The ldsfaqs / Climate Change MEGATHREAD

[_honorentheos]

Hi mikwut,

Your value system is the primary reason you should be concerned about the consequences of climate change. There's a reason the military, most of the civil infrastructure industry and an increasing number of people in the development industry have simply moved to addressing resilience in the face of climate change rather than sit around and debate it. It's because the failure to account for it is understood by the military to undermine their mission. It's because failure to account for it means under-designed infrastructure unable to effectively behave as intended leading to failures of the comforts and other givens you take for granted being available. It's because failure to account for it in development means unanticipated life-cycle upkeep costs and/or less desirable products coming to market that became the modern equivalent of a housing project built on the bank of a river just waiting to be washed away.

OTOH, the mass migrations, increases in mortality outlook, cost to maintain the standard of living behind our current state of so-called flourishing all speak to issues predicted at high degrees of confidence in the models which should concern you given your value system.

If you value human flourishing, you should be first in line seeking changes to ensure it continues.

[_EAllusion]

"Climate-related deaths" seems narrowly defined here to refer to deaths caused by oppressive weather such as deaths due to more frequent deadly heat waves as opposed to the deaths caused by the secondary consequences of rapidly changing climate. If drought in Syria causes political destablization that leads to a bloody civil war that draws in international military action that leads to thousands of deaths that's not a "climate related death" in this narrow sense, but it is a "climate related death" in a way that we'd care about. One of the more dangerous risks of climate change is causing geopolitical instability over intensified resource competition and rapid migration leading to great power conflicts. That's hard to capture in a simple number.

That said, there are estimates on how climate change is currently and will continue effect mortality due to impacts on heat wave frequency, disease patterns, food availability, air quality, etc. Those estimates are well beyond "almost no one" even in industrialized nations. Thousands of people die prematurely already due to climate change that has already occurred and that number is rapidly increasing as the climate warms. We're about a decade off a conservative estimate being around a quarter million deaths per year. It is true that you are better off in a country where malaria isn't a problem, but even industrialized countries are affected.

[_canpakes]

mikwut, being grateful for the advances seen by society in general during the time of increased fossil fuel use does not mean that fossil fuel use cannot also inevitably lead to other, newer problems. Nor does it mean that you are not allowed to consider that possibility.

And it also does not follow that we cannot continue to advance the societal status quo with non-fossil fuels, going forward.

[_Res Ipsa]

Two quick things, with more later. First, the issue of gratitude toward fossil fuels is a red herring. Coal hasn’t accumulated an account of goodwill that entitles it to to damage the lives of millions of people. The issue is how to best go forward.

Fossil fuel has allowed us to accumulate a massive amount of wealth. But we’ve been doing it on a credit card by failing to account for the cost of putting greenhouse gases in the atmosphere far faster than the earth can sequester it again. Now, the bill is coming due, and the folks who will be hit the worst are those who have benefited the least and can least afford the cost.

One more: flourish is a very vague criterion that varies widely across the globe. How about those flourishing Syrians. Or Yemenis? The refugees on our southern border?

[_mikwut]

Hi mikwut,

Your value system is the primary reason you should be concerned about the consequences of climate change. There's a reason the military, most of the civil infrastructure industry and an increasing number of people in the development industry have simply moved to addressing resilience in the face of climate change rather than sit around and debate it."

Of course there is, that is their job and duty. But this shouldn't be confused with empirical and historical data for non-military to use as evidence and make decisions from. Do you believe an alien threat is imminent? I don't. But the military has over several decades increasingly developed plans and procured resources toward addressing that possible threat. They address all possible threats, that is what a military is for. They use a threshold of possibility much different and lower because of their job of preparing for any and all possible threats. I don't just speculate with this, I am prior military myself.

It's because the failure to account for it is understood by the military to undermine their mission. It's because failure to account for it means under-designed infrastructure unable to effectively behave as intended leading to failures of the comforts and other givens you take for granted being available.

