I’ll just respond to point 3 as it refers to my opinions directly. I don’t think one should read me saying “Wow okay” as an off-the-cuff response to something someone says as much evidence that I’ve changed my mind, let alone that other people should. At that point I haven’t had a chance to scrutinise the research, or reflect on its importance.
I suspect I said ‘wow okay’ because I was surprised by the claimed volatility of food supply in general, not the incremental effect of climate change.
Taking the figures Dave offers at face value, the increase is from 56% to 80% in the remainder of the century, which isn’t surprisingly large to me. Not having looked at it, I’d also take such modelling with a pinch of salt, and worry that it exaggerates things in order to support advocacy on the topic.
There was a UK government study on this that estimated right now, it might be around 1% chance per year, but with the slow climate change… They were getting more like 80% chance of this century that something like that would happen.
I think the UK government study I referred to was saying that even the ~1% chance per year of a 10% global food production shortfall now is increased by the climate change we have had so far. So the delta due to slow climate change could be larger. In general, I think it is a good idea for EA to have something to say to people who are interested in climate change. But the conventional emissions reductions that will cost ~$10 trillion present value is generally not very effective. However, I think there could be neglected opportunities that are effective. I talked about one of targeting neglected energy efficiency policy opportunities that reduce CO2 emissions and save money in that same 80,000 Hours interview (near the end). Carl Shulman notes that OPP has found some leveraged opportunities for climate change. Also, FLI and CSER do some work on climate change. The food system resilience work ALLFED does can also be valuable for abrupt regional climate change, where a region can lose 10°C in a decade, which has happened several times in the ice core record.
I’ll just respond to point 3 as it refers to my opinions directly. I don’t think one should read me saying “Wow okay” as an off-the-cuff response to something someone says as much evidence that I’ve changed my mind, let alone that other people should. At that point I haven’t had a chance to scrutinise the research, or reflect on its importance.
I suspect I said ‘wow okay’ because I was surprised by the claimed volatility of food supply in general, not the incremental effect of climate change.
Taking the figures Dave offers at face value, the increase is from 56% to 80% in the remainder of the century, which isn’t surprisingly large to me. Not having looked at it, I’d also take such modelling with a pinch of salt, and worry that it exaggerates things in order to support advocacy on the topic.
N.B. (1-0.99^81 = 56%)
I think the UK government study I referred to was saying that even the ~1% chance per year of a 10% global food production shortfall now is increased by the climate change we have had so far. So the delta due to slow climate change could be larger. In general, I think it is a good idea for EA to have something to say to people who are interested in climate change. But the conventional emissions reductions that will cost ~$10 trillion present value is generally not very effective. However, I think there could be neglected opportunities that are effective. I talked about one of targeting neglected energy efficiency policy opportunities that reduce CO2 emissions and save money in that same 80,000 Hours interview (near the end). Carl Shulman notes that OPP has found some leveraged opportunities for climate change. Also, FLI and CSER do some work on climate change. The food system resilience work ALLFED does can also be valuable for abrupt regional climate change, where a region can lose 10°C in a decade, which has happened several times in the ice core record.