Aren't most of these prices an illusion, even in the middle term? I think it's good to encourage people to see that the first stage of the energy transition is 'affordable' in our daily context, but the reality is, emissions are an existential problem that has to be solved, or at least ameliorated, even for the super wealthy with their ideas of digging a bunker in case of societal breakdown. If your house is on fire with all your money in it, counting the money while things are burning (including money) is a maladaptive response.
Bunkers are a good comparison on price, because obviously for some of us (ahem, Mark Zuckerberg), the price is right for a bunker. Interestingly, the price is still wrong for Zuckerberg to turn Facebook into a giant climate education and social contract generating machine.
Inferred by that logic, with super-wealth, there is no price worth the constraints of a functioning democracy. Life in a bunker is better than democracy.
Sidenote: if you really were in a bunker, any of the prices that seem familiar to us today are already out the window (or hatch, I guess). Do you have a dentist in your bunker?
There is also a middle term crisis that dwarfs prices as we know them: what happens if 100 million climate migrants try to enter the US over a 10 - 20 year period? That number could be on the low side judging by this paper:
My guess is that if anything pushes us to spraying sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere, it will be the existential necessity of trying to keep a billion people in their own regions, after having bungled our concept of pricing in every decade prior.
I ask you because you made the statement, and I'm interested in seeing your reasoning.
I especially asked because I've seen no credible scientific papers or reasoning that would support your claims. The scientific papers I've read, including IPCC Working Group reports, are much more modest. They predict effects from continued warming, but no catastrophes.
The IPCC press releases, on the other hand, make dramatic claims, but never supported by scientific findings.
So, what's the basis for your claim that a billion or more people will be forced to leave unlivable regions? Which regions will be unlivable? What will make them unlivable?
The decision of whether something is an emergency or catastrophe is ultimately a value judgment. Even if we agree on every fact, we might still disagree on how bad things are.
Brian, farther along: "What are the US subsidies for oil, gas, and coal you refer to? If you're talking about US defense spending as a subsidy for oil, just stop."
Oh come on, don't stop yet! Again, specific numbers may be hard to verify, but how can our defense posture not include protecting our access to foreign energy? If it's documentation you want, try "National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency" (https://www.cfr.org/report/national-security-consequences-us-oil-dependency). You may not find the Council on Foreign Relations credible, but you should be arguing with them, not us.
Brian, somewhere: "I don't think most people have even posed the real question: What is the objective, and what are the tradeoffs in trying to reach it."
The objective is to cap the rise of atmospheric greenhouse gases at the lowest amount collective action can achieve, before the accumulating global radiative imbalance overwhelms our collective ability to adapt. By and large, it's the market-driven transfer of fossil carbon to the atmosphere by the gigatonnes annually that drives the rising global heat content. Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy buys us time to eliminate or neutralize the other anthropogenic emissions sources as well. And before you suggest "solar radiation management", bear in mind that ocean acidification (i.e. declining pH) is also due to anthropogenic carbon emissions. The economic tradeoffs are the risks of taking collective action to decarbonize the global economy, preferably with the USA leading the way. Collective action is always on a slippery slope, but because of the tragedy of the commons, we don't have the option *not* to act collectively. Various tools are available to our collective will: Direct carbon pricing, incentives for driving down the price of renewable energy, and outright bans on, say, new coal-fired power plants. Who wins and who loses, comparatively, will be determined politically. The alternative is an open-ended trend of rising global heat content and declining marine biodiversity, with mounting individual and mass tragedies and diseconomies. You don't need us to verify that in the public record for you.
Speaking of politics, Mr. Smith, your objections sound like lukewarmism to me. You may not listen to Hannity, but you employ similar language, especially your use of dog whistles like "the alarmist position". You do seem to be sealioning (good word) Mr. Reiss, who is apparently alarmed about climate change, but IMHO not alarmist in the loaded sense you imply. And you appear to presume no one else has thought about their position here, or that they should include everything last thought they have about it in a blog comment. You do understand that just because you haven't seen data you find persuasive, that doesn't mean no one else has? AFAICT, you display a cognitive bias against taking even proportional responsibility for your marginal greenhouse emissions. If you're a US voter, the rest of us will just have to hope you're outvoted!
Brian Smith: "I especially asked because I've seen no credible scientific papers or reasoning that would support your claims. The scientific papers I've read, including IPCC Working Group reports, are much more modest. They predict effects from continued warming, but no catastrophes."
