

Why climate change is good for the world - newnewnew
http://www.spectator.co.uk/features/9057151/carry-on-warming/?s

======
mikeyouse
Wow is that a terrible article.

The comments on the spectator website get to the point, but 'Scientific
Consensus' isn't one single person reviewing a dozen papers and deciding
climate change isn't a big deal.

Cherry-picking a few areas where humans will benefit doesn't just negate the
rest of the (mostly unknown) impacts. Fewer people will die in the cold? The
presence of cold doesn't kill people, it's the lack of protection from the
cold caused by failed governments and failed economic systems. Flooding
doesn't matter since we can just build dykes? Ugh.

There are actual existential threats (looking at you ocean acidification) to
the survival of humanity, but it'll be warmer and we can build dams, so NBD.

~~~
astrobe_
You could have just stopped at "mostly unknown impacts", or rather
"unpredictable effects". Because the heart of the problem, and I think the
debates between pro and anti climate change perfectly illustrates it, is that
we don't exactly know what will happen if we push the ecosystem too far from
the current equilibrium.

------
casca
There are many decisions that need to be made around climate change. Is it
worth the cost (financial, lifestyle, environmental) to mitigate it by
reducing energy consumption and therefore reducing growth? How much warming is
acceptable? Is geo-engineering a reasonably option? Should the countries that
created the existing CO^2 bear the majority of the income costs?

These are reasonably questions to be asked by those who will be affected by
the change, i.e. everyone. However this debate can only happen when there's an
acknowledgement that climate change is happening. Sadly there appears to be a
politically influential group who deny the science out of fear of a potential
outcome.

(Not implying that I agree with the article, just that exploring these
questions is a good thing)

------
ryandvm
So... hypothetical question for the climate change activists: What if tomorrow
we found conclusive evidence that global warming was completely natural? (I'm
not suggesting it is, this is just a hypothetical.)

Would we still try to enact legislation to alter the projected change?

------
lifeisstillgood
For US readers : the Spectator is a well regarded but self consciously right
wing magazine, most famously edited by the current London Mayor Boris Johnson.

The article is a rehash of the arguments proposed by (cited) Bjorn Lomborg -
who rose to fame / notoriety with "The environmental Skeptic" (not sure if
have title right there).

He is a economist who does make sensible arguments about needing to take into
account the costs and benefits of climate change - which I do agree with. I
only am suspicious of who said the reasonable and sensible comment - it's like
the difference between Lech Walensa saying the workers should organise and
Lenin saying it.

I am however, heartened by the fact that right wing magazines in the UK accept
climate warming, accept it as human caused, merely argue if we need to do
something. Which apparently puts us a long way ahead of the Republicans.

~~~
glenra
The IPCC reports say pretty much the exact same thing, if you filter out the
spin. In particular, the "impact" part of their reports says the next 1-3
degrees of warming will on-net increase agricultural productivity - it'll be
easier to feed the world. If you look at the underlying studies the biggest
positive impacts seem to be: (1) In the northern regions that currently
produce the most food, warming means longer growing seasons means more food.
(2) Near the equator where it's too hot to grow most crops, extra CO2 makes
growing trees much more productive.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
great - now all we have to do is make sure we stop at 1-3 degrees,and we are
all sorted :>

~~~
glenra
The good news is that gives us about a century, and if we don't break the
world economy today with our attempts at _premature optimization_ , our
technological capabilities then will be unimaginably greater than they are
now.

Roughly one century ago - around the year 1900 - cities of the world had a
huge problem - horses. The problem of hauling away the horse manure and dead
horses was a bigger and bigger job and throwing more horses at the problem was
not doing the trick. The cities _smelled_ and bred disease and there was just
nowhere to put the stuff. The situation was _unsustainable_. People drew line
charts with hockey sticks. There were conferences where people gnashed their
teeth and wrung their hands over how horrible it was - and getting _worse_ \-
and how would we ever _survive_?

Then the problem went away. Not because the professional worriers came up with
a solution, but because technology changed.

That will happen this time too. The one thing we can be ABSOLUTELY SURE of is
that our biggest problem a century from now will be something ELSE, probably
something we haven't even encountered as an issue yet. It is an amazing luxury
that we can afford to worry about such trivial matters. I think there must be
a "conservation of worry" law - as the world gets safer, as fewer people are
starving or dying of dysentery or whatever, we still need to worry the same
amount, so we find new things to worry about - no matter how arcane and
obscure they have to be - and invest them with undue importance.

~~~
lifeisstillgood
The glenra law of conservation of worry - loving it

------
bonemachine
I don't get it -- was that supposed to be satire?

Either way, such claptrap

