Climate Change is a Problem But Not the End of the World

Cost-benefit climate change analyst Bjorn Lomborg has the following analysis of the costs.

Bjorn is taking the UN panel report as being mostly credible and accurate.

Bjorn does believe that sea levels would rise but that this is not a big overall cost.

Hurricanes will go from 0.04% of world GDP damage to 0.02% of world GDP by 2100. However, it would have declined to 0.01% of world GDP if there was no global warming.

There will be 2-4% of economic impact in 2100, but this is from a projected increase of 1000-3000% in world GDP. This would mean that the GDP of 2100 would be the GDP of 2099. We would lose one year of growth.

The Doha round of world trade agreements would have made everyone in the world on average $1000 per year richer in 2030. It would have raised 146 million people out of poverty.

In 2017, there was $148 billion spent on UN world development goals. $29 billion as spent on climate change. Climate change spending was not the best way to improve the world.

In the USA, air pollution is still killing 200,000 people per year. 95% of the economic benefits of the EPA come from reducing air pollution. Air pollution causes the premature death of over 7 million people per year in the world.

Bjorn proposes different priorities for improving the world.

Bjorn lists the costs and benefits of the smartest solutions to twelve global problems. If $75 billion were spent over four years.

The highest ranked solution – meaning that it yields the most benefit for the least cost – is to spend $3 billion over four years, on a bundle of micronutrients and medicines to reduce under-nutrition and improve education in preschool-aged children.
For about $100 per child, this bundle could reduce chronic under-nutrition by 36 percent in developing countries. More than 100 million children could start their lives without stunted growth or malnourishment.

Because these children will lead healthier, more productive lives as adults – a virtuous cycle of dramatic development – each dollar spent addressing chronic under-nutrition has a $30 payoff in economic terms. Ultimately, when all the benefits are translated into economic terms, every dollar spent on malnutrition will likely do $63 worth of global good.

Other top-ranked solutions include expanding malaria treatment (generating $35 in benefits for every dollar spent), immunization for children, and deworming.

SOURCES- Bjorn Lomborg, Youtube

Written By Brian Wang

113 thoughts on “Climate Change is a Problem But Not the End of the World”

  1. True. I did read the part where it says that interglacials typically last 15-30ky and figured that was rebuttal enough. But the historical data proves that this claim is actually exaggerated. I will now be forced to find a trend for you showing that the Holocene is already into the super-interglacial range, and that the respite could end at any moment- and provide more data showing that these transitions occurred despite high atmospheric CO2.

  2. You do realize that at 220 ppm and lower plants have some serious difficulty growing! A simpler long term chart might help.

  3. I may have simplified or oversimplified his position, mostly because he really isn’t worth my time, or yours. Too many people have made too many (consistent!) complaints about his glib non-scholarship to start respecting him now. But if you insist on being a historian, here are some journal reviews from 2001 of his first book:

    “Relying on Manna from Heaven?” by Michael Grubb
    http://science.sciencemag.org/content/294/5545/1285

    “No need to worry about the future” by Stuart Pimm and Jeff Harvey
    https://www.nature.com/articles/35102629

    As for prioritizing other living things … you might look up the
    phrases “ecosystem services” and “keystone   species” and   “ocean
    acidification”. And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overfishing

  4. I’ve replied twice, and both were eaten by the POS comment system. Let’s see if this one makes it.

  5. Which is it, you didn’t actually that research or is it beyond your level of reading comprehension?

  6. My reply seems to have vanished. To repeat:

    I may have simplified or oversimplified his position, mostly because he really isn’t worth my time, or yours. Too many people have made too many complaints about his scholarship to start respecting it now. But if you insist on being a historian, here are some reviews from 2001 of his first book:

    “Relying on Manna from Heaven?” by Michael Grubb
    http://science.sciencemag.org/content/294/5545/1285

    “No need to worry about the future” by Stuart Pimm and Jeff Harvey
    https://www.nature.com/articles/35102629

    As for prioritizing other living things … you might look up the phrase “ecosystem services”. You do realize that the O2 in the atmosphere is one of those ? And that the current level is not a given ?

  7. As I said, Lomborg deserves to be ignored: huge numbers of people have pointed out bits of his bad scholarship. But since you ask, his 2001 book argued that global climate change would be solved by manna from heaven, errr, for-free economic and technological progress.

    Some reviews from 2001, if you absolutely must be a science historian:

    “Relying on Manna from Heaven?”, Michael Grubb
    http://science.sciencemag.org/content/294/5545/1285

    “No need to worry about the future”, Stuart Pimm and Jeff Harvey
    https://www.nature.com/articles/35102629

    As for prioritizing all living things … look up the phrase “ecosystem services”. Are you aware that having O2 in the atmosphere is one of them ?

  8. Checking a bit – at least as far back as a Ted talk in 2005, and I presume quite a bit before that, Lomborg was willing to cite Climate Change as one of the world’s major problems. His thing has consistently been one of focusing on prioritization based on effectiveness/efficiency of invested effort.

    I haven’t found any instance of him considering climate change to not be happening or to be a good thing – perhaps you could provide citations illustrating your claims along those lines?

    It should be noted that his priority appears to be ‘benefit to humanity in general’. So his conclusions are unlikely to match those who prioritize ‘all living things equally’ over ‘just or primarily just humanity’.

