# Will having children solve climate change? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 27, 2019, 10:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598 "2019-03-27T10:33:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/241 "2019-04-11T00:04:06Z")
> [@Ulfreida](#): > > Yes, I for one certainly do. Okay, great. Now this is the key part: WHY do you think that? Did you read it somewhere? If so, where? Would you consider it a “serious source of climate science reporting”? Or is it just a gut feeling you have? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/242 "2019-04-11T00:04:34Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > You’ve been steadily moving the goalposts during our conversation. It started out with a quote (by another poster) that “billions will likely die”. And, as I keep pointing out to you, I never claimed that that statement was true. I have simply been showing you why it is much more plausible than your denialist stance is willing to admit. No goalpost-shifting has been involved on my part: I started out in this conversation showing concrete numbers behind a fairly conservative estimate of 100 million climate-change deaths in the course of a few centuries, and have been giving realistic reasons why that number **might** expand by an order of magnitude or more. > [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > You wrote earlier “I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to suggest that we might lose a billion or more humans to the combined effects of climate change before we manage to regain a more stable climate system. (If we ever do.)”. I certainly believe that you “don’t think it’s at all unreasonable”, but I want to know WHY you think that. Because, to spell it out for you once again, the world already has, at an extremely conservative estimate, at least a million deaths a year resulting from tropical diseases, natural disasters, food and water scarcity, political destabilization related to resource scarcity, and other climate-related factors. If the impacts of climate change put twice as many people at similar levels of risk from those factors—and the IPCC estimates and scenarios I cited make it clear that that’s extremely likely—then statistically, we can expect twice as many deaths from them. And in the course of centuries, those (extremely conservatively estimated) extra million deaths a year add up to hundreds of millions of deaths. What part of this do you really find implausible or “hyperbolic” or “alarmist”? It looks to me like pretty predictable cause and effect. > [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Should I be regarding your posts here as “implausible hyperbole and alarmism” or do they have an actual basis in “serious sources of climate science reporting”? The latter, as you can see from the recent IPCC report I quoted (and which, along with previous IPCC reports, all my previous cites—however much you might not like their “tone”—were ultimately based on). But you are heavily invested in denying that the implications of those factual summaries and realistic predictions can be true. You have constructed a denialist safe-space for yourself where you’ve decided you don’t have to take seriously any facts or reasoning not presented in the form of an irrefutable proof that X hundred million people will absolutely-guaranteed be killed by climate change in the next Y years. You’re not trying to arrive at a realistic assessment of likely outcomes: you’re just trying to defend your comfort zone by ignoring scientific reality in favor of demanding an impossible level of certainty. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/243 "2019-04-11T00:32:12Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > I’m going to ask you for cites too. What’s the “consensus about ocean level rise”? Are we talking about 1 meter? 3 meters? 30 meters? Well, as [this article notes](https://ocean.si.edu/through-time/ancient-seas/sea-level-rise), > [@](#): > > Between 1900 and 1990 studies show that sea level rose between 1.2 millimeters and 1.7 millimeters per year on average. By 2000, that rate had increased to about 3.2 millimeters per year and the rate in 2016 is estimated at 3.4 millimeters per year. Sea level is expected to rise even more quickly by the end of the century. […] > > Scientists with the Intergovernmental Project on Climate Change predict that global sea level will rise between 0.3 and 1 meter by 2100. Eventually, sea level is expected to rise around 2.3 meters for every degree (°C) that climate change warms the planet, and Earth has warmed by 1°C already. What scientists don’t know is how long it will take for sea level to catch up to the temperature increase. Whether it takes another 200 or 2000 years largely depends on how quickly the ice sheets melt. The IPCC report previously linked estimates a 20-cm rise in sea level by 2050, increasing to about 1 or 1.25 m by some time in the 2200s, depending on how much warming we induce. (Note that [even a rise of 25cm or so will have serious impacts on many US East Coast cities](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/sea-level-rise/), among other places.) ---