It's because failure to account for it in development means unanticipated life-cycle upkeep costs and/or less desirable products coming to market that became the modern equivalent of a housing project built on the bank of a river just waiting to be washed away.

Correct, but using completely different standards than we use in our civilian economy and everyday lives. The threshold the military uses is much more often than not never realized.

On the other hand, the mass migrations, increases in mortality outlook, cost to maintain the standard of living behind our current state of so-called flourishing all speak to issues predicted at high degrees of confidence in the models which should concern you given your value system.

If you value human flourishing, you should be first in line seeking changes to ensure it continues.

[/quote]

Now slow down we really have to pin down where we are disagreeing. The climate alarms you are mentioning like mass migrations have been predicted based on models for over 30 years now. During that same time period the burning of fossil fuels has continued to help human flourishing. How is it you expect the military is planning on preparing for the disasters you alluded to above? It is through the use of fossil fuel energy. In the civilian world carbon capture technology is becoming a very real technology and if CO2 is the direct cause of climate disaster we can remove CO2 to dial it back which is much more realistic than all the less scalable energy alternatives. That is my value system, mind, ingenuity it is the way we have flourished and will continue to flourish not the sky is falling. I don't have a belief that the government should never get involved but I do believe much more in the private sector solving problems than the government.

We have no real empirical happenings of the disasters that are commonly stated as the alarms. Droughts have not significantly increased by our data of the last 80 years worldwide, neither have tornadoes, nor hurricanes, nor mass migrations due to specifically those disasters. It is all anticipatory and has been for quite a while now. There is a reason for example Hansen made these predictions in the 80s about the 90s and early 2000s that never materialized. How many times does that have to happen before a skeptical position begins to have some credence? What has increased is our flourishing and less deaths due to climate in industrialized nations due to our inexpensive, scalable and reliable use of fossil fuels. Our shelter from those disasters and our ability to repair from those disasters has increased dramatically due to our energy from fossil fuels. Nothing else has offered anything close. Nothing is holding the alternatives back except the downsides to the alternatives themselves.

We don't know if a push is really what happens if this mass migration doomsday scenario plays out due to climate change. We know of circumstances such as recent tsunamis where it was the opposite, it was a pull to stay and not migrate to help build and repair. So I need real empirical data from you because that is what I am using. And how many years need to go by (really) before the models which have always been wrong can without ridicule be legitimately criticized? I don't know about you but even if your right and we apply my standard, how do you want to approach these alarms and disasters, with the help of the greatest reliable, powerful, scaleable and inexpensive energy ever known to us and abundant or the unreliable, not nearly as scalable or powerful and much more expensive alternatives? I would rather face the fight with the former because of my values, and if the alarmist scenario proves false I certainly prefer the fossil fuel energy to combat it.

To answer canpakes of course we can utilize alternatives that is what the market does and is doing as we speak. Nothing is holding it back, fossil fuels are what is being attacked and held back around the globe. Alternatives right now as we speak have government incentives and tax breaks and every break going for them. The market is favorable for them, the public is favorable for them so you bet, bring it. But we do have experiments such as in Germany where the real difficulites of scalability and reliability played out.

mikwut

[_mikwut]

Hi Res,

One more: flourish is a very vague criterion that varies widely across the globe. How about those flourishing Syrians. Or Yemenis? The refugees on our southern border?

Flourishing and thriving as humans is very understandable and not vague. Are you saying the refugees you refer to have something to do with burning fossil fuels?

mikwut

[_EAllusion]

the civilian world carbon capture technology is becoming a very real technology and if CO2 is the direct cause of climate disaster we can remove CO2 to dial it back which is much more realistic than all the less scalable energy alternatives.

That's quite false and is a tell that you're reading bad sources.

[_EAllusion]

We have no real empirical happenings of the disasters that are commonly stated as the alarms. Droughts have not significantly increased by our data of the last 80 years worldwide, neither have tornadoes, nor hurricanes, nor mass migrations due to specifically those disasters.