    Or, of course, the conclusions of anyone who prioritizes benefit to just their own nation. That is an attitude which unfortunately is made MORE prevalent by excessive doom-saying. A lot of people today seem to have become convinced the rest of the world is doomed, and our only hope is to wall them out lest we be dragged down with them.

  9. In the 50’s some scientist made tests with two big glass boxes,one with co2 the other with clean air then they shine both with heat lamps the one with co2 heated up higher and faster. to me that proves that co2 is heating the climate. But big oil cartel and the coal co.
    don’t want us to use clean energy.

  10. or 170 feet, according to
    https://www.nature.com/articles/nclimate2923

    who take a different approach. They model the earth 500 or 5000 years from now, as a consequence of various possible CO2 levels. And no, they didn’t just assume that the entire cryosphere melts – that could blow us past 200 feet of rise. The good news: none of their models have the oceans rising faster than 11 feet per century. Implying that your future great-grandchildren can exist, but will probably visit your grave to piss on it.

  11. I would have stopped at Global Warming is a good thing.
    Compared to the inevitable alternative.

  12. Many of the western US states are sparsely populated, 160M Bangladeshi could easily find a home there.

  13. The current interglacial wasn’t expected to end for another 15-20k years.
    All those negative consequences just to prevent something that isn’t happening for a long time, makes sense.

  14. In the 50’s they made experiments with two big glass boxes and one had air with co2 and the other with clean air. then they shined heat lamps on both, and the one with the co2 heated up higher and quicker. so to me that proves that co2 is to blame for warmer climate.. But the big oil cartel and the auto industries don’t want other clean energy.

  15. Do the professors have evidence to support their claims or is the fact that site is run by former NASA employees the evidence?

  16. They’re starting to eat their own now – and I think the frequency of them doing so is going to increase.

    It’s impossible to be ‘woke enough’ to never be attacked for some perceived deficiency – especially when there’s a lot of people running around who are actively looking for things to be offended by.

    The only way to win is not to play the stupid game in the first place.

  17. Interesting thoughts there. I think you’re right – that an increased technology level enables a much lower environmental impact.

    Hmm… Considering how many whales/day it’d take to light something like NYC… figure each person would require 4 ounces whale oil/day, times 1 million people (rough approximation) so 4 million ounces, 31,250 gallons, or about 781 40-gallon barrels.

    A whale could provide between 25-40 barrels. So with a ration of 4 ounces whale oil a day you’re looking at harvesting between 20 and 32 whales a day to keep NYC minimally lit with oil lamps.

    For the entire country, 350 million people… 7000 to 11,000 whales.

    A day.

    Of course, they’d be extinct by day 4…

    Not exactly ‘sustainable’, even if they’re a natural, self-renewing resource.

  18. I’ve noticed that. We’ve gone from ‘5 years to save the planet!’ to ‘If we don’t institute draconian measures NOW in 2100 things will be horrible!’

    And the solutions they propose always seem to be… ineffective, but they sure make the people proposing them feel good about themselves.

  19. it isn’t really about computing power. It’s that past temps are rough estimates. And when scientists are concerned about trying to measure tenths of a degree variation, it is quite obvious we only have a very short actual historical record to rely on to make extremely uncertain predictions. IE can’t be done. Statistics is hard but politics tries to make it easy.

  20. correct. CO2 was way higher, but kinda irrelevant to modern day. IE the cartoon of the global warming religion.

  21. DOI:10.1016/j.gca.2005.11.031 is the wrong paper, it only covers the Phanerozoic and would only support +15x.

    Excerpt:
    “3. Results and discussion
    3.1. Fidelity of Phanerozoic CO2 record All 490 CO 2 proxy records and their attendant errors are plotted in Fig. 1B, sorted by method; Fig. 1C plots the data as a time series without error bars. When viewed at the scale of the Phanerozoic (Fig. 1B and C), the overarching pattern is of high CO2 (4000+ ppm) during the early Paleozoic, a decline to present-day levels by the Pennsylvanian(~320 Ma), a rise to high values (1000–3000 ppm) during the Mesozoic, then a decline to the present-day.”

    I cant locate the right pdf, but these papers indicate co2 levels in the deep past, no relation to the deep state, might be a few orders of magnitude more higher than today.

    DOI: 10.1038/nature01902
    DOI: 10.1038/378603a0
    DOI: 10.1016/j.precamres.2006.02.004

  22. The Smokey Mountains also has had their problem with Pine Beetles, but it is due to large areas having conifers replanted after clear-cutting all of the hardwoods. Now that those pines are thinning out, the area is finally beginning to look as it did before the lumber companies came through. And Pine Beetles have moved on.

  23. Forget about future temperatures, past temperatures are completely indeterminate and need to be constantly adjusted. Until we have the computing power to properly predict past temperatures, there’s no possibility of predicting future temperatures.

  24. Earth’s had life for a while now. In the past its its found ways to self regulate. What one organism dislikes another organism takes over to stabalize the food chain of each other, in a round about way.

  25. What you are missing is that these changes took 100s of years excent in cases like the Younger Dryas caused by meteor impacts. In this case we are talking about 50-70 years. Huge difference in impact on where people live farm and the wildlife. Also 130,000 years ago the human civilization did not have 1.5 billion people living near the sea. Mot people rae not aware of climate impacts on food since they just go to the air conditioned grocery store to buy their ice cream. Many people of the wold spend over 30% of their income just to feed their families. The Arab spring was caused by a huge drought and world instabilities are propelled by resource shortages.

