[extropy-chat] Climate skepticism patterns

[Eugen Leitl]

On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 11:01:45AM -0500, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:

> ### Immense. An increase in the average temperatures will be very
> useful to expand farming to feed the burgeoning population of the
> world. The benefits of even modest warming have been calculated by

What about those regions with lots of population, subsistence agriculture
which will be hit by draught? There will be precipiation shifts, and
arguably a decrease of arable land overall. Water wars will ensue,
resulting in mayhem amplification. This is certainly difficult
to quantify in $$$, as is loss of human life (Sahel & Co is perpetually
fucked up, they really don't need a yet another hammer).

This summer is just awful (sleet in June), so I really hope it's
not an artefact of the weakining Gulf stream. I don't know where
the warming/cooling separatrix is going to be, but I'm probably not
exactly on it.

> economists to run into billions of dollars in the US alone (I can dig
> up the reference from Marginal Revolution if anybody is interested).

I don't think there is any reliable model which is going to predict
the bad/good outcome. Whenever human lifes are on the line excessive,
unwarranted optimism is usually not a good idea. Our only excuse is
that collectively we have very little choice on minimizing climate forcing,
where hordes of freely behaving irrational primates are at play.

Let's hope not much is going to happen, or if something happens it
will be quite visible and not disrupt too much so we can adapt and
start homesteading this place, instead of exercising habitually 
poor stewardship of this resource.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
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