All of nobody's Comments + Replies

I replied about this before to one of your posts. Maybe I did not explain it well. In short, two guys wrote a paper about how combinations of heat and humidity above certain levels could kill everyone who lacks access to air conditioning in large regions of the world, or at least force them to evacuate their countries. Do you have any opinion on the priority level of understanding this compared with other climate causes?

2
Hauke Hillebrandt
6y
Sorry, I missed your previous comment. I'm not an expert on climate change and this not necessarily the best place for this discussion of why this is neglected within effective altruism - I would recommend that you post your question to Effective Altruism Hangout facebook group and ask for an answer. The reason that you get downvoted is that you post on many different threads even though it's not really related to the discussion. I would recommend you reading this: before posting though: https://80000hours.org/2016/05/how-can-we-buy-more-insurance-against-extreme-climate-change/ However, here are my two cents: * everybody here agrees that climate change is an important problem * the 'wet bulb' phenomenon is known and mortality from heatstrokes is included in most assessments of overall cost of climate change. see https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/cause/climate-change/ https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/climate-change-2/ https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/modelling-climate-change-cost-effectiveness/ * most scientists agree that the most likely outcome is not that the whole planet will be pretty much uninhabitable. However, there is a chance that this will be true and extreme risks from climate change is a topic that many people in the EA community care about (see:(https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/ )) * you don't propose a particular intervention, but rather highlight a particular bad effect from climate change. There's more active discussion on what is the best thing we can do about climate change rather than listing the various effects (https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/ccl/ https://www.givingwhatwecan.org/report/cool-earth/ * in effective altruism, we also look at 'neglectedness'. Many people work on climate change, fewer care about risks from emerging technology ((https://80000hours.org/problem-profiles/ )), this is why climate change is not more of a priority area.

What do folks here think about the political views of Noam Chomsky? I ask because he is a strict global cosmopolitan thinker on foreign policy. And global cosmopolitanism is a central part of EA. Do any seasoned members of this site have an opinion?

Would whoever downvoted this like to discuss why?

Did you think this was a crank cause? No. GiveWell has mentioned this, if that helps lend it credibility. Here's a quote:

Rising temperatures could also impact human health through extreme heat waves, or cause droughts that might lead to water scarcity and decreased agricultural production.16 More extremely, we have seen it argued that a 12ºC increase in mean global temperature—which is substantially outside the range considered plausible this century—would cause at least one day each year in the territor

... (read more)

I think this climate cause should be the top climate priority.

0
nobody
6y
Would whoever downvoted this like to discuss why? Did you think this was a crank cause? No. GiveWell has mentioned this, if that helps lend it credibility. Here's a quote: But I don't see this taken to its logical conclusion. That's what I tried to do in my e-mail that I linked to above.

very neglected climate cause (an e-mail I wrote)

Hello Professors A and B,

Earlier this year I looked over a paper that was published in 2010 called "An adaptability limit to climate change due to heat stress”. It made a strong impression on me. I think heat stress must be the biggest danger to human beings from climate change. If a region becomes uninhabitable, or at least uninhabitable to folks too poor to afford air conditioning, that trumps everything else.

I wrote to you because I am puzzled that journalists and researchers do not seem to agree. ... (read more)