An expert on Africa, then at Duke University, Stephen Smith, wrote an excellent book, 5-6 years ago titled "The scramble tor Europe" describing how any one in tropical Africa, with a few thousand dollars and a cell phone was fair game for smugglers who would ship them to Europe and the US-Mexican border for these few thousand dollars . The countries they wanted to leave were and still are disfunctional, with about other things, a very high birthrate. That's why so many want to leave. It has nothing to do with climate change, although some of us like to call them climate refugees
I like Roger's articles also, but this one seems to boil down to the advice, "When discussing the prospect of mass migration, include a disclaimer that the concern is not motivated by racism". That seems silly to me.
Scholarship on the management of common pooled resources is of course not per se racist. Agreed. Hardin’s TOTC however was at its core about population control, and specific populations. So that’s the distinction I’d make. 🙏
Although I accept Hardin's racism, it doesn't seem true that the metaphor of "The Tragedy of the Commons" is necessarily racist, too. As I understand it, doesn't the Tragedy explain how policies that protect a shared resource like a plot of land or access to water are influenced or subverted to benefit special interests such as individuals, communities or organizations and states? Don't we see this daily, when farmers advocate for tariffs, or companies lobby against regulations? Isn't this struggle to regulate not always a mutual benefit but frequently self-serving? It seems to me that the Tragedy of the Commons explains much - and in much the same way as the second law of thermodynamics. It's why, in the long run, we are all losers.
Implicit in these arguments is the thought that we can control our world and society. Never mentioned are the consequences of trying to control complex adaptive systems undergoing complicated non-linear phenomena. CASs by their nature are uncontrollable. We may be able to influence them – if we're smart about it. These totalitarians aren't. Case in point - it is becoming ever more apparent that our feeble attempts to control covid actually created a disaster (calls to mind Tacitus on Agricola - "He created a devastation and called it a victory."). We must demand well-worked-through scenarios of possible responses and their consequences on all parts of human society (including doing nothing!) and then minimax our responses to achieve an optimal policy. Too often, our linear responses create more havoc - in unforeseen places - than the problems they are alleged to solve.
are you planning to write a reply that can be reviewed and scrutinised by experts (as this paper did), or are you satisfied with substack subscriptions and congratulatory comments from this audience*?
*Which seems overwhelmingly to be more concerned with perceived "climate alarmism" than with the attributable impacts and well-established risks of climate change.
Hi Daniel, Thanks. Yes, I've got multiple papers in the queue, as I always have. One (that I'm actually deep into today!) is specifically on the topic of attributable impacts, something I've written a lot about in the peer-reviewed literature (see: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WtqpmdIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao). I'm also working with colleagues on a paper that looks into the network of non-state governance that this post is discussing. You can get a pretty good idea of what I'm working on academically in parallel to THB by what shows up here.
But as you know the peer review process is a lot slower than Substack (pluses and minuses, to be sure). That said, not every post here will become or even contribute to a peer-reviewed paper (I wish they could!). Many will.
Over the years I've found that the very public postings (as on Substack) and peer reviewed writing are highly compatible. I've already received plenty of comments here, and also via email which also add a lot of value.
I'm easy to find -- here, on Twitter, via email, DM etc etc. There is no shortage of opportunities for anyone, experts included, to provide feedback, criticism, alternative views. In fact, there's an open invitation for experts to contribute here if they think an alternative view would be worth sharing. No problem with any of that. My experiences however are that experts in general (including IPCC) choose not to engage me or my work, whether or not it appears in the peer reviewed literature. That's on them, not me.
Last point: The subscribers here include a lot of experts, who are not shy in either the public comments on various posts or being in direct contact with me. I'm very appreciative.
I agree with the many benefits of the public fora for developing arguments, and sharing ideas. Even though I get easily discouraged with quality of comments and mean-spirited thrust of most social media interactions.
I will keep my eyes open for you upcoming publications, as I have been doing for a while now.
My next few papers in press are on transgender athletes (which draws on and is parallel to posts here mainly in 2022 -- such is the peer reviewed lag) and on detection and attribution of climate change in disaster trends (also in parallel to a lot of posts here). Hopefully both of those get out in 2023! I've also got several papers on science advice in the pandemic (as part of the EScAPE project) in various stages of prep -- on shadow science advice and overall advice lessons. None of this happens fast. Substack happens fast, which makes it a great parallel to ongoing academic work and allows for extended peer review in near real time. I love the parallel tracks, for sure. Thanks again, appreciated.
