I Stopped Being a Climate Catastrophist

https://www.breakthroughjournal.org/p/why-i-stopped-being-a-climate-catastrophist

by paulpauper • 9 months ago

79 108 9 months ago

MangoToupe2• 9 months ago

Your reaction doesn't matter; only the collective response does. It seems there is little appetite to doubt nationalism, and immense optimism for our ability to correct later.

zahlman2• 9 months ago

What has that got to do with TFA?

MangoToupe2• 9 months ago

Well, your reaction does not matter (and neither does bill gates'); only the collective response does. The

Lucky for your conscience the world doesn't give a shit about global warming, nor your realization that you can't do anything about it

Of course the world is fucked

delichon2• 9 months ago

This rhymes with https://www.gatesnotes.com/three-tough-truths-about-climate.

epistasis9• 9 months ago

I see very little agreement in any way with Bill Gates is talking about.

In fact I suspect that Gates would be dismissed as too woke for making this one of his main points:

But we can’t cut funding for health and development—programs that help people stay resilient in the face of climate change—to do it.
It’s time to put human welfare at the center of our climate strategies, which includes reducing the Green Premium to zero and improving agriculture and health in poor countries.

This is just rehashed Green New Deal language for the global stage. (Something I fully support!!)

delichon2• 9 months ago

They're agreeing that climate change is serious but not necessarily civilization ending:

  Nordhous: "The amount of warming that is conceivable … is not remotely consistent with the sorts of catastrophic outcomes … where tens or hundreds of million, perhaps even billions of lives were at stake."

  Gates: "Although climate change will have serious consequences — particularly for people in the poorest countries — it will not lead to humanity’s demise."

quamserena• 9 months ago

Anyone else notice the obvious misspelling of “climate” in the AI-generated hero image?

lynndotpy3• 9 months ago

It's pretty amazing how much we've lowered our collective standards for article quality since the advent of AI generation. (Not just here, but everywhere). It's not like it's a rote spelling mistake deep in the article, the spelling mistake is the very first thing you see.

Why would a serious author go with this image? Just a few years ago, misspelling "climate" and having nonsensical political cartoon to headline your article would have just been disqualifying.

uvaursi• 9 months ago

Whereas before the air of sophistication conned you into thinking the authors knew what they were talking about, it took AI slop for you to see how bad things really are.

Queue the “always have been” meme.

vunderba• 9 months ago

Wow, that is a terrible image (yellow tinge indicative of gpt-image-1, spelling errors). I don't mind generative images being used in articles, provided that they:

A. Have some relevance to the actual content.

B. Don't exhibit glaringly obvious AI flaws (polydactyly, faces like melted wax candles, etc.).

It's amazing how little time people take to vet images that are intended to be the first thing viewers will see.

Reminds me of the image attached to Karpathy's (one of the founding members of OpenAI) Twitter post on founding an education AI lab:

https://x.com/karpathy/status/1813263734707790301

dmart• 9 months ago

When I see an AI-generated hero image, I close the tab. It’s an excellent heuristic for quality.

mikestew• 9 months ago

It’s the only thing I saw before I closed the browser tab. If you’re going to use AI to generate an the very first things reader sees, proofread the damned thing so it doesn’t come off as amateurish.

claytongulick2• 9 months ago

I hope that we see more measured, objective articles like this. It's been pretty frustrating as someone on the sidelines looking in, the degree of panic and emotion attached to the climate stuff, that has always seemed to be out of scale with the actual effects to me.

I'm ~50, and my whole life, back to the 80's, there have been these sort of breathless extreme articles about the existential threat that climate poses. I remember, as a kid, it was global cooling, and we were all going to have to deal with an ice age, which terrified me.

Then it was global warming, and the "tipping point" and hawaii and all of our coastal cities were going to be under water within 5 years.

Then it was "climate change" which was poorly defined to me, but humans were definitely to blame, and causing hurricanes and destroying the planet - even though when I bothered to look at the actual data, the rate of hurricanes and other events had actually decreased.

I've read some super compelling articles from what I'll call "measured environmentalists" that argue persuasively that to do the most good for people, we should shift our focus to immediate harms that we can actually control well - things like malaria, and reliable clean water and heating, that would have a far greater impact for tens of millions of people than something nebulous like carbon credits.

I'm far from an expert on this stuff, I just wish that the conversation (as with so many things) could have less yelling, and more considered thoughtful discussion. This article, and Gates' seem to be a great start.

abdullahkhalids3• 9 months ago

An article talking about a complex system [1] (the Earth's climate system coupled to human industrial/farming systems) with few hard numbers, no mathematical models and graphs of their behavior, and no links to any such discussions, is not objective in any sense of the word. It's all the author's uncited subjective views.

