Humans Can Survive Underwater
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He admits climate change is real and we need to do something about it... but the main problem is the media, which is trying to claim climate change is real and we need to do something about it, but they are too scary about it.
He thinks it's going to go pretty smoothly building dykes to keep our cities from flooding so the media should not be making big deal out of it.
It's not a logical argument to me.
Building dykes to product numerous coastal areas may well be a good answer, but in aggregate that is an absolutely massive capital project. Media reports will obviously need to be part of that since people will need to understand why their taxes are going up and why the government is taking their land.
He also drops this doozy: "The real solution is to lift the world’s poorest out of poverty..."
Oh, OK, so it's that's simple then. /s
Frankly, I think this is just a somewhat subtler form of climate change denial. He acknowledges the problem, but then hand-waves the problem away and blames the media.
He might as well be saying we'll use the magic crystals to solve our problems.
The Deltaworks project is pretty incredible (there's a great museum here all about it). But it certainly wasn't cheap or easy.
"Though officially completed in 1997 at the cost of $7 billion, the Netherlands continues to add infrastructure to the Delta works as needed. It is estimated that it will continue to need construction to protect the area against the rising water levels caused by global warming." [1]
The Dutch public infrastructure department, the Rijkswaterstaat, is called the "Ministry of Infrastructure and Water Management". Water management is a huge continuing challenge.
Spending was up to $13 billion in 2013. Based on that, securing all the coast lines of the world to that level will cost over $10 trillion.
And I'm pretty sure by 2050 we will have spend a lot more on updating & maintaining the delta works.
So I looked it up, it is 13 billion in total or 1.4% of the yearly GDP of the Netherlands. That seems rather affordable to me.
The goal of this project was to address flooding (and is impressive in this regard), but not to solve any environmental issue and even less to address all the repercussions of global warming.
Where the point of the guy who wrote this article falls even shorter than it already is, Delta Works needs massive funding to address sea water rise caused by Global Warming as it currently can't handle current predicted scenarios.
> Oh, OK, so it's that's simple then. /s
Cheap fossil fuels since the 1800s are the major driver of all the exponential growth assumptions in economic models. That and improved technology; but the technology all required cheap energy. "Mine more fossil fuels and try to power through" is a strategy that could work. I don't think it will because I doubt we have enough fossil fuels (I'm a peak-oil-ist at heart) but the idea isn't so crazy that it can't be talked about.
It is a pretty fair thing to point out that focusing on cheap and abundant prosperity might be a better strategy than direct mitigation. I enjoy bringing up France, which has a pretty reasonable approximation of a carbon free electricity grid for military reasons; whereas the German Energiewende (bringing in solar and wind) has so far failed to meaningfully reduce carbon emissions and I think they have some sort of gas pipeline to Russia in the works.
But...
(1) How? It's not like people haven't been trying to rid the world of poverty all along. It's useless to suggest this without better solutions than have/are already being attempted.
(2) How does that solve the problems around climate change? The gap in the logic here is immense.
This just changes the subject away from climate change to something else.
(2) Wealthy people can cope with climate change; it is the poor people who will suffer. Reducing the number of poor people is an effective way of reducing the overall suffering.
> This just changes the subject away from climate change to something else.
I was quite explicit about that - the France v Germany example is a great example for saying that pro-environmental strategies have actually not had a great record for making emissions drop.
I look at https://co2.myclimate.org/en/portfolios?calculation_id=29330...
and I see that 8.4 t CO2 is about average for EU citizens and rough estimate would cost easily less than $300 USD per citizen, sorry for mixing regional numbers.
If this is accurate, then it seems the cost of doing eliminating CO2 globally equals around 6billion people * $300. $1.8 trillion dollars, that feels like an absurdly low number.
Your money means nothing without other humans to spend it with.
OTOH, one could consider revamping entirely wasteful entirely stupidly designed industrial processes in favor of ones that don't put our entire civilization at risk.
There will be no markets if civilization collapses.
Edit: removed my own judgement.
This is ridiculous.
Going crazy, whatever that means, is going to fail because it won't be possible to sustain efforts as the economy shrinks.
What we actually want to do is to pay a relatively tiny cost now to avoid a much larger cost later.
Imagine mobilizing that level of support against climate change.
