[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.

[eesmith]

My point is that "deal with" can mean almost anything.

We dealt with the Dust Bowl of the 1930s through mass exodus, malnutrition, widespread loss of personal land ownership, and stigmatizing the Okies and others who had to leave their homes.

Is that how we'll deal with the changes to Miami?

Or, look at the Swedish famine of 1867–1869. The government deal with it ... poorly, but it did deal with it.

So when ThomPete asks "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?" ... what does "deal with" mean?

Because we can always deal with problems by letting people suffer. That's surely not what's meant, but just what is meant?

[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.

[eesmith]

"let the people migrate"

You'll notice that many Syrian refugees trying to reach Europe were not allowed to migrate there, nor the asylum seekers currently trying to reach the US through Mexico.

This is not new. Jews trying to flee Europe before WWII were also prevented from migrating. Chinese people were prohibited from migrating to the US. Many people resist economic migrants, to the point of wanting them killed. "Build a wall", etc.

So the question isn't "why stop now?" Why have we stopped over a century ago, and what must be done to allow migration?

But that's still not enough. I pointed out the Dust Bowl for a reason. The Okies who needed to migrate were discriminated against, even though there were no legal reasons to prevent their migration. Quoting http://americanexperience.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/... :

> The mass of migrants that arrived in California did not receive a warm welcome from the state of California, which was already overwhelmed by the amount on people on the state’s relief roll. They were met at the state border by patrolmen who told them to turn back – that there was not enough work for them in California. Additionally, the established population of California was hostile towards the migrants due to differences in regional culture. They viewed the Okies as culturally and socially inferior, backward and uneducated – a view echoed in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath. The term “Okie” originally had the derogatory connotation of "They were hungry, and they were fierce. And they had hoped to find a home, and they found only hatred."—The Grapes of Wrath “poor, white trash.” As the character of Tom Joad stated in The Grapes of Wrath, “Okie means you’re scum.”

So when ThomPete writes "Migration have always been a fact of life and we have always managed to deal with it", that seems to include the Okie experience as one of the ways we deal with it.

Is that experience what the Miamians of the 2060s might have to look forward to?

[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?

[rosege]

Can you post something to back up your claims from a well respected climate scientist?

Benny Peiser (b. 1957) is a UK social anthropologist and AGW denier listed among the Heartland Institute "Global warming experts" despite having no evident expertise in climate science or policy. https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Benny_Peiser