I cannot tell you how many times I talk about human material progress that a skeptic says "But what about climate change?"
My answer is:
1) The climate has been warming since the Little Ice Age ended in 1670 and that had been the greatest human material progress in over 100,000 years.
2) Continuing material progress gives us the resources to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
3) Even if climate changes end human material progress in the future, this does not negate the progress that we have experienced over the last few centuries.
4) We should be skeptical of the accuracy of projections of the future. Very few actually come true.
5) IPCC's own scenario's project continued economic growth.
Fasanating article today,Michael. The thought of climate change is rather deep for one to get into ,even when we use centuries as a gage. It certainly would not stop me from raising a family,if I wanted to. If smart people don't have babies, Will un-smart people use birth control? My class looked at that several times in college. The results were less than pretty.
There is a term that was coined years ago for just this type of arm-waving: cornucopian fallacy. Originally applied to population growth, the idea that we will overcome our problems by having ever more people applying their creativity to technologies that don’t exist. This argument is absurd on its face.
Let’s just take a couple of examples. It is suggested in the article that advances in food production will be made that will elevate the standard of living of the hundreds of millions yet to be born. Never mind that the planet is losing arable land at a rapid rate through processes both unrelated and linked to climate changes.
Desertification, for example,is a real thing, currently causing soil erosion and loss at a rate of millions of hectares a year.
Over salinization of soils is real as well. It has already reduced the amount of arable of land by billions of acres, and millions more are lost each year.
The recent increase in food security is primarily due to better food transport. This requires energy, which currently almost completely reliant on fossil fuels (as is the production, distribution, and application of fertilizers and pesticides). No breakthroughs in increasing yields through genetic engineering are on the horizon that are as significant as the increases that have been accomplished by selective breeding of staple crops.
A society people who are starving and displaced from their homes due to climate change and the resulting societal tumult is yet another factor ignored by “cornucopianists”. Who is going to absorb these hundreds of millions? And even if they were, what would be the effect on economic growth. A few hundred million more malnourished and undernourished brains aren’t going to innovate our way out of the mess we’re in.
Most likely, the cumulative effects of climate are underestimated rather than exaggerated. I haven’t even touched on the costs of fortification or replacement of infrastructure. This is because I’m an ecologist, not an economist (even both words share the same root). Boudry is a philosopher, not a climate scientist (or even a scientist). He likewise should stay in his own lane.
Stay in your lane, Maarten! You differ in view from Mr. Peters, so shut the hell up!
"The argument is absurd on its face." Malthus would have said that the idea of the Earth supporting more than 8 billion people in the early 21st century was absurd on its face. People also said that it is plainly absurd to think we will ever have powered flight, or go to the moon, or make advances in warfare (Julius Frontinus, Rome’s leading military advisor in the time of Vespasian), or send voices across the Atlantic, and on and on and on. The "absurd on its face" argument (if you can call it that) is the laziest argument of all time. Never mind that the limitationist view you propound has been contradicted by reality over and over. People still praise The Limits to Growth despite it being refuted by experience repeatedly and consistently.
The expectation of continued progress is, to me, the best argument that McAskill's long-termism is wrongheaded. People in the future will be much wealthier than us and therefore better equipped to solve their own problems. We should not waste our scarce resources on future problems. They are not ours to solve.
Undernutrition in terms of calories may be a solved problem, but the problem of malnutrition is still severe and it is depriving us of a great deal of human potential. Billions of children don't get enough essential fatty acids, vitamins, metals and/or other minerals to fully develop their physical and mental capacities. As well as this being a moral tragedy, we'll regret the missing capacities in coming decades.
The chief global problem I see before us today is crashing fertility, an obvious-in-retrospect effect of effective contraception on cultures fundamentally unequipped to deal with such a powerful tool. We are only three or four generations into the problem, and it will probably be another four or more before we start to do something about it that retains human dignity and enhances wellbeing. (Creating an optimistic spirit of the age would be part of such a solution.) In the mean time I foresee a lot of needless misery, particularly but not only in authoritarian countries.
Today is better than any time in the past, that is true; but that does not mean we can rest on our laurels.
Most of what Boudry writes is valid, in emphasizing technological advances and human ingenuity to make our lives better and longer. However, unless I missed it, he fails to address the invention of better human institutions and cultural approaches, specifically republican democracies and a focus on free market enterprise. These have also played a major part in our humanity wide improvements. [Some might suggest the Christian Church has had a role to play in this, and I would also accept that, with reservations and qualifications.]
