Michael Tobis wrote:
>
> Nevertheless, and despite my admiration for James, I find the question
> he is raising quite shockingly wrongheaded.
Well, I feel there's a risk I'm getting pushed into defending a devil's
advocacy position more strongly than I believe, but I'l play along for a bit.
> Historical and prehistoric civilization collapses have often been
> triggered by climate change. (See Jared Diamond's book _Collapse_ for
> a remarkable exposition on this and related points.) One never hears
> about abrupt declines caused by excessive climate stability or about
> abrupt improvements in fortune caused by climate change.
>
> This is not accidental.
No, it is arguably because scientists and the press alike prefer a scare story
to a happy outcome, and they love to pin simplistic blame on a complex series
of events. If all you do is subsist on what happens to be around, then a change
in what happens to be around may be a great threat. Is that the fault of the
climate change, or of the lack of a more resilient society that has not learnt
how to cope with challenges? Of couse the flip-side is that if we exploit
resources at an unsustainable rate, things will have to change at any rate. But
Ehrlich was spectacularly wrong on this in his bet with Simon, as was the
person (I forget who) who I saw recently asserting that Ehrlich was right, just
a few years early. Don't people ever learn?
FWIW, last summer was (I understand) a remarkably good one for
strawberry-growers in the UK, and I'll mention again the winter deaths issue.
Good-luck stories aren't news and it often seems that they aren't considered
worthwhile science either.
AIUI, extropians argue that human ingenuity is our greatest resource and that
challenges bring out the best in us. War has motivated a lot of development,
even though it primarily consists of people destroying lives and property. I'm
not advocating war, but have they actually cost us untold billions, compared to
where we would be without them?
If increased awareness (discussion) of climate change and sea level rise leads
to a better defence plan for New Orleanes, then have no doubt that this will be
described as a "cost of climate change", but the net result may be better (in
economic, environmental and human terms) than the previous status quo. Climate
doesn't just do things to us - we manage its impact.
>
> Similar arguments apply to ecological risk.
>
> Consider that it would not take a huge change to make the planet
> essentially uninhabitable; say 20 C in either direction would do the
> trick. That we are talking in terms of a significant fraction of 20 C
> seems to me, therefore, completely and utterly beyond the remotest
> justification.
I think you should be able to do beter than this sort of handwave. The
therapeutic dose of paracetamol is a substantial fraction of the dangerous one,
too. It is, no doubt, mostly a matter of luck that we do not face 20C of
warming, at least unless humans for many generations hence do everything in
their power to bring such changes about (OTOH, if the climate was that
sensitive or CO2 that potent, the Earth's history would be rather different).
>
> It is conceivable that our troubles are smaller than many of us
> suspect, but it is also possible that they are as large or larger.
Yes, it's all possible, and nothing can ever be "ruled out", to use the
soon-to-be-infamous phrase. I'm just observing (and objecting to) the fact that
some (perhaps many) people are asimply asserting as axiomatic a particular
solution to a question that I believe is in principle open. Worse, they seem to
think that their belief is in some sense a scientific truth rather than a moral
judgement or perhaps practical heuristic.
Do you actually think the extopian POV is in principle invalid or defeasible?
James
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