I generally don't engage with people online because most comments have a 'tell', also there is the I don't get paid enough/at all to argue online. It eats into my free time/responsibilities. so a couple of points and I'll leave it at that
- Everything you stated requires, energy infrastructure and good governance,, unfortunately which is lacking at this moment in time (perfect storm) in many warmer places
- you have to account for demographics/work force/education
- I was just in Mexico and watch construction workers get up early because siesta is mandatory for your health.
- much of farming is still subsistence and requires manual labour
- you need abundant water, tech, energy, labor, money for this to work
My premise is the main problem is money, which is being restricted and controlled by those who have nefarious motives. For instance for Africa, Qaddafi had the right idea. An indigenous African Development Bank with a Pan-African trading currency. That is far more important than water, tech, energy & labor, in fact that would facilitate all of those which already exist in ample supply. So what happened? The Western powers broke their agreements with Libya and invaded, using ridiculous contrived justification. And their hired guns, mercenary Islamic Barbarians as their first act on overthrowing the Qaddafi government was to create The Central Bank of Libya. That was their priority?!? Now you can understand the source of poverty in these countries. It's all about REAL money vs DEBT money:
"We already use Producer Credits - customer reward points, prepaid cards and business-to-business "capacity credits" are all Producer Credits. This is the doorway to a stable global money system, in which only producers of real goods and services in demand get to create money."
Great job calling BS on the fear mongering alarmists and their scare pieces that pass for science and journalism.
These folks, and their work, need to be called out, debunked and discredited.
We simply cannot have a serious discussion on climate policy when clickbait horror show headlines dominate news coverage while simultaneously totally misrepresenting the issues we face.
As there has been no climate change outside historical norms as yet, and in fact all climate change in the past 200 years has been hugely net positive, there are no climate refugees.
There are however a growing number of climate change POLICY refugees which will eventually require crimes against humanity trials to adjudicate.
Erhlich has been saying let those brown people die for decades, to save the worlds resources for us and this year he is still put on TV to spout his evil.
If you took all the Germsns to Nigeria and all the Nigerians to Germany what would happen. Germany would trend to be like Nigeris and Nigeria would trend to be like Germany. But it is not racism as the same would happen between Germany and Russia.
So the niche places are about who lives there not the temperature in a place.
It is based on the Earth having a population of 12 billion in 2100, which cannot happen. Most projections are in the 7 to 9 billion range, and have been lowered now that China's population is already decreasing.
I thought Rogers point was very clear, although I do not think he spelled this part out in particular. Go back and read again, and then ponder this: "The “major mode” of the “human climate niche” was defined in 2019 as those places where “mean average temperatures” lie between ~11C and 15C. Wikipedia lists 460 cities around the world according to their mean average temperatures. Of these cities, 68 fall within the “human climate niche,....” "
...and...
"Outside this niche are most of the world’s large cities ...."
If most of the world already is outside the supposed niche where mankind supposedly thrives, why have the people there not started their mass migration a long time ago? Why are they waiting for "climate change" to happen before they start? (and if you care, what is this climate change that is supposedly different from the other thing we know as climate change that has been going on forever - harder, better, faster, stronger?)
As always I find Rogers writing intriguing and thought driven, in that it needs a bit of pondering and figuring to see what he is saying. This one I found to jump straight out of the text.
'If we divide the world crudely into rich nations and poor nations, two thirds of them are desperately poor, and only one third comparatively rich, with the United States the wealthiest of all. Metaphorically each rich nation can be seen as a lifeboat full of comparatively rich people. In the ocean outside each lifeboat swim the poor of the world, who would like to get in, or at least to share some of the wealth. What should the lifeboat passengers do?'
The nuance of this.......There's a lot here for me. If you looked at the world in 1100 or 1500 or 1600. The above is not true. I believe in the tragedy of the commons argument. Take water - we all use the same resource without monitoring its quality, abundance precisely because its always been abundant.
I don't believe in central planning but if no one monitors resources, particularly as they become scarce that's a recipe for collapse. Data, research science should inform good policy.
The intersection of water/arable land/money supply/goods/energy per capita are matters that should be studied.
