Missing Climate Goals Could Cost the World $20 Trillion (technologyreview.com) 219
An anonymous reader shares a report: There are trillions of reasons for the world to prevent temperatures from rising more than 1.5C, the aspirational target laid out in the Paris climate agreement, according to a new study. If nations took the necessary actions to meet that goal, rather than the increasingly discussed 2C objective, there's a 60 percent chance it would save the world more than $20 trillion, according to new work published this week in Nature by scientists at Stanford. That figure is far higher than what most experts think it will cost to cut emissions enough to achieve the 1.5C target. Indeed, one study put the price tag in the hundreds of billions of dollars. If temperatures rise by 3C, it will knock out an additional 5 percent of GDP. That's the entire planet's GDP.
Eh.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't cutting emissions 40% - 60% in the first world cause hundreds of millions or even billions of deaths in places dependent on western aid? Or is that part of the plan?
Given that less than 0.005% of global economic output is spent on food aid, that is highly doubtful.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No.
That food doesn't get shipped without emissions and without taxes the first world countries can't afford it, limiting emissions will cut into normal peoples incomes much more than it does corporations.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
First, this report doesn't match up with other estimates of the changes in temp from following/not following the Paris targets.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
More than you'd think [dailymail.co.uk]
"How 16 ships create as much pollution as all the cars in the world"
Re: (Score:2)
The aid could generally be much better spent buying local food - as it is, long-term aid destroys the local market for food, causing local farmers to turn to exportable cash crops to make a living.
Basically, long-term food aid is an excellent strategic decision for turning at temporary crisis into long-term dependency, with all the political leverage that entails.
Re: (Score:2)
Nice try, but a ton of beef costs 30-100g CO2 to move 1 km by train [timeforchange.org], while that same ton costs 34.6 kg CO2/kg beef [timeforchange.org] = 31,400,000g CO2 to produce. Even if the cows are raised 1,000 km from where the meat is eaten, the shipping costs of food in CO2 are still just a rounding error compared to the production costs.
I used to be all in favor of the local food movement until I realized this. Now I'm like "meh." So it's good to try to keep things in perspective.
Re: (Score:2)
Reductive reasoning to the max. Noise, that's all you're bringing to the conversation.
Try posting with your username then we can have an argument. Or at least include the argument in your post.
Re: (Score:2)
LOL, where do you think corporations get their money if not from people...
Why would they care about acquiring more money (medium of exchange) once they already control all wealth?
Re: (Score:3)
You believe the US is more likely to give the middle east more aid if Florida ends up under water requiring millions of US citizens to be relocated?
Florida will suffer fate of doggerland any which way, it will keep getting warming for thousands of years before it starts getting colder, but without economy, US would collapse tomorrow
Re: (Score:2)
commentary grossly misleads readers (Score:3, Insightful)
This commentary published by The Wall Street Journal, written by Fred Singer, claims that warming (and therefore greenhouse gas emissions) has no effect on global sea level rise. Although Singer concedes the physical fact that water expands as its temperature increases, he claims that this process must be offset by growth of Antarctic ice weasels.
Scientists who reviewed this opinion piece explained that it is contradicted by a wealth of data and research. Singer bases his conclusion entirely on a cherry-picked comparison of sea level rise 1915-1945 and a single study published in 1990, claiming a lack of accelerating sea level rise despite continued warming. But in fact, modern research utilizing all available data clearly indicates that sea level rise has accelerated, and is unambiguously the result of human-caused global warming.
Re: commentary grossly misleads readers (Score:5, Insightful)
Just for a minor reality check, floating ice displaces exactly the same volume of water that it would occupy if melted and brought to the same temperature as the water it displaces; however, the majority of the ice in the Antarctic and other locations like Greenland are on land, where the melting would drain water into the oceans, causing sea level rise.
Re: (Score:2)
Not to mention he's holding the wrong quantity constant. There is no law of volume conservation; there is a law of mass conservation (at least for reactions involving small enough amount of energy not to affect the rest mass). He's at least several steps away from understanding Archimedes' principle.
Re: (Score:2)
Don't you mean "more non-floating ice to melt"?
Reading the page, it seems that Antarctica is still mostly below freezing, precipitation has been up for the last 10,000 years and is now slowing down.
And it is on track to stop increasing in 20 to 30 years, when it will add to the raising s
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It "used" to be deniers saying it's natural causes, but that didn't seem to work, so now they're saying it's humans causing warming but it's not going to get that bad.