This is the kind of stuff one should take in from one ear, and let it out through the other ear without letting it touch the brain.

[1] complexity in the sense of mathematics.

claytongulick2• 9 months ago

It sort of depends on the expertise of the author, right? In this case, it seems like an actual climate scientist that has moderated his opinion over time, at least that was my takeaway.

That makes it at least as valuable to me as any given "we're all going to die" article that pops up endlessly in these kinds of discussions.

I agree though, that a big problem with these conversations is dealing with complex systems, small signals and potentially large impacts and communicating all that in an effective way.

Most people (myself included) are simply not equipped to understand the details, so we rely on others to explain it to us.

My point was just that I enjoy a more balanced take on the issue.

JohnMakin5• 9 months ago

What is this author smoking? "2 to 3 feet" of sea level rise is still absolutely catastrophic and is hand waved away in one sentence. 5 degrees in 50 years? We've already gained about 1 degree in the last 20 years alone - with no signs of slowing down. If it's ackshually 5 degrees in 75 years, what even is the point of making a point about that? We're reaching several ecological tipping points. We're in a mass extinction. What in the everloving hell is this? Have we gone full "don't look up" with this now?

epistasis9• 9 months ago

I think the problem is that "catastrophic" is not well-defined. Will we all be back to caves and sticks? No. Will there be trillions of dollars of damages and massive societal upheaval from massive migrations of people? Yes. Will a billion people die? Probably not, unless a war breaks out and leads to nuclear destruction.

I would consider all of these to be "catastrophic" but some may not consider migrations + damagaes to be "catastrophic."

lynndotpy3• 9 months ago

Well, one plane crashing or one building falling, destroying something valuable and killing "only" a few dozen people is considered a catastrophe. I think we can say the bar for "catastrophe" is lower than that for "apocalypse".

The higher global average temperatures alone are already a yearly catastrophe, by this standard.

jsbisviewtiful3• 9 months ago

Will a billion people die? Probably not

Really underestimating the amount of deaths that will occur when our food production systems start collapsing.

gmuslera• 9 months ago

We have a working system. That's why our world's population is so large. And it improved over time, as in more efficient ways to grow food, more productivity, the green revolution, to feed more, then roads/cities/buildings tied to single spots improving efficiency, giving safe housing to billions, mass transport and global logistics.

So what will happen if that gets disrupted? And badly disrupted, while at it. And while that is happening, multiple other things pile up in different ways everywhere?

Thats the danger. You don't die from climate change. You may occasionally die from increasingly frequent extreme weather, a flood because rains, some dam break, extended forest fires and so on. But that is not a single catastrophic event that kill billions. What will kill billions are losing food security in big scale, no safe/climate controlled place to live, violence and wars, widespread diseases and no way to help. In some years to decades millions to billions may die by that combination of factors.

So no, it wont be a single day, sudden event that will kill billions. Is the breakup of the system that holds it together. Agriculture needs a stable climate, megacities need food, the economic system depend on more things, and everything else is packed together. And the first wave of deaths will be just the start.

xtiansimon• 9 months ago

“…some may not consider migrations + damagaes to be ‘catastrophic.’”

I think you’re showing a lack of imagination. The COVID shutdown was not that long ago. People lost their minds when they were asked to wear a mask in public.

All you need to do to make a “catastrophe” is imagine the trauma response played out over shorter and shorter time periods.

Now take the speed of natural disasters measured over hours and days. Recovery time over months and years.

Now pile multiple such events back to back and dispersed across the nation.

You will have a Tipping Point where public opinion and suffering overwhelm any attempts by government to restore order with a speech.

Finally, Marshal Law and empty stores.

There you go. Have a nice day.

asacrowflies6• 9 months ago

Don't forget most animal like lions tigers and bears oh my! Becoming as mythical as a dragon or fairy.... The theft from future generation and children is immeasurable imo

terminalshort• 9 months ago

Sea level has risen 1 foot since 1800 and nobody noticed. 2 to 3 feet isn't catastrophic. Nobody credible claims temperatures will rise 50 degrees in 50 years.

soco• 9 months ago

Nobody will notice 1m/3ft rise, except the whole Oceania disappearing, and also Florida getting basically inhabitable, and... details, details.

soVeryTired4• 9 months ago

A metre of sea-level rise is painful for a rural cottage by the sea. But if you're in a city - particularly a wealthy city - it's something that can be engineered around.