Droughts have already intensified Mikwut. Again, this is a tell that you're reading sketchy sources. It's dodgy to attribute any specific drought to global warming, but aggregate regional changes in drought behavior is definitely attributable to climate change.

There was a debate in climatology well after global warming was understood about the impact of global warming on hurricane frequency/intensity. The science is fairly settled at this point that global warming contributes to increased hurricane intensity rather than frequency, which we've already seen. We have already observed a trend of progressively more frequent instances of more intense hurricanes. This has had disastrous consequences both in abstract economic terms and in human toll.

Take Hurricane Maria. Can you call the years in human life lost as a result of it climate change related mortality? That's tricky. Climate change didn't cause Hurricane Maria per se. It just made it statistically more likely to occur than the default chance sans anthropogenic forcing . There are ways to try to quantify that increased risk in terms of mortality, but that requires an abstraction that plays with our sense of causality. What we can say is that more Marias are more likely the more we pump carbon into the atmosphere and this negative consequence isn't built into the price of pumping carbon into the atmosphere.

[_honorentheos]

Hi mikwut -

Of course there is, that is their job and duty. (referring to the military's planning for climate change) But this shouldn't be confused with empirical and historical data for non-military to use as evidence and make decisions from. Do you believe an alien threat is imminent? I don't. But the military has over several decades increasingly developed plans and procured resources toward addressing that possible threat. They address all possible threats, that is what a military is for. They use a threshold of possibility much different and lower because of their job of preparing for any and all possible threats. I don't just speculate with this, I am prior military myself.

I love xckd. Your response reminds me of this -



Your response is only explicable through assuming you are either ignorant on the subject of military policy and planning for climate change or you're playing as a troll. Either way, comparing it to military planning for alien invasions is disingenuous or stupid. I'm not invested enough to care which fits you best in this case.

It's because the failure to account for it is understood by the military to undermine their mission. It's because failure to account for it means under-designed infrastructure unable to effectively behave as intended leading to failures of the comforts and other givens you take for granted being available.

It's because failure to account for it in development means unanticipated life-cycle upkeep costs and/or less desirable products coming to market that became the modern equivalent of a housing project built on the bank of a river just waiting to be washed away.

Correct, but using completely different standards than we use in our civilian economy and everyday lives. The threshold the military uses is much more often than not never realized.

That's a misread at so many levels. Civil engineers responsible for infrastructure design have stopped debating if climate change is real and are designing new infrastructure to be resilient in the face of it. Period. While not as wide spread, more and more developers are anticipating the effects of climate change and pursuing resiliency in their site development products as well. Your responses show how unplugged you are from the current state of the debate. People who have to deal with long term planning or infrastructure that is expected to have a functional life 50 years from now have accepted the necessity for accounting for the modeling effects. And you know why? Because the near term observations related to infrastructure function and the costs of replacing infrastructure and development lost to events tied to the effects of climate change aren't theoretical.

You're a decade behind in the discussion if you think what I said was based on theoretical plans for worst-case "what if?" scenarios. Turns out, not knowing who Metallica is means you are probably faking your way through this conversation.

[_EAllusion]

To answer canpakes of course we can utilize alternatives that is what the market does and is doing as we speak. Nothing is holding it back, fossil fuels are what is being attacked and held back around the globe. Alternatives right now as we speak have government incentives and tax breaks and every break going for them. The market is favorable for them, the public is favorable for them so you bet, bring it. But we do have experiments such as in Germany where the real difficulites of scalability and reliability played out.

mikwut

Are you an attorney for Exxon-Mobil or something? Fossil fuel interests still enjoy extensive support in US government policy. Look up the effective tax rate on coal production. We spend billions on direct and indirect subsidies of fossil fuels. We don't have extensive (and obscenely expensive) military entanglements to help ensure the competitive pricing of wind.