Both sides are guilty of getting things wrong (failures are built in to the scientific method) and overstating the effect (either too much or too little). The media inevitably injects emotion to get eyeballs. You
Re: Probably start of a new strategy (Score:5, Informative)
The ozone hole is not bullshit. [wikipedia.org]
Worldwide action to eliminate CFCs in aerosol cans and refrigerators has done much to alleviate the problem. Success at reducing the problem does not mean the problem was bullshit to begin with.
Re: (Score:2)
Which is why the world is gonna fry in 2038. The Y2K problem was way overblown, so the 2038 problem must be as well. Why allocate resources to fix it?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It *used* to be dire predictions getting ever closer and more dire, but that didn't seem to work, so now they're transitioning to monetary measures.
Errr no. The dire predictions are still dire. The only difference is where the research is being put into now that people are attempting to cost up measures to prevent us from royally screwing things up any further.
Or maybe you prefer us to not research the economics and go back to researching climate change, ... because you know... is it even real? Is the science even "settled"?
Re: (Score:3)
It *used* to be dire predictions getting ever closer and more dire, but that didn't seem to work, so now they're transitioning to monetary measures.
You are an idiot. There never where "predictions" like that. Only newspaper head lines.
Everybody with the simplest grasp of science knows the turning point is now, and was not 20 30 or 50 years ago. And 50 years ago everyone new till roughly 2000 not much would have happened. So why would they make honest predictions before that point in time?
And why exactly are
Now the Goals are Missing? (Score:5, Funny)
Who had them last? Did Trump misplace them? Has anyone checked Hillary's servers?
C'mon people. Those things are very expensive.
Think of all the jobs (Score:3)
$20 trillion is a lot of jobs created and with more people dying from the effects of climate change that could really boost wages /s
Re: (Score:2)
$20 trillion is a lot of jobs created and with more people dying from the effects of climate change that could really boost wages /s
Don't worry, because in the future most people will be on Universal Basic Income by then because jobs will be scarce.
There's no reason to boost wages, only people who want to work will work, because they don't have to work because...
</sarcasm>
Foresight (Score:2)
Actually, over a metre sea level rise by 2100 (Score:4, Informative)
https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]
Re: (Score:3)
Yeah that 1m sea level rise over a century is old news, long gone. Methane release from the once frozen permafrost, means that 1m is a hell of a lot closer and is now down to a series of severe weather affect brought on by climate change. 3m is the more accurate estimate over the century although it is avoidable greed and psychopathy seem to guarantee it will occur.
If we do not get the psychopaths out of the system, they will fuck it up completely and upon a global scale.
No point in arguing about the earl
Re: (Score:2)
Louisiana's coastal erosion has nothing to do with AGW.
Re: (Score:2)
To the people who live in the now, why exactly should they care if all of these problems will only be an issue when they are dead?
You must be the bastard who devised pension plan funding. Burn in hell
This is the right approach (Score:4, Interesting)
I haven't looked into this particular analysis at all, but this is exactly what we should be doing. Rather than making arguments that humans suck and are destroying life-giving Gaia, or trying to scare people with horror stories of runway warming, we should be carefully, rationally, constructing the best possible estimates of the cost of global warming under various scenarios, and then comparing them with the best possible estimates of the cost of various mitigation strategies, including not only cutting carbon emissions (which requires a sub-field of analyses to figure out the best and least impactful way to motivate cutting of carbon production) but also schemes to recapture carbon and schemes to directly cool the planet's climate other ways, such as orbital sunscreens to reduce insolation. And at the same time we should continue investing in climate and economic modeling to refine the estimates.
And we should act on the strategy that produces the best outcome, according to those estimates, even as we continue working to revise the estimates -- and adjust the strategy aprpropriately, in cautious, incremental steps.
This is the rational, Bayesian approach to the problem. And it's the right approach even in the (extremely unlikely) case that the warming isn't anthropogenic, or even if the planet isn't really even warming! Act on the best information you have, cautiously and adjusting for your level of confidence in that information, and keep working to get better information and adjust your approach accordingly. This is rational, logical, and the approach most likely to yield the most favorable outcomes. "Most likely" and "most favorable" are key words; there are no guarantees, but maximizing the probability of good outcomes is the the best way forward.