An expensive liability? Definitely. A civilization or nation ending event? Unlikely.

JohnMakin5• 9 months ago

besides the fact that 40% of the world's population lives near the coast - and that 2-3 feet of sea level rise is not a uniform "the tide used to be 8 feet, now it's 11 feet" - Entire islands in the pacific will disappear - How do you think global trade works? What do you think happens to ports? AMOC collapsing (a byproduct of sea level rise) will have profound effects on climate, despite this author claiming without any evidence whatsoever that "actually it isn't a big deal."

jmclnx3• 9 months ago

And how will these engineered workarounds be paid for ? It is known workarounds will cost trillions today, NYC alone could cost $1T+. And these workarounds should have been started 5 years ago when it became very clear we will never get off fossil fuels.

I fully expect no workarounds will be done just like Climate Change Mitigations. Getting off fossil fuels should have been seriously started 30 years ago, and maybe even 50 years ago. Instead the politicians have been adding hot air talking and fighting instead of doing real work.

We are now seeing this repeat with "engineered workarounds", no one wants to pay for it, so yes I call BS on the article.

All I can say is I feel real bad the past generations did nothing to really reverse CC, people being born now are looking at a very bleak future.

abdullahkhalids3• 9 months ago

Canada, this year committed to spending $3.9 billion dollars to hopefully have just completed plans for a high-speed train line in six years [1]! The number of years and dollars to actually build the line are unknown at the moment. This is a project that has humongous potential economic upside.

Would Canada be able to build a seawall to protect Vancouver? I am not sure.

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-announces-high-spee...

tim3333• 9 months ago

Fun fact - sea level rose 120m since 20,000 years ago but people seem to have largely not noticed. If you don't have large buildings and planning laws you could just move your shack a few yards inland.

metalman• 9 months ago

So after many decades of wildly under estimating the rate of climate change, the same people in the same institutions, answering to the same money, have it sussed out? This simple fact that ALL global shipping happens at sea level, and ALL shipping infrastructue is designed and built to operate in a rarrow range, and that this whole edifice, minutly complicated, can be adjusted continiously along with the million miles of coastal roads and bridges. ?Londan just walled off, all of NYC's wharfs jacked up a bit, sure, sure, whats a few dozen cubic miles of equipment refit worth anyway, phffff

delayedrapids• 9 months ago

Why not address the actual points he is making? He dramatically screwed up his forecasts of both human population growth rate and technological advancement rate.

These underlying assumptions being incorrect are the reason climate alarmist move the goal posts every year.

epistasis9• 9 months ago

I think this mostly points to us not taking his opinion seriously on the matter.

Most others in the climate science debate have been far more realistic and measured. Similarly, I tend to ignore everything from David Wallace-Wells, another person who has written a ton on climate but from a very different political perspective, who has also been quite wrong.

Xorakios• 9 months ago

It's closer 1 one degree in the last 120 years, than 20, for a global average, though polar areas are bearing more of the brunt.

Unless AMOC collapses and we foolishly trip into another glacial period, the 200ft increase in sea level is inevitable in the next thousand years, but totally manageable for the continents. It's the oceanic mountaintops, aka, low level islands, and coastal cities that are at risk. Most of those cities are already filled with happy rich people who will have been long gone decades, or even centuries before Florida and Bangladesh are submerged and Russia, Australia and Canada are booming with happy with abundant rainfall, crops and awesome weather.

It just seems like focusing on ameliorating pain and focusing on the making the inevitable a better outcome is the most important focus for the next few decades.

gitaarik• 9 months ago

Earth's climate always changes over time, it's not unusual, although not always the best for us.

What causes this climate change, how much infuence humans have on it, and how much we could possibly do about it is unclear.

That's not a reason to not do anything about it, but there's also no reason to be super intense about it.

defrost3• 9 months ago

Earth's climate always changes over time, it's not unusual, although not always the best for us.

Earth's climate has been stable during the rise of human civilisation. It has changed more in the past 100 years than in the past 200,000.

It's true it's changed often over the course of the 4 billion year history of the pkanet. It's not true to claim it's fluctuated wildly over the course of human civilisation.

What causes this climate change, how much infuence humans have on it, and how much we could possibly do about it is unclear.

False.

It's clear the cause is the increased insulation factor of the atmosphere. It's clear this change has been in the majority due to human activity dragging up millions of years worth of past captured C02 via fossil fuel extraction.

That's not a reason to not do anything about it,

Naturally, because as stated it is false to claim the cause is unclear.

but there's also no reason to be super intense about it.

