[deepsun]

What if in 50 years it turns out alarmists were right, and there's nothing could be done? Anti-alarmists will say "oopsie, we were wrong, you were right, now we see". But it won't help.

Imagine there's a huge asteroid comes at Earth, but it will strike only in 100 years. Alarmists start screaming that we need to act NOW, but anti-alarmists would be like "oh come on, you're screaming it for the last 44 years, please stop".

People are pretty bad at solving long problems.

[fooker]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_wager

You can extend this 'what if I am right' argument to literally anything, making it vacuous.

[BearOso]

Pascal's wager doesn't require much effort on behalf of the user, though. The idea is the benefits far outweigh the downsides. So should we just try to have a cleaner earth with the benefit of subverting this dangerous thing if it does exist?

The clincher here is that most of the greenhouse gasses come from giant corporations. As non-billionaire individuals, we don't have to personally give anything up. All we have to do is get those corporations to stop polluting simply because it's more profitable in the short term.

[fooker]

>All we have to do is get those corporations to stop polluting simply because it's more profitable in the short term.

Agreed. Also happy to personally give up conveniences if it helps.

The distinction is between 'this bad thing should be fixed', and 'this double plus super duper bad thing is going to kill everyone'.

Why even bother if the second one correct?