[NBC News] People who worry about climate change have mental health problems

bongman · Dec 28, 2018

Os Trigonum said: ↑

the cutting and pasting for responding will get more tedious from here on in, so I'll just try to respond to one or two of your points.

"how do we reach the conclusion that "climate change" was the causal agent for these mental issues?" The point of the OP article was that there's evidence that climate change is keeping people up at night. In my opinion that's not really healthy.

.
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The actions of religious folks seems to be more straneous. Spread the word, participate in the Sabath (every week), follow the word of God (everything in the bible), pray EVERYDAY, etc. These are things that believers constantly do in order to prepare for the next life or end of the world.

That's not the same?

Os Trigonum · Dec 28, 2018

Sweet Lou 4 2 said: ↑

Ok, so let's take out the word catastrophic and let me ask you what do you think is the most likely outcome we're facing on our current course? What's are the most likely outcomes? What kind of changes do you think are most probably on our current track?

There's a range, but that range doesn't start anywhere close to 0 impact.
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I think humans are adaptable, and that we will be able to adapt. In my view, the Holocaust was a catastrophe . . . and humans got together and dealt with it. I believe climate change will be less traumatic. I also think that climate worriers tend to emphasize ONLY the negative impacts of predicted climate change, and never the potential positive impacts. In that sense, I think a true "cost-benefit analysis" has not yet been done--which would be necessary for a genuine policy discussion to begin.

I also believe that "on our current track" changes are already occurring. Just look at the slowdown in emissions in the U.S. which occurred without ratifying the Kyoto agreement or signing on to the Paris accord.

I agree the Trump era is a bit of a step backward, but the long-range policy genie is out of the bottle, and I believe we will see slow, lasting moves toward emissions reductions over time. I am also something of a technological optimist: I believe it is possible that we will come up with some kind(s) of geo-engineering solutions for removing carbon from the atmosphere, again over time.

Os Trigonum · Dec 28, 2018

bongman said: ↑

The actions of religious folks seems to be more straneous. Spread the word, participate in the Sabath (every week), follow the word of God (everything in the bible), pray EVERYDAY, etc. These are things that believers constantly do in order to prepare for the next life or end of the world.

That's not the same?
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no. I think you and I likely have different conceptions of "religion" and "religious"

bongman · Dec 28, 2018

Os Trigonum said: ↑

no. I think you and I likely have different conceptions of "religion" and "religious"
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Lets say that we have a difference in terminology. Does that change the fact that MAJORITY of believers perform certain actions that they would otherwise not do if they did not accept the proposition of the bible? As you claimed, it's keeping the climate change folks up all night. Do believers think of it less or more. Based on their actions, I would go with the later. If you agree with that, why is one more susceptible?

Os Trigonum · Dec 28, 2018

bongman said: ↑

Lets say that we have a difference in terminology. Does that change the fact that MAJORITY of believers perform certain actions that they would otherwise not do if they did not accept the proposition of the bible? As you claimed, it's keeping the climate change folks up all night. Do believers think of it less or more. Based on their actions, I would go with the later. If you agree with that, why is one more susceptible?
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I don't think you can generalize that the "MAJORITY of believers perform certain actions that they would otherwise not do if they did not accept the proposition of the bible." so I'm not quite sure what to say in response.

"{Climate change} is keeping the climate change folks up all night. Do believers think of it less or more." Again, are you asking "do believers in climate change think of it" (and what does "it" refer to here?) less or more (less or more than . . . what exactly?)" again, not trying to be dense, just having a hard time figuring out what you're asking me.

Hopefully if I get clearer on that then I can respond to the question "why is one more susceptible?"

Amiga · Dec 28, 2018

I might be wrong, but I believe people who literally believe in the biblical's end of the world LOOKS FORWARD to it. It's true acceptance and with that, I doubt there is room for negative emotion state, but there is room for joyful state (concerning the end of the world).

bongman · Dec 28, 2018

Os Trigonum said: ↑

I don't think you can generalize that the "MAJORITY of believers perform certain actions that they would otherwise not do if they did not accept the proposition of the bible." so I'm not quite sure what to say in response.

"{Climate change} is keeping the climate change folks up all night. Do believers think of it less or more." Again, are you asking "do believers in climate change think of it" (and what does "it" refer to here?) less or more (less or more than . . . what exactly?)" again, not trying to be dense, just having a hard time figuring out what you're asking me.

Hopefully if I get clearer on that then I can respond to the question "why is one more susceptible?"
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According to the claim Climate change advocates may stay up all night which can cause issues. People who subscribe to religion do more than just stay up all night. They perform actions to prepare for death or end of the world (not just before sleeping) like praying, mass, etc. Are these the actions of folks who are concerned about their future or they are just doing it for the heck of it?

