[FRIAM] Murdoch and Trump

[uǝlƃ ☣]

You're laying out a fragile chain of reasoning here: 1) Estimates: [1.5,4.5], 2) Data: [1.5, 1.5+ε], 3) No serious harm.

We know that people aren't swayed by data. Even when contradictory data is staring someone in the face, they tend to reinforce their prior held belief. So, the question I ask is more about opportunity cost. What's the lost opportunity if we *stop* burning fossils? (lost plastics in medicine, higher cost for agricultural pest control, lost convenience, single parents having trouble getting to work, 3rd world economies' quality of life, etc.) And what is the opportunity cost if we continue burning fossils? (less innovation in diverse energy supplies, risk of global warming > 1.5+ε and all that entails, toxic air, etc.)

The ethical question is which set of costs are worse than the other? And it seems pretty clear to me (were I an engineer who wanted to foster innovation or a humanist who wanted to limit suffering) the costs for *continuing* to burn fossils is higher than the costs for stopping burning fossils ... at LEAST for the wealthy countries. There's simply no excuse for a healthy person in a developed economy to argue for burning more fossils. There *is* good cause for the poor in undeveloped countries to continue burning fossils ... to which it's a bit of an ethical burden for the wealthy to mitigate that, as well as stop burning fossils ourselves.

Given this, your fragile chain of reasoning becomes irrelevant, even *if* it stays intact after all's said and done.

On 1/21/20 12:23 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
> For example, the latest available figures from the IPCC reports give the climate sensitivity as within the range of 1.5 to 4.5 (that is the expected increase in global temperatures per doubling of CO2. This is according to the models. Empirical data studies show it to be close to the lower end. If this is true, then the IPCC figures are correct and we don't have to be concerned about CO2 causing serious harm. 

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