He totally fails to address reality when he says: "Predicting the future of our global climate system is one of the most impressive scientific achievements of our time, but that by itself tells us precious little about how human societies will respond and adapt." He is correct about the adaptability part, but if you follow the work of the Heartland Institute and their group of associated climate skeptics, via their series of International Climate Change Conferences (ICCC) and related endeavors, we find that the reality is global climate "science" is an impressive "crime against the true scientific method", as it has become totally politicized and distorted by investigators beholding to the agendas of their respective funding sources, or politicians failing to accept the more credible limitations of the technical evidence. The relevant empirical evidence does not validate the climate modeling, as the climate reality is much more complex than the models can currently handle. Reading Steve Koonin suggests making the models more precise would require more computing power than can be brought to the table for this purpose, with little expectation that the "catastrophic" projections for humanity would still be credibly. supported.
On that basis, I give this essay a C+. The qualifying discussion of tipping points and some of the other subtopics might cause me to raise this grade to a B-, but if we are crediting human ingenuity, then we ought to credit the results from the satellite measurements and the detailed and extensive efforts by the skeptics to disprove the assertions of the alarmists.
It is also taking way too long to correct and alter the distortions being promoted by climate hysteria. Essays such as this one do not help in that regard. These include the attempts to implement renewable energy sources (wind/ solar) and electric vehicles (cold weather performance? etc. ); and forestall faster allocation of scarce resources to the further development of nuclear power. All these capabilities have their place, but we should let the marketplace sort out the level of winning and losing, not governmental subsidies (beyond for core research).
I disagree on multiple levels. First, we’ve had these things called “thermometers” for quite a long time and more consistent monitoring for decades. The models are not only improving, the empirical data actually shows that they are underestimating the effects.
We’re already seeing displacement of populations due to climate change. This is going to increase as the Earth warms.
Your use of “climate hysteria” is actually “climate denialism” and flys in the face of multiple lines of evidence. It may be your opinion, but absent counterweighting evidence, that’s all that is (and a uniformed one at that). I think The Eagles are overrated, but my opinion is no less as supportable as yours.
Fortunately you don't have to convince me to have me change my mind. You have to convince the more expert analysts and scientists at The Heartland Institute and the other technical presenters at their latest conference (last year), the 15th ICCC: https://climateconference.heartland.org If and when THEY say there is a minor, medium, or major problem with climate changes, then I will be concerned at the appropriate level. They will provide some of the "counterweighting evidence" supporting my contentions over yours.
You assert "the empirical data actually shows that [the climate models] are underestimating the [climate warming] effects. But you don't provide a reference, in distinct contrast to your other comment referencing ecological issues, where you presumably do have expertise and knowledge of the applicable supporting papers, etc.
"We’re already seeing displacement of populations due to ..." political divides and governmental malfeasance. [FIFY]. Moves from Blue states to Red states in the US; movement from many s-hole countries to Europe and the US for economic betterment since those places do not seem to be able to emulate the (better performing) core institutional and governance models developed in the Westernized civilizational centers.
“Fortunately you don't have to convince me to have me change my mind.” Yes, I’m sure that you’re capable of making up your mind without evidence. Fortunately, I don’t have to care what your opinion is. What matters are the data.
Can’t say I’m entirely convinced, but many excellent points. One concern I have is perhaps more expansive than climate change but certainly closely related. The idea of overshoot — that human activity in this mode we exist today is fundamentally unsustainable and is heading for a crisis point. We are taxing the planet at a rate beyond its ability to recover
Continued economic growth, if its anything like the past centuries, requires continued population growth and continued increases in resource extraction. We are badly taxing the planet today as it is in ways that are very obviously unsustainable, and there is simply no viable offramp in sight. In fact, our impact continues to accelerate as economic growth accelerates. Our current mode only knows relentless economic advancement, which of course is great for people…until/unless it collapses the ability of Earth to sustain human populations at anywhere near current population levels. This is a recipe for horrendous violent conflict, imo, fights over scarce resources.
I am hopeful that ingenuity will help to blunt the worst impacts of climate change that are around the corner. Just less confident we can sustain without some major evolution or new mode.
Excellent article.
I cannot tell you how many times I talk about human material progress that a skeptic says "But what about climate change?"
My answer is:
1) The climate has been warming since the Little Ice Age ended in 1670 and that had been the greatest human material progress in over 100,000 years.
2) Continuing material progress gives us the resources to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
3) Even if climate changes end human material progress in the future, this does not negate the progress that we have experienced over the last few centuries.
