Global warming is real but not a crisis (2014) | Hacker News Reader

Global warming is real but not a crisis (2014)

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2 pointsmorpheos1378 comments

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https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/

https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/612710/

https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2021/04/27/...

https://research.cornell.edu/news-features/migration-forced-...

https://www.thetravel.com/15-usa-cities-that-will-be-underwa...

https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/dataset/sea-level-rise-map...

https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/air-pollution-an...

https://factor.niehs.nih.gov/2020/7/science-highlights/clima...

“Taken as a whole, the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time.” - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27711447

Where do these sources establish that logistically effective mitigation is also cost effective? That is the real question we should answer. Does the benefit exceed the cost?

There are several possibilities: (1) Climate change is true and humans can stop it. (2) Climate change is false. (3) Climate change is real but humans can not stop or reduce it enough at this point in a cost justified way, i.e. the costs of mitigation exceed the damage done by climate change.

Perhaps we need more sustainable economic models or ‘logistically effective mitigations’ as you say: ie. moving stuff around the world more efficiently? Perhaps the clever people that read this site can help develop technology or software to help? What other choice do we have as a species? …as for your ‘possibilities’: 1) the truth: we could do a lot to ‘mitigate’ it tomorrow given sufficient political and popular will. The problem is that some powerful and influential people would lose a lot of money and some countries’ economies are precariously built reliant on eg. fossil fuels, logging, non-sustainable farming etc. that will take time to transition from/implement alternatives to… 2) see my above post - if you doubt it: prove it/provide evidence! 3) how do you define ‘cost’? Do you have kids/grandkids/relatives?

"Crisis" is branding, it's the same as most causes recently, everyone wants the world to drop everything and focus on their cause, so they adopt increasing urgent rhetoric. Not saying it shouldn't be a priority, but there are other priorities too, and labeling everything a crisis or emergency just makes people tune out.

Yeah in economics it is called "rent seeking." Clearly there would be a survivorship bias in climate scientists promoting a climate threat they get funded: boring scientists don't. There need not be an intentional conspiracy.

You post a 2014 article why? Why not post a more recent article about the heat wave in the pacific NW?

weather =! climate. If climate change is real, which I believe it is, it is a decades or centuries long process. A temperature fluctuation in a single season in a single region is does not prove or disprove climate change. So the passage of 6 or 7 years does not really have much bearing on the article's relevance.

It is fascinating to me how people assume pseudo-religious extreme stances on things like climate change or covid.

I believe both are real, both can be deadly on the margins.

However i don't believe either poses or posed an immediate existential threat to civilization and I do suspect that either mass hysteria or rent seeking guised as mitigation attempts are both more likely to cost society more than the harm they purport to mitigate.

Just like with covid it is likely we will incur great costs in ineffective mitigation of something that was overhyped and won't stop the bad thing regardless.

Maybe to show how this prediction came out to be wrong ? Or right ? I don't know I didn't read it.

But At the very least it needs "2014" in the title.

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