Re: (Score:3)
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/may/22/federal-reserve-emergency-expense-economic-survey
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The issue is the same in both cases. Greedy assholes know that the consequences won't come until after they're gone, so they don't want to spend any of their money now to prevent needing to spend far more money in the future.
Re: (Score:2)
from parent:
...we should be carefully, rationally, constructing the best possible estimates of the cost of global warming under various scenarios
from Bjorn Lomborg [lomborg.com]:
A new peer-reviewed paper by Dr. Bjorn Lomborg published in the Global Policy journal measures the actual impact of all significant climate promises made ahead of the Paris climate summit.
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is that there is no "we". There are a bunch of different countries, states, towns, individuals. There are corporations and politicians.
Climate change affects them all differently. Some stand to gain from it, most will lose to some extent but the amount varies hugely. Half of them will be dead before it really kicks in.
The only way to solve this is to make a high level decision to do it and then make doing it the cheapest option for everyone. It's a little bit authoritarian perhaps, but there doe
Re: (Score:2)
Re:This is the right approach (Score:5, Insightful)
Faked and overhyped disaster scenarios about the death of all life if we don't stop global warming is no different then faked and overhyped disaster scenarios that it'll be super-dooper expensive if you don't buy my snake oil now.
Yes, if you assume the whole scientific community is just lying to you then you'll believe there's no point in listening to them.
Of course, since you're nutty enough to believe in a global conspiracy involving tens of thousands of people, any one of whom could make a huge name for themselves by disclosing it, there's no point listening to you.
Re: This is the right approach (Score:2)
Open source climate models (Score:4, Insightful)
I once strongly believed in this, but to my left is a computer that is entirely capable of doing nuclear bomb simulation. I'm curious why there's never any models given that I can simply run.
There is.
http://theconversation.com/mak... [theconversation.com]
https://opensource.gsfc.nasa.g... [nasa.gov]
Jurassic Climate (Score:3, Insightful)
Mean atmospheric O2 - 130 % of modern level.
Mean atmospheric CO2 content - . 1950 ppm. 7 times pre-industrial level.
Mean surface temperature - 16.5 C. 3 C above modern level.
I HATE cold weather. I would say this would be a better climate to live in.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Except sea/ocean levels would be drastically different, millions would not think it's a better climate to live in.
No one will miss California and Florida.
Re: (Score:2)
Sure...sufficiently.
The central valley is largely above 10 meters altitude. The confluence of the Sacramento and American rivers is at about 10 meters. Water doesn't flow uphill.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Shame we're so invested in coastal areas (Score:3)
Coastal real estate is probably worth $125+ trillion. And that doesn't include cost of dealing with migratory pressures, fighting wars over resources etc.
Then there's how much people would pay to avoid that misery ie quality of life value.
$20 trillion seems pretty low to me.
Here's how they calculated it though:
http://sci-hub.tw/https://www.... [sci-hub.tw]
Re: (Score:2)
I hate hot weather.
Re: (Score:2)
I HATE cold weather. I would say this would be a better climate to live in.
The climate we live in isn't in question. The industry and civilisations we have built around assumptions on climate in specific areas are. No one is complaining that it may be a few degrees warmer outside. They are complaining that they need to relocate crops, that cities will flood, and that areas which were used to collect water may not receive any.
Re: (Score:2)
Dinosaurs - 100% of modern level.
Cost who? (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Quite so. And the "common man" doesn't care all that much about voters and customers yet to be born either.
"Could" (Score:2, Insightful)
"Could" is the keyword here... Makes the entire statement completely unfalsifiable and thus unscientific.
15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance.
Re:"Could" (Score:4, Insightful)
"Could" is the keyword here... Makes the entire statement completely unfalsifiable and thus unscientific.
No, it makes it a scientific prediction, one backed by rigorous and proper study and validated by peer review.
They aren't just pulling $20 trillion and 60% out of their ass. They have a paper where they show how they derive those figures and justify their assumptions. If you want to falsify their statement there's actually a straightforward process to do so. Read their paper to see where those figures came from, find a calculation that's incorrect, a cost they misprojected, an assumption that's unjustified, or some other way in which you can show their results to be false.
Don't just blithely declaring any scientific finding you don't like to be "completely unfalsifiable and thus unscientific".
Re: (Score:2)
Then they should've said "Will". Saying "could" makes the statement just what I said, unfalsifiable. And that in turn makes in unscientific.
I read the title, which is unscientific. Thank you.
Not all the findings I dislike are unscientific. But this one is.
