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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.
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.
Just for a minor reality check, floating ice displaces exactly the same volume of water that it would occupy if melted and brought to the same temperature as the water it displaces; however, the majority of the ice in the Antarctic and other locations like Greenland are on land, where the melting would drain water into the oceans, causing sea level rise.
Faked and overhyped disaster scenarios about the death of all life if we don't stop global warming is no different then faked and overhyped disaster scenarios that it'll be super-dooper expensive if you don't buy my snake oil now.
Yes, if you assume the whole scientific community is just lying to you then you'll believe there's no point in listening to them.
Of course, since you're nutty enough to believe in a global conspiracy involving tens of thousands of people, any one of whom could make a huge name for themselves by disclosing it, there's no point listening to you.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
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.
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.