Afternoon Must-Read: Ryan Cooper: How to Talk to a Climate-Change Contrarian

Ryan Cooper: How to talk to a climate change contrarian (if you must): “Climate trolls make the link between climate change and extreme weather seem highly complicated…

…It isn’t…. Roger Pielke Jr… made his career repeatedly accusing climate scientists of scientific malfeasance for exaggerating the link between climate change and extreme weather…. Now the Breakthrough Institute, which is about as troll-y as they come with regards to climate change, is out with a true-to-form defense of Pielke, claiming that a new, devastating report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change entirely vindicates his approach to weather disasters….

When it comes to climate change and extreme weather, one simple fact takes care of the vast majority of what’s really important. You ready? Here it is, drum roll…

More global warming means more extreme weather. To put it another way: Why do we care about climate change? Because it could cause serious, potentially catastrophic damage to our civilization. Extreme weather is a big part of how this will happen, according to the new IPCC report, which even Breakthrough and Pielke apparently agree is a good source: ‘Impacts from recent climate-related extremes, such as heat waves, droughts, floods, cyclones, and wildfires, reveal significant vulnerability and exposure of some ecosystems and many human systems to current climate variability (very high confidence). Impacts of such climate-related extremes include alteration of ecosystems, disruption of food production and water supply, damage to infrastructure and settlements, morbidity and mortality, and consequences for mental health and human well-being. For countries at all levels of development, these impacts are consistent with a significant lack of preparedness for current climate variability in some sectors.’

It’s really that simple. Organized science is highly confident that unchecked climate change will cause more extreme weather in the future, along with a grim parade of horribles. So we should stop the carbon pollution that causes it….

Economic damage is a completely cock-eyed way of looking at any of this. Poor countries are going to be hit hardest by climate change, but since they’re poor the damage isn’t going to be very ‘expensive’. As some dude named Nate Silver showed us back in 2009, you could delete something like three billion people off the face of the Earth and it would only add up to 5 percent of world GDP. What happened to that guy?”