This is purely anecdotal but I tend think that hotter climates are at a disadvantage not through advance of culture/civilization but through the sheer oppressive nature of heat as opposed to cold.
For me its not a racial argument but a geographical one.
Perhaps I missed the point and feel free to point me in the right direction.
Here’s my take. The core environmentalist argument is that the human species is in ecological overshoot. We are reaching the population limits on energy, mineral and ecological resources. It is simply not possible for the lower 4 quintiles to live at the same level of consumption as the top quintile.
This Malthusian view has thus far underestimated the power of technological discovery, but I personally think there is a very high chance that it is correct. And I agree with you that these issues should be studied. So, it’s a predicament that may actually be unavoidable.
The issue IMO is that the academic scientific class, who do indeed have the most expertise to address climate change, is not just a neutral source of best information. They are simultaneously a favored part of the elite socio-economic stratum, a clerisy. And like all humans before them, when they feel threatened their evolutionarily adaptive coalitional behaviors start to manifest in group psychology. This phenomenon can be seen in the institutional sticky attraction to worst-case scenarios (such as this article illustrates), the precautionary principle, and tipping points.
This has caused them to prioritize CO2 mitigation (much of which is imaginary) over resilience through providing energy security to the poor. A low-energy development paradigm has dominated international bodies since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 set the focus priority on CO2 emissions reductions. This is life-boat ethics.
I'm not sure I understand the point of this comment. As I'm not the ruling class and look for accessible ways to bring energy to all people. Its a pretty simple minded concept an idiot could muster. Perhaps you are entitled to your opinion and anonymity when engaging online but I prefer individuals who argue in good faith. Cheers.
I don't understand what you don't understand about the comment. In hot regions, yes it is indeed harder to work. Most work is done by machines now, i.e. one backhoe can dig as much as >100 workers with a shovel, and the operator can sit in air conditioned comfort. As for all office work, factory work, almost all work, including farming is done in big air conditioned machines in Western countries. So productivity by machine is far, far higher than what was previously done, and the vast bulk of that can quite easily be done in air conditioned comfort. So hot climates are no longer a problem is you use readily available tech.
As 'Binder', I have also assumed so (I mean, for you as a writer, not for the comments - that would be way too much to ask for any social media platform). I also subscribed because you often scrutinise oft-repeated talking points in climate science and diplomacy, which have to be at least qualified, or even revised entirely.
But lately you have written a few posts that don't seem good faith arguments at all. You seem to be just blatantly playing to "your crowd", promoting the most uncharitable interpretation possible (e.g. these authors are peddling racist shit, these other authors are part of a secretive organisation seeking to undermine democracy).
And, as I said on a separate comment, "your crowd", from what I have been noticing lately, seems to rejoice way too much on these type of critiques. Could it be that you have been attracting a bunch of climate change deniers and action delayers eager to collect ammunition from you??
I get accused of a lot of stuff, rarely though am I accused of not arguing in good faith.
I'm of course willing to engage on that accusation. What here is not presented in good faith?
As I wrote in this post, this territory is uncomfortable. The line from "human climate niche" to "climate determinism" to Lifeboat Ethics to "racist shit" (your term) is absolutely crystal clear here. Of course, I am not the first to point this out.
If you think I got something wrong here, or have a different view, share it. I'd love to hear it. It sounds like you are ready to make such a challenge -- please do!
As I've said, everyone is welcome here. No one need share my views or agree with my politics. In fact, THB is a richer place with intellectual and political diversity.
Jun 6, 2023·edited Jun 6, 2023Liked by Roger Pielke Jr.
I appreciate your sincerity engaging on this. Sorry, if I came across unnecessarily aggressive.
To be clear, I know several of the authors from the 'human climate niche' papers. So my response has to do with the yawning gap between the insinuation you make of these authors as concealed racists, and what I know to be the kind nature of all this people; all of whom are devoted to advancing knowledge on a complex issue with enormous social implications. One could critique the way that the media picks these studies and turns them into a caricature with unsavoury undertones; I find myself regularly bemoaning media outlets for their problematic account of the potential role of climate change on human mobility. But these authors are deliberately avoiding such statements, and sticking to the concern of increasing swaths of land that will be exposed to very harsh temperatures.
