> Back to does "change = bad".
It was James who wrote "change = bad" but I never wrote that. He raised that point because it is the antipathy of his Extropic philosophy, which believes change = good. See http://www.extropy.org/principles.htm What I did try to explain was that we have adapted our environment to suit the way we want to live, and so any change would be moving it away from that optimized state. Thus I argue that "climate change = bad". Of course it is not all bad, and there would be advantages to certain people and disadvantages for others. This produces the Utilitarian problem of how to balance the advantages to one group (perhaps the 25% living in the developed world) with the disadvantages to the other group (75% poor now, and poorer or even dead after climate change.) I don't see how you can argue that is certain that "climate change = good". Let's take a subset of climate change - sea level change. As in climate change where these arguments are really about a rise in temperature, so in sea level change here I am only considering sea level rise. In that case I believe I can say without fear of contradiction "sea level change = bad". Not only will it reduce the amount of arable land available to a rising global population, it will also destroy much of the infrastructure which represents the wealth which we and our children inherit. James, can you see a net advantage from rising sea levels? Cheers, Alastair. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Global Change ("globalchange") newsgroup. Global Change is a public, moderated venue for discussion of science, technology, economics and policy dimensions of global environmental change. Posts will be admitted to the list if and only if any moderator finds the submission to be constructive and/or interesting, on topic, and not gratuitously rude. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
