osJUkAAPkF8.jpg

Lastly, what's even the big issue with changes in global temperatures? Even without humans, this planet would go in and out of ice ages on semi-regular intervals. We can't really control that. Life adapts. In the interest of our descendants, we had better develop technology to deal with a tougher climate, rather than cut down on emissions so that maybe ten or twenty generations can live with a somewhat smaller fallout of manmade climate change.

[dominicr]

> In the interest of our descendants, we had better develop technology to deal with a tougher climate, rather than cut down on emissions

Or do both. Let's make the world less hostile to live in for billions of people, whilst also providing technology & resources for them to survive.

About your graph: historical global temperature changes are not the same as anthropomorphic global temperature changes. Past periods of high CO2 do not contradict the notion that CO2 leads to higher global temperatures. Indeed, it confirms that there is a strong relationship between the two.

There are other sources of temperature change so you can't use one indicator to prove there is no effect. What climate scientists have done is look at ALL the possible drivers of climate change and ruled out all of the natural causes as contributing to the current very sharp and ongoing rise in temperature. Everything that's left is caused by human activity.

On the right of that graph, there is a vertical red line. That's not an axis or a border, that's the recent rise in CO2 levels, and it's unprecedented. The overwhelming majority of evidence shows that human activity, mainly greenhouse gases, is causing climate change. Misrepresenting one graph does not change that.

[flash_zombie]

> Past periods of high CO2 do not contradict the notion that CO2 leads to higher global temperatures. Indeed, it confirms that there is a strong relationship between the two.

The relationship, at least in the smaller graph, isn't in question. The causality is. I didn't say it contradicts the causality, I say it doesn't support the causality.

If you look at the larger graph, whatever relationship there is between CO2 and global temperature becomes indiscernible.

> There are other sources of temperature change so you can't use one indicator to prove there is no effect

You can't prove a negative in the first place. Of course there's bound to be some effect, but how large is it really?

> On the right of that graph, there is a vertical red line. That's not an axis or a border, that's the recent rise in CO2 levels, and it's unprecedented.

The rise may be unprecedented, the level isn't.

> The overwhelming majority of evidence shows that human activity, mainly greenhouse gases, is causing climate change.

That's a strong statement for what it is at best a discernible correlation.

I'm willing to take it on faith. Humans cause climate change? Now what? We absolutely have to drop everything and start cooling the planet? Until the next ice age, when presumably we'll have to warm it?

[dominicr]

> The rise may be unprecedented, the level isn't. So you admit the there is a problem ;) The level hasn't been this high for over 400,000 years. How many homo sapiens were around then to adapt to that? The unprecedented rise is the problem, and it's not just CO2 and methane rising faster than should be expected, it's also the global temperature.

> That's a strong statement for what it is at best a discernible correlation. It's a strong and very valid statement, supported by a wealth of science. In this instance it's not really possible, or wise, to run multiple randomly controlled experiments on our own planet to conclusively prove the point. Instead, we have a lot of observations and modelling that allow us to run those experiments, and the weight of those say we have a problem.

> We absolutely have to drop everything and start cooling the planet? The majority consensus is not to drop everything but to continue making substantial changes to human activity to reduce warming. You personally do not need to become an eco-warrior, just more aware of the effect you're having on the planet and try to reduce it. Cooling the planet is now beyond expectations. The aim now is for it not to warm up too much.

> Until the next ice age, when presumably we'll have to warm it? That is a terribly big false equivalency! First, yes, I expect so. Second, it's totally different! Ice ages take multiple hundreds, if not thousands, of years to get going. The next ice age is not going to affect the next generation, global warming is.

The benefits to ecological improvements and the risk of climate change vastly outweigh the costs. Less pollution related illness, our limited resources will last longer, etc... The risk alone is enough to make me think that ignoring the problem is the morally wrong choice, the benefits double the equation.

[flash_zombie]

> Instead, we have a lot of observations and modelling that allow us to run those experiments, and the weight of those say we have a problem.

No, the weight of those say there will be an increase in temperature. Never mind that the weight of these have been wrong for more narrow definitions of the word "wrong":

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs/public...

If those models can't predict ten years into the future with any reasonable amount of confidence, how can we trust them to predict the next 100 years?