  26. Yes they would. A 2 degree difference means spring comes 2 weeks earlier, changing what plants and animals want to make it their home. Winters in northern MN are about ten degrees warmer now than in the 80’s, and tamarack trees are dying because of a beetle that isn’t being killed by cold weather anymore. Same thing but on a much more massive scale in the Rockies with the pine beetle. Whole mountain ranges are losing most of their forests because of the pine beetle, because of more mild winters. (Winters are typically affected more than summers).

    Regarding the satellite data, the accuracy may not be enough to say with confidence one year has higher sea levels than other, but over 5, 10 or 20 years, it is easily determined. It’s quite simple math, really.

  27. ummm… did you forget about colonialism? exporting slaves? The west has taken plenty of resources out of Africa for basically nothing.
    Yes, Africa could have developed their own societies that used those resources in a manner to build up their own wealth, but the facts are a whole lot of western wealth (including the majority of our gold and diamonds) came from Africa and South America, and they got basically squat out of it.

  28. Human progress changes the environment and the laws of thermodynamics are, as yet, unbreakable. If we are making the world warmer then this is an action and we can expect a reaction. Climate changes are much more likely to be detrimental, rather than beneficial, to humans.
     
    Economic and political interests will work against slowing down progress and, besides, it would be a finger in the dike reaction. Legislators mostly just create new laws, so they treat all problems as a need for more legislation.
     
    Transferring wealth from industrialized nations to the typically more corrupt leadership of less wealthy countries (or anyone else) won’t fix it.
     
    With very few exceptions, impoverished nations stay that way due to the deliberate choices of their leadership to seek personal aggrandizement over the public weal, and their ability to do so with less restraint than they would have in countries with a stronger rule of law.

    If there is a solution it will come through vast increases in scientific knowledge and the resultant technological capability that this engenders. In other words, science and technology led to the problem, science and technology must fix it.
     
    That means we can’t afford to be hurting the economy that will fund that.
     
    With respect to detrimental changes caused by technology, we are riding the tiger, and attempting to dismount at this point would be worse than foolish.

  29. Has little to do with economic optimism. Has to do with people, especially women, getting a taste of how much better and enriched their lives can be with a few kids instead of a whole bunch.

    Lot of other things involved, too, of course. Go read Empty Planet. Way too much there for a tiny post here.

  30. Royer took the Geocarbsulf model and adjusted the Co2 doubling response. Published in Nature, and is a more accurate estimate of CO2 and temps. Bear in mind of course that the degree of error in any million-year climate model is only indicative.

    The correlation between CO2 and global temperatures is not that “tight”, at all. It’s the climate sensitivity problem that is still not perfectly understood because CO2 and temps don’t follow each other perfectly. IPCC estimates a doubling of CO2 concentration will generate between 2-4.5c warming. That is pretty wide, but for sure doesn’t mean additional CO2 will cause cooling. Global temps have risen about 2.5% over the past 100 years while CO2 has increased 33%. In very general terms. “Average” temps, when talking about global scale is very, very rough. One needs to look at WHERE, global temp increases are not at all uniform. See this and makes is apparent that modeling the future climate is really, really tough. https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2671/long-term-warming-trend-continued-in-2017-nasa-noaa/

  31. Funny how you already made up your mind that it’s bs. Nasa doesn’t hide the fact that they “adjust” the data to fit what they think it should be. They say it openly. The video has references so you can find the sources if you are willing to spend some time.

    Here is a list you can go search on Youtube. These are professors specialized in climate. Don Easterbrook, Tim Ball, Richard Lindzen, Jay Lehr, Judith Curry, Patrick Moore, David Legates, Bob Carter, Denis Rancourt, Roy Spencer, John Christy, William Happer, , and few non-professors who have still contributed a lot, like Anthony Watts and Tony Heller.

    Here is a link for http://www.therightclimatestuff.com/
    Run by 25 former Nasa employees.

  32. Greenhouse effect was higher 1970 than 1997 and no detectable difference in CO2 IR wave. Nature 410, 355; 2001

    6000 year with 8C warmer climate on Greenland and 2,5C higher globaly.

    https://www.nbi.ku.dk/english/news/news13/greenland-ice-cores-reveal-warm-climate-of-the-past/

    You can find that more desert to forest than Amazon after 2005 Nasa and you can calculate that Sahara radiate 16,3% more energy to space than if it was thick forest like Amazon.

    I hope you know physic and math. After that learn geology so you learn that we are living in an ice age that started 2,6 million years ago after more temperature difference started 55 years ago and temperature difference is what give average temperature.

    Take two surfaces with same size one with -80C and the other with 50C they look like one with +7C from a distance not the average temperature -15C

    Earth look like it is -18C but are just below 15C therfore the greenhouse effect is 33C but with more desert to forest the average temperature will rice but earth still look like -18C:

    Changed greenhouse effect say very little about changed average temperature but that don´t get in climate alarmist head.

    California have contribute most per person in US to higher global average temperature by transforming desert to “forest” How much of Colorado river and ground water uses to agriculture?

    Knowledge is king believing with out knowledge is dangerous.

  33. A really nasty plague could still take us out.
    We have the tech to beat just about any microorganism given time, but a sufficiently nasty bug may not give us time.

  34. Person says X.
    Other people argue that X is false.
    Therefore, change the argument to Y and everyone who argued that X was false is evil because Y is a bad thing.

