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Comment by silver_silver | Hacker News Reader

It’s anxiety about tipping points more than conspiracy theories. If you look at the figures in the various scenarios without even factoring them in: hundreds of millions to billions face food and water insecurity. You may be insulated enough from the direct effects but what about what they trigger? Already even our wealthy societies are being strained by rising food prices, extreme weather, and dysfunctional migration.

We don’t know exactly what the tipping points would lead to but we do know it would be some degree of a more severe and abrupt decline across the board.

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> If you look at the figures in the various scenarios without even factoring them in: hundreds of millions to billions face food and water insecurity

Its exactly the people in the third world that don't need climate change lecture because it is absolutely needed to increase their energy and emissions output to reduce deaths.

Lots of people in Indonesia, Bangladesh, Africa, India _already die_ not due to climate change but lack of productivity.

They definitely don't want holier than though westerners to tell them to reduce their emissions as if it doesn't come at any tradeoff whatsoever.

> Already even our wealthy societies are being strained by rising food prices

False. There's no sustained rising of food prices.

> We don’t know exactly what the tipping points would lead to but we do know it would be some degree of a more severe and abrupt decline across the board.

Its convenient to be vague about consequences. Then you can use the vagueness to oppose whatever you want. Don't like something someone's making? You can just say "but we don't know exactly what the tipping point is so you are not allowed to do that thing".

Unfortunately the third world will suffer the most from climate change. They do indeed already suffer (I’m from Africa originally myself) but emissions have to be reversed, not simply cut to zero, globally to avoid that getting even worse. There would likely be a midpoint where unchecked industrialisation would increase their quality of life but it would be short-lived. Farms aren’t factories and ultimately even the most developed nations will have to reckon with their dependence on nature.

> False. There's no sustained rising of food prices.

The inflation-adjusted FAO food price index has risen by 64% since 2000. The global average temperature anomaly has risen ~50% in the same period.

> but we don't know exactly what the tipping point is

We do know almost exactly what the tipping points are and that they will make the already dire trajectory worse. The uncertainty is simply how much worse. For example, AMOC collapse would prevent much of Europe from growing enough food to sustain its population. Not an impossible problem but certainly not an easy one, especially in the context of a world already having to deal with moving fertile regions and mass migrations from North Africa and the Middle East due to drought and extreme heat.

> Unfortunately the third world will suffer the most from climate change. They do indeed already suffer (I’m from Africa originally myself) but emissions have to be reversed, not simply cut to zero, globally to avoid that getting even worse. There would likely be a midpoint where unchecked industrialisation would increase their quality of life but it would be short-lived. Farms aren’t factories and ultimately even the most developed nations will have to reckon with their dependence on nature.

This doesn't count innovation due to technology. For instance, a lot of data centres in the past like 1990's, indirectly contributed in a lot of ways in reducing poverty and deaths - improving supply chain logistics, increasing general efficiency, helping in biological and pharma science. Stopping industrialisation disallows any progress in such fields. In the last 200 years we have made progress in science and tech allowing us to fight back with the environment.

> The inflation-adjusted FAO food price index has risen by 64% since 2000.

That doesn't count income rising, acknowledging you specified inflation adjusted.

You can verify this yourself: try to ask whether the average person today can buy more food with their income or less food. The answer is unambiguously more food because Americans have much more disposable income through social programs, better wages and so on.

> We do know almost exactly what the tipping points are and that they will make the already dire trajectory worse. The uncertainty is simply how much worse.

Source? Please show any source that tells us something like: this much emissions causes this much death in the future with relative confidence. And the tipping point must map to some meaningful tipping point where death rate increases by a big amount.

The only few sources I can see tell me that even if we don't reduce emissions, even if we stall scientific progress we still increase the annual death rate by 2%. This puts us still much much better in the future than now because of poorer countries catching up. So even in this bad case scenario, we are still better off in the future than today.

https://static1.squarespace.com/static/59bf26af29f187c6f3a9f...

Most conspiracy theories think food grows in supermarkets and because they have a job which pays them a good global income they can just pay a bit more.

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