Again, I want to thank you for the feedback you’ve given. We really appreciate engagement with the content, including meaningful critical engagement.
Given the volume of comments you had, I’m not going to provide too much in the way of object-level discussion (with one exception in a reply below). However, I think there are two important overall takeaways:
1: Many points you raise give important context and nuance, and in some cases importantly different headline conclusions. With these comments in mind, as well as further research, we’re going to revisit the content and make changes where we think it’s appropriate. It’s highly likely we’ll conclude that some changes are warranted – for instance (but not exhaustively), by clarifying where we’re giving figures conditional on more severe emissions scenarios, and discussing the effect economic growth is likely to have on strengthening adaptation. I think the content will be more accurate as a result of your comments, so thank you!
2: It’s possible someone who has just read the comments on this post could come away with the impression that each of these criticisms reflects an inaccuracy with our content, which we don’t think would be a correct inference. In some cases, we’re either already aware of the nuances you’ve raised, don’t think they give us sufficient reason to update our content, or don’t think they necessarily represent claims we’ve made.
For example, in a comment below you imply that we exaggerate the importance of wildfires. I don’t think this is a fair characterisation; not only do we exclude wildfires from our priorities article, we devote only one word to them in our climate overview. We mention them only to note that they are expected to increase in frequency due to climate change (which is true). Additionally, we believe you substantially underestimate of the mortality impacts of wildfires. I discuss this in a reply below. Here are a few quick smaller points:
You say that climate change will increase food insecurity. True, but studies that incorporate the effects of climate change, economic growth and agricultural progress find reductions in food insecurity on nearly all socioeconomic scenarios. I think it would be worth providing this context.
Agreed—we discuss this in our article on climate change priorities. It might also be worth mentioning in the overview.
In support of the claim that climate change is an important contributor to conflict risk you cite an 80,000 Hours article. The IPCC is highly equivocal on the effects of climate change on civil conflict. It basically says nothing about the effects on interstate conflict and no scholars of great power war think it is an important driver of 21st century potential great power conflicts.
I think the wording of this point implies we have more confidence in this dynamic than we state in the article. Just for reference, our phrasing of this point is ‘On top of this, some are also concerned that the effects of climate change may indirectly exacerbate other large-scale risks, too – such as increasing the chance of international conflict… These considerations increase the importance of climate change beyond its direct effects’. This isn’t intended to (and hopefully doesn’t) convey a high probability of climate change leading to great power war – though I understand that more context and additional caveating would likely be beneficial.
To characterise the trend in flood deaths as anything other than a dramatic downward trend seems clearly wrong.
If you’re referring to my comment, my claim was that ‘annual flood deaths have been fairly flat since the 1970s.’ I think this is a pretty fair extrapolation from the OWID data, given that we’re talking about absolute mortality numbers and not the average lethality of each flood event!
On a general note, as a small organization we have limited capacity and expertise of our own. This means we rely on deference to both respected institutions and mainstream resources more than we otherwise might. I think this deference is typically justified, though there are many obvious caveats. Regardless, pointing us towards specific points (or more general claims) you believe are suspect as well as resources that raise valid disputes helps us to better evaluate contentious claims—so we appreciate that.
Hi Dylan, thanks a lot for these thoughts I appreciate the openness to criticism a lot. As I mentioned, I think it is extremely difficult to provide a good overview of this topic in part because the literature is so vast. A draft I wrote on climate change a couple of years ago was correctly described as ‘drivel’ by a climate scientist a couple of years ago; I think any assessment of the quality of work on this topic should be forgiving especially when researchers are pushed for time. Some professional scientists think that 3-4 degrees of warming will kill billions of people due to food loss and heat stress, whereas myself and others think this is clearly wrong. I think there is, as lots of people seem to want to say nowadays, a lot of ‘misinformation’ about climate change. Scientists and media organisations who claim that ‘misinformation’ is one of the great problems of our time don’t seem to care about ‘misinformation’ on climate change. One can speculate as to why this might be.
I may be biased, but my report on climate change might be useful. I’d also be happy to provide feedback on any future drafts.
On floods: firstly, I think the per capita death rate is the best metric for assessing whether weather events themselves are getting worse. The global population has increased by 4.3 billion people since 1970 (and there is large net migration to coastal regions). So, attributing all of the increase in flood deaths to changes in weather trends is wrong. The death rate is the measure we should use. Second, the trend in per capita deaths from floods is down.
On wildfires I agree that the indirect effects look more important than the direct effects. However, one also has to consider whether there is a trend in wildfires, what it is, and to what extent it can be attributed to climate change. I think there is considerable doubt about all of these issues, as discussed by Roger Pielke here. As I noted above, the IPCC has low confidence in any trend in fire weather, i.e. the weather conditions that might contribute to wild fires.