Your assertion that there is an "obvious" link from Huntington’s “universally optimal climate” to the HCN is a good example of why the general tone of the post seems on bad faith. Cities in the "Global North" are more prominently located in cooler places. Of course (!!) it is the places that are already warmer the ones that are suffering more from global *warming*. If the challenge was one of "global cooling", then most certainly it would be the other cities the ones that would be getting pushed outside of the HCN.
I am no expert in any of this. But that much seems quite obvious.
(It's amazing to be able to have these type of discussions on real time! Thanks)
Reading your article was like reading a book of fiction. This is one more example of unelected idiots spreading theories that have no basis in scientific fact but once again who’s counting. You have warned us about these individuals who have hi Jacked climate science to manipulate policies that no one but them want. The troubling thing is that the world press goes along with this garbage. Once again you burden us with the facts but in most cases where powerless to do anything significant about it. This is scary stuff Roger.
I took a look at the free preview via Google. Focuses on a RCP6.0 95% world, which is similar to a RCP8.5 50% world. So not great. I could only see the first chapter, but I'd be surprised if the "human climate niche" did not feature prominently in there.
I think I found the thesis and indeed it seems to…
“We face a very hostile world, characterized by a belt of uninhabit-ability swathed across most of today's most populated regions, including much of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania. This is a completely new situation for our species, one in which our expanding population must deal with an ever-shrinking zone of habitability, within the restrictive cage of social and geopolitical boundaries.
Although the scale and extent of what we face this century is unique, we have over the past hundreds of thousands of years experienced other crises. We've survived them by migrating. Migration is not the problem; it is the solution - it always has been. As we will see, migration is the oldest survival trick.“
An expert on Africa, then at Duke University, Stephen Smith, wrote an excellent book, 5-6 years ago titled "The scramble tor Europe" describing how any one in tropical Africa, with a few thousand dollars and a cell phone was fair game for smugglers who would ship them to Europe and the US-Mexican border for these few thousand dollars . The countries they wanted to leave were and still are disfunctional, with about other things, a very high birthrate. That's why so many want to leave. It has nothing to do with climate change, although some of us like to call them climate refugees
I like Roger's articles also, but this one seems to boil down to the advice, "When discussing the prospect of mass migration, include a disclaimer that the concern is not motivated by racism". That seems silly to me.
Scholarship on the management of common pooled resources is of course not per se racist. Agreed. Hardin’s TOTC however was at its core about population control, and specific populations. So that’s the distinction I’d make. 🙏
Roger,
Although I accept Hardin's racism, it doesn't seem true that the metaphor of "The Tragedy of the Commons" is necessarily racist, too. As I understand it, doesn't the Tragedy explain how policies that protect a shared resource like a plot of land or access to water are influenced or subverted to benefit special interests such as individuals, communities or organizations and states? Don't we see this daily, when farmers advocate for tariffs, or companies lobby against regulations? Isn't this struggle to regulate not always a mutual benefit but frequently self-serving? It seems to me that the Tragedy of the Commons explains much - and in much the same way as the second law of thermodynamics. It's why, in the long run, we are all losers.
Implicit in these arguments is the thought that we can control our world and society. Never mentioned are the consequences of trying to control complex adaptive systems undergoing complicated non-linear phenomena. CASs by their nature are uncontrollable. We may be able to influence them – if we're smart about it. These totalitarians aren't. Case in point - it is becoming ever more apparent that our feeble attempts to control covid actually created a disaster (calls to mind Tacitus on Agricola - "He created a devastation and called it a victory."). We must demand well-worked-through scenarios of possible responses and their consequences on all parts of human society (including doing nothing!) and then minimax our responses to achieve an optimal policy. Too often, our linear responses create more havoc - in unforeseen places - than the problems they are alleged to solve.
Hi Roger,
are you planning to write a reply that can be reviewed and scrutinised by experts (as this paper did), or are you satisfied with substack subscriptions and congratulatory comments from this audience*?
*Which seems overwhelmingly to be more concerned with perceived "climate alarmism" than with the attributable impacts and well-established risks of climate change.
Hi Daniel, Thanks. Yes, I've got multiple papers in the queue, as I always have. One (that I'm actually deep into today!) is specifically on the topic of attributable impacts, something I've written a lot about in the peer-reviewed literature (see: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WtqpmdIAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao). I'm also working with colleagues on a paper that looks into the network of non-state governance that this post is discussing. You can get a pretty good idea of what I'm working on academically in parallel to THB by what shows up here.
