Wouldn't it be best to act as if it's fact, even without definitive evidence one way or another? Otherwise it's like deciding to not drive cautiously on a mountain road because your GPS isn't sure if there's a sharp turn ahead.
Because since basically forever, people have been claiming doomsday based on nothing. Mayan calendar!
Obviously this is climate change related so lets just stick with climate change doomsdays.
~1969, The UK won't exist in 2000 ~1970, food and water rationing by 1980s ~1975, new ice age upon us. ~1988, NYC under water in the 2000s: https://web.archive.org/web/20110202162233/https://www.salon... ~1989, entire nations wiped off the planet by global warming: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nations-vanish-global-warm... ~2000, snowfall a thing of the past: https://web.archive.org/web/20150912124604/http://www.indepe...
Might I interject, I have 30cm of snow coming in the next couple days. Mmmm Canada.
~2005, 50 million climate change refugees by 2010: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/oct/12/naturald... ~2006, Super hurricanes! https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2015/06/01/media-fail-no...
Lets just look at that last one. The rationalization seems sound. So much more energy in the oceans would seem to suggest it would give more power to hurricanes. but the exact opposite of the prediction happened.
~2006, inconvenient truth by al gore? Except the title it a lie. Virtually every one of his claims have been falsified now. https://www.oprah.com/g/image-resizer?width=670&link=http://...
Yes that's al gore in the inconvenient truth predicting florida significantly under water, years ago.
What is the motivation behind Al gore's false claims?
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2015/12/03/al-gore-...
Al Gore invested $ in renewables, he will profit greatly when we switch over. However, as an evangelist, he may be exagerating the doom and gloom a lot.
Virtually all of them? These are often still claims made today. The common retort to this is to say 'See how dire it has been for decades!'
>What you are linking are individual studies or ancient history,
Lets take John Stossel for example, he made the counter claim that we have not had an increase in severity to hurricanes and other similar weather. He got fact checked as false. So absolutely not ancient history.
>not the aggregate of research which says that climate change
Let's get each other back on the same page. I do not deny climate change. I deny the alarmism. The claims like this: https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/13/world/climate-change-oceans-h...
5 hiroshima nuclear bombs a second! Except that claim is also true during the coldest day of the last ice age because that energy equivalency is coming from the sun.
>uman encroachment are causing oceans to rise, species to disappear, top soil to disappear, fish stocks to dwindle, and the air we breath and water we drink to become increasingly polluted.
Humans aren't causing the oceans to rise. https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/images/119/...
The sea levels greatly increased about 7000-8000 years ago. Most likely this is the source of stories like Noahs ark and atlantis going under water. From about 6000 years ago to today it has risen at exactly the same rate. In fact Al Gore's false claim that florida would be under water was in part due to 'icecaps melting' as well as that standard rate of rise. Yet despite the icecaps melting Florida remains...
Species disappearing is a concern to be sure. Not really climate change related at all. Human sprawl and destruction of natural habitats is a problem. We should do more about this.
Top soil disappearing is a gigantic problem. Like beyond immense. I have researched extensively around regenerative farming, vertical farming, aquaponics. Here's the thing... climate change is actually helping in for this problem. This problem is entirely being caused by immoral farming. We must greatly increase the amount of animal farming is occurring. Get back to pasture raised animals.
Fish stocks are another big concern of mine as a hobby fisherman. This is entirely due to commercial over fishing. We should do something about this. However blaming climate change for this is missing the target.
>. Salon, Breitbart, The Guardian, Forbes, Al Gore, Oprah, Snopes and the Independent you linked are not reliable sources.
Are you asserting climate change proponents didnt make these claims in history? That would be a fallacy.
So no, it wouldn’t be best to default to assuming the worst, you have to be able to decide which risks to tolerate and which to address, and to which degree.
Imagine that you the kind of immortal being that can still die in car crashes, but you never age. Whenever you take a risk, of death say, in order to get the expected utility of taking this risk, you need to multiply your risk ,which is a small number, by the opportunity cost of that risk, which is an infinite life's worth of utility. I do not, like many of the "rationalists" believe that this figure is infinity, but it is very obviously much larger than your risk is small. It's hard to reason about, but I urge you to imagine it in the shower with the lights off. Really try to get into that space, and imagine what risks you would consider to be acceptable as an immortal.
Humanity is such an immortal being, but it currently lacks the tools to act for itself. We can build those tools, but that will take time and lots and lots of thought.