Even then, let's say these models are more or less correct, what exactly says "we have a problem"? What problem? We already have tons of problems! Not being able to emit CO2 would be a huge problem in and of itself. What are the models to predict the actual problems caused by climate change? How good are those? Do 95% of scientists agree on them?

> The majority consensus is not to drop everything but to continue making substantial changes to human activity to reduce warming.

Okay, I don't exactly feel like making substantial changes to my lifestyle based on these predictions, especially since the impact doesn't concern me much at all. Now what? Good luck getting all that political support that you will need.

[dominicr]

> especially since the impact doesn't concern me much at all.

Yes, it usually boils down to selfishness.

[flash_zombie]

> Yes, it usually boils down to selfishness.

All lifeforms are selfish. If your solution only works on an imaginary selfless version of the human being, then it's not a solution. It's a fantasy.

[ThomPete]

So is denying poor nations to get out of poverty which is only possible through access to cheap and reliable energy.

[Brakenshire]

In the past, temperature rises caused by other factors have in turn caused the release of CO2, raising the temperature further. This does not in any way call into question the causality between increasing concentration of CO2 (a greenhouse gas) and increased warming as predicted by gas absorption equations which we teach in high school.

[flash_zombie]

> In the past, temperature rises caused by other factors have in turn caused the release of CO2, raising the temperature further.

That's your claim, but you can't actually derive that from the data. It may just as well be the case that rises in temperature cause the release of more CO2, period.

> This does not in any way call into question the causality between increasing concentration of CO2 (a greenhouse gas) and increased warming as predicted by gas absorption equations which we teach in high school.

The climate on the planet isn't a simple gas absorption equation, there are other factors. Even if the greenhouse effect is a factor, it couldn't be the dominating factor.

Otherwise, how could an ice age just "end" a period of high CO2 concentration? Shouldn't the greenhouse effect prevent it? And if so, will the next ice age be "tamer" if we keep CO2 levels up? Wouldn't that be good?

[tasty_freeze]

Here is a great, low emotion description that covers the "CO2 lags temperature change". Potholer54 cites his claims, and does a lot of work to run down where claims first originated, then reads that paper instead of just citing some random web blogger or popular news article.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ3PzYU1N7A

One of the problems cited: the temperature/CO2 graph probably came from an antarctic ice core sample ... and temperature leading/lagging there is different than in non-polar locations.

Second, the climate is a complex feedback system; there isn't one independent variable and everything else is dependent. If something forces any of the variables in the feedback system it can affect the other variables. For instance, say the artificial release of CO2 by humans results in the thawing of the arctic, releasing gigatons of methane, at which point CO2 might no longer be the primary driver. Over geologic time there are different causes for these forcings, but that doesn't mean that the current forcing (human released CO2) isn't the current problem.

He covers all of that and more, much better, in 13 minutes.

[EDIT] I forgot to address "what's even the big issue with changes in global temperatures?"

That is a supremely cavalier attitude. Nobody is saying AGW is going to kill off all life. In the long term life will recover. But in the short term we humans are going to have to deal with the consequences: displacement of millions of people through crop failures and loss of coast, disruption of economic systems, and more civil unrest. The US military is gaming out these scenarios because they believe the science, not because they are pinko tree huggers who hate freedom.

[flash_zombie]

> One of the problems cited: the temperature/CO2 graph probably came from an antarctic ice core sample ... and temperature leading/lagging there is different than in non-polar locations.

Specifically, he points out that CO2 lags temperature by hundreds of years in the southern hemisphere, but that temperature lags CO2 by again hundreds of years in the northern hemisphere.

CO2 is claimed to have accelerated natural warming through a feedback loop - until it didn't, and temperatures began drifting down again.

That's fair enough. That's reasonably nuanced. I'm missing the extent to which this feedback loop actually made an impact though, because clearly it can't be the dominant driver or ultimate control lever. Otherwise, we'd have had a runaway greenhouse already.

> Nobody is saying AGW is going to kill off all life.

One might get that impression from the media narrative though.

> But in the short term we humans are going to have to deal with the consequences: displacement of millions of people through crop failures and loss of coast, disruption of economic systems, and more civil unrest.

