On Jul 11, 12:00 am, James Annan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Zeke Hausfather wrote:
> > To be fair James, the "wibble" on Grist that humans (and most life on
> > earth) tends to be well-adapted to current climates, and that rapid
> > climate change would severely damage natural systems and impose
> > potentially large costs on the economy, has fairly strong support in
> > the literature. We can quibble over the term "optimal", but it seems
> > clear that under most scenarios anthropogenic warming will have
> > widespread negative effects vis-a-vis the status quo.
>
> Well, I don't want to be too picky, but there is a huge spread of
> options covered by "well adapted", "adequately adapted", "optimally
> adapted". I don't think the last is defensible under any plausible
> definition of "optimally", but it was the specific (and wholly
> unsupported) claim of the linked Grist article, which was the only
> support cited for that aspect of the whole post. In fact the Grist
> article was even worse than that, because even if we were "optimally
> adapted" to the current climate (whatever that means) then it still does
> not follow that climate changes would bring a net loss, as previously
> discussed here:
>
> <http://groups.google.com/group/globalchange/browse_thread/thread/de04...>
>
> Indeed according to the economic analyses I've seen, modest climate
> change (roughly, the amount we are committed to at current GHG levels)
> will likely bring net benefits.
>
> I don't dispute that rapid and substantial climate change may (indeed
> will, for some values of rapid and substantial) bring problems. But I'm
> concerned when I see scientists trotting out ideas such as "optimally
> adapted", as it suggests to me that they aren't even trying to get to
> grips with the issues in a reasonably objective manner.
>
> James
James is right, the optimal adaptation thing is useless.
Let's say that a pickpocket steals $100 from my wallet.
If $100 was the optimal amount for be to be carrying, then I lost
$100.
Now, let's assume that $100 was not optimal, say $1000 or $10 was
optimal. In that case, how much did I lose?
We need to calculate the loss or gain. I suppose an optimal
adaptation assumption might simplify the calculation, but don't see
how the assumption would be accepted without evidence.
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