>>890171>But it was cold today!Irrelevant. Climate is a long-term average and not what happens at one point in space and at one time. Climate is the change of four seasons in the Northern hemisphere, or the Monsoons in the tropics. Or the fact that there's a desert in Arizona. It might be chilly at on a desert night in Arizona, but we can reasonably expect that there won't ever be 30cm of snow in Arizona. In fact, there may be a new polar vortex this year which makes our (North American) winter exceptionally cold again. This is not inconsistent with climate change.
>But it doesn't matter!Injecting 36 billion megatons equivalent of TNT of energy into the Earth system doesn't matter?
>But it doesn't matter to me specifically!Economic projections of business-as-usual emissions, and the resulting climate change, would mean that the globally we would lose 20-25% of GDP or higher every year, essentially forever. This is the equivalent to burdening ourselves to a neverending Great Depression. Now it's true those projections are for the year 2100, but those estimates don't factor in sea level rise, and generally made very optimistic assumptions.
I'm sure New York City can maybe probably afford to build massive seawalls, storm defenses, etc. to protect itself, but imagine now that every major city in the world, every nuclear power plant relying on seawater for cooling, and every important naval base also bad to build these things too. I'm sure taxpayers will love it.
By 2050, when I think most of us will still be alive, we also might start seeing the Middle East becoming so hot, that on some days it would be impossible to stand outside for more than a few hours without succumbing to heatstroke. In addition to the nice things this will do to agricultural production, imagine the refugee flows. A million refugees in 2015 will look like nothing compared to what's coming.
