Cuts in emissions (e.g., the 80% cuts the EU is pushing for) will require major cuts in energy usage. We know what a low-energy economy looks like - it looks like a pre-industrial economy. We might not need to go back to the middle ages, but we'd need to reverse many advances of the industrial revolution.

In contrast, we're facing a maximum of 59cm of sea level rise by 2100. (IPCC estimate). That's not desirable but it is manageable - at least if we maintain our technological, industrial civilisation.

If your priority is to save a few endangered species, the best way to do it is to go out and save those species, not to 'try to reduce or offset anthropogenic climate change'; there are many species which are extremely endangered, and for a great intro to the topic, I suggest Douglas Adam's brilliant book.[1]

We are faced with tough choices, and should acknowledge them to be difficult; I don't know that I could bear telling parents that their children will die because I see climate change as a higher priority than disease.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Chance_to_See

Could you bear to tell parents that their children or grand children will die because our climate will be irrevocably damaged?

I was trying to make the point that even if you favor a given course of action, the costs and benefits should be assessed, and neither should be dismissed.

Is this a good reason to not favor that course of action? or is it laden with self-interest? is "I'll lose my whole business" a cost that anyone would be willing to pay for the benefit of the climate? how do we convince this kind of person? in the face of this opinion, should we not dismiss it?

As a result of all this, saying that they are dishonest or lying is wrong, but appeals to complex intellectual arguments won't work; you should give opponents their due though, as the complex intellectual arguments wouldn't convince you either (even if you are wrong).

[1] http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8756.html

[2] http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10843.html

[3] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-moral/

even if that (their belief that it isn't being harmed being genuine) were true, there is literally direct evidence to show this (climate is being harmed by industry) is not true. carbon emissions and the greenhouse effect - it's a fact that industry contributes heavily to carbon emissions. and it's a fact that carbon emissions create increasing temperature by allowing heat to bounce around inside the atmosphere.

What you're saying is, I don't believe in climate change because of these scientific facts (which, are relatively non-complex. we put stuff in air. stuff in air makes air warmer), I believe in it because I'm a bleeding heart liberal? come on.

How many people really need to have their minds changed for congress to create legislation around climate change? Around a hundred eh.. hmm. Self-interest is definitely not a part of this though. they just don't want to change anything because its what they genuinely believe is best!

christ, even arguing that they have this genuine belief is a crock of shit. there's not test for sincerity of belief.

I am saying that you probably arrived at your view by your intuition, after looking at who was on either side of the debate, and how you felt about the 'issue', then you found evidence to support your view. The idea that any of us arrives at their view solely through a careful analysis of the facts is quite optimistic, and I think Hume was on the money 250 years ago. If you believe you are capable of a careful examination of the views on the other side, I implore you to read Alex Epstein's book all the way through, and give him a fair hearing; I would bet you $20 at even odds that you cannot read his book and give an accurate summary of his arguments, because you will find it too frustrating.[1] Changing your view because the facts contradict your intuition and peers is an extremely painful and slow process, which most of us resist at all costs.[2]

There are many tests for the sincerity of beliefs.[3]

[1] http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20821049-the-moral-case-f...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_that_Failed

[3] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2703011

I literally formed my opinion this in grade 12 earth science class, where I was first shown inconvenient truth followed by a direct rebuttal. I found gore to be unconvincing, but I found the rebuttal even worse.

I'll see if I can find the book for cheap. From reading reviews it's fairly clear that the author isn't exactly unbiased or entirely fact-based.

you've got to be fucking kidding me if you think "intuition" is unrelated the self-interest. instead of side-stepping, might you answer my questions?

are you truly saying that politicians and public figures who are involved with oil companies and against climate change are doing so out of anything but self-interest?

ultimately your argument is fallacious. you're dismissing my more salient points by attacking my reasoning process rather than my argument itself. I'm just as self-interested as they are, right? I only believe what I want to believe, I'm just intuiting and agreeing with my peers.