The author and you to a certain degree, you, are comfortable with the idea that believing in climate change can cause folks to have mental issues. I will not disagree with that. if there could be a lot of factors that can cause mental issues, or other groups is able to cope with terrifying ideas, why single out a particular group?

bongman · Dec 28, 2018

double post ... deleted

Sweet Lou 4 2 · Dec 28, 2018

Os Trigonum said: ↑

I think humans are adaptable, and that we will be able to adapt. In my view, the Holocaust was a catastrophe . . . and humans got together and dealt with it. I believe climate change will be less traumatic. I also think that climate worriers tend to emphasize ONLY the negative impacts of predicted climate change, and never the potential positive impacts. In that sense, I think a true "cost-benefit analysis" has not yet been done--which would be necessary for a genuine policy discussion to begin.

I also believe that "on our current track" changes are already occurring. Just look at the slowdown in emissions in the U.S. which occurred without ratifying the Kyoto agreement or signing on to the Paris accord.

I agree the Trump era is a bit of a step backward, but the long-range policy genie is out of the bottle, and I believe we will see slow, lasting moves toward emissions reductions over time. I am also something of a technological optimist: I believe it is possible that we will come up with some kind(s) of geo-engineering solutions for removing carbon from the atmosphere, again over time.
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How bad do you think climate change will be and its impact? The world is being slow to mount a campaign for finding technical solutions to excess co2 in the atmosphere - don't you think part of the solution is to take it seriously and have a two pronged approach? Reduce emissions to buy us more time?

Or do you feel the positive impact of climate change on Russia, Europe, and Canada will out weight the negative impact for the rest of the planet. Ironically, red states in the south will take the hardest hit from climate change while many northern blue states will benefit

Os Trigonum · Dec 28, 2018

Sweet Lou 4 2 said: ↑

How bad do you think climate change will be and its impact?
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Honestly? I have no idea. But neither do most climate scientists. Here is precisely where there is no "consensus." At the risk of being criticized for "relying on a link," here's a Chris Mooney (of all people) article that describes the uncertainty surrounding the potential answer(s) to your question.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ios-and-the-best-ones/?utm_term=.16ca18ee3963

an excerpt:

Yes, global warming will be bad. But these scientists say it won’t reach the worst-case scenario.

By Chris Mooney
January 17
Climate scientists on Wednesday suggested that they may be able to rule out some of the most dire scenarios of what would happen if greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere were to double.

Unfortunately, the same scientists say the best-case scenarios are also probably unrealistic.

How a doubling of atmospheric greenhouse gases would affect the climate is of tremendous importance, as humans are running out of time to avoid that outcome. With current atmospheric concentrations at 405 parts per million, as opposed to about 280 parts per million before the dawn of the industrial era, the planet is already about halfway there.

In the new study in the journal Nature, Peter Cox and Mark Williams of the University of Exeter and Chris Huntingford of the United Kingdom’s Centre for Ecology and Hydrology attempt to recalculate the “equilibrium climate sensitivity,” a highly influential metric that describes how much the planet will warm if carbon dioxide doubles and the Earth’s climate then adjusts to the new state of the atmosphere.

For decades, climate studies have found a very broad range of possibilities for this key figure — somewhere between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius, with 3 degrees Celsius (or 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit) sitting smack in the middle of the range. But the inability to further narrow this estimate has been a big problem, Cox said.

“The problem is the low end sort of implies maybe you don’t need to do much about climate change except adapt, and the high end implies it’s kind of too late,” he said.

Recently, however, different teams of scientists have hit upon an approach to try to narrow the results — trying to find an “emerging constraint” on what the possible future outcome could be by comparing high-powered climate change models, which predict the future, with currently observed elements of present climate.

“You find something in the models which is well correlated to future response and can potentially be observed in the real world,” Ben Sanderson, a climate expert at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, said of the approach. Sanderson was not involved in the current study.

To that end, Cox and his colleagues focused on a simple measurement: How much the climate varies on an annual basis, irrespective of greenhouse gas emissions.

“What we did is look at how the variation from year to year, having taken out the long-term trend, was related to the sensitivity of the system, across all models,” Cox said.

The result allowed the scientists to narrow the probable climate sensitivity range to between 2.2 and 3.4 degrees Celsius, with a central figure of 2.8 degrees C (5.04 degrees Fahrenheit), somewhat lower than the previous central estimate. They said this amounts to narrowing the uncertainty around the figure by 60 percent.

“We think the likely range is 2.2 to 3.4, so that kind of very much downplays high climate sensitivities above 4, and low climate sensitivities below 2,” Cox said. The study asserted that there is less than a 3 percent possibility that the climate sensitivity is lower than 1.5 degrees, and less than a 1 percent possibility that it is higher than 4.5 degrees.

If correct, this would be very good news — suggesting that we may not have to reckon with truly hellish temperature increases by the end of this century. “I should thank Cox and colleagues for helping me to sleep a little easier in my bed at night,” Piers Forster, a climate scientist at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom, wrote in a commentary on the new study, also published in the journal Nature.
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there's more to the story at the link, including a discussion of other estimates that differ from Cox's and Huntingford's.