Sure. It's true that no one alive today in a G20 non equatorial country need fuss much about it - all the real serious consequence will fall after their lives have passed.

kcplate3• 9 months ago

Not sure that just providing climate alarmist talking points is going to be a convincing counter to a climate alarmist who is now a climate pragmatist and provides some interesting reasons why they switched.

How about explaining why he is wrong? Don’t just respond with incredulousness and generalizations and assumptions.

JohnMakin5• 9 months ago

He’s literally just giving his opinion. There’s nothing to argue against. He doesn’t provide much if any evidence for his claims and heavily relies on his “authority” on the subject to present them. Climate science largely disagrees.

One of the funnier points in this word salad is when he casually dismisses AMOC collapse without giving any real reason why then “trust me bro.”

What pragmatism?

cholantesh• 9 months ago

It's libertarian woo; David D. Friedman even makes an appearance in the comments.

soVeryTired4• 9 months ago

He's comparing AGW, which drives a trend, with weather-based events, which are noise around the trend. He conveniently cuts his analysis off at the year 2100, by which we'll all probably be dead. But he's probably right that the trend itself doesn't cause insurmountable problems by that point.

But what about the year 2200, or 2300? At three degrees warming per century, the earth looks like a pretty hostile place to live in a few centuries.

"A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they will never sit", and all that...

Daishiman5• 9 months ago

His idea of it being "not insurmountable" is essentially us not starving to death in a mass scale.

I care, in my comfortable life as an office worker, about the fact that chocolate, coffee, and wine will become luxuries as yields and quality drastically drop off.

I care about the fact that many places I visit frequently will need A/C to be _survivable_.

Those are not civilization-ending events but the hubris you need to have to just hand-wave this away are beyond my understanding.

mike_hearn• 9 months ago

It's irrelevant beyond that point and possibly much earlier because the forcing effect of CO2 saturates logarithmically, it's not linear.

jay_kyburz• 9 months ago

As a layperson, I read that 2024 was the hottest on record, and I see charts that go up. I have no reason to believe that the charts will go down. I don't care if its 3 deg by the end of the century or 5 deg. But what about the century after that, or by 3000.

I'm not so concerned about disasters or economic impacts, I just have a deep moral belief that we should leave our environment the same as when we entered it. We know that fossil fuels release pollution that we have no technology to clean up. We we should not be using it. It's not rocket science.

Admittedly, it makes no rational sense go without today so that future humans can experience the earth in the same way I have. I understand why many people dismiss risks of things unlikely to effect them or their children, but to me to feels wrong, and I would like to have as little impact on the climate as I can.

https://wmo.int/news/media-centre/wmo-confirms-2024-warmest-...

energy1232• 9 months ago

The moral case is really for the billions of people near the equator who cannot afford for temperatures to go up much more. It's too hot there already. We are making their countries insufferable to live in and we aren't compensating them for it. It's a travesty.

tuatoru3• 9 months ago

They are getting cheap electricity from PV and batteries and cheap air conditioners to run on the electricity.

tuatoru3• 9 months ago

If there is any technological progress, people in 3000 will be so much wealthier than we are today that fixing any problems arising from climate change will be trivially easy for them.

That is, if there are any people in 3000. Nuclear war is still the number one problem. AI is a candidate for number two right now; the next decade should clarify things.

kcplate3• 9 months ago

We know that fossil fuels release pollution that we have no technology to clean up. We we should not be using it.

The irony is that without them, you (wherever you are) and I (wherever I am) could not be trading messages. Every bit you send and every pixel lit has a fossil fuel cost associated with it.

Our world 100% runs on fossil fuels and right now there is no alternative that rids us of them that can be made without them. No replacement technology can be developed that won’t employ fossil fuels even further to excess in its creation. So “not using it” is not an option. Cutting back is not an option. The only way to replace them is to extract, refine, and burn more and hopefully that investment can be the one that gets us the returns we need to hopefully one day eliminate our dependency.

asacrowflies6• 9 months ago

The long term like the year 3000 is indeed absolutely catastrophic ...

Holocene extinction - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

davebranton• 9 months ago

I stopped reading at the AI image at the top of the page. The comments here suggest I was right to.

nh23423fefe• 9 months ago

CLMATE

RickJWagner2• 9 months ago

Bill Gates opened the floodgates.

After 25 years of dire, ‘existential’ warnings, the political messaging is beginning to taper off and moderate.

It’s a necessary step. If you tell people the worlds about to end for too long, you lose credibility with all but the true believers.

Apologies are due to everyone that was fried on social media for suggesting things were not as bad as described. Anyone not fully radicalized was declared a ‘denier’ and accused of being ignorant about the overwhelming science.

