Media glosses over upsides and caveats in IPCC report | Hacker News Reader

Media glosses over upsides and caveats in IPCC report

businesslive.co.za

19 pointsRickJWagner20 comments

Ideally, articles like this calling out other media outlets for their one sided reporting wouldn't be needed, and especially in this particular case we would be much better off for it.

There is a discussion to be had on this topic, but the article comes off as disingenuous and reads to me like it's just meant as more cannon fodder to rile up a certain crowd than it is about making a point.

Rating of the site[1] itself is not what I would consider a trustworthy source for myself and matches my expectations.

Saying climate change won't be too bad because the economy will be fine is like saying a traffic accident wasn't so bad because the driver walked away with minor scratches. It's an incomplete picture that disregards all the collateral damage that comes with the situation. Criticizing other outlets that highlight those other aspects because they don't mention or focus on the economy being fine is completely missing the point, and I'm struggling to believe that is anything but intentional.

[1] https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/businesslive/

I know this is somewhat frowned upon here, but a strongly-worded op-ed complaining about mostly-non-specific "media" coverage of a non-tech, non-startup-related topic really seems like a poor fit for this community.

I'm not saying to not discuss it, obviously, and it isn't the sort of thing I'd normally flag. I'd just humbly ask folks (as a generic community member) to take some extra care to avoid starting or fanning flamewars.

The article is written by Bjorn Lomborg (president of the Copenhagen Consensus)

https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Copenhagen_Conse...

So the title could be be re-written, "Shocker: Climate sceptic is sceptical about climate report"

> Because of economic development, the UN estimates that the average person in the world will become 450% as well-off by 2100 as they are today. But climate change will have a cost, in that adaptation and challenges become somewhat harder. Because of climate change, the average person in 2100 will “only” be 436% as well off as today.

This same type of prediction was in the UNs last report. GDP growth reduction of 6% by 2050. Growth. Not GDP.

We really need to be clear about these things but of course the media prefers just getting eyeballs at all costs.

Global warning at worst will slow our development. It won’t lead to catastrophe.

> Global warning at worst will slow our development. It won’t lead to catastrophe.

I find "not slowing our development" a weird definition for catastrophe. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. Extinction rates are multiples higher than the background rate. Climate systems are at historic weak points (arctic jet stream, AMOC) with speculations about collapse that people in the field didn't anticipate they would have to deal with in their lifetimes. Other tipping points are inching closer or are crossed already.

I'm glad the economy will live to see another day, but is that really the best metric to say it won't be a catastrophe? Because it really seems like it will be.

>but is that really the best metric to say it won't be a catastrophe

do you have a better objective metric? Sure, "Extinction rates are multiples higher than the background rate" is a bad thing, but how does it compare to other bad things? eg. poverty increasing by 5%?

Loss of diversity is as good as it gets I think.

The benefits of diverse life are numerous, from stabilizing ecosystems and protecting them against outlier events to the sheer amount of things we can learn from nature as we have throughout human history.

Sure, economy will chug along, but there are a lot of victories out there that will be much more hard won if we have to start from nothing. So many discoveries won't be made because of the species that went extinct before we could learn from them. Minimizing that damage is in our interest as much as keeping the planet livable for ourselves and upholding/raising the standard of living across the globe.

Is it more objective? Maybe. Maybe not. But it will be much harder to come back from something so permanent and the damage potential is unknowable.

The economy will skyrocket. Just print more currency and do more digitally. At this rate it's just gasoline on the fire.

This is really bad, with statements like "more people die from cold than from heat". With the climate drifting as it is, more cold storms and snow is also part of the picture, on top of drought and searing heat... Do these people not know about instability-induced jet stream disruption?

We are not at the end of the process, but the beginning of it. And the change is speeding up, as positive feedback loops are being triggered.

We probably won't end like Venus, but if nothing is done we will reach conditions not fit for human life nor our food sources or whatever else you think it is essential. No matter if in some day you got a nice rare rainbow, after we die nothing will matter.

Hanlon's Razor doesn't apply anymore for climate denialism. By now it is pure malice.

If you ignore 99% of the systemic risk you can find a few tiny “positives”. Less cold days? Really? Yay existential threat averted

This is the only angle these people have since straight up climate change denial doesn't fly anymore.

Ok noted. But what’s the real point you are trying to make here? That we should be unhappy about the planet greening and having net less death due to climate change.

It is so odd to me on this topic that neither side seems to want to look at it holistically and it’s really all about the fight.

Greening until drought doesn't sound like a sustainable path.

Considering that one of the IPCC report’s “high confidence” predictions was an increase and heavier precipitation associated with the warming, I suspect “drought” might be more a localized issue than a global one.

Wishful thinking. Heavy, localized and random precipitation means floods washing away on dry soil. Warming, heatwaves and melting of glaciers will have the stronger effects, especially on industrial farming and natural irrigation.

There will be new areas of blooming, but we lose so much more of existing life.

Interesting…you are discounting some of the conclusions of the IPCC because they are not apocalyptic enough?

Not sure that is really all that much different than discounting the conclusions of the IPCC because they are too apocalyptic. Either way you are basically saying “I don’t trust the climate scientist’s conclusions”.

More and more op-eds like this will be needed to desperately assuage the cognitive dissonance between climate denial and the actual news.

Ah not to worry then as a few of us will get much richer while the planet burns, business as usual /s

The planets getting greener!! Who cares if millions will die for it and that we could achieve this green through other means. Doing it this way puts the right kind of green in peoples pockets, so doing nothing is a much better solution obviously.

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