The world is being slow to mount a campaign for finding technical solutions to excess co2 in the atmosphere - don't you think part of the solution is to take it seriously and have a two pronged approach? Reduce emissions to buy us more time?
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I think this is happening, particularly in the U.S. It may not be happening in China, India, and elsewhere. I do not believe that we can control China, India, and elsewhere.

Or do you feel the positive impact of climate change on Russia, Europe, and Canada will out weight the negative impact for the rest of the planet. Ironically, red states in the south will take the hardest hit from climate change while many northern blue states will benefit
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I have no idea, this CBA topic is an area I have not spent much serious time on.

Sweet Lou 4 2 · Dec 28, 2018

Os Trigonum said: ↑

Honestly? I have no idea. But neither do most climate scientists. Here is precisely where there is no "consensus." At the risk of being criticized for "relying on a link," here's a Chris Mooney (of all people) article that describes the uncertainty surrounding the potential answer(s) to your question.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ios-and-the-best-ones/?utm_term=.16ca18ee3963
Click to expand...

Do you know what the impact of 2.2 - 3.4 degree Celsius increase would be on life? It's still pretty bad. Here's an article from NASA talking about the significant impact of going from 1.5 degrees increase to 2.0 degrees

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2458/why-a-half-degree-temperature-rise-is-a-big-deal/

Os Trigonum · Dec 28, 2018

Sweet Lou 4 2 said: ↑

Do you know what the impact of 2.2 - 3.4 degree Celsius increase would be on life? It's still pretty bad. Here's an article from NASA talking about the significant impact of going from 1.5 degrees increase to 2.0 degrees

https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2458/why-a-half-degree-temperature-rise-is-a-big-deal/
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well again, your judgment is that the impact would be bad. An alternative view might welcome what we might term the 'evolutionary opportunity' of such a geologic event, which presumably would pave the way for all subsequent evolution--in much the same way that cyanobacteria once "polluted" the atmosphere with oxygen, paving the way for all subsequent evolution.

Now, I'm being partly facetious here, but there's a very real philosophical issue behind making such normative judgments of good or bad. If you're like Aldo Leopold, who lamented living in what he called a "world of wounds," then you're going to be sad about climate change and judge the potential impacts to be bad.

If on the other hand you're more optimistic and less inclined to melancholy, then perhaps you might see value in the grand experiment being conducted right before your eyes . . . and exclaim, what a time to be alive!! Just sayin' . . .

But appreciate the point about the possible effects of a 1.5 to 2 degree increase.

Nook · Dec 28, 2018

People “stay up worrying” about their loved ones, their health, their job and their mental wellbeing. Not many people stay up worrying about global warming.

That isn’t to say global warming isn’t important. It clearly is important and it is cute to utilize a bizarre article to down play global warming and infer there is some hysteria.

Sweet Lou 4 2 · Dec 28, 2018

Os Trigonum said: ↑

well again, your judgment is that the impact would be bad. An alternative view might welcome what we might term the 'evolutionary opportunity' of such a geologic event, which presumably would pave the way for all subsequent evolution--in much the same way that cyanobacteria once "polluted" the atmosphere with oxygen, paving the way for all subsequent evolution.

Now, I'm being partly facetious here, but there's a very real philosophical issue behind making such normative judgments of good or bad. If you're like Aldo Leopold, who lamented living in what he called a "world of wounds," then you're going to be sad about climate change and judge the potential impacts to be bad.

If on the other hand you're more optimistic and less inclined to melancholy, then perhaps you might see value in the grand experiment being conducted right before your eyes . . . and exclaim, what a time to be alive!! Just sayin' . . .

But appreciate the point about the possible effects of a 1.5 to 2 degree increase.
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I mean I equate human suffering with the word bad. You can say that heck, we're all going to die and in the big scheme of things there is no good or bad - sure but then why have a moral position on anything? But I the evidence is predicting that climate change isn't going to be the kind of change that's going to improve lives, but it's going to be change that worsens it.

Change isn't a bad thing. A fire has positive impact by clearing out old trees for instance. But if 1,000 people die, is that a good or bad thing? Do we have a philosophical discussion about whether or not we try to stop that level of human suffering?

Anxiety about climate change is useless - that's true. But if collectively we care about a lot of people who will suffer - mostly people who don't use very much in terms of fossil fuels or cattle - then I do feel we have an obligation to take steps as a species to ensure we aren't going to F a lot of people including ourselves.

You are right, we don't understand the impact fully of climate change. Ecosystems are complex and seemingly innocent changes can have dramatic impact. Change creates opportunities for some, and hardships for others. But generally speaking, when you have 7 billion people dependent on how things are currently, change is a massive risk - and that risk translates to both survivability and the global economic health.

The logical course is to take steps to slow down this change by cutting emissions as well as investing in technology that will reduce the Co2 in the air - and do it as a strong effort not the half hearted one that's currently underway.

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[NBC News] People who worry about climate change have mental health problems

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