I don't think that's such a big deal, all things concerned. Sometimes, people have to move. Sometimes, crops fail. Sometimes, coasts move. Sometimes, there's civil unrest. Telling people in China or Brazil that they'll have to cut down on their emissions is going to cause civil unrest. "Vote for me, I'll make you poorer" is not a winning political provision.

> The US military is gaming out these scenarios because they believe the science, not because they are pinko tree huggers who hate freedom.

They're also gaming out scenarios of mass epidemics, or political secession. What do you expect them to do?

[tasty_freeze]

> Sometimes, people have to move. Sometimes, crops fail. etc

If the ebola infections started appearing in all the major cities with airports and seaports, would you want the experts to try their best to stop it, or would you shrug and say, eh, sometimes people live and sometimes they die,

> One might get that impression from the media narrative though. (that AGW is going to kill all life)

I have two responses: one, as potholer likes to point out, we all know that press headlines are sensational. Don't deny the science because you don't like the way the press reports it. Second, I don't personally get the impression that even the press claims AGW will sterilize the planet. It sounds like a strawman to me.

[flash_zombie]

> If the ebola infections started appearing in all the major cities with airports and seaports, would you want the experts to try their best to stop it, or would you shrug and say, eh, sometimes people live and sometimes they die

That highly depends on what "the experts" recommend that we do. In any case, your bad analogy is bad.

> I have two responses: one, as potholer likes to point out, we all know that press headlines are sensational.

...which is what makes me far less worried about climate change.

> Don't deny the science because you don't like the way the press reports it.

All this talk about "95% of scientists agree (that the charts point up)" and "science denial" is an argument from authority.

Given that 50% of science is estimated to be wrong[1], I'm willing to take my chances on this one, especially since there's a strong ideological component to it.

The actual simulations are drastic simplifications with wide margins of error, and even those margins have been crossed by observation even in the close term, where the margins are still narrow. All the interesting stuff happens way further down the line, however.

Perhaps a bit more humility regarding the practical limits to the scientific method is in order, at least in this case - but then how would you make your argument from authority?

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/

[KnightOfWords]

> Lastly, what's even the big issue with changes in global temperatures? Even without humans, this planet would go in and out of ice ages on semi-regular intervals. We can't really control that. Life adapts.

The issue is the rate of change, which is unprecedented. The path we're currently on will devastate ecosystems and cause a huge drop in crop production.

[neuronic]

If I may add to your sentence, specifically the last claim in your quote is what puts their train of thought on a collision course with reality.

Life adapts, when it can. The rate of change you mentioned ensures that a majority of life will not be able to adapt and it's not impossible that another K-T level extinction event is already taking place.

Geologically speaking, the speed at which the Earth is changing from human-induced climate change could just as well be a meteorite impact. Looking at global conflict resolution ability I fear that we have no hope to stop it.

[flash_zombie]

> Life adapts, when it can. The rate of change you mentioned ensures that a majority of life will not be able to adapt and it's not impossible that another K-T level extinction event is already taking place.

It's also "not impossible" that a meteorite wipes us all out tomorrow. Which serious scientist is predicting a K-T level extinction event?

Serious predictions are talking about a couple of degrees over thousands of years. That's not out of the ordinary in terms of variance for life on earth right now. Sure, some species may have to migrate, some will go extinct one way or another, but not a K-T level event.

[pjc50]

> Serious predictions are talking about a couple of degrees over thousands of years.

Serious predictions are talking about a couple of degrees over the next century. That's very different. It may be hard to separate the climate change extinctions from the regular habitat destructions that are already ongoing, though.

[flash_zombie]

> The issue is the rate of change, which is unprecedented.

Perhaps over some arbitrary timeframes within the measured record. On the other hand, a volcanic eruption can immediately cause a change of 1K or more.

But let's say it is unprecedented, so what?

> The path we're currently on will devastate ecosystems and cause a huge drop in crop production.

[citation needed]

This has been predicted numerous times, it didn't come to pass. Crop production depends on the weather far more than the climate, we have to deal with that issue anyway. So let's deal with the actual issue, not part of what may cause the issue, some of the time.

As for ecosystems getting "devastated" - so what? They get devastated one way or another all the time. They recover.

[eesmith]

Are you quibbling about what "huge drop" means?

Here's a citation - https://www.pnas.org/content/114/35/9326 "Temperature increase reduces global yields of major crops in four independent estimates".