  35. Telling the children to stop it hasn’t worked.
    The next step is to leave them to their own resources and they’ll fight among themselves and learn lessons the hard way.

    For example, reaching the point where nobody was prepared to host the Academy Awards, because everyone in Hollywood knows that being the center of attention means people will attack you now.
    Which cuts right to the very heart of what being in show business is all about, so I can’t see that being sustainable.

  36. Alternative explanation: rderkis is also being sarcastic, but without the dead giveaways and obviousness that I was using.

  37. Based on measurements made from multiple places inn 1900 sea level today is 6 inches higher than it was in 1900. IPCC states in its reports that sea level rise is accelerating. It was 2.5 mm per year in 1990 while today it is 3.4 mm per year. But the IPCC never mentions that the satellite data used only has an accuracy of +/- 3.4 cm (-30mm to +30mm). So once you factor in the accuracy of the satellite you can only conclude that the rate of sea level rise is not enough to accurately measure.

    This winter a place in Illinois measured a temperature of -30 F. In the summer that same location does occasionally hit 100F. In light of this would people notice a yearly average temperature increase of 2C?

  38. It’s not a question of just how many, but also of what kind. For instance, doubtful you’d have the same kind of success with Papua-New-Guinean cannibals. Which, actually, reinforces your point: the West ought to banish SJWs & feminism and start making families.

  39. The problem is that there are people that really need help – war refugees etc.. and people who are just plain uncivilized and come to Europe and cant behave.

    If we categorize them into one group of people its just evil. Just like saying all muslim are terrorists.

    We need to help war refugees and other poor souls so we can still look at ourselves in the mirror without being ashamed who we became.

  40. Not the point! It is about 6 billion people who depend upon the stable environment. Some morons here are flipant that we could survive. That is not the point the point is haveing an environment where a couple of billion people are not displaced or die. The empathy for potential human suffering is none existant with you Alt right.

  41. Oh, fer chrissake. Lomborg is the Ann Coulter of the denialist movement: someone richly deserving of being ignored. Brian should be ashamed of himself for giving Lomborg more air time.

    For the younger among us: Lomborg has been at this for 20 years. He started with “Global warming isn’t happening”, retreated to “Global warming will be a good thing”, and now it’s “Global warming won’t be that bad”. Are we supposed to respect a prophet who’s been wrong each previous time ? Has he apologized ? Not that I know of. Has he taken oil company money ? I do believe so.

    His supporters say his scientific mistakes are OK, because he’s not a scientist, he’s a mathematician, so his stuff is opinion, not analysis. Yeah, great for him, but not the standard I expect from someone who waves his university affiliation around. His detractors point out that he cherry picks. That is, he selects facts that he likes, and glosses over the facts he dislikes. When I was a grad student, we called that “lying”.

    You know, the worst-case scenario isn’t the ocean going up 6 feet. It’s the ocean going up 180 feet, like it did 30 million years ago.

  42. There are definitely some valid points here. The #1 problem for species extinction right now is habitat loss. That’s followed by over-fishing and over-hunting/poaching, then pollution, then global warming.
    Global warming’s effect will rise in the future, but if we had available habitat with green corridors, the plants and animals could mostly move and be okay. Those on isolated mountains, islands, or unable to move in the time-scale of decades would still have a problem.

    This doesn’t get talked about enough, people get all wrapped up in global warming. Kind of like blaming windmills for bird deaths, when electric wires have 10x the number of bird kills, city skyscrapers have 10x that, and house cats kill 10x that number of birds (numbers are approximate, but there are orders of magnitude involved, and windmills are at the very bottom of risk for birds).

  43. Daily swings have nothing to do with averages.
    The year-long average for NYC is 55′ F, only 4 degrees cooler than Nashville, TN, but it’s enough for 26″ snow in an average winter vs. only 6″ in Nashville.

    The elevation of Miami is only 6 feet. A 6 inch increase in sea level may not sound like much until you realize the effect is compounded with sea surge during a hurricane. What was survivable in 1950 may not be in 2050 and quite likely not at all in 2150.

    We can certainly adapt, but our economy will take a beating in insurance payments, seawall fortifications, dealing with economic migrants/refugees, etc. Kansas will lose farms, Canada will gain. Bangladesh will certainly devolve into civil war, what will happen to those 160 million people?

  44. I looked at your researchgate link, I don’t understand the CO2 line because obviously that’s not the normal ppm that most charts use. It shows spikes and changes that other charts don’t show and has a different scale. It would be interesting to see what the Royer [40] source is that he used for that chart.

    I haven’t looked at the correlation that far back (the beginning of the chart is before flowering plants!), but for the last 1/2 million years, there’s definitely a tight correlation between temperature and CO2. For instance, figure 3 here:
    http://www.jerome-chappellaz.com/files/publications/climate-and-atmospheric-history-of-the-past-420-000-years-from-the-vostok-ice-core-antarctica-38.pdf

    The easier-to-visualize version: http://www.johnenglander.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/420-kyr-graph-US-w-download-Englander.jpg

  45. Drake is shoveling something, and it doesn’t smell as good as he thinks it does…

    The last time CO2 was even 5x higher that today was the early days of the dinosaurs, there were insects a foot across, and the continents didn’t look like they do today. We might match those levels, if we don’t change things. Big changes in CO2 levels are associated with mass extinctions. There is definitely reason to be cautious. Nature will ultimately survive, it always does, I imagine people will survive too, but our economy could be pushed back to the middle ages.

    https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms14845/figures/4

  46. People are not spending less energy or resources per capita, just better and with less waste.

    We ceased chopping trees and burning wood (or killing whales) for getting heat an light, now we use hydro, coal plants and nukes.

