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Missing Climate Goals Could Cost the World $20 Trillion (technologyreview.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: There are trillions of reasons for the world to prevent temperatures from rising more than 1.5C, the aspirational target laid out in the Paris climate agreement, according to a new study. If nations took the necessary actions to meet that goal, rather than the increasingly discussed 2C objective, there's a 60 percent chance it would save the world more than $20 trillion, according to new work published this week in Nature by scientists at Stanford. That figure is far higher than what most experts think it will cost to cut emissions enough to achieve the 1.5C target. Indeed, one study put the price tag in the hundreds of billions of dollars. If temperatures rise by 3C, it will knock out an additional 5 percent of GDP. That's the entire planet's GDP.
Wouldn't cutting emissions 40% - 60% in the first world cause hundreds of millions or even billions of deaths in places dependent on western aid? Or is that part of the plan?
This commentary published by The Wall Street Journal, written by Fred Singer, claims that warming (and therefore greenhouse gas emissions) has no effect on global sea level rise. Although Singer concedes the physical fact that water expands as its temperature increases, he claims that this process must be offset by growth of Antarctic ice weasels.
Scientists who reviewed this opinion piece explained that it is contradicted by a wealth of data and research. Singer bases his conclusion entirely on a cherry-picked comparison of sea level rise 1915-1945 and a single study published in 1990, claiming a lack of accelerating sea level rise despite continued warming. But in fact, modern research utilizing all available data clearly indicates that sea level rise has accelerated, and is unambiguously the result of human-caused global warming.
Who had them last? Did Trump misplace them? Has anyone checked Hillary's servers?
C'mon people. Those things are very expensive.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
$20 trillion is a lot of jobs created and with more people dying from the effects of climate change that could really boost wages /s
I haven't looked into this particular analysis at all, but this is exactly what we should be doing. Rather than making arguments that humans suck and are destroying life-giving Gaia, or trying to scare people with horror stories of runway warming, we should be carefully, rationally, constructing the best possible estimates of the cost of global warming under various scenarios, and then comparing them with the best possible estimates of the cost of various mitigation strategies, including not only cutting carbon emissions (which requires a sub-field of analyses to figure out the best and least impactful way to motivate cutting of carbon production) but also schemes to recapture carbon and schemes to directly cool the planet's climate other ways, such as orbital sunscreens to reduce insolation. And at the same time we should continue investing in climate and economic modeling to refine the estimates.
And we should act on the strategy that produces the best outcome, according to those estimates, even as we continue working to revise the estimates -- and adjust the strategy aprpropriately, in cautious, incremental steps.
This is the rational, Bayesian approach to the problem. And it's the right approach even in the (extremely unlikely) case that the warming isn't anthropogenic, or even if the planet isn't really even warming! Act on the best information you have, cautiously and adjusting for your level of confidence in that information, and keep working to get better information and adjust your approach accordingly. This is rational, logical, and the approach most likely to yield the most favorable outcomes. "Most likely" and "most favorable" are key words; there are no guarantees, but maximizing the probability of good outcomes is the the best way forward.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Mean atmospheric O2 - 130 % of modern level.
Mean atmospheric CO2 content - . 1950 ppm. 7 times pre-industrial level.
Mean surface temperature - 16.5 C. 3 C above modern level.
I HATE cold weather. I would say this would be a better climate to live in.
The fossil fuel industry and the politicians in their stranglehold for campaign money don't care about the cost everyone has to pay. They care not a whit about the voters and customers yet to be born.
Greed is the root of all evil.
Sure, sure. You want to motivate the people with the money and power to do something about this? Tell them they'll lose money and power if they don't. Aspects of humanity like this are what make me feel like our entire species just plain sucks; you can't get any action out of people with "this is the right thing to do", you have to frame it as "this is what's in it for you if you do this".
"Could" is the keyword here... Makes the entire statement completely unfalsifiable and thus unscientific.
No, it makes it a scientific prediction, one backed by rigorous and proper study and validated by peer review.
They aren't just pulling $20 trillion and 60% out of their ass. They have a paper where they show how they derive those figures and justify their assumptions. If you want to falsify their statement there's actually a straightforward process to do so. Read their paper to see where those figures came from, find a calculation that's incorrect, a cost they misprojected, an assumption that's unjustified, or some other way in which you can show their results to be false.
Don't just blithely declaring any scientific finding you don't like to be "completely unfalsifiable and thus unscientific".
I stole this Sig
"Could" is the keyword here... Makes the entire statement completely unfalsifiable and thus unscientific.
15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance.
And you could die if you get into a high-speed auto accident while not wearing a seat belt. Or you could live. But your odds are better if you wear the seat belt.
If you're going to dismiss any argument that isn't based on ironclad guarantees, you can't predict much of anything. The future is unknown. Accept it. The best we can do is maximize the likelihood of good outcomes.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I would guess that at least 10 billion people will die over the next 100 years, probably more.
It "used" to be deniers saying there was no warming, but that didn't seem to work, so then they're saying it's natural causes.
It "used" to be deniers saying it's natural causes, but that didn't seem to work, so now they're saying it's humans causing warming but it's not going to get that bad.
Both sides are guilty of getting things wrong (failures are built in to the scientific method) and overstating the effect (either too much or too little). The media inevitably injects emotion to get eyeballs. You have to read between the lines.
The thoughtful have always realized that humans are causing warming, have been for most of the last 150 years, and will continue for the next 50 or so, when hopefully technology and social pressure will finally tip the needle. The warming is locked in for longer. There will be economic downsides and upsides, and some people will suffer and some will profit.
I come at it from the prospective of, we each need to have a conversation with our grandchildren in 50 years, where the trends for CO2 and warming continue, and can we say we did as much as we could to give them the same kind of world we thrived in. Arguments that "the environment could be better!" miss the point, we know we have a great environment now. It's selfish and myopic to assume that the environment in 50 years (assuming warming trends continue) will be better due to technology or what have you.
