| sundin13 said: I don't understand the OPs main point. I see that you are saying that climate change is occuring but you aren't sure whether it is problematic but this seems like a strange point. As with any widespread change, we as humans need to change to keep up and that is where a lot of science is going. A lot of science has looked at what has already happened and are finding ways to compensate for these changes and make systems robust in the face of future changes. Systems like agriculture, hydropower, wildlife conservation, urban planning etc need to keep climate change in mind to maximize efficiency under changing conditions. I think any large scale change such as this can be considered harmful due to the large changes that must accompany it and I certainly think that a statement such as "Greenlanders like the warmer weather" has virtually no place in this discussion. Overall, it can be debated whether these effects will be as harmful as some models say, but the point of view that we might as well just wait and see because there is a chance that things might turn out fine is utterly useless in my opinion. |
Oh both Dyson and I support planning for rising oceans, and such. The concern is that an international limitation of carbon emissions can induce huge costs to developing countries like China and India, who depend on fossil fuels in their process of industrialization. We are more concerned about poverty levels and reducing them than minutely reducing greenhouse emissions so that we can buy a few more years to prepare. Industrialization will lead to more innovative technologies and solutions which can prepare us much more suitably for any negative effects. Furthermore, I believe that the cost of fossil fuels will exceed the costs of alternative methods some point in the next few decades, and we will see a market reduction of carbon emissions. So by the time any legislation will go through, it will likely already have been the case that the market was heading in that direction anyway. So the whole movement wasted time and resources that could be spent elsewhere on other environmental concerns and planning methods.
My main point is that environmentalists seem to crusade against people who aren't as alarmed by climate change and think it is the biggest obstacle humanity will face in the next hundred years. I don't think it is anywhere near close to certain that the predicted negative effects will happen at the magnitude they choose to declare it will, and it baffles me how much the positive effects are ignored. Change is not always bad. I also think if humans are influential enough to accelerate the change in climate, we are also capable enough to adapt to said changing climate through our elaborate shelters. In my opinion, there are more pressing environmental concerns than climate change, and some of the fear-mongering really does bother me. I was watching the episode of the new Cosmos the other day which was about climate change, and Tyson started the episode talking about the runaway greenhouse effect on Venus. While the point was to illustrate how the greenhouse effect works, I don't recall any mention that it is extremely unlikely that such an event can happen on Earth, even according to the current models. It seemed almost intentionally positioned like that to induce fear. In my opinion, this is scientifically unethical.
Nobody is saying wait and see. We're just saying don't spend massive amounts of time and resources on things we are not certain of. Time and resources that would bring entire human populations out of poverty and could otherwise save lives. I know environmentalists address said poverty issue, but they do it with heterodox economics (marxism and the like) that has never worked.