    We ceased spreading through the open fields for living, and now we choose to live in dense cities, because agriculture is so successful we can live well enough far from the crops.

    The world is getting greener and emptier of human intervention, because we changed the way we provided for our needs of shelter, food and energy.

    But I’m fairly certain we are using more Kw per capita and more resources now than in the past, for having a more comfortable life.

    For me, the answer for the paradox of greater riches for more, with somewhat reduced environmental impact, is because of technological improvements and economic development, bringing more riches and services for all.

    More people have brought more riches to the world, not less. More brains thinking about the problems have brought more technological solutions and more development.

    The reason of our success, is because we are so many. Yeah, quite the heretical thought.

  47. What if the cultural attitude that deters one from purposely increasing resource pressures in the face of dwindling resources is the primary reason western societies are doing objectively better?

  48. So we will stop when the earth is just the right temperature?and when the permafrost melts…no biggy…and the wars and starvation that follow..no biggy….you should go back to denying it.

  49. And, the reality about Hurriane damage is that it is NEVER going down because more and more people are building in the coastal areas where damage is most likely

    If 1 in 10 buildings is damaged, but there are twice as many buildings in the impact zone, damages will double.

  50. Good that you bring that point.

    Westerners are objectively better off than any human group in human history, yet they are consistently moody and pessimistic about the future and they stopped popping out babies above replacement rates. Except for some small natalist groups, mostly religiously driven.

    Seems not only your actual level of economic wellness and future prospects matter. For human groups to survive, there needs to be some… ideology in place that makes people want to continue doing the chores of a living being.

    This IMO makes any forecast of the death of religion quite premature.

    If religion becomes an evolutionary selection mechanism, it only takes a century or two for the non religious to die and be replaced.

    Yeah, that means an Amish 23th century for America. Star Trek’s cultural prognostication of the future can be quite wrong in more than one sense.

  51. Where is your recognized scientific source for your BS?

    Who is they? Where did you get your survey of what THEY think? You regurgitate a lot of BS facts that the science community does not support.

  52. A perverse effect of the power of computers.

    Make the model complex enough, and the priesthood can use it as replacement for empiricism and falsifiability.

    Happened to cosmology too, with all the dark matter this, dark energy that models.

  53. Yep and I can get many people to tell me that man did not land on the moon. So a scientist has an opinion on a field that he is not an expert. Everyone has an opinion but then I don’t go to a engineer to get a medical opinion. Ridiculous. Now we have morons who claim temperature are not changing when glaciers are melting everywhere and Greenland is melting and even the planting zones in the US are changing. But it is all some liberal conspiracy to take control of the world. I can’t stand the left with its identy politics and I can’t stand the right denying science because some right wing spokesmsen tells them to. Both sides are FOS

  54. Great resources can be redirected to other areas with greater cost benefits according to this guy. The issue is what happens with the carbon that will be in the atmosphere for another hundred years plus. This is cumulative and it seems to be going exponential. Saying nothing has happened yet as you leave the road and headed for a tree so keep the gas peddle to the floor is suicidal. You cannot bring back the species that are missing nor can you gain the land back that will be flooded with a billion people displaced.

    Deniers don’t need facts or sources they will just pull another fact out of their asses when you challenge their previous facts. Repeatedly they quote some single asshole who has an opinion that is in contrast with every nationally recognized or internationally recognized scientific organization in the world.

    The Greenland ice melt has accelerated and there are numerous reports illustrating that point. This is from reputable scientists not some weekend “scientists” writing reports with crayons.
    Yes the world will keep spinning but a billion people could die and the worlds oceans will be devastated along with 1/2 of the worlds land animal species. People cannot just get up and move when the climate changes and their land floods. The coral reefs cannot be replaced nor the species driven to extinction.

    Didn’t even discuss the acidification of the oceans from burning fossil fuels did he?

  55. That could apply to just about every western society though. Western societies without immigration would be shrinking. There seems to be something culturally where generally people won’t create another mouth to feed if there isn’t economic optimism.

  56. You can’t fix every problem at once. Triaging the problems and doing cost benefit analysis is a good approach. Also not fixing any of the problems is the worst most expensive solution. There are people who believe that the best approach to economic difficulty is to stop spending. That is a bad idea.

  57. How can you not succeed when a continent fall in your lap and you have less people than Florida to fight over it.

  58. If you study geology you will learn that as little as sandstorms and erosion higher the oceans melting ice will do it.

    Earth crust are floating in equilibrium according to Archimedes further more continental plates below water float up when other parts presses down from land ice.

    Just some part of South Americas west cost can show historic water levels where continental plate met sea bed on the beach and land don´t had land ice.

    Few meter i maximum changes in sea level.

    When (if) you study geology you will learn how to calculate how thick the continental plates that collides below Himalaya most be to have the mountain floating so high.

    After earth crust cracked up in plates a big sorting started that had made sea bed twice as dens as continental plates.

    Hope your fear has gone.