How do I edit my sig.
Then they should've said "Will". Saying "could" makes the statement just what I said, unfalsifiable. And that in turn makes in unscientific.
So you could then criticize them for making an authoritative prediction they could not possibly justify.
'Will' vs 'Could' has nothing to do with falsifiability or scientificness, it's scientific and falsifiable because their "could" is justified with research.
I stole this Sig
It *used* to be dire predictions getting ever closer and more dire, but that didn't seem to work, so now they're transitioning to monetary measures.
Errr no. The dire predictions are still dire. The only difference is where the research is being put into now that people are attempting to cost up measures to prevent us from royally screwing things up any further.
Or maybe you prefer us to not research the economics and go back to researching climate change, ... because you know... is it even real? Is the science even "settled"?
Take a look at this: https://xkcd.com/1732/
Those are simple numbers, not complicated simulations. You don't need to be an expert or even an actual scientist to see that the world is actually warming. You also don't need to be an expert to see that it is going at a rate that might start to hurt. Nobody can tell you how much it will hurt, but it will not only cost money, it will be paid in human lives too...
Also, that stuff you're pouring into your car and what you're firing your power stations with, that stuff took hundreds of million of years to get there. Now, we have burned up a sizable amount of that stuff in the last few decades, you don't need to be an expert to see the scalability problem there...
The ozone hole is not bullshit.
Worldwide action to eliminate CFCs in aerosol cans and refrigerators has done much to alleviate the problem. Success at reducing the problem does not mean the problem was bullshit to begin with.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
"... the proposed actions always involve diminishing everyone's lives - living in cold houses in winter and boiling houses in the summer, ..."
Nope, this is just your nihilistic attitude towards the subject at hand. You've decided this is a zero sum game and that you aren't going to be the loser. Well your myopic attitude is your problem. Not someone else's problem!
You see there were lots of right wing nay-sayers suggesting that programs that supported home insulation upgrades were inappropriate and wrong. "You can't pick winners and losers" they said. "Government grant programs are bad" they said. "It's all Al Gore and Big Government, and Climate Change isn't real" they said.
Except, home insulation programs are one specific example of how lives will not be diminished. How homes will not be "cold in the winter" and "boiling in the summer". How to avoid zero sum nihilism.
You see you are a zero sum nihilist, and you want the rest of the world to be as well. Good luck with that, but don't be surprised if the world chooses a different direction. And when they do, I'm sure we'll hear you whining about that too. "Well, if the Deep State hadn't silenced us, we could have won at the expense of everyone else!!! Damn you Al Gore!"
Sad. Pathetic. Small thoughts for small minds.
If it is only going to cause $20 T not to do so, it would appear to be a good deal just to do nothing.
On the first glance: for the survivors, yes.
On second glance: you most likely would never survive it or not like to live under the conditions the survivors will do.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
It *used* to be dire predictions getting ever closer and more dire, but that didn't seem to work, so now they're transitioning to monetary measures.
You are an idiot. There never where "predictions" like that. Only newspaper head lines.
Everybody with the simplest grasp of science knows the turning point is now, and was not 20 30 or 50 years ago. And 50 years ago everyone new till roughly 2000 not much would have happened. So why would they make honest predictions before that point in time?
And why exactly are you so dumb that you believed them in case you stumbled over one randomly?
The big change climate is now over a timeframe of the next 100 years, depending how quick we stop it, or the next 300 years if we fail to stop it.
Calling that a "religion" is the dumbest thing a man can do, idiot.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Wrong. "Will" is falsifiable. "Could" is not.
Because, whether a prediction comes to pass or not, "could" is still true — not falsifiable. The "will", on the other hand, would be wrong — and is therefor falsifiable. Not necessarily true — for it may still end up falsified, but falsifiable.
Being falsifiable is a requirement for being scientific.
Research does not make a statement falsifiable.
I've exhausted both my means and my willingness to fill the gaping voids in your education. Please, consult the Wikipedia link above and search for other resources yourself. I'm embarrassed to have replied to you even once...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
That reminds me of those people who rollover their payday loans into new payday loans because every dollar they put into paying down the loan is a dollar they can't spend on other stuff. In other words, breaking out of they payday loan cycle requires diminishing their lives in the short term.
People who complain about global warming mitigations diminishing their lives are trying to justify the equivalent of locking us all into massive loans which our children and grandchildren will inherit. In the USA, the American Dream is dying.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
I once strongly believed in this, but to my left is a computer that is entirely capable of doing nuclear bomb simulation. I'm curious why there's never any models given that I can simply run.
There is.
http://theconversation.com/mak...
https://opensource.gsfc.nasa.g...
Coastal real estate is probably worth $125+ trillion. And that doesn't include cost of dealing with migratory pressures, fighting wars over resources etc.
Then there's how much people would pay to avoid that misery ie quality of life value.
$20 trillion seems pretty low to me.
Here's how they calculated it though:
http://sci-hub.tw/https://www....
Yeah that 1m sea level rise over a century is old news, long gone. Methane release from the once frozen permafrost, means that 1m is a hell of a lot closer and is now down to a series of severe weather affect brought on by climate change. 3m is the more accurate estimate over the century although it is avoidable greed and psychopathy seem to guarantee it will occur.
If we do not get the psychopaths out of the system, they will fuck it up completely and upon a global scale.
No point in arguing about the early 1m rise brought on by a mass release of methane, just a matter of waiting, no stopping it now. Just don't invest in underwaterfront at this time, it would be a very stupid thing to do and something I would only do if forced. Man the mob will be baying for the blood of the deniers, just a matter of waiting now.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen