this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2024
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Edit: Downvoters please reply. For clarification, I am just arguing against the claim that climate change will "kill us all" in the literal sense.
Cold weather still kills way more people than hot weather. Warming has decreased the overall temperature-related deaths. 650,000 fewer people die per year than in the 80s and 90s. 18 million die per year from cold weather, 2.2 million from hot weather.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/07/19/excessive-summer-heat-can-kill-but-extreme-cold-causes-more-fatalities/?sh=135860881d88
World population has grown (4x) but natural disaster deaths have decreased to a fraction (less than 1/10th or less than 5,000 per year). This is because we are better prepared. A 40+x increase is required to reach 1920 levels per capita. And that 50,000 per year would still not be able to beat the 650,000 fewer people dying from temperature per year.
This is starting to reach the capitalist apologia end of climate change discussion. As long as we can prepare well enough, things won't get that bad. Kill us all is stretch of course but we shouldn't just downplay climate change and the disastrous conscequences it will have on the world and our society. Especially considering the people who are responsible for the majority of all pollution are not the people who will face the most direct consequences.
not the most well read dude, but my understanding is that as there is more energy in the atmosphere, there will be more unstable weather patterns - and will lead to crop failures.
this will most likely hit the global south and nations that are less developed (exploited nations such as the global south) harder than the developed nations. people migrating because they can't live in the deadly heat, or not having enough food, or something about florida going underwater (iirc they won't insure houses in florida anymore because of global warming and rising sea temperatures.)
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-climate-change-impact-assessment-1.6964662#:~:text=By%20the%202080s%2C%20the%20report,average%20of%20about%2016%20days.
edit i don't think people will want to lay down and die from the inhospitable environment, they will probably move - i don't think looking at the death toll and saying "see there are less deaths from the climate therefore climate change is not significant" is a good form of analysis, it seems like a bit of a kneejerk reaction, that needs more inspection - like quality of life, crop failures, if you can go outside without heatstroke, these things are gradually ramped up on a scale
I have some friends who live in Florida and, due to work, have to go on the news and say that although Florida is being hit by climate change that it's still a good place to buy a home. But, privately, they all know that shit is going down and it's a terrible place to purchase a home.
For any comrades in Florida who expect to live longer than a decade or two, don't do it.
Changes in the climate might decrease yields, however CO2 concentration directly increases them. This should recover 60% to over 100% (wheat increased, soybean fully recovered) of the losses due to climate change depending on the crop from 2000-2080 according to NASA.
So if you take the 50% loss of corn due to lack of moisture stated in your report, recovered by 60%. It should be ~20% decrease (time period probably starts from 2020s in the report, so this calculation is off), while wheat will increase by 10% overall according to NASA.
Farmers may switch to the more productive crops to compensate.
https://www.nasa.gov/technology/nasa-study-rising-carbon-dioxide-levels-will-help-and-hurt-crops/
I don't mind taking the study you linked at face value, but I have to ask, taking a step back, why it matters that we don't be as alarmist over climate change. You agree that it's man-made and still a problem, from what I understand, but I don't see a scenario where being alarmist about it to demande real, rapid, effective change is a problem and creates future issues. Less climate change can only be good, I would rather put a stop to temp increases over the next 5 years than slow temp increases in that same timespan, you know what I'm saying?
The medieval warm period was warmer than present and society flourished during that time. This period lasted from 900 to 1300 AD.
https://est.ufba.br/sites/est.ufba.br/files/kim/medievalwarmperiod.pdf
https://www.scmp.com/article/700638/china-gives-history-lesson-warming
Chinese scientists say that Chinese society prospered during warmer times.
This doesn't really answer my concerns and I think looking at more continental climates with summers and winters, further away from the equator is looking at a very narrow amount of data. Countries closer to the equator will not see these benefits from a warmer climate. A few years ago, Pakistan saw a devastating weather in the summer, with scorching temps above 45C as well as very high relative humidity (far above what tropical climates usually see), effectively turning the air into an oven.
Mind you, climate change is not solely about warming temps; the biggest part of it is it makes the weather simply unpredictable; farmers can't determine what they should plant anymore and when. Canada right now is having a cold snap, while Europe is seeing summer temperatures. We don't know what summer will look like in the future, one year it could be unbearably dry and droughty (2022) while in other years, it can be cold and rainy (2019). This leads to droughts one year, and floods the next. Climate change is the reason there was a cold snap north of the equator in January, the polar vortex could not be contained and spilled down south due to changing wind patterns.
Certainly people living in colder climates will be happy that it gets a bit warmer. People living in scorching heat right now will not.
That first study you linked about the Medieval Warm Period was written by just one guy (wonder why he couldn't get anyone else to co-sign his paper) and they're basically climate change deniers, not "we shouldn't be alarmists"-ers. This makes me wonder why exactly you would point to these fringe scientists, who run against almost the entire body of science, as trustworthy sources if you're not a climate change denier yourself. I don't have time to look deeply into Easterbrook right now, but I found this:
All climate change deniers are sponsored by the fossil fuel industry, if you follow the money back up enough, you'll find they all have an agenda.
The work I linked is not a study. It cited many studies on the Medieval Warm Period.
I think you are basing him being a denier on what he said in 2013, it's about the haitus and he's acknowledged warming in the 1900s. (“Global warming ended in 1998. […] There has been no global warming in 15 years.”). This was said at the end of the 15-year hiatus (1998-2014). The hiatus was even acknowledged by the IPCC in its 2013 report.
And here's Chinese climate scientists acknowledging a decrease in temperatures in North America during that time period in a peer-reviewed journal. So there was some substance to what he was saying at the time. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2018EA000443
Edit: I'll respond to the first part too in a later reply.
Is your perspective that climate change is happening, but we shouldn't be alarmist over its effects? Asking in good faith comrade.
Yes