Re: (Score:3)
Then they should've said "Will". Saying "could" makes the statement just what I said, unfalsifiable. And that in turn makes in unscientific.
So you could then criticize them for making an authoritative prediction they could not possibly justify.
'Will' vs 'Could' has nothing to do with falsifiability or scientificness, it's scientific and falsifiable because their "could" is justified with research.
Re: (Score:2)
You cannot prove a negative.
'Could' is a weasel word.
Re: (Score:3)
Wrong. "Will" is falsifiable. "Could" is not.
Because, whether a prediction comes to pass or not, "could" is still true — not falsifiable [wikipedia.org]. The "will", on the other hand, would be wrong — and is therefor falsifiable. Not necessarily true — for it may still end up falsified, but falsifiable.
Being falsifiable is a requirement for being scientific.
Research does not make a statement fa
Re: (Score:2)
'Will' vs 'Could' has nothing to do with falsifiability
Wrong. "Will" is falsifiable. "Could" is not.
Except when someone says "will" involving climate change, then you scream "a prediction isn't falsifiable!".
Being falsifiable is a requirement for being scientific.
So you think polling science exists? I'd say a lot of what 538 does qualifies as science, despite not going through the full scientific process, and they almost exclusively work in probabilistic outcomes. They also routinely falsify the claims of other polling outfits by demonstrating their errors.
As for this research it has plenty of falsifiable aspects, in fact there's two falsifiable statements in
Re: (Score:2)
Wrong. "Will" is falsifiable. "Could" is not.
Read the paper. It gives a probability density function. A result outside the PDF would falsify the paper. Of course, what’s the use of having developed a science well enough to make predictions if, in the end, all we’re willing to do is stand around and wait for them to come true?
Re: (Score:2)
If someone tells you that you could be injured badly if you don't put on your seatbelt, do you ignore them because it's not falsifiable?
Re:"Could" (Score:4, Insightful)
"Could" is the keyword here... Makes the entire statement completely unfalsifiable and thus unscientific.
15 minutes could save you 15% or more on car insurance.
And you could die if you get into a high-speed auto accident while not wearing a seat belt. Or you could live. But your odds are better if you wear the seat belt.
If you're going to dismiss any argument that isn't based on ironclad guarantees, you can't predict much of anything. The future is unknown. Accept it. The best we can do is maximize the likelihood of good outcomes.
Re: (Score:2)
And 100 minutes could save you 100% or more on car insurance!
Sad but true: money motivates everything. :-( (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
It must be fun to still be that naive.
There is a sandwich on the table. Just enough food to keep either you or I alive. Which one of us sucks for not being the one that gets to eat it?
We're trapped on a spaceship. Just enough air for one of us to live. Are you going to do the "right thing" and space yourself to save me?
Money is nothing more than an accounting method for tracking resources. We can either expend resources now, or maybe expend them in the distant future. In neither case this there a mora
Re: (Score:2)
People have plenty of bodyfat to survive on. We share the sandwich. Now we're only both a little hungry, and we're not enemies.
We both limit our physical activity, try to nap, until rescue arrives; somehow we co-operate to find a way for both to survive.
We can continue to think only so far ahead as next quarters' profits, and perhaps there won't be a future for anyone, or we can stop acting and thinking like animals, operating o
Re: (Score:2)
I must also be fun to think that there are not situations where multiple people that have interests that are irrevocably and diametrically opposed, where for either to win, one must lose.
They should call it Carbonomics (Score:2)
I remember my old tome Fundamentals of Astronautics. An invaluable reference. Authors include guys like von Braun, Bussard, Tsien, and Phil Bono - legendary geniuses in the field all of them. I also remember the chapter using the same analytical techniques for the rockets being used as diviners of economic costs of said rockets. It struck me as odd and kind of silly - sad even - that such smart people were so confounded by economics. All their rocket science is as good today as it was then; but these guys w
It is already missed (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Source? I seem to recall that they announced a moratorium on new coal plants.
Re: (Score:2)
Your 700 coal plants lies have been pointed out numerous times Windy.
climate science buffet (Score:2)
At one end of the climate science buffet we have the reliable, traditional cuisine: that CO2 and methane (and water vapour) function as greenhouse gasses, that burning an aggregate trillion barrels of fossil fuel is enough to make a difference on a planetary scale, that we are presently in a warming cycle (of what duration, not yet certain), that certain mitigations are already cost-effective (solar roofs in California, minimizing hyper-disposable electronic goods), that the ocean is a carbon sink, and that
Dr Alfred Bartlett said it first: (Score:2)
Modern farming is just a way of converting oil into food.