> Without CO2 fertilization, effective adaptation, and genetic improvement, each degree-Celsius increase in global mean temperature would, on average, reduce global yields of wheat by 6.0%, rice by 3.2%, maize by 7.4%, and soybean by 3.1%.

When you write "This has been predicted numerous times", do you mean, for example, the predicted famines of the mid-1900s, saved by the Green Revolution? Borlaug's Nobel Prize speech cautious us technical success in raising food production is only a temporary victory - we must also limit our population.

When you write "Crop production depends on the weather far more than the climate" ... how is that even a valid argument? Where are the Canadian orange groves? How's the Brazilian maple syrup industry? They don't exist, because the climate is wrong for those crops in those areas.

You write "They recover" .. Citation needed. Simple counter-example - the Icelandic forests from the Norse era have not recovered.

Or, 10,000 years ago the Sahara was green. Now it's a desert. Why hasn't that ecosystem recovered?

[flash_zombie]

> Are you quibbling about what "huge drop" means?

No, I'm sincerely interested.

> Without CO2 fertilization, effective adaptation, and genetic improvement, each degree-Celsius increase in global mean temperature would, on average, reduce global yields of wheat by 6.0%, rice by 3.2%, maize by 7.4%, and soybean by 3.1%.

"Without adaptation" is not a plausible scenario. Of course there will be adaptation. But let's take those numbers anyway, and take a very liberal estimate of six degrees of temperature increase: That's 36% (wheat), 19.2% (rice), 44% (maize) and 18.6% (soy), respectively.

That may sound alarming if all that produce had to be turned into food that people need to live. In practice, most of it goes to livestock or even biofuel production. Being forced to have less cattle and fuel might be good for the climate, no?

> Borlaug's Nobel Prize speech cautious us technical success in raising food production is only a temporary victory - we must also limit our population.

Perhaps, but the best way to limit your population growth is to deliver a better standard of living.

> When you write "Crop production depends on the weather far more than the climate" ... how is that even a valid argument? Where are the Canadian orange groves? How's the Brazilian maple syrup industry? They don't exist, because the climate is wrong for those crops in those areas.

I'm talking about actual crop production, not hypothetical crop production. Nobody is starving because farmlands that never existed stop producing. With bad weather, that's different.

If we're talking about climate and agriculture, the argument goes both ways: If global temperature rises, then new places will start making sense for certain forms of agriculture, just as old places will stop making sense. This also will happen regardless of human intervention.

[nec4b]

And Antarctica had tropical climate once and now it's and ice desert. Things move slowly on geological scale, 10,000 years is a blip.

[aldoushuxley001]

The rate of change isn't unprecedented. In fact, most of the times the earth has come out of ice ages, similar to now, there have been rates of change in temperature similar to ours now.

[yk]

Thankfully climate scientists don't just eyeball a single graph. And as a matter of fact, you conflate two things, one is that we know that now industrial emission is the cause for global warming and the other is, that in the past warming has lead to the release of CO2. These are two different things, and taken together only implies a positive feedback loop.

On the second question, the problem with global warming is, that everybody talks about the weather, and all our systems are well adapted to the current climate. Concretely, there are farmers at the edge of the Sahara, who are adapted to a semi-arid conditions, and when the Sahara moves south, then they have to deal with desert conditions. Similar, when the Great Barrier Reef moves south, then there are dive centers without a reef north of the new location.

So we will have to adapt to a warmer climate anyhow, but not cutting down emissions is an entirely unforced error, it makes global warming worse, without any concrete benefit. Cutting down emissions is precisely the "smaller fallout of manmade climate change" you are arguing for.

[flash_zombie]

> These are two different things, and taken together only implies a positive feedback loop.

If it's a positive feedback loop, then why hasn't there been a runaway greenhouse effect in the past? Something must have stopped it. What was that?

> Concretely, there are farmers at the edge of the Sahara, who are adapted to a semi-arid conditions, and when the Sahara moves south, then they have to deal with desert conditions.

Yes, they will. They'll have to move. The Sahara didn't use to be a desert for all of human history, it used to be fertile at one point. Now it isn't anymore, so we don't have agriculture there. So what?