  59. Respected physicist, Freeman Dyson, a contemporary of Albert Einstein, is interviewed by sexual predator, Charlie Rose. Dyson was a pioneer researcher on CO2. Dyson agrees that we have global warming and that we have increased CO2, but he believes that both global warming and increased CO2 are good for our planet. This interview was 10 years ago, but Dyson’s opinion on this subject remain the same. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1q5WeoZER8s

  60. I agree. I do believe space stations will be a huge part in colonizing the solar system.

    I’m still waiting to see a government, or company take up the challenge up to create a circular-style space stations that could be spun up to 1g to create a gravity environment for astronauts to live, and work in.

    Maybe with the commercial space companies going all in now with their launchers we will see something soon on that front. I can only hope.

  61. I’ve always been intrigued behind the “unknowns” that could be headed our way out from deep space. These huge forces like black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and even large comets, or asteroids that we haven’t detected that could just ruin our day. Just like that asteroid that hit over the northern pacific the other day, that was detected to be about 10 times the power of the Hiroshima bomb.

    Imagine just going about your day, and then all of a sudden it seems like it’s getting extremely hot, wind is ripping everything from the ground, and the clouds are getting blown away because of the atmosphere is getting stripped by a close-range gamma burst that hit the earth dead on. Pretty epic way to go if you ask me.

    I do hope none of that happens is our lifetimes, or in our children’s, and grand children’s lifetimes. It would be exciting to see humanity spread out into the solar system, and eventually out into the galaxy to plant our seeds, and gain vast knowledge about the cosmos.

  62. You conflate causation. We built our society up from nothing. We didn’t tear down Africa to do it. We have nothing to be ashamed about. We aren’t keeping the 3rd world down, their own culture makes it the 3rd world. We can help correct that but don’t assume we owe help simply because we build awesome societies. Our culture is available to anyone who wants to live it.

  63. The problem was that the EU leaders were so VERY anxious to show just how ‘caring’ and ‘woke’ they were that they allowed in quite a few refugees who had no intention of assimilating, learning the host language, getting jobs, or doing anything but accepting the generous ‘refugee’ benefits being offered.

    Think about it another way. Here in the US, Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles are having a real ‘homeless crisis’. Why? Because their ‘homeless’ benefits are VERY generous – (As compared to pretty much nothing) – and there is no responsibility for the ‘homeless’ to change anything they’re doing.

    As a result, we have ‘homeless camps’ where typhus, crime and dysentery are endemic, and a host of other diseases are surging because simple sanitation is ignored. (After all, we cannot expect them to have any standards, right? That’s just so… normative of us.)

    You get more of what you pay for. Increase homeless benefits? You get more homeless. Increase refugee benefits? You get more refugees.

  64. You and me both. Some folks really like cold climates, but I’m not one of them. And humanity’s spread from the equator to the arctic – we’re pretty darn adaptable, and so are the animals worldwide. The concept of a degree increase driving massive extinctions is ridiculous when you see a daily swing of about 20-40 degrees F, and seasonal variations from extreme to extreme over 100F.

    Which makes me think most of the ‘climate scientists’ predicting this crap rarely get their heads out of whatever simulation they’re tuning for the next prediction cycle.

  65. If China, India and Egypt haven´t concert an area big as Amazon from desert to forest in resent time, the global average temperature had been lower.

    Desert is cooling for the fact that outgoing energy expand with the power of four to the temperature and Sahara radiate 16% more energy than if the region was as thick forest as Amazon.

    No one have detect higher greenhouse effect as function of higher CO2 in the earths atmosphere after satellites could measure it .

    We are living in an ice age, last interracial was 2,5C warmer global ans 8C warmer during 6000 years on Greenland with the result that life had it better.

    It demand 5C higher global average temperature to take earth out from this 2,6 million years long ice age to that much more life friendly climate.

    All this have objective data so it cant be new information.

    Why let the climate threat industry change name form CAGW to AGW to climate changes when earths climate don´t follow theirs stupid stimulation program?

    IPCC just allow program that have more water from more CO2 but the earth have show that its wrong. In fact the greenhouse effect haven´t increase just gone up a bit so back, as an example 1970 had higher than 1997 but most important the wavelength that CO2 can act as greenhouse gas have not radiate less energy from earth just as much as radiate in above the heavy molecule.

    When the hate modern walkaway safe nuclear, cloud seeding and ocean fertilization you all should started think…

  66. On the SJW shows more like the current week. It’s exceedingly tiresome… and it’s just about burned itself out, I think.

    You can only humor children’s fantasies so long before you go “Okay, that’s enough…”

    And really, it’s absolutely amazing to me how the US has to somehow make up for the entire REST of the world’s CO2 output because they’re not doing anything more than lip service as far as adhering to any CO2 reduction strategies.

    Heh. At least CHINA is building nukes in assembly-line fashion. But us? Oh, no. We CAN’T use nuclear power – it’s ‘icky’ according to the greens. And the licensing apparatus is so convoluted we’d have to have started twenty years ago.

    Greens don’t want to solve the problem. It’s just too damn useful in their bid to control everything we say, do, and think.

  67. More options is key…I personally like the O’Neil colony mode of expansion. Use the resources already floating around out there to create many varieties of living space – a hundred kilometer cylindrical habitat of coral island and sea would be cool. Or a woodland setting with seasonal changes. Any kind of polluting industry would be done well away from where people live with robots working the asteroids outside the colony. Turn Earth into a garden world – urban areas of course could be supplied from off world resources while the rest of the planet can be restored to a more pristine state.

    Might take a few hundred years to get to this, but worth working towards is it not?

  68. I wasn’t aware that the Kaiser imported millions of Jews into Germany just before WWII, where they proceeded to rape, pillage, intimidate and impose Jewish law on their host country.