But as you know the peer review process is a lot slower than Substack (pluses and minuses, to be sure). That said, not every post here will become or even contribute to a peer-reviewed paper (I wish they could!). Many will.
Over the years I've found that the very public postings (as on Substack) and peer reviewed writing are highly compatible. I've already received plenty of comments here, and also via email which also add a lot of value.
I'm easy to find -- here, on Twitter, via email, DM etc etc. There is no shortage of opportunities for anyone, experts included, to provide feedback, criticism, alternative views. In fact, there's an open invitation for experts to contribute here if they think an alternative view would be worth sharing. No problem with any of that. My experiences however are that experts in general (including IPCC) choose not to engage me or my work, whether or not it appears in the peer reviewed literature. That's on them, not me.
Last point: The subscribers here include a lot of experts, who are not shy in either the public comments on various posts or being in direct contact with me. I'm very appreciative.
Thanks for this.
I agree with the many benefits of the public fora for developing arguments, and sharing ideas. Even though I get easily discouraged with quality of comments and mean-spirited thrust of most social media interactions.
I will keep my eyes open for you upcoming publications, as I have been doing for a while now.
My next few papers in press are on transgender athletes (which draws on and is parallel to posts here mainly in 2022 -- such is the peer reviewed lag) and on detection and attribution of climate change in disaster trends (also in parallel to a lot of posts here). Hopefully both of those get out in 2023! I've also got several papers on science advice in the pandemic (as part of the EScAPE project) in various stages of prep -- on shadow science advice and overall advice lessons. None of this happens fast. Substack happens fast, which makes it a great parallel to ongoing academic work and allows for extended peer review in near real time. I love the parallel tracks, for sure. Thanks again, appreciated.
Thank you for your scholarship and wisdom, Roger. Credibility is everything.
👍🙏
I generally don't engage with people online because most comments have a 'tell', also there is the I don't get paid enough/at all to argue online. It eats into my free time/responsibilities. so a couple of points and I'll leave it at that
- Everything you stated requires, energy infrastructure and good governance,, unfortunately which is lacking at this moment in time (perfect storm) in many warmer places
- you have to account for demographics/work force/education
- I was just in Mexico and watch construction workers get up early because siesta is mandatory for your health.
- much of farming is still subsistence and requires manual labour
- you need abundant water, tech, energy, labor, money for this to work
There are so many points to be made
My premise is the main problem is money, which is being restricted and controlled by those who have nefarious motives. For instance for Africa, Qaddafi had the right idea. An indigenous African Development Bank with a Pan-African trading currency. That is far more important than water, tech, energy & labor, in fact that would facilitate all of those which already exist in ample supply. So what happened? The Western powers broke their agreements with Libya and invaded, using ridiculous contrived justification. And their hired guns, mercenary Islamic Barbarians as their first act on overthrowing the Qaddafi government was to create The Central Bank of Libya. That was their priority?!? Now you can understand the source of poverty in these countries. It's all about REAL money vs DEBT money:
#6 How to create Producer Credits:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVVwvTFbdmA
"We already use Producer Credits - customer reward points, prepaid cards and business-to-business "capacity credits" are all Producer Credits. This is the doorway to a stable global money system, in which only producers of real goods and services in demand get to create money."
Great job calling BS on the fear mongering alarmists and their scare pieces that pass for science and journalism.
These folks, and their work, need to be called out, debunked and discredited.
We simply cannot have a serious discussion on climate policy when clickbait horror show headlines dominate news coverage while simultaneously totally misrepresenting the issues we face.
As there has been no climate change outside historical norms as yet, and in fact all climate change in the past 200 years has been hugely net positive, there are no climate refugees.
There are however a growing number of climate change POLICY refugees which will eventually require crimes against humanity trials to adjudicate.
Erhlich has been saying let those brown people die for decades, to save the worlds resources for us and this year he is still put on TV to spout his evil.
If you took all the Germsns to Nigeria and all the Nigerians to Germany what would happen. Germany would trend to be like Nigeris and Nigeria would trend to be like Germany. But it is not racism as the same would happen between Germany and Russia.
So the niche places are about who lives there not the temperature in a place.
It really is a superficial idea.
I suppose by the description of rcp8.5 as nonexistent you mean never likely to happen. It does exist in the IPCC reports.
