Go read an actual IPCC report rather than breathless press releases by greenpeace.
"Theoretical and climate model studies suggest that, in a climate that is warming due to increasing greenhouse gases, a greater increase is expected in extreme precipitation, as compared to the mean. Hence, anthropogenic influence may be easier to detect in extreme precipitation than in the mean. This is because extreme precipitation is controlled by the availability of water vapour, while mean precipitation is controlled by the ability of the atmosphere to radiate long-wave energy (released as latent heat by condensation) to space, and the latter is restricted by increasing greenhouse gases." --- http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/technical-papers/ccw/chapter2.pdf
> Might it not lead to more rain in some drought-stricken places and less rain in some rainy places?
Yes, in fact some IPCC analysis suggests that North America will see e.g., increased crop variety and yields by 2080, and also e.g., a 40% decrease in Texan farmers' net income and more agricultural disease.
But although climate change isn't uniformly and strictly bad news, it is likely that some places will see catastrophic effects and that in aggregate the changes will be more problematic than beneficial for humans.
For example, consider the Maldives, with 300,000 people making about $5k/year. Relocating every person in the Maldives to the US would probably be cheaper than most climate change solutions. This would also quadruple the standard of living of the average Maldivian, provided their income increases to the US poverty line.
You're right that it would increase their incomes. But standard of living is much more than income...
-The poster hadn't considered that argument
-The poster doesn't want to have kids
-The poster will have a finite number of descendants
-The poster's concern for the standard of living of his distant descendants diminish according to distance (for instance, he probably cares a great deal for his children and a similar amount for his grandchildren, but by the time you're talking great-great-grandchildren his empathy has diminished significantly)
-The poster's descendants will not want share his fondness for the Maldives
-The poster's descendants will move away from the Maldives for other reasons
I'm sure you can think of a half dozen other alternatives if you think for a minute.
2. Same as barren.
3. Impossible to know, and under any plausible reckoning of improvement, insufficient to make activation costs predominate.
4. Same as doesn't care.
5. Unlikely; goes against millennia of empirical evidence that people love where they live (nowadays we call that 'patriotism')
6. A fully general counterargument (http://wiki.lesswrong.com/wiki/Fully_general_counterargument). You can use that to argue against anything: 'You should move away from North Korea', 'Why, my descendants might move away into it for other reasons!'; 'You shouldn't move away from North Korea, then', 'Why, my descendants might then move away elsewhere for other reasons!'
What makes you think people consciously consider it? Most of them just say "I don't feel like moving", or "I'm too lazy". Also, you missed the point of the "fully general counterargument". The point is that if your descendants find it better to be somewhere else later - well, they're fully capable of moving themselves.
5 (his children may not be fond of the Maldives): You just argued that children are likely to have a fondness for wherever they are born. If true, this invalidates the argument for moving at all: whether his descendants love the Maldives or America will make for no gain at all.
6. (children may move away from Maldives): Actually, given the limited economic and educational opportunities of the Maldives, there's likely to be a fairly high probability of one's children moving. Once we use this probability to work out an EV for "number of descendants resident in the Maldives", or even apply the probability recursively to work out a proportion of descendants resident in the Maldives over an infinite number of generations, your infinity argument is pretty well refuted.
We should definitely use that as the solution to climate change.
> For example, consider the Maldives, with 300,000 people making about $5k/year.
The sea level of the Maldives fell by more than 20cm since the 70ies. If the worst of the IPCC predictions come to pass, then the Maldives will still be better of in 2100 than in 1970.
Here is a reference - but you can find many more using Google:
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2...
Some actual IPCC reports are available from [1] and [2]. They describe observations of "The atmospheric concentration of CO2 and CH4 in 2005 exceeds by far the natural range of the last 650,000 years," "wide-spread melting of ice margins [...] with implications for sea level rise," and increased frequency of extreme precipitation events. They predict "irreversible changes in climate and ocean chemistry" and "rapid and large changes of the statistics of extreme events."
Droughts, floods, cyclones, and ecological disruptions all threaten human life. The IPCC data and reports suggest that these and other adverse events have increased in frequency and severity, that human activity had a causal role, that things will probably get worse, and that our future behavior matters.
Not that someone's death is the only possible justification for international cooperation in limiting pollution.
[1] http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_and_da... [2] http://www.ipcc.ch/presentations_and_speeches/presentations_...
I don't consider requiring a few million people to relocate 100 meters inland over 100 years (or stay put and build landfill) to be catastrophic. Nor do I consider a few more hurricanes to be catastrophic -- we handle hurricanes adequately, and as our economy grows, handling them will become even cheaper (relative to our wealth). Caribbean nations will handle them adequately as well once they become richer.
Al Gore's and Greenpeace's dire predictions of the death of humanity are simply way outside the scientific consensus.
Incidentally, the response of climate to CO2 is logarithmic -- i.e., if doubling CO2 increases climate by 1 degree, then an eight-fold increase in CO2 will increase climate by 3 degrees (not 8). (This is all to leading order, of course.) Big increases are only marginally worse than small ones.
Reference? I don't see how that can be the case at all. The basic physics of radiation balance have no logarithms, and the naive expectation would be that the amount of escaping radiation depend exponentially on the CO2 column density.
You are referring to Beer's law, which describes radiation transmission at a single wavelength. However consider its meaning for the broad absorption band of CO2, whose graph is the shape of a wide lump with low shoulders. For parts of the band above some threshold, exponential absorption will have eliminated almost all the radiation, and further increase in concentration will not change this: you cannot go below zero. Parts of the band below that threshold will absorb very little radiation, and increasing the concentration will change this very little: double almost zero is still almost zero. Concentration change only makes a practical difference at the edges of the band, and the CO2 band's shoulders are so steep that even drastic concentration changes only make for small growth in the width of the total absorption band.
P.S. MODTRAN assumes a nonmoving atmosphere, so its temperature predictions are not to be believed. The actual atmosphere experiences stronger vertical convection as ground temperature rises, which in turn produces secondary effects on vegetation, evaporation, and clouds that affects temperature. Predicting the net effect on temperature requires an accurate biological/meteorological simulation. And those are mighty thin on the ground.
P.P.S. Convection effects are why greenhouses actually get hot: the glass obstructs natural convection from cooling the ground. Calling radiation effects the "greenhouse effect" is scientific fraud.
All the carbon will be burnt -- count on it. Plan accordingly.