  69. Thing is that science isn’t on the side of AGW. For the last 10 thousand years it has been warmer than now. CO2 Levels have been several times higher than now and the planet was fine. The climate models that predict increased warming due to co2 are actually calculating the warming based on increase in water vapor since co2 isn’t capable of warming the planet, since there is so little of it and it absorbs a narrow spectrum of IR light. Water vapor contributes about 90 – 95% of the Greenhouse effect. These models predict increase in water vapor due to increase in co2, but water vapor has not increased in reality.

    The reason there are so many people, including professors and scientist, who believe in agw is not because they have studied the matter extensively, but because they trust other scientists and organizations.

    Great example is the IPCC. Founded by Maurice Strong, friend of several Big Oil and Big Bank owners like the Rockefellers. He made the IPCC and wrote the terms of reference. These terms dictated that the scientists of Work Group 1 would only focus on the Human causes of climate change. He made sure that only one outcome was possible, that humans are causing climate change.
    He then, after several years, made it that the findings of Work Group 1 would need to agree with the Report called “Summary for policy makers”. So in other words, the scientific process was thrown out of the window.
    These are documented facts, More information can be found at Corbett Report.

  70. You know what else Nasa and it’s fellow Government funded climate organizations do? Deliberately “adjust” data to fit their inaccurate models even when satellite and balloon data show no significant warming. Oh wait, they adjusted that too few years back when people started asking too many question about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0l3tymEagc
    This is just the tip of the iceberg of the Politically motivated moves Nasa has done.

  71. A graph of centuries when the planet’s history goes back billions of years. Yeah, NASA isn’t deliberately cherry picking…

    But, yes, not 100 times higher, but still, a lot higher.

  72. The is so much rubbish talked about how to deal with climate change. Lomborg is one of the exceptions.

  73. I think Drake exaggerates, but makes a point. The estimated CO2 concentration at the latest global cooling was about 2,600 ppm around 30 million years ago, or about 6x current. You need to go back about 200 million years ago to get to 5,500 ppm, the highest estimated CO2 concentration for the past 400 million years (well, rough estimates at least). Earth was significantly warmer when CO2 levels were LOWER and HIGHER than they are today. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Temperature-T-and-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-CO2-concentration-proxies-during-the_fig4_320123470

    Lomborg is making the point about cost-benefit. Should tax payers in Germany, for instance, pay for windmills, or is the money better spent teaching kids in central Africa how to read and write?

  74. This coming from a guy that lives in a country whose people are better off than 93% of the rest of the world.
    If you are doctor go do some work for doctors without borders and don’t bother coming back to such a spoiled country just so you can live well while demeaning it.

  75. Our weapons and technology are bigger threats to ourselves than nature. And even them are unlikely to end us all.

    Nowadays we would need something out of an apocalyptic science fiction movie to kill us all (a black hole comes and devours Earth in a few weeks, or aliens decide to send some RKVs our way, or some such). Rising waters and more erratic climate won’t do it.

    As we go outside and start being able to live in other worlds, the risk of total extinction will be less and less. And this will be the case until the Sun grows old, heats up and finally dies.

    And even those events aren’t unavoidable risks of extinction. Before those faraway times, there will be countless strains of humanity and life spreading among the stars, regardless if such a thing as FTL travel exists. We could go even by hopping from planetoid to planetoid in conventional nuclear spaceships across millenia.

    In that way, in a a few million years the galaxy itself could be teeming with life, way before our cradle finally can’t sustain any more life.

    It’s most likely life will endure until the entropic end of the Universe. For that, we have no answer, but the uncountable many that will come later, who knows?

  76. Rubbish.

    3rd world suffering can be blamed on capitalism, colonialism, straight men enjoying sports in their own lounge rooms, kids playing at backyard barbeques, people not being vegans, people who watch TV shows where one character isn’t perfectly in tune with SJW coded behaviour (for the current month, regardless of if the show is 5 years old), people driving cars instead of squeezing into (government owned) buses, and just about every other thing that could possibly occur.

    Including stuff that I can’t type out because I cannot understand a single word of what the nutcase weirdos are talking about when they start to complain.

  77. Yeah those GDP growth numbers are suspect. UK per capita went up 6x from 1900 to 2000 and that was with a lot more low hanging fruit.

    And population growth is only going to be about 20% by 2100.

    7x at best in next 100 years, not 10-30x.

    I predict 3x by 2100.

  78. Those Dutch fleeing the collapse of their Dykes will storm the border fences into France and Germany, bringing their barbaric culture of wooden shoes, chocolate and tulips to contaminate the cities of the civilized world.

  79. There’s a pdf online named: “Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide”. It’s only 12 pages long, but provides a serious rebuttal to the U.N. IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) global warming hypothesis.

  80. Yes, Luca was pretty extreme at times with his America hate. I do agree Americans deserve some hate from time-to-time regarding certain geopolitical situations we get ourselves in, but never to the level he would take it.

    I’ll need to create an account, and become legit. Been testing the waters here since I’ve only ever read the comments, and never participated.

  81. THe gloom and doom prognosticators learned a long time ago with the “Peak OIl” fiasco to never predict something that can occur in their lifetime.

    ”IF”, they were absolutely sure it was the end of the world ICE would be banned and solar roofs would be mandatory, food and water would be rationed, recycling of everything would be required and our waste stream would be limited to coffee grounds and grapefruit rinds.

    the sheer magnitude of waste on this planet is mind numbing.

