I agree with your conclusion, but you should not be so willing to believe alarmist scare stories.
"This has already been pretty bad, with unusually many hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts."
The IPCC claimed that climate change had increased droughts in the fourth report, retracted that claim in the fifth. For hurricanes, a long discussion by Chris Landsea, who wrote a substantial part of one of the IPCC report's section on hurricanes is at:
If you actually read the IPCC reports with care, instead of the news media, things look a lot less bleak. Here are some of my favorite quotes:
There is no evidence that surface water and groundwater drought frequency has changed over the last few decades, although impacts of drought have increased mostly due to increased water demand.
Economic losses due to extreme weather events have increased globally, mostly due to increase in wealth and exposure, with a possible influence of climate change (low confidence in attribution to climate change).
Some low-lying developing countries and small island states are expected to face very high impacts that, in some cases, could have associated damage and adaptation costs of several percentage points of GDP.
... most recent observed terrestrial-species extinctions have not been attributed to recent climate change, despite some speculative efforts (high confidence).
With these recognized limitations, the incomplete estimates of global annual economic losses for additional temperature increases of ~2°C are between 0.2 and 2.0% of income ... .
I was also struck some years ago by a piece written by William Nordhaus responding to a WSJ OpEd that argued that climate change was not a catastrophe requiring immediate response. His calculation at the time was that the net cost of doing nothing for fifty years instead the optimal policy starting immediately was about $4.1 trillion. Spread out over a century and the entire world, that works out to a reduction of average world GNP of about one twentieth of one percent. He didn't put it that way. You can find my comments on his piece and a link to it at:
Richard Tol characterised the non-alarming perspective (as an IPCC lead author) by suggesting a century of climate change would cost a year or two of economic growth.
We are having a debate here with completely different "facts" (assuming facts is a term we can use on multi decade model projections of complex phenomena).
David, you and I seem to be operating under the assumption of the IPCC scenarios which suggest that climate change is serious, with serious defined as requiring a couple of years extra time before average global income quadruples.
Scott (in an above comment) believes that it is quite likely that entire cities in Africa will be destroyed by draught, leading to millions dying of thirst.
Half the youth in London seem to believe that the risk is existential, meaning total civilizational collapse or worse?
Before we discuss whether or not to have a child, I think we need to narrow our assumptions a bit
That is true, but both of us disagree with the narrative that is used to argue against having a child, which is pretty close to "we will all die."
Two other points. Over the next century, we can expect, with or without climate change, something like ten to twenty billion deaths, so a few million mean a change of something like .1%. Economic growth can be expected to reduce death rates, via increased life expectancy, by much more than that, judged by past experience.
Also, "cause millions of deaths" is a bit ambiguous. Rising temperature may well increase the number of people who die over the next century from heat by several millions. It may also decrease the number who die from cold by several millions. Does that count as "cause millions of deaths"?
I agree with your conclusion, but you should not be so willing to believe alarmist scare stories.
"This has already been pretty bad, with unusually many hurricanes, wildfires, and droughts."
The IPCC claimed that climate change had increased droughts in the fourth report, retracted that claim in the fifth. For hurricanes, a long discussion by Chris Landsea, who wrote a substantial part of one of the IPCC report's section on hurricanes is at:
hurricanes:https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/Landsea/gw_hurricanes/
If you actually read the IPCC reports with care, instead of the news media, things look a lot less bleak. Here are some of my favorite quotes:
There is no evidence that surface water and groundwater drought frequency has changed over the last few decades, although impacts of drought have increased mostly due to increased water demand.
Economic losses due to extreme weather events have increased globally, mostly due to increase in wealth and exposure, with a possible influence of climate change (low confidence in attribution to climate change).
Some low-lying developing countries and small island states are expected to face very high impacts that, in some cases, could have associated damage and adaptation costs of several percentage points of GDP.
... most recent observed terrestrial-species extinctions have not been attributed to recent climate change, despite some speculative efforts (high confidence).
With these recognized limitations, the incomplete estimates of global annual economic losses for additional temperature increases of ~2°C are between 0.2 and 2.0% of income ... .
I was also struck some years ago by a piece written by William Nordhaus responding to a WSJ OpEd that argued that climate change was not a catastrophe requiring immediate response. His calculation at the time was that the net cost of doing nothing for fifty years instead the optimal policy starting immediately was about $4.1 trillion. Spread out over a century and the entire world, that works out to a reduction of average world GNP of about one twentieth of one percent. He didn't put it that way. You can find my comments on his piece and a link to it at:
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2014/03/contra-nordhaus.html
Richard Tol characterised the non-alarming perspective (as an IPCC lead author) by suggesting a century of climate change would cost a year or two of economic growth.
We are having a debate here with completely different "facts" (assuming facts is a term we can use on multi decade model projections of complex phenomena).
David, you and I seem to be operating under the assumption of the IPCC scenarios which suggest that climate change is serious, with serious defined as requiring a couple of years extra time before average global income quadruples.
Scott (in an above comment) believes that it is quite likely that entire cities in Africa will be destroyed by draught, leading to millions dying of thirst.
Half the youth in London seem to believe that the risk is existential, meaning total civilizational collapse or worse?
Before we discuss whether or not to have a child, I think we need to narrow our assumptions a bit
Note that David and Scott position is not necessarily contradictory.
Some problem may be serious, cause millions of deaths and still delay general economic growth be few years.
AKA, "we really should do something serious about this" is not reserved for "we will all die" type of problem.
That is true, but both of us disagree with the narrative that is used to argue against having a child, which is pretty close to "we will all die."
Two other points. Over the next century, we can expect, with or without climate change, something like ten to twenty billion deaths, so a few million mean a change of something like .1%. Economic growth can be expected to reduce death rates, via increased life expectancy, by much more than that, judged by past experience.
Also, "cause millions of deaths" is a bit ambiguous. Rising temperature may well increase the number of people who die over the next century from heat by several millions. It may also decrease the number who die from cold by several millions. Does that count as "cause millions of deaths"?