Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

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Even many on the left don’t agree that climate change is an “existential threat.” https://www.aei.org/economics/the-case-for-one-billion-ameri...

“Science” does not agree that climate change is an “existential threat.” https://www.mcall.com/opinion/mc-opi-climate-change-existent...

> Such talk has scared many young people. Shortly after the 2016 presidential election, a young Clinton volunteer named Zach was upset the Democrats failed to beat Trump. According to cbsnews.com, at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee, Zach yelled at a senior official: “You and your friends will die of old age and I’m going to die from climate change. You and your friends let this happen, which is going to cut 40 years off my life expectancy.”

> Do scientists agree with Zach? The federal government’s Fourth National Climate Assessment was released last November. Hundreds of scientists from 13 government agencies compiled the 1,500-page report. It finds no existential threat from climate change. Zach is likely to have a long life.

Fires, hurricanes, extreme heat, and drought are made more frequent & severe by climate change, and they certainly kill people. Climate change also disrupts food systems and will cause civil war and mass migrations. Millions will need to migrate just from coastal flooding, which I'd imagine will cause plenty of geopolitical strife and ultimately lead to many deaths.

"Existential threat" in my mind means humanity itself is threatened. The species will likely survive but millions if not billions will die due to climate change.

Current projections of the effect of an RCP 8.5 scenario (a “do nothing” approach) suggest severe impacts to the Florida and gulf coasts, creating significant migrations inland. But the projected GDP hit will be an estimated 5%—i.e. losing a few years of growth.

It will be bad and disruptive and many people will die. But based on what we know about the “science” it’s not going to be “existential.” For example the wildfires on the west coast killed 35-40 people. We could have a dozen of those a year and it wouldn’t threaten the existence of humanity or really even civilization as we know it.

> more frequent & severe

If you don't quantify that, it's meaningless in relation to somebody's life expectancy.

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