As Andrew observes, whether something is a catastrophe is a value judgement; indeed, so is a "much more modest" climate change damage function. We might say catastrophe is in the eyes of the victim. Now, obviously the costs of regional climate change will fall unevenly around the world, as the accumulating heat circulates through the atmosphere and oceans. But do you think no one has lost their home, livelihood or life to a new record extreme weather event, that was at least partially attributable to the rising trend of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? Take a look at this Nature article (no paywall): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41888-1. From the abstract:
"We find that US$143 billion per year of the costs of extreme events is attributable to climatic change. The majority (63%), of this is due to human loss of life. "
Yes, the precise numbers may be hard to pin down. Nonetheless, do you agree that at least one person, somewhere, has already paid a subjectively catastrophic price for our socialized emissions? Are you only concerned with the risks to your private welfare, or do you simply have a higher quantitative threshold for alarm? If the latter, just how much aggregate grief and diseconomy do you need?
There's a ton of work on climate and existential risk. Andrew should compile it, though it may not make a difference to you. If it doesn't make a difference, why keep bugging people, though? So maybe it does make a difference to you, and you should consider that. Maybe you do actually have a stake in this.
The same information is at the beginning of Julian Allwood's talk at Ely Cathedral on mitigation. Crop yields towards the equator decline as temperature rises. Allwood pretty much gets all the main factors covered in this talk.
It's the speed of the warming that is so dangerous.
"As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years.
In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly TEN TIMES FASTER than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming." (my emphasis)
Aren't most of these prices an illusion, even in the middle term? I think it's good to encourage people to see that the first stage of the energy transition is 'affordable' in our daily context, but the reality is, emissions are an existential problem that has to be solved, or at least ameliorated, even for the super wealthy with their ideas of digging a bunker in case of societal breakdown. If your house is on fire with all your money in it, counting the money while things are burning (including money) is a maladaptive response.
Bunkers are a good comparison on price, because obviously for some of us (ahem, Mark Zuckerberg), the price is right for a bunker. Interestingly, the price is still wrong for Zuckerberg to turn Facebook into a giant climate education and social contract generating machine.
Inferred by that logic, with super-wealth, there is no price worth the constraints of a functioning democracy. Life in a bunker is better than democracy.
Sidenote: if you really were in a bunker, any of the prices that seem familiar to us today are already out the window (or hatch, I guess). Do you have a dentist in your bunker?
There is also a middle term crisis that dwarfs prices as we know them: what happens if 100 million climate migrants try to enter the US over a 10 - 20 year period? That number could be on the low side judging by this paper:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1910114117
Meanwhile, the US will be experiencing internal migration.
https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374171735/onthemove
My guess is that if anything pushes us to spraying sulfate aerosols in the stratosphere, it will be the existential necessity of trying to keep a billion people in their own regions, after having bungled our concept of pricing in every decade prior.
More about prices, from actuaries themselves:
https://actuaries.org.uk/media/g1qevrfa/climate-scorpion.pdf
"emissions are an existential problem that has to be solved, or at least ameliorated"
What is the basis for this claim? What is a "solution", and what will cease to exist if the solution is not "solved" or "ameliorated"?
160 years of climate science
https://history.aip.org/climate/timeline.htm
As for what ceases
https://www.pnas.org/doi/pdf/10.1073/pnas.1910114117
So - your first link claims that climate change is real. I agree.
Your second link claims that climate change will have affects on humans. I agree again.
But, where's the "existential"? What's a "solution"? What will cease to exist without the solution?
If you're following Andrew Dessler, you know the answers already, so why ask me? This is a good Wikipedia entry, btw.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealioning
If you think 1 billion or more people migrating out of unlivable regions doesn't end business as usual on Earth, you're a pretty gullible person.
I do recommend the work of UK FIRES, a mitigation research group based at Cambridge.
https://ukfires.org/impact/publications/reports/
I ask you because you made the statement, and I'm interested in seeing your reasoning.
I especially asked because I've seen no credible scientific papers or reasoning that would support your claims. The scientific papers I've read, including IPCC Working Group reports, are much more modest. They predict effects from continued warming, but no catastrophes.
The IPCC press releases, on the other hand, make dramatic claims, but never supported by scientific findings.
So, what's the basis for your claim that a billion or more people will be forced to leave unlivable regions? Which regions will be unlivable? What will make them unlivable?
And again, what would be a solution?
The decision of whether something is an emergency or catastrophe is ultimately a value judgment. Even if we agree on every fact, we might still disagree on how bad things are.
https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/is-climate-change-an-emergency
Brian, farther along: "What are the US subsidies for oil, gas, and coal you refer to? If you're talking about US defense spending as a subsidy for oil, just stop."
Oh come on, don't stop yet! Again, specific numbers may be hard to verify, but how can our defense posture not include protecting our access to foreign energy? If it's documentation you want, try "National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency" (https://www.cfr.org/report/national-security-consequences-us-oil-dependency). You may not find the Council on Foreign Relations credible, but you should be arguing with them, not us.
Brian, somewhere: "I don't think most people have even posed the real question: What is the objective, and what are the tradeoffs in trying to reach it."
The objective is to cap the rise of atmospheric greenhouse gases at the lowest amount collective action can achieve, before the accumulating global radiative imbalance overwhelms our collective ability to adapt. By and large, it's the market-driven transfer of fossil carbon to the atmosphere by the gigatonnes annually that drives the rising global heat content. Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy buys us time to eliminate or neutralize the other anthropogenic emissions sources as well. And before you suggest "solar radiation management", bear in mind that ocean acidification (i.e. declining pH) is also due to anthropogenic carbon emissions. The economic tradeoffs are the risks of taking collective action to decarbonize the global economy, preferably with the USA leading the way. Collective action is always on a slippery slope, but because of the tragedy of the commons, we don't have the option *not* to act collectively. Various tools are available to our collective will: Direct carbon pricing, incentives for driving down the price of renewable energy, and outright bans on, say, new coal-fired power plants. Who wins and who loses, comparatively, will be determined politically. The alternative is an open-ended trend of rising global heat content and declining marine biodiversity, with mounting individual and mass tragedies and diseconomies. You don't need us to verify that in the public record for you.
Speaking of politics, Mr. Smith, your objections sound like lukewarmism to me. You may not listen to Hannity, but you employ similar language, especially your use of dog whistles like "the alarmist position". You do seem to be sealioning (good word) Mr. Reiss, who is apparently alarmed about climate change, but IMHO not alarmist in the loaded sense you imply. And you appear to presume no one else has thought about their position here, or that they should include everything last thought they have about it in a blog comment. You do understand that just because you haven't seen data you find persuasive, that doesn't mean no one else has? AFAICT, you display a cognitive bias against taking even proportional responsibility for your marginal greenhouse emissions. If you're a US voter, the rest of us will just have to hope you're outvoted!
Brian Smith: "I especially asked because I've seen no credible scientific papers or reasoning that would support your claims. The scientific papers I've read, including IPCC Working Group reports, are much more modest. They predict effects from continued warming, but no catastrophes."
As Andrew observes, whether something is a catastrophe is a value judgement; indeed, so is a "much more modest" climate change damage function. We might say catastrophe is in the eyes of the victim. Now, obviously the costs of regional climate change will fall unevenly around the world, as the accumulating heat circulates through the atmosphere and oceans. But do you think no one has lost their home, livelihood or life to a new record extreme weather event, that was at least partially attributable to the rising trend of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? Take a look at this Nature article (no paywall): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-41888-1. From the abstract:
"We find that US$143 billion per year of the costs of extreme events is attributable to climatic change. The majority (63%), of this is due to human loss of life. "
Yes, the precise numbers may be hard to pin down. Nonetheless, do you agree that at least one person, somewhere, has already paid a subjectively catastrophic price for our socialized emissions? Are you only concerned with the risks to your private welfare, or do you simply have a higher quantitative threshold for alarm? If the latter, just how much aggregate grief and diseconomy do you need?
There's a ton of work on climate and existential risk. Andrew should compile it, though it may not make a difference to you. If it doesn't make a difference, why keep bugging people, though? So maybe it does make a difference to you, and you should consider that. Maybe you do actually have a stake in this.
https://www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1126/sciadv.aaw1838
Heat exposure limits habitability.
It also impacts crops, which is why we generally can't grow crops in deserts, for instance.
Richard Alley at AGU in 2013, cued:
https://youtu.be/Z_-8u86R3Yc?si=g8V7byLfhFaI02_6&t=998
The same information is at the beginning of Julian Allwood's talk at Ely Cathedral on mitigation. Crop yields towards the equator decline as temperature rises. Allwood pretty much gets all the main factors covered in this talk.
https://www.youtube.com/live/WOIXnJ8OzXY?si=ajRQiT7_w2ArZ7yD
It's the speed of the warming that is so dangerous.
"As the Earth moved out of ice ages over the past million years, the global temperature rose a total of 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over about 5,000 years.
In the past century alone, the temperature has climbed 0.7 degrees Celsius, roughly TEN TIMES FASTER than the average rate of ice-age-recovery warming." (my emphasis)
NASA Earth Observatory