Re:CO2 in the atmosphere just exceeded 415ppm for the first ...
by pdonis on Monday May 13, 2019 @04:09PM
(#19903412)
> I don't see how man-made climate change is even controversial
What's controversial (at least, if we're talking reasonable discussion) is not that climate change is happening, nor that human activities cause at least a good portion of it, but whether we understand all the factors involved well enough to predict with high confidence that spending trillions of dollars on drastic measures to reduce or eliminate CO2 emissions will stop it from happening. If we don't have high confidence that spending the trillions of dollars will do that (and I don't, nor do I see how anyone could given that climate models are overpredicting warming and our ability to predict economic consequences is even worse than our ability to predict future climate), then we shouldn't be spending the trillions of dollars--or at least, not on measures aimed directly at drastically reducing or eliminating CO2 emissions.
That's not to say, however, that there aren't other things we could be doing, that might help with climate change as a side effect. One is switching to non-fossil-fuel energy sources (see below). Another is making our infrastructure more robust, which helps civilization to withstand change in general. Still another is bringing more people out of poverty, since the richer people are, the more easily they can adapt to change.
> I don't see why we shouldn't transition to renewable energy asap anyway
A better term than "renewable" would be "non-fossil-fuel", since that would include nuclear (which is not considered "renewable" by most definitions). I agree that switching to non-fossil-fuel energy is something we should be doing anyway, both for scarcity reasons and for national security reasons: much of the money we spend on foreign oil ends up funding terrorism. I wish more people would realize that we don't need to agree on climate change alarmism in order to work on switching energy sources.
What's controversial (at least, if we're talking reasonable discussion) is not that climate change is happening, nor that human activities cause at least a good portion of it, but whether we understand all the factors involved well enough to predict with high confidence that spending trillions of dollars on drastic measures to reduce or eliminate CO2 emissions will stop it from happening. If we don't have high confidence that spending the trillions of dollars will do that (and I don't, nor do I see how anyone could given that climate models are overpredicting warming and our ability to predict economic consequences is even worse than our ability to predict future climate), then we shouldn't be spending the trillions of dollars--or at least, not on measures aimed directly at drastically reducing or eliminating CO2 emissions.
That's not to say, however, that there aren't other things we could be doing, that might help with climate change as a side effect. One is switching to non-fossil-fuel energy sources (see below). Another is making our infrastructure more robust, which helps civilization to withstand change in general. Still another is bringing more people out of poverty, since the richer people are, the more easily they can adapt to change.
> I don't see why we shouldn't transition to renewable energy asap anyway
A better term than "renewable" would be "non-fossil-fuel", since that would include nuclear (which is not considered "renewable" by most definitions). I agree that switching to non-fossil-fuel energy is something we should be doing anyway, both for scarcity reasons and for national security reasons: much of the money we spend on foreign oil ends up funding terrorism. I wish more people would realize that we don't need to agree on climate change alarmism in order to work on switching energy sources.