> Similar, when the Great Barrier Reef moves south, then there are dive centers without a reef north of the new location.

First-world problems...

> So we will have to adapt to a warmer climate anyhow, but not cutting down emissions is an entirely unforced error, it makes global warming worse, without any concrete benefit.

No concrete benefit? You mean, besides the fact that our entire standard of living rests on the fact that we can emit CO2 more or less undisturbed?

> Cutting down emissions is precisely the "smaller fallout of manmade climate change" you are arguing for.

Not if you take into account the standard of living of the people calling the shots, right here and now.

[crocowhile]

You've missed the point. It is well known that co2 is a greenhouse gas. You can do the experiment yourself with some children using a plastic water bottle, a thermometer, and a mixture of baking soda and vinegar. We understand this physics extremely well. Denying the causal effect of co2 on warming is akin to denying the causal effect of gravity towards an apple falling from a tree.

[flash_zombie]

> You can do the experiment yourself with some children using a plastic water bottle, a thermometer, and a mixture of baking soda and vinegar. We understand this physics extremely well.

If you can't see how ridiculous that sounds, you might not understand how people become skeptical about climate science.

If we really understand these physics so well, why have most of the predictions been wrong?

https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/styles/pubs/public...

[crocowhile]

That graph is a known fraud. See: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97...

Don't trust the CATO when it comes to climate (at the very least). They are known negationists. If you understand basic level physics, read the IPCC reports and the realclimate blog.

[ThomPete]

There is a difference between can be demonstrated in a lab and what can get demonstrated in a larger system.

The climate is a non-linear chaotic system it has positive and negative feedback loops.

You can't replicate the climate in a simple experiment which is why we try with models and they are depending on which initial conditions we put in.

If we understood it extremely well we wouldn't come up with a rather large range in the predictions.

[eesmith]

Should we have continued with CFC emissions then? And not put restrictions on sulfur dioxide emissions?

FWIW, we don't have to understand it extremely well, only well enough to affect policy changes.

A 99% probability of an estimated increase of 2-4°C can be considered a rather large range, but enough certainty to know that it's a problem. (Numbers made up for demonstration purposes.)

[ThomPete]

We should improve the environment wherever and whenever we can which is what people demand when the get pulled out of poverty and into the middle class.

But the idea that we should upend the use of fossil fuels without any realistic alternative is simply anti-human and will for sure cause millions to die.

I haven't heard of a single scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change that would lead to that and thus I see no need to worry more about climate change more than pulling people out of poverty.

We should always try and make energy cleaner and less pollutant but wouldn't you agree we should always make a cost benefit analysis and weigh the positive and negative consequences of our decisions?

[eesmith]

I don't understand the point of your first paragraph.

Poor people demand an improved environment too - it's not a special demand limited to the middle class or richer.

Eg, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_justice#Affected... starts "Among the affected groups of Environmental Justice, those in high-poverty and racial minority groups have the most propensity to receive the harm of environmental injustice." Many of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe members are poor, and they lead the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline in part on environmental grounds.

Have you heard of a single scientifically demonstrated consequence of decreased CFC emissions which would lead to people being pulled out of poverty and into the middle class?

Do you support CFC restrictions, and if so, when do you regard the evidence as being strong enough to warrant those restrictions?

I agree we should "weigh the positive and negative consequences of our decisions". I disagree with your statement that there are no realistic alternatives to the current practices.

People argued that there were no realistic alternatives to CFCs. (See http://aei.pitt.edu/63734/1/WD_126.pdf from 1980 for "No satisfactory substitute has yet been found for these machines containing CFCs [11 and 12], but there is undoubtedly room for reducing emissions by making design changes.") Now, from https://www.livescience.com/62603-new-cfcs-enter-ozone-layer... :

"""Neither of the two primary CFC-11 use-cases, firefighting and refrigerators, are at all hampered today by not having the substance, Ferry said. He added that he couldn't think of any special use-case for the chemical for which there isn't already an alternative."""

There is undoubtedly room for alternatives for the current use of fossil fuels.

[ThomPete]

The west have the cleanest environments so yes they go hand in hand. If you have the money you can clean up your environment you do that mostly by replacing things like cooking over indoor fire with gas or induction or electricity and you use air purifiers, and you use better and more modern cars, you clean up the streets and so on. All things rich societies do and poor societies dont.

