Comment by idiotsecant
2 days ago
I am baffled by the number of people on HN, presumably a website for and by technical people, who fail to consider secondary and tertiary effects when it fits their worldview to do so.
There is a yawning abyss of states in between extinction and 'boy sure is a few degrees warmer out here' and none of them are good.
Many organisms would benefit from a warmer climate, just not humans.
We rely on extremely narrow conditions for the fragile supply chains and power structures that keep us on the ragged edge of civilized to continue working. We had an extremely mild contagious disease outbreak, by historic standards, and our economy is still feeling the effects!
Imagine the impacts of something like wildly different rainfall patterns, increased rate of global infectious disease, shifted agricultural zones, changes to Jetstream patterns, large scale crop failures, loss of water supplies, temporary local ecosystem collapses etc. These changes are incredibly fast on the scale of what it takes to reach ecological equilibrium.
These of course mean nothing to biological life, writ large. Life will recover and adapt. To fragile human civilization they mean refugee crisis, resource wars, failed infrastructure, and ten thousand other existentially terrible things.
I get your point but on the other hand humans live quite well in places like Medicine Hat say where it swings from -40 C in winter to +40 C in summer. Against that the likely warming by say 2100 is I think 1.5C up from what it is today which might be just about noticeable?
Did you read the post at all? Second order effects, not primary effects. Its exasperating how much effort people will put into not understanding the smallest things when they are inconvenient to their worldview.
> Many organisms would benefit from a warmer climate, just not humans.
and a whole fuckin lot that wouldn't, and that may collapse the ecosystem