4) We should be skeptical of the accuracy of projections of the future. Very few actually come true.
5) IPCC's own scenario's project continued economic growth.
Fantastic article.
I cross-posted this article yesterday.
I hope that this gave you a bit of a boost in subscribers.
Fasanating article today,Michael. The thought of climate change is rather deep for one to get into ,even when we use centuries as a gage. It certainly would not stop me from raising a family,if I wanted to. If smart people don't have babies, Will un-smart people use birth control? My class looked at that several times in college. The results were less than pretty.
Thanks for your work
There is a term that was coined years ago for just this type of arm-waving: cornucopian fallacy. Originally applied to population growth, the idea that we will overcome our problems by having ever more people applying their creativity to technologies that don’t exist. This argument is absurd on its face.
Let’s just take a couple of examples. It is suggested in the article that advances in food production will be made that will elevate the standard of living of the hundreds of millions yet to be born. Never mind that the planet is losing arable land at a rapid rate through processes both unrelated and linked to climate changes.
Desertification, for example,is a real thing, currently causing soil erosion and loss at a rate of millions of hectares a year.
https://www.fao.org/in-action/action-against-desertification/overview/desertification-and-land-degradation/en/
Over salinization of soils is real as well. It has already reduced the amount of arable of land by billions of acres, and millions more are lost each year.
https://www.alva-water.com/post/soil-salinity-repairing-the-world-s-agricultural-soils
https://www.circleofblue.org/2019/world/as-salt-builds-up-in-soils-around-the-world-farmers-and-conservationists-seek-solutions/
The recent increase in food security is primarily due to better food transport. This requires energy, which currently almost completely reliant on fossil fuels (as is the production, distribution, and application of fertilizers and pesticides). No breakthroughs in increasing yields through genetic engineering are on the horizon that are as significant as the increases that have been accomplished by selective breeding of staple crops.
https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/failure-yield-evaluating-performance-genetically-engineered-crops
A society people who are starving and displaced from their homes due to climate change and the resulting societal tumult is yet another factor ignored by “cornucopianists”. Who is going to absorb these hundreds of millions? And even if they were, what would be the effect on economic growth. A few hundred million more malnourished and undernourished brains aren’t going to innovate our way out of the mess we’re in.
Most likely, the cumulative effects of climate are underestimated rather than exaggerated. I haven’t even touched on the costs of fortification or replacement of infrastructure. This is because I’m an ecologist, not an economist (even both words share the same root). Boudry is a philosopher, not a climate scientist (or even a scientist). He likewise should stay in his own lane.
Stay in your lane, Maarten! You differ in view from Mr. Peters, so shut the hell up!
"The argument is absurd on its face." Malthus would have said that the idea of the Earth supporting more than 8 billion people in the early 21st century was absurd on its face. People also said that it is plainly absurd to think we will ever have powered flight, or go to the moon, or make advances in warfare (Julius Frontinus, Rome’s leading military advisor in the time of Vespasian), or send voices across the Atlantic, and on and on and on. The "absurd on its face" argument (if you can call it that) is the laziest argument of all time. Never mind that the limitationist view you propound has been contradicted by reality over and over. People still praise The Limits to Growth despite it being refuted by experience repeatedly and consistently.
The expectation of continued progress is, to me, the best argument that McAskill's long-termism is wrongheaded. People in the future will be much wealthier than us and therefore better equipped to solve their own problems. We should not waste our scarce resources on future problems. They are not ours to solve.
Undernutrition in terms of calories may be a solved problem, but the problem of malnutrition is still severe and it is depriving us of a great deal of human potential. Billions of children don't get enough essential fatty acids, vitamins, metals and/or other minerals to fully develop their physical and mental capacities. As well as this being a moral tragedy, we'll regret the missing capacities in coming decades.
The chief global problem I see before us today is crashing fertility, an obvious-in-retrospect effect of effective contraception on cultures fundamentally unequipped to deal with such a powerful tool. We are only three or four generations into the problem, and it will probably be another four or more before we start to do something about it that retains human dignity and enhances wellbeing. (Creating an optimistic spirit of the age would be part of such a solution.) In the mean time I foresee a lot of needless misery, particularly but not only in authoritarian countries.
Today is better than any time in the past, that is true; but that does not mean we can rest on our laurels.
Most of what Boudry writes is valid, in emphasizing technological advances and human ingenuity to make our lives better and longer. However, unless I missed it, he fails to address the invention of better human institutions and cultural approaches, specifically republican democracies and a focus on free market enterprise. These have also played a major part in our humanity wide improvements. [Some might suggest the Christian Church has had a role to play in this, and I would also accept that, with reservations and qualifications.]