My understanding of it is a bit different. He disagrees with the impact of climate change as described by mass media. He also disagrees with how the problem should be addressed.
In my opinion there is definitely a lot of hyperbole in describing climate change consequences as well as talking about what can be done to deal with it.
One example is the "green new deal" proposed by few US senators. It aims to amongst other things replace all internal combustion cars in US, replace _all_ power generation with renewables and to make _all_ buildings in US net zero emissions in next 12 years. This is clearly impossible, but it goes on, one of the many goals for those 12 years in addition to replacing all the vehicles and upgrading all buildings in US is "jobs with guaranteed living wage provided to everyone by the federal government". There are other things in there (single payer healthcare etc) that could be achieved, but by lumping them into one document with impossibilities authors ensure none of them will actually be achieved.
Bear in mind this is not a wish list, or some sort of statement of direction. That would be fine. It is fairly normal to aim high when setting overall strategies, but this proposal is something that would be put into law and would be expected to be fulfilled in 100%. If this is not the best example of applied climate change hysteria I don't know what is.
The one AOC famously supports, which I think is what people are usually referring to these days, doesn't have some of the hard provisions you're talking about.
Here's a nice rundown if you're interested: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/02/11/whats-act...
Also, it is actually an aspirational statement of direction. It's just a resolution and doesn't, e.g, change any laws or allocate any funds, etc. So I think you've got some bad information about the fundamentals of it.
(BTW, I'm not myself a supporter of the green new deal. I agree with most of the goals, but it's a marketing effort, not a plan. As such, I think is going to fail and will make it less likely the goals will be achieves or cause them to be achieved less well.)
I think this is where a lot of the pushback regarding climate change comes from. Saying "Southern Vietname will be underwater" is not the same as saying "Southern Vietnam will be below sea level". That kind of jump, when it happens over and over again, only results in people mistrusting the media (and, by proxy, "scientists").
> Building dykes to product numerous coastal areas may well be a good answer, but in aggregate that is an absolutely massive capital project. Media reports will obviously need to be part of that since people will need to understand why their taxes are going up and why the government is taking their land.
I think that this comes down to a difference between you and Lomborg's perception of how large groups of people solve problems. It's top-down/central planning vs. distributed. I think I'm usually on Lomborg's side: I expect that people will solve these problems (rising sea levels) in fits and starts, as people's lives become more and more affected. I suspect that any other approach isn't politically feasible (and is also, perhaps, undesirable). Once you acknowledge this perspective, quotes like "the real solution is to lift the world’s poorest out of poverty" start to make more sense.
I understand this perspective is dissatisfying to many people, especially scientifically-minded, highly educated people. But I don't see any way around it.
> I think that this comes down to a difference between you and Lomborg's perception of how large groups of people solve problems. It's top-down/central planning vs. distributed.
No. I don't care whether there's a top-down or bottom up solution.
My point talking about taxes and land was actually about the importance of the media in informing people about the problem. I only mentioned taxes and eminent domain because that's how large capital project usually work. If there's a bottom up way that will get the job done better, I'm all for it.
Point is, the media is still important for informing people. If they don't understand what's going on they won't have any reason to do anything. No matter how it's done, it's going to require large amounts of resources and people aren't going to expend them without a reason.
> I understand this perspective is dissatisfying...
I wouldn't say dissatisfying. It's just a meaningless approach. We have been and continue to work to eliminate poverty and I fully agree we should keep doing so. Great.
Now let's move on: how will we deal with the rising water levels around the globe? If it's build barriers, then how will that work? E.g., what will it cost? Who will do it? When do they need to start? Are there alternatives that may be cheaper or better?
Loke the marshal plan. It will create large amounts of wealth. Any time of upheaval is also a good time for wealth redistribution. All on all it might be a good thing.
Some people think that the damage to the natural world from climate change cannot be measured in financial terms...
...but if you choose to talk about costs that can be measured, what makes you think the cost of adjusting to climate change is comparable to or more than the cost of preventing it?
A long time ago, I wanted to put numbers on the externalities of a gallon of gasoline, and so I looked up an estimate of the costs of global warming (in 50-100 years) from the Natural Resources Defense Council. The amount was on the order of $3-6 per gallon. If you make the US and Venezuela pay European gas prices, it's not going to stop climate change.