It is based on the Earth having a population of 12 billion in 2100, which cannot happen. Most projections are in the 7 to 9 billion range, and have been lowered now that China's population is already decreasing.
RCP8.5 scenario is based on burning coal at many times the rate we are now
It’s ridiculous but it was created specifically to enable this fear porn
It’s premeditated fraud
Thanks for adding this important point!
That is the whole point, they keep using this unattainable impossible scenario as the basis for fear porn
I’m not clear about your point, Roger. Which is it?
1. Mass migration will not be a consequence of climate change, or
2. Mass migration is not a concern unless you’re racist?
I thought Rogers point was very clear, although I do not think he spelled this part out in particular. Go back and read again, and then ponder this: "The “major mode” of the “human climate niche” was defined in 2019 as those places where “mean average temperatures” lie between ~11C and 15C. Wikipedia lists 460 cities around the world according to their mean average temperatures. Of these cities, 68 fall within the “human climate niche,....” "
...and...
"Outside this niche are most of the world’s large cities ...."
If most of the world already is outside the supposed niche where mankind supposedly thrives, why have the people there not started their mass migration a long time ago? Why are they waiting for "climate change" to happen before they start? (and if you care, what is this climate change that is supposedly different from the other thing we know as climate change that has been going on forever - harder, better, faster, stronger?)
As always I find Rogers writing intriguing and thought driven, in that it needs a bit of pondering and figuring to see what he is saying. This one I found to jump straight out of the text.
Neither.
We shouldn't be trying to scare people into climate policy by appealing to racist tropes dressed up as science and laundered through the media.
'If we divide the world crudely into rich nations and poor nations, two thirds of them are desperately poor, and only one third comparatively rich, with the United States the wealthiest of all. Metaphorically each rich nation can be seen as a lifeboat full of comparatively rich people. In the ocean outside each lifeboat swim the poor of the world, who would like to get in, or at least to share some of the wealth. What should the lifeboat passengers do?'
The nuance of this.......There's a lot here for me. If you looked at the world in 1100 or 1500 or 1600. The above is not true. I believe in the tragedy of the commons argument. Take water - we all use the same resource without monitoring its quality, abundance precisely because its always been abundant.
I don't believe in central planning but if no one monitors resources, particularly as they become scarce that's a recipe for collapse. Data, research science should inform good policy.
The intersection of water/arable land/money supply/goods/energy per capita are matters that should be studied.
This is purely anecdotal but I tend think that hotter climates are at a disadvantage not through advance of culture/civilization but through the sheer oppressive nature of heat as opposed to cold.
For me its not a racial argument but a geographical one.
Perhaps I missed the point and feel free to point me in the right direction.
Here’s my take. The core environmentalist argument is that the human species is in ecological overshoot. We are reaching the population limits on energy, mineral and ecological resources. It is simply not possible for the lower 4 quintiles to live at the same level of consumption as the top quintile.
This Malthusian view has thus far underestimated the power of technological discovery, but I personally think there is a very high chance that it is correct. And I agree with you that these issues should be studied. So, it’s a predicament that may actually be unavoidable.
The issue IMO is that the academic scientific class, who do indeed have the most expertise to address climate change, is not just a neutral source of best information. They are simultaneously a favored part of the elite socio-economic stratum, a clerisy. And like all humans before them, when they feel threatened their evolutionarily adaptive coalitional behaviors start to manifest in group psychology. This phenomenon can be seen in the institutional sticky attraction to worst-case scenarios (such as this article illustrates), the precautionary principle, and tipping points.
This has caused them to prioritize CO2 mitigation (much of which is imaginary) over resilience through providing energy security to the poor. A low-energy development paradigm has dominated international bodies since the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992 set the focus priority on CO2 emissions reductions. This is life-boat ethics.
That's why we invented air conditioning. Pretty simple minded stuff, funny how the Ruling Class believe only they are entitled to using it.
I'm not sure I understand the point of this comment. As I'm not the ruling class and look for accessible ways to bring energy to all people. Its a pretty simple minded concept an idiot could muster. Perhaps you are entitled to your opinion and anonymity when engaging online but I prefer individuals who argue in good faith. Cheers.
