Why I Believe Climate Change Is Not the End of the World | Hacker News Reader

Why I Believe Climate Change Is Not the End of the World

quillette.com

10 pointsvimy6 comments

TL;DR:

Some people are making claims that "the world is going to end in twelve years" or something, but it isn't. Lots of stuff about the author's experiences traveling in the Congo even though most of it isn't that relevant to the questions of climate or its effects. We've got other problems the author cares more about than the climate. Human ability to adapt might surpass the effects of the change. A couple of weird and IMO not very good arguments about volcanoes and asteroids being threats to humanity, and of course the coronavirus epidemic which apparently somehow means we should care less about climate change. People are getting depressed and anxious about climate change, so according to the author, we should worry about it less.

Sorry, but I don't think the article really makes good arguments. Taking someone's claim that the world is ending in twelve years (or something similar), making the obvious observation that that's not true, and thus implying that climate "alarmism" is wrong is pretty much a strawman argument.

Pointing out that many natural disasters aren't necessarily a result of climate change (or at least it's hard to tell how much of a connection there is) is valid and potentially valuable. It would be better and easier to take as a non-motivated argument if the general tone of the piece weren't discounting the effects of climate change.

And yes, people in the Congo probably are worrying more about their immediate survival and coping than about climate, and factors other than climate change quite possibly have a greater effect on their lives. That doesn't stop climate change from being an issue; it just means that people whose daily life is mostly about survival have other issues that are even more critical to them.

The paragraph about other non-climate threats to humanity ("Consider the other threats humankind has recently been forced to cope with. ...") is somehow so absurd and irrelevant that I have no idea why someone putting the thought and effort into writing a lengthy article would include it.

Additionally, the article is entirely focused on humanity and doesn't touch on the effects of climate change on other animal life at all. That's a possible value choice to make, but effectively saying that us massively disrupting the ecosystem is fine because we ourselves will somehow be able to manage falls a bit short of a responsible philosophy in my books. The lack of any focus on other life would make it very difficult for me to agree with the article's thesis even if it successfully argued that it were in our best interest to not worry about the climate as much.

Maybe I live in a different information media bubble but, before the pandemic, the Climate Change apocalypse dominated the public discussions.

Greta and her alarmism was given a lot of airtime. Politicians used the alarmism to get people behind their plan.

The main point of the article is to disprove the excessive alarmism. I'm glad it wasn't needed in your case but people elsewhere have been bombarded with it for years.

I just found my mostly typed-out comment from yesterday in a forgotten tab and figured that I might as well finish and submit it, but it looks like you already made a lot of the same points.

I'm left wondering if the 'article'/excerpt is just not that compelling or if I'm simply not in its target audience. In the latter scenario, what might characterize those who would find it convincing?

It's hard for me to tell exactly what makes me feel about it the way I do.

Maybe the message is actually benign but the amount of denialist crap that I've seen in the past makes me react to it strongly as something similar and untrustworthy. Maybe it's that many of the the arguments it presents aren't, at least when picked apart analytically one by one, that good [0]. Maybe it's that parts of it feel more like rhetoric than actual arguments, and rhetoric always makes me a little uneasy.

Your other comment treats the excerpt somewhat more generously than my perhaps cynical gut reaction was, probably for the better.

[0] in the form they are presented in the excerpt; it's a good point that it's not originally a full standalone article

I was trying to be as even-handed as possible, but I'm not sure the cynical reaction isn't the right one. The reliance on rhetoric, as you point out, seems unnecessary for a topic that should be dealt with through relatively uncontroversial facts and figures. Whatever the case, the 'article' left a weird taste in my mouth.

This is an excerpt from Michael Shellenberger's latest book, which I haven't read and can't assess based on the linked content alone.

As for that content...

Shellenberger's central claim rings true - no, we're not all going to spontaneously combust (or something) in 2030 if we haven't met emissions reduction goals by that time. Taken at face value, though, it seems like any obvious, even unnecessary point - who actually thinks the world will end in a decade? He cites AOC (the US politician) being recorded as saying, "The world is going to end in twelve years if we don't address climate change" and the existence of Extinction Rebellion movement as proof that some people really do believe the apocalypse is nigh. The problems with this argument are that:

  * a.) AOC is a politician who employed hyperbole for the sake of political rhetoric; she doesn't actually think the world is 'ending.'
  
  * b.) Notwithstanding the anecdote, featuring an Extinction Rebellion member, included in the article, the Extinction Rebellion (so named in response to the so-called sixth mass extinction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction)) doesn't exist because its members think they will be dead in ten years.

Although he didn't exactly extend the same level of good faith to those mentioned above, I'll assume that Shellenberger's goal in writing this 'article' was to reduce the anxiety of those harboring excessive fears regarding climate change (rather than to 'prove' an obvious fact that nearly everyone already believes). I'll also assume that his target audience is the broader climate movement, rather than climate deniers looking for any 'evidence' they can use to bolster their position.

Along those lines, he makes some reasonable points:

  * Those living in wealthy, stable nations have less to fear from climate change than the less fortunate

  * Increased levels of population and development make present-day natural disasters more costly than past disasters, regardless of any changes in the frequency or intensity of natural disasters (he denies any such changes, FWIW)

  * The global poor are more concerned with just getting by than the long-term implications of climate change (he uses the example of Bernadette, a Congolese subsistence farmer, to make this point)

The article also includes some errors, omissions, or irrelevant claims that weaken his argument (IMHO):
* Despite the fact that climate dynamics are nonlinear, he implies that current impacts (or lack thereof) show that projections of future impacts are exaggerated (here he's contradicted by the same IPCC reports he cites throughout the piece) * He seems to claim, without context or justification, that economic growth is *the* solution to Bernadette's problems, but fails to elaborate in any way (Why hasn't the status quo produced an outcome where she has economic stability, what in the DRC does he expect to change, how does economic growth relate to climate change and/or the environment, could the earth support 8 billion people with American levels of consumption, why is he pushing economic growth in an article about the climate (non)apocalypse?) * He appears to view climate change as if it exists in a vacuum, not as one component of a complex system that's linked to other complex systems (while many people concerned with climate change are also concerned with related environmental issues such as biodiversity loss, resource depletion, pollution, water scarcity, etc., the article only seems to address the increase in global temperature due to the buildup of greenhouse gases)
Overall, I would agree with the article's, perhaps superficial, message that (some) people should be less anxious about climate change, but found this book excerpt otherwise unconvincing. It's mix of anecdotes, cherry-picked data-sources, and - when convenient - inconsistent nods to the scientific consensus. Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising - it's essentially an opinion piece, not a lit. review, but I'd like to expect more of supposedly science-based nonfiction. This excerpt felt a bit like a vessel for (at least what I assume is) the author's ideological prejudices, as opposed to a dispassionate look at a specific topic. Distilled down to its most basic claims, it seems to be advocating reduced concern for the climate (and environment, by extension - I guess?) and an increased focus on economic growth. One can certainly make arguments for those priorities, but this excerpt really didn't do that. It just threw them into the mix after making a completely different argument. Maybe I'm reading too much into it, or perhaps the full book would address some of these deficiencies, but I'm not left with the impression that taking the effort to find out would be worthwhile.

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