Of course, in 50 years, things could be much worse than expected. But the expectations of non-deniers are what they are, so it seem necessary to engage with the question of, what do we do if internalizing the costs is not enough to change the trajectory? And what should we do?
The answer is so often "people are bad and need to radically change." The reality is that people are good and we are only capable of incremental change. This article helps show why that is likely to turn out better than alarmists claim.
A singular map and strawman-premise do not undermine millions of human hours of climate science, core samples, troves of data, etc. You believe this nonsense at our mutual peril.
The climate crisis WILL utterly destroy human civilization through an ever reducing funnel, an ever tightening noose, and we are currently in the last phase of determining the height of that curves trajectory.
There is nothing "too extreme" to attempt at this point in time. We should be prepared to spend up to 100% of our resources in fighting this existential threat. Certainly giving up fossil fuels is not "too extreme". They were due to exit-stage-left decades ago.
We have the tech, let's make it happen.
And for heavens sake, enough of this fake "moderate" fossil fuel drivel.
> There is nothing "too extreme" to attempt at this point in time. We should be prepared to spend up to 100% of our resources in fighting this existential threat. Certainly giving up fossil fuels is not "too extreme". They were due to exit-stage-left decades ago.
Ew. I did the sustainability minor with my chem e degree - so I understand the importance of action on climate change.
People like you with the hysterics and dramatic statements make everyone else roll their eyes and remember all the doomsaying articles they've been reading forever.
I think you should just leave this to the adults.
>There is nothing "too extreme" to attempt at this point in time
No, this is not the apocalypse. Aren't you concerned that an even more extreme version of yourself would do something very, very bad to many, many people for the sake of the cause? Extremism is bad.
Incredibly rapid climate change has a much different impact now that it would have 8000 years ago. By the way, the science is pretty clear that then climate change happening today is far more rapid than anything that has happened in recent geologic history.
I agree that spending 100% of our resources doesn't look to be necessary. But 5% or 10%? If this is what the science and engineering analysis tells us we should probably l do, then that seems like a rather responsible and beneficial course of action, given the known risks and the potential unknown unknowns.
But this is how things will probably work out. I don’t believe we will make any meaningful reduction in emissions over the next decades so we will deal with the consequences.
I don't think they argue against combating climate change.
Another way to put it: let's worry first about the climate change issues we cannot mitigate.
I think there is a point to be made. I'm no climate change denier. But with mitigating the effects of climate change, we are trading an up-front cost today against a benefit in the future. Both the up-front cost and the future benefit must be fairly estimated, as much as we can.
Claims like "We must cut carbon emissions to 0 or South Vietnam will be eradicated" justify a very different level, or at least destination of spending than saying "South Vietnam will need [international help] to build extensive anti-flood infrastructure". Potentially at least, I don't know the numbers.
It's the tip of the (soon no longer extant) iceberg. Flooding is the relatively easy part. Water, food and power are hard.
* Venice entered the chat *
For reference:
Dikes are not cheap to build and maintain, securing the dutch coasts cost ran up to $13 billion in 2013. That cover about 700km of coast lines & river sides.
Not sure how many kilometers of dikes will be needed, but based on http://world.bymap.org/Coastlines.html even covering 10% of the coast lines will cost more about $1 trillion.
The problem is, it assumes the prisoners can’t talk to each other and don’t have an ongoing relationship beyond the one transaction.
In fact, in general, social issues — from the personal level in up to global level - rarely, if ever, restrict he flow of information like that.”
This model is fairly popular with Tories in Canada.
Yes we have the capacity to run engineering programs that would halt the rising sea levels, we can build huge dykes, perform land reclamation, pump water out and even use the rising sea levels for energy generation.
And while we can save Manhattan and perhaps even venice this won't help Bangladesh and other poor regions which are at risk of being flooded by the rising seas destroying not only their homes but also their ecology putting their limited food supply at greater risk.
And that is a problem a distbalized Bangladesh and other poor(er) countries in South East Asia would destabilize the more established nations like India, China and Pakistan all 3 of which are nuclear powers.
A destabilized middle east and africa would spill out into Europe, a destabilized South America would spill into North America.
You can't rely on local solutions for a global crisis if you want to maintain the same quality of life you enjoy today.