So you are making my point.

[crocowhile]

chaos has nothing to do here. Look, it's really very very simple actually. The higher the concentration of greenhouse gases, the more energy gets trap in the atmosphere. This changes the balance and warms up area of the planets that did not warm up for millions of years. Chaos is more important when it comes to weather, but climate is more straight forward. The only pseudo-chaotic aspect of climate change is the so-called tipping cascade and that should scare the bejeezus out of you.

[wiggler00m]

>Lastly, what's even the big issue with changes in global temperatures? Even without humans, this planet would go in and out of ice ages on semi-regular intervals. We can't really control that. Life adapts. In the interest of our descendants, we had better develop technology to deal with a tougher climate, rather than cut down on emissions so that maybe ten or twenty generations can live with a somewhat smaller fallout of manmade climate change.

False dichotomy. Why not do both?

[ThomPete]

Because we don't actually have any realistic alternatives yet and the ones proposed would be much more expensive than just dealing with the issues as they arrive.

Can you mention one scientifically demonstrated consequences of climate change that we don't know how to deal with with todays let alone future technologies?

[eesmith]

(As a clarification, that's "global warming causing climate change".)

When you write "deal with", do you mean to include mass migrations, loss of populated areas, and civil unrest? Because that's how we dealt with, for example, the Dust Bowl.

One example is that there does not seem any way to save Miami in its current form, using today's technology or any realistic technology we could develop.

Quoting https://www.businessinsider.com/miami-floods-sea-level-rise-... :

> “Miami as we know it today — there’s virtually no scenario under which you can imagine it existing at the end of the century,” Goodell said. “It may be some smaller version of Miami that incorporates platform houses and floating structures.” ...

> And while there is much that Florida can learn from these other places, no one has answers to looming threats like water rising through the ground underneath. “The solutions that are going to be used to save cities like Miami Beach probably haven’t been developed yet,” Mowry said.

Or from https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20170403-miamis-fight-aga... :

> But the question isn’t whether this work will save every community: it won’t. Even those tasked with making their cities resilient admit that, at some point in the future, certain areas here will no longer be “viable” places to live. Rather, the challenge is to do enough to ensure that the economy as a whole continues to thrive and that tourists still come to enjoy the sun, sand – and swelling sea.

We can "deal with" that by mass migration to move. Or letting them die. But I don't think that's what you mean?

[nec4b]

The richest and one of the biggest country in the world cannot move one city? Do you think that the whole world should be captive to city that was basically build on sea level because they found it opportune.

[eesmith]

"Move one city" implies a mass migration, yes?

If so, then I agree that we have solutions. Mass starvation is another solution. But I wanted clarification on what "deal with" means.

[nec4b]

I don't understand you. In what why is starvation a solution? Perhaps you believe that moving equals starvation? Either way you hold some very concerning ideas.

[ThomPete]

I mean we have had to deal with climate change in all of human history and we have only become increasingly better.

We also live places today which wasn't possible 100 year ago.

Migration have always been a fact of life and we have always managed to deal with it. We are better at that today than any other time in history.

So the question I am trying to get answered is what have been scientifically demonstrated to be the case with climate change that we cant deal with if we don't "do anything" today?

Climate is always changing yes, the temperature have been rising yes, that will have consequences on us yes, but which changes have been demonstrated that would be worth the cost of upending the current use of ex fossil fuels to help modern civilization deliver goods and services to it's growing population and to reduce the amount of funding for new scientific discoveries or R&D in Molten or fusion?

It sounds like a Pascals wager to me but without the upside and instant damnation of the existing people inhabiting the planet.

[eesmith]

I want to pin you down on what "deal with" means.

It appears that your "deal with" accepts mass migration, mass starvation, and civil unrest, as those are some of the historic ways humans have addressed things before.

If so, I don't see a difference between your view and "just let things happen - some people will survive, and I don't care who."

(Actually, your "worth the cost" suggests that you care less about the world's poorest people, whose deaths have the least economic impact.)

If your view is anything at all like that, then of course we can "deal with" the effects climate change. But it's not a humane approach.

[flash_zombie]

> It appears that your "deal with" accepts mass migration, mass starvation, and civil unrest, as those are some of the historic ways humans have addressed things before.