  82. There are many consequences of global warming not clear at first glance but potentially way more dangerous.

    Waves of immigrants are the cause of populistic and nationalist governments to emerge in Europe.
    Indirectly european union will collapse because of this.
    That means weak Europe and Putin happy.

    If we see these effects now when immigration is relatively low what effects will global warming immigration have?

    Our government in Europe is already blaming immigrants like Hitler blamed jews. I Hope history wont repeat.

  83. Nah. Luca would have added some hateful comments and would have said that the end of the world was a good thing because all the Americans would die. (I’m convinced some US Marine stole his girlfriend. Or maybe his mum.)

    NextBigAntihero has been polite and nice. I personally think that “end of humanity” is a gross exaggeration of even the most pessimistic climate projections, but this is a opening into a debate not a troll.

    Though… I’d change your name if I were you. We already have a few characters calling themselves NextBig[something] and many of them have been picking fights and staking out extreme positions. Using such a name is just asking for people to prejudge you and get off on the wrong foot.

  84. Where I too wouldn’t mind settling off world I need to point out that if settling Mars is workable then settling a “Climate changed” Earth is immensely easier.

    I agree, but I believe we should be able to accomplish both. The more options the better, and we learn a ton in the process. To become a multi-planetary, space fairing civilization should be the ultimate goal in my eyes.

  85. I would call you a hysterical woman but I know you are just Luca.

    Oh, ole Luca lol. I do remember him, but no, I’m not Luca.

    I’m actually someone who has been frequenting this site since my days in the military. I’ve now recently just decided to start commenting because this place needs to be less of an echo chamber of political leanings, and more of a futurism blog that’s more agnostic to anyone’s political views in my humble opinion. I hope I can accomplish my goal of trying to engage folks in here on both a platform of respect, and tolerance. Unless they insult me, or berate me, then yes, I’ll gladly counter-punch 🙂

    Please, stop trying to figure out who I am, and engage in some constructive conversation will ya?

  86. Where I too wouldn’t mind settling off world I need to point out that if settling Mars is workable then settling a “Climate changed” Earth is immensely easier.

    I mean no vacuum, ambient oxygen, liquid water, etc.

  87. I would call you a hysterical woman but I know you are just Luca. Never change. It would make you hard to spot.

  88. Only the irrational and the inept ever believed the cartoon that AGW represents the end of the world. CO2 levels have been 100 times higher than today and the world is still waiting to end.
    DOI:10.1016/j.gca.2005.11.031

    The problem resides under the umbrella of associated effects on the planet that goes with ever increasing levels of co2. If you prefer the earth’s environment in ages before modern humans existed, you are going to love the future.

    People with options will have no problems surviving and thriving in an ever changing world.

  89. Quote “But seriously, “the end of humanity” ?”

    How would you know anymore than the experts know? None of them can be sure of anything yet, but our technology is getting there.

  90. Yea because my random picture is a duck

    Looks more like a rubbery ducky doesn’t it?

    But seriously, “the end of humanity” ?

    If you look back at the history of our little blue planet, there have been many catastrophes that would have doomed humanity if we were around then in our current capacity. One example being when humanity was all most wiped out by a supposed asteroid strike in the cradle of life in Africa. Humans were reduced to only a few thousand at most. We are a very resilient species I give us that, but we should not overestimate ourselves, and underestimate what nature is capable of. Especially when we’re intentionally, and unintentionally keep messing with her dials.

    If you misunderstood me, I apologize, but I’m rooting for humanity to expand out into the stars since I believe that’s our destiny. If we want to continue living within this paradise, then we need to figure out how to adapt quickly, or safely modify nature to our will.

    Moving to another planet, where would you go, Mars ?

    How about lets go everywhere? The more we challenge ourselves, step outside of our comfort zones, and take risks. The more we will learn, and grow as a species. Also, I am a proponent of geo-engineering, but we need to be careful since this is the only place we have to live right now. Start with the low hanging fruit, and work on fertilizing the oceans with iron, planting more and more trees/plants, and making sure the ecosystems are in balance.

    That’s just my 2 cents.

  91. Yea because my random picture is a duck. But seriously, “the end of humanity” ? At worst, a few places will be less hospitable, and a few places will be more hospitable. If you think about the fact that some cities are built in deserts, like Las Vegas or Dubai, you can figure out that it would take a lot to doom humanity, even more so when the change is gradual.

    Moving to another planet, where would you go, Mars ? It would take many orders of magnitude more efforts to terraform Mars than to fix Earth with geo-engineering.

  92. Climate change is not a one state, but a progression. Waters levels can go up one meter, 3 meters or a 150 meters. after the ice melts sea waters can reach critical temperature point where the ocean melts and the prevailing temperature and air composition becomes similar to that on Venus which reached its current state after going through a deep climate change. Also, mitigating climate change should not be considered as a problem that is costly to fix as the technologies to fix are in the process of becoming cost effective, but as an opportunity to divert our energy sector, industry, and transportation to a healthier path through smart regulation incentives and decentives.

  93. Watermelons don’t care about the little brats in the Turd World. Well, not unless their suffering can be blamed on Global Warming, that is.

    Cynical but true.

  94. Climate change isn’t the end of the world, but IT IS the end of humanity, and civilization as we know it 🙂

    Especially if we don’t adapt to it, or move off of the earth. I prefer the latter myself.

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