Are you truly telling me that someone looks at industry, like actually looking at factories and the way they operate, and their intuition is that this is good for the environment.

(It should be obvious, but this is not an argument that climate change isn't real. Just that if it weren't real, we'd want to know, and act upon that.)

You know what is the biggest cause of global malnutrition? Climate change, because it is causing more erratic weather patterns that destroy harvests worldwide.

You know what the biggest cause is for the spreading of the malaria mosquitoes beyond the tropics? Climate change again, because it makes some (highly-populated) regions a more favourable habitat.

Climate change isn't some hypothetical problem anymore, like it was in 1850. It is here now, and is already causing problems like you mentioned, that we are spending so much money on countering. But we're treating symptoms, not the cause. I fully expect our spend on treating the symptoms of climate change will rise to unmanageable levels in mere decades.

But I'll respond anyway. From http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs266/en/:

> climate change is expected to cause approximately 250 000 additional deaths per year between 2030 and 2050; 38 000 due to heat exposure in elderly people, 48 000 due to diarrhoea, 60 000 due to malaria, and 95 000 due to childhood undernutrition

Meanwhile, today malaria is killing around 600 000 people a year (ten times that number), and malnutrition around 3 million (thirty times). So, while I'm open to convincing, color me skeptical that today, climate change is the "biggest cause" of those things, for any reasonable definition of "biggest cause".

(Granted, you said "spreading of the malaria mosquitos beyond the tropics". To the extent that this problem is different from the problem of malaria in general, it's moving the goalposts.)

(I also note that even if climate change were the biggest cause of those problems, the best solution to those specific problems might not be to fight climate change. Perhaps instead we should work on growing more resistant wheat, or eradicating mosquitos.)

I'm not arguing that climate change isn't real or that we shouldn't try to solve it. But I categorically reject the idea that if it weren't real, we should nevertheless act as though it were.

I understood what you said, but in my view you were painting a false dichotomy: it's not a matter of "either climate change or all-these-other-useful-things", it's a matter of "all-these-other-useful-things because of our inability to address climate change directly".

what do we do when people treat their opposition as faith, i.e. belief despite lack of evidence.

for some people it will never be real. what do we do about that? is that a legitimate thing to take into account? does that faith mean we cannot act as though climate change is largely human-driven?

You don't wait until you've proven it beyond doubt. But you say "this is our best model, we're pretty confident it's right in the essentials, and we're going to act on it but remain open to being wrong; here are our policy proposals". You don't say "this is our best model, and here are our policy proposals based on it, but even if our model is wrong we would make the same proposals anyway".

I have no particular insights into the other questions.

'what do you mean you don't know, you're not sure? you could be wrong?!'

that's how people see that. that's why climate science needs to give concrete beyond doubt proof. anything less and people ignore it.

You are not helping with that.

In interconnected systems, there's an opportunity cost to opportunity cost.

Once you step into more generations though, fertility rates drop as child survivability rises, as it becomes much more viable to rely on a few children as insurance for old age. Source: Hans Rosling, Gapminder

It would be really surprising if our best-value course of action, relating to climate change, was exactly the same regardless of whether climate change were human-influenced or not.

we know that pushing this button has coincided with a change in climate trends over the last 200 years. what we have to prove is then that a. this is not a natural change, and b. this change can be slowed down or reversed.

would you say that if science proved we are past the tipping point that nothing should be done to reverse the effect we've already had?

I think it's clear that if we could know, and if we could all agree on that, that it would be important to accomplish. but I don't think we can ever all agree on it. so it's not important to accomplish (in fact you could say it's already been accomplished, we already know, and it's not enough, we don't all agree despite the fact. that's what I'm trying to get across by arguing the point of human-caused real climate change)

I am not convinced that "making obviously terrible arguments" is an effective way to shut up one's political opponents.

His name indicates that this is a throwaway account he made so he wouldn't risk having posts like that in the history of his usual account.