*"The Best Response to Climate Change?"*

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So I've accepted the scientists assessment that "possibly-human-caused" ( possibly) dangerous climate change is happening.

My question now is, why should we believe the scientists who say that the best response to this is to cut back massively on carbon etc emissions, with all the even more disastrous economic consequences this might/probably would have, rather than simply deal with each and every sea-level rise, desertification, etc as and when it happens, as some economists suggest?

Is there any/much reason to think that the degree to which we could reverse or halt climate change with emissions reduction etc is worth the drastic changes to society which it would entail, compared to using current fossil-fuel-fuelled economic wealth to deal with the problems as they occur?

At the moment I think that we might well muddle through in the usual "cure" rather than "prevention" way that we humans tend to have, but.. I'm not entirely sure.

Isn't it possible that the poverty and destabilisation which would very likely result from the necessary drastic-emission-reduction might cause more death, misery, etc, than localised band-aid response to each crisis as happens? Or is New Orleans too vivid an example of how "well" governments respond to natural disasters?

On the other hand is it preferable to avoid too much govt interference; "Acts of God" cause less resentment/rebellion than heavy govt measures?

Last edited by ouinon on 11 Mar 2008, 3:43 pm, edited 4 times in total.

I think I'm wondering whether the "best response" question is actually the business of scientists.

Last edited by ouinon on 11 Mar 2008, 4:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

One briefing on the subject at:

http://www.ncpa.org/pub/ba/ba527/

Who are the reliable economists and statisticians on the subject? Stern has been debunked/seriously criticised for "exaggerating"!

To the people who have voted "both"; one theory is that this may not even be possible, because to respond effectively to the individual crises as they occur would require the economy that we have now, but would NOT have if we reduced emissions.

The green house effect is a natural phenomena and will happen no matter what we do. We'll just either be anticipating it or delaying it.

Human beings will suffer and loose out either way. If there is a climate change to the point of causing all the changes that scientists say will occur, humans will have huge financial losses. If we try to delay the green house effect by cutting back on those gases there will also be financial losses.

The main question is - which way do you want to go? Which way will cause less loss?



AND



OR



AND

The author of the book called "The Meltdown" basically said that increased CO2 is partially caused by human factors (prolly back in the early industrial revolution days when every factory belched out tons of toxic smoke everyday) but basically there is absolutely NOTHING we can do to reverse it, and much of the climate change is natural anyway (just a bit magnified). It's weather and everyone knows you can't change the weather, we can't even predict it correctly! We can make educated guesses about what the weather will do tomorrow and the next day but there is no guarantee it will happen. Example it was supposed to be really warm today and yesterday but it's definitely cold outside, warmer than last week but still not 55 degrees.

Here in Illinois and the other northern states its hard to see much evidence of global "warming" it's been cold and unusually wet, however I do realize other parts of the country are experiencing water shortages... if we could we would more than happily share our excess water, between last summer and this winter we've pretty much up for the last several years of drought. I've never seen corn so tall and healthy!

Honestly, we need to come up with a plan to collect and share the resources from states that are getting excess rainfall and snow. The we have flood problems up here, so build a way to "irrigate" the dry parts of the country using excess water from the flooding parts. It would be a big project but it's nothing funding and research can't solve. So stop using corn to produce ethanol (which produces more green house gas in it's production than simply burning gas in your car) and use it ensure food is available to parts of the country that are too dry to grow their own. We have a lot of resources in this country and the states should be able to help each other out.

Just to add; I voted "both" because I think it's what we'll have to do. As problems arise we'll have to take care of them, mostly after they've done their damage, as is the case with tornadoes and tsunamis, for example.

I have a pessimistic outlook into the future.

Doing something about reducing the birth rate. It's not just climate change, the world has a very much finite amount of resources (minerals, oil, arable land, inhabitable terrain, etc). While the green lobby mostly keeps its head in the (ever warmer) sand about the limitations and shortcomings of renewables or advocates downright idiotic and criminal policies (biofuels), the truth is that any plan that does not include population control is just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. Population growth is the elephant in the living room that nobody wants to talk about, but the truth is that any gains made any other way are rapidly going to be wiped out by population growth. Also, more nuclear power is going to be needed - unlike solar it can actually replace fossil fuels for electricity.

I do like your metaphors!

Isn't "dangerous" climate-change just what we've been waiting for then? A few MASSIVE natural disasters.

In what way is that solution worse than that of limiting reproduction to certain people, by what rules?, and in certain numbers? This way it might be slightly less driven by dubious ideological notions about who should reproduce etc? It will probably still favour the generally better off, but with greater variety.

Last edited by ouinon on 11 Mar 2008, 5:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks, though they're all plagiarised from somewhere.
A sensible thing would be to take into account how bad population growth and overpopulation are in each locality - there's no need to do anything about the Scottish Highlands for example, or Russia (falling population) but parts of Africa for example need a strict one-child policy. Bringing more starving children into the world is neither sensible nor humane. This goes beyond climate change - it's part of the answer for reducing poverty for example, since the last thing the Third World needs are more mouths to feed.

But I think it might actually be worse to institute controlled programmes of birth control based on our limited understanding of genetics and value to population of difff gene pools etc, and how people use their land aswell, than to leave it up to more random factors like climate catastrophes, which at least can't start acting out human fantasies about who should be allowed to reproduce.

I realise that "aid" to certain peoples in time of climate disaster is going to be biased, and politically determined too, but at least there will be less "space" for the awful kind of "calculations" about the future benefit to the human race of certain genes etc.

Last edited by ouinon on 11 Mar 2008, 6:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The whole one-child policy hasn't worked so great for china... most people want boys so they give up or kill the girls so they can try again for a son... it causes a serious gender imbalance...

but in a lot of these regions you speak of... the best (easiest) way for them to avoid poverty is to HAVE kids (work the family land ect, not welfare baby issues)... they would need lots of outside help to reverse that situation by other means...

im not disagreeing with you... but it's not really easy.

i'm still a proponent of my lazerbeam of random death

Exactly.

Wondering whether if population reduction is so urgent rather than bewailing global warming we should think, "Brilliant, the perfect, (relatively) random reaper" just when we need it! Do you think some interested/powerful parties are already thinking this?

"Other" ( that's if GW is..)man-made population-control programmes have been disasters. And even if the degree to which natural disasters impact populations depends on the help they get, which is susceptible to political agendas, it would remain relatively free of the "idealistic" dangers so inherent in birth control programmes, like eugenics.

It's odd, how lots of people must be thinking this, but it is not, as far as i've seen, included in the papers calculating the costs of the various responses. That climate change might help reduce the population, is not negligible.

Last edited by ouinon on 11 Mar 2008, 6:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i don't know how humane restricting the number of children a person is allowed to have is. I think i might prefer natural selection by climate change.

Someone can disabuse of this idea if they like! I'm just trying it on.

As far as climate change goes Capitalism simply isn't equipped to deal with the level of reduction needed. We're kind of toying around with the idea of a 5% reduction in the next 5 years and realising it won't be possible, when most of the scientific advice is pointing towards a much more drastic reduction being required. So honestly I think it's already too late. We'll get mass floods, a change in the Earth's temperate zones, death on an unprecedented scale, economic meltdowns and so on. But for the 2% of the population that actually matter and actually have things there'll be no changes whatsoever, except they may have to move to sunny Alaska. That's going to be the kind of action we'll see.