[ExI] "Up against the warming zealots"

[samantha]

John K Clark wrote:
> "Eugen Leitl" <eugen at leitl.org>
>
>   
>> if you can destroy value to the tune  of more than
>> a terabuck (and counting) that that value was
>> expendable, by definition.
>>     
>
> Eugen that's chump change if you're really serious about reducing 
> CO2 emissions. The extraordinarily silly Kyoto Protocols if
> adopted by the USA would cost between 150 to 350 billion dollars
> every year (that's Billion with a B)
That depends a lot on how we get there, doesn't it?  How many billions 
(with a B) are we spending and likely to spend on fossil fuels?  How 
much in the so-called "Fight on Terrorism" not all that separable from 
the way we go after fossil fuels?  How many billions would it cost to 
lose a lot of prime coastland over the next 1 - 3 decades?

>  and for all that it would mean
> the warming you would see in 2100 would be postponed until 2106.
>   
The models are hardly exact enough to say such a thing meaningfully 
which I think you would be one of the first to agree.


> That's a rounding error! If we spent the same money on clean water
> in just 8 years (8 YEARS!) every human on earth would have clean
> potable water, this would stop 2 million deaths and prevent a
> billion illnesses EVERY YEAR. So I'm supposed to get all weepy
> over the prospect of global warming? BULLSHIT!
>
>   
Not bullshit.  Anything with the potential to displace millions, disrupt 
weather patterns and harvests on a massive scale and potentially such 
down the thermohaline cycle cannot be cavalierly dismissed as relatively 
unimportant.   It had best be taken damned seriously at least long 
enough to debunk it if that is possible.


> If it turns out in a hundred years that global warming is a serious problem
> then we will deal with it then, but you seem to demand that the Wright
> brothers produce a solution to airport congestion before they try to build
> their first airplane.
>
>   
Where is your evidence that the problem will not be serious for 100 years? 

- samantha


>   John K Clark
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