It seems the people who acknowledged the climate was changing, but did not consider it an immediate, existential threat now have the high scientific ground. It seems possible they’ll keep it.

anon7000• 9 months ago

People just aren’t equipped to think about it on the right scale.

Experts have not been suggesting that a catastrophe will wipe humans from the planet within the next handful of years. They have been suggesting that our trends are deeply unsustainable for the planet. And the effects of screwing with our planet will easily be catastrophic in many years if trends continue.

So yes, urgent action would be necessary to get the trends to be more manageable. But because monkey brain doesn’t see an immediate threat, monkey brain calls climate scientists liars for some reason. We have these “temperature targets” not because the world instantly ends once we hit however many degrees of warming, but because we know the impact of that much change will be more drastic over the following decades. Monkeybrain just doesn’t know how to prioritize that threat without making people afraid of it.

asacrowflies6• 9 months ago

Just because humans are dumb especially things on this time scale. Does not make the fools and deniers any less deplorable....

Holocene extinction - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

You all call yourself pragmatist but us doomers actually seem to be the only ones who want any of humanity to survive at all ....

tuatoru3• 9 months ago

Everyone is a climate skeptic.

"To know, and not yet to do, is not to know" - Aristotle.

Everyone still flies on planes. Ceasing burning kerosene is the easiest possible thing you could do to reduce your climate impact, but no-one does it.

Everyone hates being called out on it, but it is true. No-one really cares, because no-one is prepared to make a socially costly signal, costly in prestige or relationships or group membership. It's all posturing.

seba_dos1• 9 months ago

Speak for yourself. I can count the times I flied in my whole life on one hand, and I have never flied domestically. It's not some unachievable ideal, and majority != everyone.

tim3333• 9 months ago

It's a funny business. I'm a bit skeptical how much of a problem it will be but am up for fixing things. But me not flying will make no difference. The kind of thing that could is a global carbon tax but hardly anyone seems up for that.

incomingpain2• 9 months ago

Where I live in Canada we have a humid continental climate. Climate change is a fact; and lets even say worst case scenario happens. We become a humid subtropical climate. Northern Canada is subarctic and they will become humid continental.

I look at these 'climates changing" and see absolutely no problem at all. Looks like an improvement to me. How can we go about speeding up this process?

asacrowflies6• 9 months ago

You have to be supremely ignorant... Bordering on flat earther or evolution denial/young earth creationist... To believe this will work out like that..... This won't be a nice change of pace for your climate. It will be a mass extinction even humans have never experienced. It's obscene even. And this language of 'catastrophism' literally sounds like woo woo therapy speak by unscientific fools. Calling it not a "catastrophy' will be looked at as immoral as slavery in the future generation imo.

Holocene extinction - Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

incomingpain2• 9 months ago

You have to be supremely ignorant... Bordering on flat earther or evolution denial/young earth creationist... To believe this will work out like that.....

Great place to start with flames.

This won't be a nice change of pace for your climate. It will be a mass extinction even humans have never experienced. It's obscene even.

The science clearly says that isn't the case at all. Feel free to reference IPCC RCP8.5 scenarios where we magically find extremely more fossil fuels and burn those as well. No extinction is expected even in those scenarios.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene#Climate

The eocene was approximately 14celcius warmer than it is today and life thrived.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Interglacial

During the last spike, the eemian, it was about 2 celcius warmer than today. Roughly 100,000 years ago, and that's roughly all we do expect to happen now. Life was thriving.

more_corn• 9 months ago

One known tactic by climate denialists is to create a feeling of despair. If nothing can help, nothing must be done.

asacrowflies6• 9 months ago

What pisses me off about these people and the comments is the shear hubris and ONLY thinking about humans survival.... And not the rest of the biosphere ...... If our children have to live in habitats like LITERAL SPACESHIPS to survive and will never experience grass...or a dragonfly or bee landing on them. Or lady bugs...or horses or elephants or whales etcetcetc. ... To have these relegated to the same mythical category as a dragon or unicorn.... Is so unconscionable I don't understand how all these so called intelligent people just carry on and shrug...

"The economy will be fine"

True Idiocracy moment....

Voultapher• 9 months ago

A true human supremacist society - I know controversial term but it fits way too well. You and I live in it and it sucks how many people think like that.

Life is a co-op, winning does not mean being the last ones left standing.

JohnMakin5• 9 months ago

I half expect at some point soon these types to push out takes like "if we run out of arable land, we can raise humans for meat"

I Stopped Being a Climate Catastrophist

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