zlacker

> If climate change is not a thing or not man-made, the worst outcome would be missing a few percentage points of economic growth by unnecessarily restricting energy sources.

This is a bit reductive of what is happening. How about the psychological damage done by the fear mongering caused by these type of news regarding climate change?

>>travel+(OP)
How about the psychological damage done by the fear mongering caused by these type of news regarding climate change?

What about it?

>>reaper+q
You're not concerned about how having such a large percentage of population becoming basically useless due to psychological problems can trouble the future of mankind?

>>reaper+q
Not good for humanity? We have enough psychological damage already...

>>travel+(OP)
If somebody calls out the problem and then we all agree on an attempted solution why is there some major psychological damage to the general population as a result of that? Just because something might be scary we shouldn't talk about it?

>>Jimthe+81
True...

>>travel+(OP)
What about the physical and psychological damage if the scientists are right and things get really really really really bad? If the ocean levels really do rise 10+ meters, won’t that cause even worse psychological damage? If places like the Middle East really do become uninhabitable, won’t that cause even worse psychological damage? Millions of refugees. If the vast majority of sea life dies, won’t that cause psychological damage? What about the Atlantic current stopping and the effects that would have on Europe? What about the increased drought and crop failure? What about invasive species moving farther North? More animals going extinct? Etc. It seems to me that the psychological damage from any and all of those will be far worse that what you are worried about.

>>travel+K
You're not concerned about how having such a large percentage of population becoming basically useless due to psychological problems can trouble the future of mankind?

I have not seen any evidence of a "large percentage of the population becoming useless" due to fear of climate change.

Can you provide a citation?

I have seen people with a basic background concern about climate change, and some people have more of it than others, but I don't see a "large percentage" of people becoming useless.

People have lots of fears. Some even more more pressing than climate change. Human beings are able to handle and process many different fears of varying intensities simultaneously, and have for thousands of years.

I have also not seen any information that the psychological fear of climate change is worse than actual climate change. One provokes level of fear in a subset of the population. The other will kill us all.

Perhaps the best way to fix those psychological fears in people is to fix the climate so they don't have to worry about it?

>>travel+(OP)
If you removed news about climate change, the climate of fear mongering in the news would not change much, it’d just refocus on the typical, and I think the psychological damage you’re referring to would continue nearly unabated.

It’s a product of the information environment, not the information itself.

And in light of the magnitude of the risk of getting this wrong, future generations will benefit in either case - either because we did what we could to improve things, or because we were the unfortunate generation that got lucky enough to be the ones having to interpret the data and suffer through some anxiety so the next generation doesn’t have to.

Imagine two future headlines:

“21st century scientists were on the right track, but society failed to act in time due to a drastic pullback in climate related reporting caused by worry that such reporting was too upsetting for people to handle. 6B perished in the aftermath due to mass starvation and forced migration.”

“21st century scientists had the unfortunate job of coming face to face with apparently cataclysmic data, without enough information about earth’s long term cycles to know that this was inevitable”.

Bottom line: the cost of incorrectly taking no action is so much higher than taking unnecessary action that it seems preferable to find ways to manage the downsides of acting than to hope there are no downsides of not acting.

>>travel+K
Ah go it. You are on the latest climate change deniers checkpoint:

- There's no climate change

- Climate change is okay and has no impact

- Climate change exists but it's due to natural causes

- Climate change exists but it's due to natural causes and its impacts are small

- Climate change exists but its impacts are good for us

- Climate change exists but we will adapt

- Climate change exists and its the activists' fault we didn't act because they scared us with their doomsday predictions

- Climate change exists and we shouldn't talk about it because it's scary and scared people are not productive members of society <- you are here