**Author:** ![Chingon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chingon/32/17645_2.png) [@Chingon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chingon)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 12:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/244 "2019-04-11T00:43:52Z")
How will that impact sealions? ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/245 "2019-04-11T00:50:11Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Well, as [this article notes](https://ocean.si.edu/through-time/ancient-seas/sea-level-rise), > > The IPCC report previously linked estimates a 20-cm rise in sea level by 2050, increasing to about 1 or 1.25 m by some time in the 2200s, depending on how much warming we induce. (Note that [even a rise of 25cm or so will have serious impacts on many US East Coast cities](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/sea-level-rise/), among other places.) [https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/29461](https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/29461) Over a hundred million may be displaced just in the next few decades, according to the World Bank. > **[Rising seas could result in 2 billion refugees by 2100 | Cornell Chronicle](https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2017/06/rising-seas-could-result-2-billion-refugees-2100)** > > In the year 2100, more than 2 billion people - those who live on islands or along coasts - could become climate change refugees due to rising sea levels, according to Cornell researchers. Or up to 2 billion by 2100, according to this Cornell research. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 12:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/246 "2019-04-11T00:55:09Z")
> [@Chingon](#): > > How will that impact sealions? :D, but in all seriousness, the [impacts of climate change on sea lions are pretty severely negative](http://www.marinemammalcenter.org/about-us/News-Room/2015-news-archives/sea-lion-crisis.html). ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/247 "2019-04-11T03:19:35Z")
The approach I learned from my atmospheric science PhD pal is to stick to what one can be sure of. Do we know the photochemical properties of CO2? Yes. Can we measure the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere? Yes. Has it been rising? Yes. Do we know why? Yes. Will it continue? Forward looking statement, and the exact numbers will vary depending on what occurs as events play out, but sure looks like it. Do we have precedents for increased atmospheric carbon levels? Geologically speaking, oh yes, up to and including a period when most of the coal underground today was floating around in the atmosphere. It was hot, there was not much ice gloabally, and sea levels were (cites vary on the exact number, and is _was_ hundreds of millions of years ago, and also I am not a professional scientist but a message board poster) ~240 feet higher than today. I think it would be a long-term rolling disaster if sea level rise accelerated significantly. Sea levels have been rather stable for centuries, millenia even, and now that is changing. Inches per year will really add up over a couple of centuries, and a burgeoning future world population will be continuously squeezed inland. How much poisonous crap will end up in the oceans? A lot, probably. This is on top of arable land moving or being lost, in an increasingly desertified world, buffeted by ever increasingly violent storms. It is alarm_ing_. But where have I been dishonest? ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/248 "2019-04-11T05:38:12Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Okay, great. Now this is the key part: WHY do you think that? Did you read it somewhere? If so, where? Would you consider it a “serious source of climate science reporting”? Or is it just a gut feeling you have? As **Kimstu** showed, he and others “never claimed that that statement was true. I[/we] have simply been showing you why it is much more plausible than your denialist stance is willing to admit.” Speaking of gut feelings, you actually did go for a cite from Fox news’ Tucker Carlson parading Lomborg, who was discredited more than 15 years ago. It was like seeing a denier of evolution pointing at a creationist as if he was a reliable source in a biology discussion… well, at least the creationist quoted the bible passages accurately… /s ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/249 "2019-04-11T05:53:40Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > As **Kimstu** showed, he and others “never claimed that that statement was true. I[/we] have simply been showing you why it is much more plausible than your denialist stance is willing to admit.” … The post of mine you quoted here was in response to this one: > [@Ulfreida](#): > > Yes, I for one certainly do. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/250 "2019-04-11T05:59:12Z")
> [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](#): > > … where have I been dishonest? It’s not that you’ve been dishonest, it’s that you didn’t follow through with what you said in the beginning. You started out with: “The approach I learned from my atmospheric science PhD pal is to stick to what one can be sure of.” That lasted for like most of one paragraph. By the second one, you were quoting sea level figures that you were NOT sure of, and by your third paragraph you had abandoned that initial plan altogether and resorted to “I think” and “probably”. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Tooth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c67d28/32.png) [@The\_Tooth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Tooth)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 6:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/251 "2019-04-11T06:03:49Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > What’s the “scientific consensus” on how many people are likely to die from climate change, let’s say between now and 2100? It doesn’t matter how many people die; Senator Lee has a plan. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/252 "2019-04-11T06:33:34Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > The post of mine you quoted here was in response to this one: And that one was following up the “billions” distraction. So, yeah. And duly noted that you are not acknowledging how retrograde is to point at Lomborg in a discussion like this one. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 8:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/253 "2019-04-11T08:06:47Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > You think exaggerating is “better”? Yeah. And so do climatologists. There’s a reason Al Gore (who was quite wrong in a lot of ways) is seen as generally harmless, while Richard Lindzen (who is or at least was a serious scientist, despite being the wrongest the longest on climate change) is seen as a goddamn menace. YES EXAGGERATION IS BETTER THAN DENIALISM! What kind of question is that? Exaggeration is close to reality; what you’re pushing isn’t in the same ballpark. You sitting here as a denialist and complaining that we can’t precisely cite that we’re looking at billions of deaths, as opposed to tens or hundreds of millions. It’s like a guy demanding more and more elaborate explanations on how black holes work while proudly proclaiming to be a flat earther and gravity denialist. You’re taking part in a discussion way above your pay grade, unless you’re doing so in bad faith the way Mike Lee was. If you’re engaging in good faith, you beed to stop asking people to spoonfeed you the basics and get up to at least a grade school understanding of the science. You’re like the guy who cites a disgraced pseudoscientist on a propaganda network, then complains about other people’s sources. … No, wait, you literally just are that guy. > [@Chingon](#): > > How will that impact sealions? They’ll thrive for a few decades before dying out long after it’s too late to actually fix anything. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/254 "2019-04-11T08:17:01Z")
Like, just to be clear. If you’re not in agreement with the following statement: “Anthropogenic climate change is real and will hurt, displace, or kill more people than all but the largest wars in human history; the longer we take on significant international efforts to end CO2 emissions, the worse it gets and harder it gets to stop.” Well, I’m sorry, but your opinion isn’t worth the bandwidth I read it on. You are _way_ behind the curve and need remedial lessons before you should get a seat at the grownups’ table, let alone before you should spend even an instant criticizing people who actually do agree with that and want to do something about it. That’s why Mike Lee’s statements are so utterly heinous and absurd, and why we’re so angry that this horrific fucking jackoff has any actual legislative power. That’s why we’re angry at the ill-informed people who put him in power and continue to support him after what, in a rational world, would be a career-endingly stupid speech. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/255 "2019-04-11T12:52:25Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > Yeah. And so do climatologists. … You’re not going to convince a lot of skeptics that way: “Hey, we say things that aren’t true and don’t have cites to back up our bullshit, but you should believe us anyways, because … just because” That’s not how this works. ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 1:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/256 "2019-04-11T13:02:39Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > You’re not going to convince a lot of skeptics that way So the thing about “skeptics” is that most anyone who wants to know about this _already knows about this_. The rest are either children, illiterates with no internet access, or have no interest in the actual facts. People who spend all day on internet forums filled with people like **GIGObuster** , **Wolfpup** , and **Kimtsu** and still deny climate change? Well, I can’t speak for you, but by all means, be my guest - you’ve been here long enough, you really have no excuse to be this wrong. Why _don’t_ you know better? “You failed to convince me of something I am not interested in looking up even the basics of” is not a good answer. It’s not my job to give every person who comes to me demanding proof that the earth isn’t a hollow disc a crash course on astrophysics. There are resources for that, if you care to look at them; I linked them upthread. Here, once again, something on your level: [https://climatekids.nasa.gov/](https://climatekids.nasa.gov/) Did you give that a read-through last time I linked it? If not, I fail to see how that’s somehow my problem. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/257 "2019-04-11T13:06:38Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > So the thing about “skeptics” is that most anyone who wants to know about this _already knows about this_. The rest are either children, illiterates with no internet access, or have no interest in the actual facts. Amen. The end. ---
**Author:** ![HurricaneDitka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/96bed5/32.png) [@HurricaneDitka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HurricaneDitka)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 1:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/258 "2019-04-11T13:13:38Z")
> [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](#): > > … People who spend all day on internet forums filled with people like **GIGObuster** , **Wolfpup** , and **Kimtsu** and still deny climate change? Well, I can’t speak for you, but by all means, be my guest - you’ve been here long enough, you really have no excuse to be this wrong. Why _don’t_ you know better? … Well, yesterday I asked Kimstu for a source and she pointed me to a feminist blog that lied about an alarmist’s article, so there’s that, just within the last 24 hours. GIGObuster keeps trying to insist no one’s defending “billions will likely die” because he, like me, knows it’s bullshit that can’t be reasonably defended, but other Dopers keep coming along and fucking up his plan by chiming in with how they believe it, or telling us how humanity is facing “an existential crisis”. This morning you admitted that you guys exaggerate. If that doesn’t explain to you why I take the alarmist things I read from your side with a significant amount of salt, I don’t know what else to tell you. ---