If you want to see civil unrest, just raise the taxes on gasoline, like Monsieur Macron.

As for mass migration, if there really is such a big fallout due to climate change (or anything else) rendering places uninhabitable, let the people migrate. Humans have always migrated. Why stop now?

As for mass starvation, I don't buy it. Most crops today are fed to cattle, there's a lot of leeway in terms of repurposing it for human consumption.

[ThomPete]

The human approach is the one that gets most people out of poverty and into the middle class so they can deal with the consequences of the climate which we always will have to deal with and always have had to deal with.

The most predictable way of doing that is allowing them to use cheap reliable energy.

Mass starvation happens when you don't have cheap reliable energy, pesticides and other modern technologies to deal with the always ongoing consequences of climate change.

Civil unrest is what happens when people don't have access to food, right now the only societies that can ensure that are rich societies using capitalism, technology, and energy (mostly fossil fuels) to deal with that.

Mass migration happens all the time but again it's more likely to happen when you don't have the means to defend you against the always occuring challenges of the climate.

It's anti-human to hinder poor people getting access to the very resource that allow them to fight the consequences of climate change like we are able to in modern societies.

Nature doesn't give us a safe and friendly environment we make unsafe, it gives us a hostile and dangerous enviroment we make safe through the use of energy.

My approach is pro human flourishing.

So "deal with" means allowing humans to deal the challenges of nature.

[walleeee]

- https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24672: humankind (including "trusted" bodies such as the IPCC) have underestimated the dangers associated with anthropogenic climate change

- https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252: we have also underestimated the speed at which the climate will depart from the relatively stable Holocene equilibrium we've lived under for the past ~10,000 years

- https://www.farmprogress.com/farm-operations/usda-crop-progr...): we are already seeing consequences to crop yields in the U.S.

- https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/201...): heat waves are becoming more frequent and more damaging

- https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ab13bf), etc: so are other extreme weather events

- https://media.defense.gov/2019/Jan/29/2002084200/-1/-1/1/CLI...: the DOD recognizes climate change as an extraordinary threat to the U.S.

- https://games-cdn.washingtonpost.com/notes/prod/default/docu...: so does the intelligence community

- https://iflas.blogspot.com/2019/07/compendium-of-research-re...: a good aggregation (the commentary is speculative; read the papers)

Our global industrial society relies, more precariously than most realize or admit, on conditions which will soon diminish or disappear. For example:

- Stable, predictable weather patterns (industrial agriculture depends on this) - Just-in-time global shipping/logistics, by which food and other necessities get to supermarket shelves (threatened by extreme weather, political crises, fuel availability, etc) - Relatively cheap, easy availability of fossil fuels (extraction costs will continue to rise over time, and competition will likely grow more intense) - Plentiful fish/marine life stocks (we are destroying coral reefs extremely quickly, which are a key part of the ocean lifecycle; ocean acidification due to carbon capture also threatens sea life, as does oceanic warming) on which many rely for food - Low atmospheric CO2 content for breathability (cognitive ability decreases as CO2 levels rise) - Thriving coastal cities, as centers of both population and economic activity (many are under threat of regular flooding if not complete loss this century)

It will likely take indefinite human intervention to keep the climate system habitable for anywhere near our present numbers, if we're even capable of the sort of coordination required.

[ThomPete]

I think you are confusing speculation with scientifically demonstrated evidence.

You are linking to the interpretation of data not actually scientifically demonstrated claims.

I could post rebuttals to each of them here is just one:

https://www.thegwpf.com/ignore-climate-hysteria-brazil-set-t...

but it's not really an argument about the future either.

The facts are the facts and they are:

We are better than ever to deal with unpredictable weather patterns and can produce food places that used to be impossible. We are better at living places that used to be impossible. We are better at producing food than ever, we are better at using resources than ever, we are better at dealing with floods than ever, with drought than ever, with extreme weather than ever and I could go on.

You are claiming that this will change based on speculation and single points of reference, not science and thus we can then have a speculative debate if you'd like not a scientific one.

I haven't seen any evidence that would point to us not being able to deal with the climate in the future better than we are today.

So what's your point? What's your suggestion? What is it you want me/us to do we aren't already doing that wouldn't be worse than what we are already doing?