I don't understand what you don't understand about the comment. In hot regions, yes it is indeed harder to work. Most work is done by machines now, i.e. one backhoe can dig as much as >100 workers with a shovel, and the operator can sit in air conditioned comfort. As for all office work, factory work, almost all work, including farming is done in big air conditioned machines in Western countries. So productivity by machine is far, far higher than what was previously done, and the vast bulk of that can quite easily be done in air conditioned comfort. So hot climates are no longer a problem is you use readily available tech.
Here at THB everyone has to argue in good faith
It’s mandatory 👍😎
As 'Binder', I have also assumed so (I mean, for you as a writer, not for the comments - that would be way too much to ask for any social media platform). I also subscribed because you often scrutinise oft-repeated talking points in climate science and diplomacy, which have to be at least qualified, or even revised entirely.
But lately you have written a few posts that don't seem good faith arguments at all. You seem to be just blatantly playing to "your crowd", promoting the most uncharitable interpretation possible (e.g. these authors are peddling racist shit, these other authors are part of a secretive organisation seeking to undermine democracy).
And, as I said on a separate comment, "your crowd", from what I have been noticing lately, seems to rejoice way too much on these type of critiques. Could it be that you have been attracting a bunch of climate change deniers and action delayers eager to collect ammunition from you??
I get accused of a lot of stuff, rarely though am I accused of not arguing in good faith.
I'm of course willing to engage on that accusation. What here is not presented in good faith?
As I wrote in this post, this territory is uncomfortable. The line from "human climate niche" to "climate determinism" to Lifeboat Ethics to "racist shit" (your term) is absolutely crystal clear here. Of course, I am not the first to point this out.
If you think I got something wrong here, or have a different view, share it. I'd love to hear it. It sounds like you are ready to make such a challenge -- please do!
As I've said, everyone is welcome here. No one need share my views or agree with my politics. In fact, THB is a richer place with intellectual and political diversity.
I appreciate your sincerity engaging on this. Sorry, if I came across unnecessarily aggressive.
To be clear, I know several of the authors from the 'human climate niche' papers. So my response has to do with the yawning gap between the insinuation you make of these authors as concealed racists, and what I know to be the kind nature of all this people; all of whom are devoted to advancing knowledge on a complex issue with enormous social implications. One could critique the way that the media picks these studies and turns them into a caricature with unsavoury undertones; I find myself regularly bemoaning media outlets for their problematic account of the potential role of climate change on human mobility. But these authors are deliberately avoiding such statements, and sticking to the concern of increasing swaths of land that will be exposed to very harsh temperatures.
Your assertion that there is an "obvious" link from Huntington’s “universally optimal climate” to the HCN is a good example of why the general tone of the post seems on bad faith. Cities in the "Global North" are more prominently located in cooler places. Of course (!!) it is the places that are already warmer the ones that are suffering more from global *warming*. If the challenge was one of "global cooling", then most certainly it would be the other cities the ones that would be getting pushed outside of the HCN.
I am no expert in any of this. But that much seems quite obvious.
(It's amazing to be able to have these type of discussions on real time! Thanks)
I assumed. It's the reason I subscribed. You challenge my ideas. Thank you.
Thanks much! And thanks for subscribing ;-)
Reading your article was like reading a book of fiction. This is one more example of unelected idiots spreading theories that have no basis in scientific fact but once again who’s counting. You have warned us about these individuals who have hi Jacked climate science to manipulate policies that no one but them want. The troubling thing is that the world press goes along with this garbage. Once again you burden us with the facts but in most cases where powerless to do anything significant about it. This is scary stuff Roger.
I’d be interested in your take on Nomad Century by Gaia Vince. She predicts warming in the 3 to 4C range and billions of global warming migrants.
I took a look at the free preview via Google. Focuses on a RCP6.0 95% world, which is similar to a RCP8.5 50% world. So not great. I could only see the first chapter, but I'd be surprised if the "human climate niche" did not feature prominently in there.
I think I found the thesis and indeed it seems to…
“We face a very hostile world, characterized by a belt of uninhabit-ability swathed across most of today's most populated regions, including much of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania. This is a completely new situation for our species, one in which our expanding population must deal with an ever-shrinking zone of habitability, within the restrictive cage of social and geopolitical boundaries.
Although the scale and extent of what we face this century is unique, we have over the past hundreds of thousands of years experienced other crises. We've survived them by migrating. Migration is not the problem; it is the solution - it always has been. As we will see, migration is the oldest survival trick.“