**Author:** ![Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/try2b_comprehensive/32/65_2.png) [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/259 "2019-04-11T14:15:24Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > It’s not that you’ve been dishonest, it’s that you didn’t follow through with what you said in the beginning. You started out with: “The approach I learned from my atmospheric science PhD pal is to stick to what one can be sure of.” That lasted for like most of one paragraph. By the second one, you were quoting sea level figures that you were NOT sure of, and by your third paragraph you had abandoned that initial plan altogether and resorted to “I think” and “probably”. There are varying degrees of certainty in science, HD. There are some things we know effectively for absolute certain. The photochemistry of CO2. The current concentration of CO2. The historical record is accurate to within a small margin of error, and anyway follows a clear trend. These bedrock basics are truly not in dispute, but I never see acknowledgement of that much out of you, or Lee, or the Fox apologists of denialism. That is either dishonesty or ignorance right there. When it comes to forward-looking statements, we acknowledge that we are making a prediction, and the exact outcome will depend on how unknown variables play out. I _know_ that if I flip this coin, the odds of getting heads are 50%. If it comes up tails and you say I was wrong, the actual answer is that you don’t understand probabilities. The increase in global temperatures is well-documented, as is the rise in sea levels. Because we are talking about planet-wide data it may exist within a margin of error, and honest people acknowledge that. Still, by the measurements we do have, nearly every year is the hottest on record, something again, you, Lee, and Fox fail to acknowledge. The increase in sea level rise was cited at .2 mm/year above. In an increasingly hot world that will surely increase. By how much? It depends. Will the Mike Lees of the world be making policy, or will informed, honest people? It depends on how we react, and also our models of the planet are not perfect, and also every ocean does not rise at the same rate. So there is a range of predictions, but all of them point to ever-faster rising seas, which will have at least some very obvious consequences. You never responded to [this](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21580251&postcount=205) post (it needed to be edited for word choice, if you want to pounce on that you will likely miss the point). See that handy map of Carboniferous period land mass? That is the end point of ocean rise. Yeah, “I think” transitioning our world into that would be a continuous disaster, but there is an element of value judgement there, no? David Duke might say, “Well, the US is a mess, but all those brown people countries are even worse off, so overall it’s a win!” Going back to the preamble of the constitution, the government is tasked with attending to the general welfare, so such an attitude would be considered un-American, but not exactly true or false. You see? Were sea levels 230 feet higher during the Carboniferous? Or 250? Sorry I can’t nail it down exactly, but either way, going back to those conditions wrecks the world as we know it. And for what? Some political animus against solar power and electric cars? Why don’t you say a few words justifying that tradeoff? Also, how does having more babies address any of this? ---
**Author:** ![Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/budget_player_cadet/32/205_2.png) [@Budget\_Player\_Cadet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Budget_Player_Cadet)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2019, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598/260 "2019-04-11T14:18:55Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > Well, yesterday I asked Kimstu for a source and she pointed me to a feminist blog that lied about an alarmist’s article, so there’s that, just within the last 24 hours. GIGObuster keeps trying to insist no one’s defending “billions will likely die” because he, like me, knows it’s bullshit that can’t be reasonably defended, but other Dopers keep coming along and fucking up his plan by chiming in with how they believe it, or telling us how humanity is facing “an existential crisis”. This morning you admitted that you guys exaggerate. If that doesn’t explain to you why I take the alarmist things I read from your side with a significant amount of salt, I don’t know what else to tell you. I wonder if we can find enough people unwilling to spend a whole lot of time going over the primary sources with you to make you believe the earth is flat. That’s how this works, right? Your ignorance of basic science is excused because a bunch of people on a message board are not very good at convincing you (and, in my case, really aren’t trying)? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598.md?page=12) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/will-having-children-solve-climate-change/831598.md?page=14)