He totally fails to address reality when he says: "Predicting the future of our global climate system is one of the most impressive scientific achievements of our time, but that by itself tells us precious little about how human societies will respond and adapt." He is correct about the adaptability part, but if you follow the work of the Heartland Institute and their group of associated climate skeptics, via their series of International Climate Change Conferences (ICCC) and related endeavors, we find that the reality is global climate "science" is an impressive "crime against the true scientific method", as it has become totally politicized and distorted by investigators beholding to the agendas of their respective funding sources, or politicians failing to accept the more credible limitations of the technical evidence. The relevant empirical evidence does not validate the climate modeling, as the climate reality is much more complex than the models can currently handle. Reading Steve Koonin suggests making the models more precise would require more computing power than can be brought to the table for this purpose, with little expectation that the "catastrophic" projections for humanity would still be credibly. supported.
On that basis, I give this essay a C+. The qualifying discussion of tipping points and some of the other subtopics might cause me to raise this grade to a B-, but if we are crediting human ingenuity, then we ought to credit the results from the satellite measurements and the detailed and extensive efforts by the skeptics to disprove the assertions of the alarmists.
It is also taking way too long to correct and alter the distortions being promoted by climate hysteria. Essays such as this one do not help in that regard. These include the attempts to implement renewable energy sources (wind/ solar) and electric vehicles (cold weather performance? etc. ); and forestall faster allocation of scarce resources to the further development of nuclear power. All these capabilities have their place, but we should let the marketplace sort out the level of winning and losing, not governmental subsidies (beyond for core research).
I disagree on multiple levels. First, we’ve had these things called “thermometers” for quite a long time and more consistent monitoring for decades. The models are not only improving, the empirical data actually shows that they are underestimating the effects.
We’re already seeing displacement of populations due to climate change. This is going to increase as the Earth warms.
Your use of “climate hysteria” is actually “climate denialism” and flys in the face of multiple lines of evidence. It may be your opinion, but absent counterweighting evidence, that’s all that is (and a uniformed one at that). I think The Eagles are overrated, but my opinion is no less as supportable as yours.
Fortunately you don't have to convince me to have me change my mind. You have to convince the more expert analysts and scientists at The Heartland Institute and the other technical presenters at their latest conference (last year), the 15th ICCC: https://climateconference.heartland.org If and when THEY say there is a minor, medium, or major problem with climate changes, then I will be concerned at the appropriate level. They will provide some of the "counterweighting evidence" supporting my contentions over yours.
You assert "the empirical data actually shows that [the climate models] are underestimating the [climate warming] effects. But you don't provide a reference, in distinct contrast to your other comment referencing ecological issues, where you presumably do have expertise and knowledge of the applicable supporting papers, etc.
"We’re already seeing displacement of populations due to ..." political divides and governmental malfeasance. [FIFY]. Moves from Blue states to Red states in the US; movement from many s-hole countries to Europe and the US for economic betterment since those places do not seem to be able to emulate the (better performing) core institutional and governance models developed in the Westernized civilizational centers.
“Fortunately you don't have to convince me to have me change my mind.” Yes, I’m sure that you’re capable of making up your mind without evidence. Fortunately, I don’t have to care what your opinion is. What matters are the data.
https://www.internal-displacement.org/research-areas/Displacement-disasters-and-climate-change#:~:text=At%20the%20end%20of%202022,forced%20to%20flee%20their%20homes.
https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/scientists-have-been-underestimating-the-pace-of-climate-change/
Interesting article, thank you
Can’t say I’m entirely convinced, but many excellent points. One concern I have is perhaps more expansive than climate change but certainly closely related. The idea of overshoot — that human activity in this mode we exist today is fundamentally unsustainable and is heading for a crisis point. We are taxing the planet at a rate beyond its ability to recover
Continued economic growth, if its anything like the past centuries, requires continued population growth and continued increases in resource extraction. We are badly taxing the planet today as it is in ways that are very obviously unsustainable, and there is simply no viable offramp in sight. In fact, our impact continues to accelerate as economic growth accelerates. Our current mode only knows relentless economic advancement, which of course is great for people…until/unless it collapses the ability of Earth to sustain human populations at anywhere near current population levels. This is a recipe for horrendous violent conflict, imo, fights over scarce resources.
I am hopeful that ingenuity will help to blunt the worst impacts of climate change that are around the corner. Just less confident we can sustain without some major evolution or new mode.