It takes 7X more oil energy to bring food to your table than you get from eating it.
At the turn of the 19th century more than 9 out of 10 people were involved in farming and feeding themselves and the other person. Now, less than 1 percent feed the other 99+% and they use machines powered by oil & coal to do it. Alternative forms of energy do not have the energy density of fossil fuels, and cannot replace them for planting, growing, harvesting,
Popular orthogonal approach needed (Score:2)
America, at least, is locked in a battle between climate change people and deniers. Much of the heat of the battle is being generated by the shared assumption of most of the battling parties that the government must be parsimonius and whatever taxes or restraints are applied will be hard on poor people or it will be hard on rich oil business people.
Lets consider an approach that is 90 degrees different for both parties. The given fact is we must substantially reduce our oil use. I propose we make engaging i
Re: (Score:2)
Save is the right word.
If they said "create" or "earn" or "make", then I think your objection would be spot on.
Re: (Score:2)
It would have been more accurate and intellectually honest for the article to say "not wasted".
I can't think of an individual word that is loaded with the precise connotative meaning that represents this thread's political bias. So "saved" is satisfactory.
Re: (Score:2)
Hundreds of millions to several billion people are just going to stand still and drown as the water creeps up at an inch per year? Unfortunately I can't tell if you're serious or snark, that's how insane the AGW crowd has become.
Re:The End in Nigh... (Score:4, Informative)
I would guess that at least 10 billion people will die over the next 100 years, probably more.
Re: (Score:2)
How much money is going into Loch Ness monster research? It's ONE guy. Pick another example.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Take a look at this: https://xkcd.com/1732/
Those are simple numbers, not complicated simulations. You don't need to be an expert or even an actual scientist to see that the world is actually warming. You also don't need to be an expert to see that it is going at a rate that might start to hurt. Nobody can tell you how much it will hurt, but it will not only cost money, it will be paid in human lives too...
Also, that stuff you're pouring into your car and what you're firing your power stations with, that stu
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, OK, what's the alternative to burning those things in our power plants and cars? Answer is that there isn't any. For now, we HAVE to burn fossil fuels. There's just no other way to maintain our level of prosperity.
And prosperity is important. The current surge in prosperity is lifting a lot of people up into the middle class. That's a good thing. The poverty class is deadly. Smoking will take maybe 7 years off your life, but living in poverty is good for up to 10 years less life. The great
This Is The Lie, Right Here (Score:4, Insightful)
"... the proposed actions always involve diminishing everyone's lives - living in cold houses in winter and boiling houses in the summer, ..."
Nope, this is just your nihilistic attitude towards the subject at hand. You've decided this is a zero sum game and that you aren't going to be the loser. Well your myopic attitude is your problem. Not someone else's problem!
You see there were lots of right wing nay-sayers suggesting that programs that supported home insulation upgrades were inappropriate and wrong. "You can't pick winners and losers" they said. "Government grant programs are bad" they said. "It's all Al Gore and Big Government, and Climate Change isn't real" they said.
Except, home insulation programs are one specific example of how lives will not be diminished. How homes will not be "cold in the winter" and "boiling in the summer". How to avoid zero sum nihilism.
You see you are a zero sum nihilist, and you want the rest of the world to be as well. Good luck with that, but don't be surprised if the world chooses a different direction. And when they do, I'm sure we'll hear you whining about that too. "Well, if the Deep State hadn't silenced us, we could have won at the expense of everyone else!!! Damn you Al Gore!"
Sad. Pathetic. Small thoughts for small minds.
Re:Only $20 Trillion (Score:4, Insightful)
If it is only going to cause $20 T not to do so, it would appear to be a good deal just to do nothing.
On the first glance: for the survivors, yes.
On second glance: you most likely would never survive it or not like to live under the conditions the survivors will do.
Re:Only $20 Trillion (Score:5, Insightful)
That reminds me of those people who rollover their payday loans into new payday loans because every dollar they put into paying down the loan is a dollar they can't spend on other stuff. In other words, breaking out of they payday loan cycle requires diminishing their lives in the short term.
People who complain about global warming mitigations diminishing their lives are trying to justify the equivalent of locking us all into massive loans which our children and grandchildren will inherit. In the USA, the American Dream is dying.