Even in the current political climate which some loonies on the left would call a "fascist regime" in the US no one is going to open fire on millions of refugees that could come to the border once their homes get flooded. And the author also forgets that if we want to save New York we would likely need China to be stable and continuing providing it's manufacturing capacity to the world which means that if its neighbourhood turns into a warzone the capacity of the west to perform these amazing feats of engineering would be greatly diminished.
If anything the media portrays the wrong message, I don't think we are screwed or we have already run out of time and reached some point of no return and I don't think that we will go extinct in the next 100 years due to climate change, I don't see climate change as something we solve but as something we adapt too and maybe eventually reverse but this also something that cannot be performed on a local scale because once it gets really bad and people get desperate they'll flood you and while a dyke can hold off water it won't hold up against 50 million people wanting to get in.
> "Humans Can Survive Below Sealevel"
Actual article's point:
> An academic paper exaggerated and now we're focusing too much on avoiding greenhouse-emissions and should instead focus on protecting below-sealevel areas.
..... Weird article.
How about "Humans can survive rising sea levels"?
Climate change charities, activists etc. do a very important role, and I am very grateful to them for it, but their impact on my personal level of informed-ness is actually negative.
Part of me is hopeful that this might be right.
And another part of me is worried that this might be a overly optimistic view to make us feel better.
I think I am leaning towards the latter when the proposed solution is simply "life the world's poorest out of poverty."
Feels like "we" have wanted to do that for a long time for many reasons.
https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/economics/nat...
We can't hope that some magical technology will come and save us from ourselves. We need to act now with what we have to avoid too much damage.
A huge amount of sea level rise is locked in already; the uncertainty is about the rate of change not the inevitability of it.
But straw-man arguments that costal communities are doomed because they are built below the coming high tide levels are not much help. Yes, there is a big and demonstrated possibility to mitigate this. An honest discussion of the costs and risks and tradeoffs is merited.
This sounds simpler than reducing greenhouse gasses
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/15/venice-council...
> Veneto’s regional council rejected a plan to combat climate change minutes before its offices on the Grand Canal, in Venice, were flooded, it has emerged as the city continues to battle high water levels.
"Selective citations of the literature allow Lomborg to make statements that are correct but unrepresentative of the best, full state of environmental scientific knowledge"
"Yet his [lomborg's] critics are rarely attacking the facts in his citations per se; they fault what Lomborg does with them and, of course, his neglect of more relevant citations elsewhere."
Anyway, that's SA's side. Follow the link to find more. Caveats: this was years ago, and the quotes above are my selection, which you may consider one-sided.
Like this one?
Really, his message is, it's all going to shit, but we can survive?
* Anthropogenic global warming, overall warming of Earth's climate caused or produced by humans
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bj%C3%B8rn_Lomborg
> In January 2003, the DCSD released a ruling that sent a mixed message, finding the book to be scientifically dishonest through misrepresentation of scientific facts, but Lomborg himself not guilty due to his lack of expertise in the fields in question.
From the Wikipedia page you linked:
> He became internationally known for his best-selling and controversial book, The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001), in which he argues that many of the costly measures and actions adopted by scientists and policy makers to meet the challenges of global warming will ultimately have minimal impact on the world's rising temperature.
Misrepresenting climate science to dispute the efficacy of specific interventions is not the same as misrepresenting science to deny that climate change has human causes.
It does however mean that you should take his opinion on these matters with a grain of salt.
Please cite this.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/aug/30/bjorn-lo...
Other posts here attack the content of the post, which works better. It's probably also fair to critique the general approach if it is disingenuous in context.
I'd like to coin the term "nuance-denier" so that we can insert it jingoistically into the lexicon. It applies to anyone who is incapable of admitting that most humans don't hold a rigid set of views that can be encapsulated by pithy, pejorative labels.
Because nothing says "a rising tide floats all boats" more than our currently massively diverging have/haven't disparity. A world in which 42 individuals own as much as 3.5 billion people, in which it was 65 individuals in the same position 2 years prior doesn't sound like a world in which the authors proposed "solutions" function at all.
Maybe that's the point.
Excuse me while I pillage and lay waste. Clearly we wouldn't want to risk doing TOO MUCH to salvage what's left of the age of mammals.