Is there a trend in wild fires? Yes, it appears to be downward since 2003.
Canada, which was recently the subject of a lot of attention about wildfires has seen a declining/flat trend since the 1990s. Claims that climate change is driving the non-existent upward trend is presented in the Guardian, New York Times, and NPR.
Hi John,
Again, I want to thank you for the feedback you’ve given. We really appreciate engagement with the content, including meaningful critical engagement.
Given the volume of comments you had, I’m not going to provide too much in the way of object-level discussion (with one exception in a reply below). However, I think there are two important overall takeaways:
1: Many points you raise give important context and nuance, and in some cases importantly different headline conclusions. With these comments in mind, as well as further research, we’re going to revisit the content and make changes where we think it’s appropriate. It’s highly likely we’ll conclude that some changes are warranted – for instance (but not exhaustively), by clarifying where we’re giving figures conditional on more severe emissions scenarios, and discussing the effect economic growth is likely to have on strengthening adaptation. I think the content will be more accurate as a result of your comments, so thank you!
2: It’s possible someone who has just read the comments on this post could come away with the impression that each of these criticisms reflects an inaccuracy with our content, which we don’t think would be a correct inference. In some cases, we’re either already aware of the nuances you’ve raised, don’t think they give us sufficient reason to update our content, or don’t think they necessarily represent claims we’ve made.
For example, in a comment below you imply that we exaggerate the importance of wildfires. I don’t think this is a fair characterisation; not only do we exclude wildfires from our priorities article, we devote only one word to them in our climate overview. We mention them only to note that they are expected to increase in frequency due to climate change (which is true). Additionally, we believe you substantially underestimate of the mortality impacts of wildfires. I discuss this in a reply below. Here are a few quick smaller points:
Agreed—we discuss this in our article on climate change priorities. It might also be worth mentioning in the overview.
I think the wording of this point implies we have more confidence in this dynamic than we state in the article. Just for reference, our phrasing of this point is ‘On top of this, some are also concerned that the effects of climate change may indirectly exacerbate other large-scale risks, too – such as increasing the chance of international conflict… These considerations increase the importance of climate change beyond its direct effects’. This isn’t intended to (and hopefully doesn’t) convey a high probability of climate change leading to great power war – though I understand that more context and additional caveating would likely be beneficial.
If you’re referring to my comment, my claim was that ‘annual flood deaths have been fairly flat since the 1970s.’ I think this is a pretty fair extrapolation from the OWID data, given that we’re talking about absolute mortality numbers and not the average lethality of each flood event!
On a general note, as a small organization we have limited capacity and expertise of our own. This means we rely on deference to both respected institutions and mainstream resources more than we otherwise might. I think this deference is typically justified, though there are many obvious caveats. Regardless, pointing us towards specific points (or more general claims) you believe are suspect as well as resources that raise valid disputes helps us to better evaluate contentious claims—so we appreciate that.
Hi Dylan, thanks a lot for these thoughts I appreciate the openness to criticism a lot. As I mentioned, I think it is extremely difficult to provide a good overview of this topic in part because the literature is so vast. A draft I wrote on climate change a couple of years ago was correctly described as ‘drivel’ by a climate scientist a couple of years ago; I think any assessment of the quality of work on this topic should be forgiving especially when researchers are pushed for time. Some professional scientists think that 3-4 degrees of warming will kill billions of people due to food loss and heat stress, whereas myself and others think this is clearly wrong. I think there is, as lots of people seem to want to say nowadays, a lot of ‘misinformation’ about climate change. Scientists and media organisations who claim that ‘misinformation’ is one of the great problems of our time don’t seem to care about ‘misinformation’ on climate change. One can speculate as to why this might be.
I may be biased, but my report on climate change might be useful. I’d also be happy to provide feedback on any future drafts.
On floods: firstly, I think the per capita death rate is the best metric for assessing whether weather events themselves are getting worse. The global population has increased by 4.3 billion people since 1970 (and there is large net migration to coastal regions). So, attributing all of the increase in flood deaths to changes in weather trends is wrong. The death rate is the measure we should use. Second, the trend in per capita deaths from floods is down.
On wildfires I agree that the indirect effects look more important than the direct effects. However, one also has to consider whether there is a trend in wildfires, what it is, and to what extent it can be attributed to climate change. I think there is considerable doubt about all of these issues, as discussed by Roger Pielke here. As I noted above, the IPCC has low confidence in any trend in fire weather, i.e. the weather conditions that might contribute to wild fires.
Is there a trend in wild fires? Yes, it appears to be downward since 2003.
Canada, which was recently the subject of a lot of attention about wildfires has seen a declining/flat trend since the 1990s. Claims that climate change is driving the non-existent upward trend is presented in the Guardian, New York Times, and NPR.