Re: (Score:2)
It's not true anyway. A better designed house that maintains a pleasant temperature with less HVAC is going to save you money. Your life gets better because of it.
Same with electric vehicles. They are getting very affordable now and will continue to get cheaper. The air you breathe gets cleaner, you spend less on healthcare and cleaning your house. Life gets better for you.
Re: (Score:2)
"It's not true anyway. A better designed house that maintains a pleasant temperature with less HVAC is going to save you money. Your life gets better because of it."
Maybe, maybe not. My geothermal heat/cool cost $31.5K. I'm 70, got it 2 years ago, probably not going to get good ROI, although going from heating oil bills of up to $630 for 1 month to $175 on the absolute worst month for _all_ the electricity I use, which is usually $65 - $85 without heating / cooling expense, is just about breaking even.
Re: (Score:2)
Combustion engines aren't practical. They can't do everything an EV can yet.
Re: (Score:2)
And it doesn't matter that America has pulled out of the Paris deal, we will still continue to set records for clean energy and CO2 mitigation via natural gas and solar and wind.
You mean record CO2 emissions (both per capita and overall)
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, we do a lot of industry which takes a lot of power, and moving stuff around the country is expensive because its just big. We're working on it, tho. And we have a freight rail system that is unmatched anywhere else on the planet, and moves whatever it hauls with extremely little energy per ton. But there are trucks, like the rest of the world mostly uses, and they suck a lot of energy. But Tesla just came out with electric trucks, so there's hope for great improvement.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah, we do a lot of industry which takes a lot of power, and moving stuff around the country is expensive because its just big.
Your problem. Certainty not the rest of the world's.
Many countries achieve similar or even higher wealth with much less CO2 emissions per capita. The US (and Canada, Australia, UAE, Qatar) carbon-based economy is unsustainable.
Re: (Score:2)
"Many countries achieve similar or even higher wealth with much less CO2 emissions per capita. The US (and Canada, Australia, UAE, Qatar) carbon-based economy is unsustainable."
We're fixing the problem way faster than the rest of the world. We were one of the very few that actually met the Kyoto Protocol requirements. Done with natural gas replacing coal, and new power being natural gas as well as solar and wind. Nobody is converting more rapidly. We will be zero-carbon, leave-it-in-the-ground before
If you need to drive a gas guzzler... (Score:2)
"Anyway, we can stop talking about it, because the proposed actions always involve diminishing everyone's lives"
If you need to drive a gas guzzler then you don't have a life.
Re: (Score:2)
>If you need to drive a gas guzzler then you don't have a life.
Its not "gas guzzler", its using _any_ fossil fuels to heat, cool, or move. We have to get to zero if we want the CO2 to start coming down. We can't do it. Not yet. I think we'll get there, but maybe in 50 years. Doing it now will just bring poverty, death, communism and slavery / genocide due to the communism.
Re: (Score:2)
And after you insulate? You _still_ have to burn fossil fuels to heat and cool. Victory over AGW is burning _NO_ fossil fuels. "Less" doesn't mean shit, at least on the scale that a few extra inches of insulation will do for you.
Hell, my triple-pane heat-mirror Nu-Sash windows, plus my geothermal heating / cooling _still_ uses fossil fuels. My cars are ALWAYS going to use fossil fuels because I'm 70, and the magic battery is probably waaaay after my lifetime, and that will be the solution. Solar / w
Re: (Score:2)
Here's one for $44 trillion, but that is 2014, just 4 years ago. The figure I heard was what the AGW alarmists were saying about 15 years ago.
https://www.technologyreview.c... [technologyreview.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Hey, here's one for $90 T:
https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
If it's only going to cost $20T to fix the effects of AGW, why would be spend $44, $50, or $90 trillion to prevent it?
Re: (Score:2)
Whenever someone claims it could happen. That means they are guessing and generally to prove a agenda or belief of some sorts. Yeah the world could end tomorrow too. But not likely.
You "could" get into a car accident. Does that mean you don't need to wear a seat belt?
Re: (Score:2)
You didn't learn to recognize 'weasel words' in college? You should get your money back, you learned nothing useful.
Re: (Score:2)
Today's "unhinged" will be tomorrow's mainstream commies, and you _will_ end up in a concentration camp and worked / starved to death to keep you from using fossil fuels. Never let these wack-jobs get the upper hand.