Two direct quotes: “There are two issues here. The first is that Ord and MacAskill are out of step with the scientific mainstream opinion on the civilizational impacts of extreme climate change. In part, this seems to stem from a failure to imagine how global warming can interact with other risks (itself a wider issue with their program), but it’s also a failure to listen to experts on the subject, even ones they contact themselves”.
“Ord and MacAskill’s confidence that climate change probably doesn’t pose the kind of existential threat they’re worried about is unwarranted. And the fact that they’re primarily worried about existential threats in the first place is the other problem: once a threat has been deemed existential, it’s impossible to outweigh it with any less- than-existential threat in the present day”.
The first one is the clearest pointing in the direction that Ord’s and MacAskil’s estimation aren’t within the pale of scientific mainstream opinion. It connects to a footnote (16) that links to https://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2022/11/on-what-we-owe-the-future-no-not-on-sbfftx.html which is definitely not some summary or compilation of mainstream views on global warming effects, but to a philosopher’s review of What We Owe the Future. Perhaps this is a mistake. Note 14 does link to an article by none other than E. Torres on ‘What “longtermism” gets wrong about climate change’ which seems to be the authority produced for the thesis that Ord and MacAskill’s views are far from the scientific mainstream on this. Torres states having contacted with ‘a number of leading researchers’ he cherrypicks—selective expert sourcing via Torres, not by systematic IPCC consensus.
“dissembling”?
Two direct quotes: “There are two issues here. The first is that Ord and MacAskill are out of step with the scientific mainstream opinion on the civilizational impacts of extreme climate change. In part, this seems to stem from a failure to imagine how global warming can interact with other risks (itself a wider issue with their program), but it’s also a failure to listen to experts on the subject, even ones they contact themselves”.
“Ord and MacAskill’s confidence that climate change probably doesn’t pose the kind of existential threat they’re worried about is unwarranted. And the fact that they’re primarily worried about existential threats in the first place is the other problem: once a threat has been deemed existential, it’s impossible to outweigh it with any less- than-existential threat in the present day”.
The first one is the clearest pointing in the direction that Ord’s and MacAskil’s estimation aren’t within the pale of scientific mainstream opinion. It connects to a footnote (16) that links to https://digressionsnimpressions.typepad.com/digressionsimpressions/2022/11/on-what-we-owe-the-future-no-not-on-sbfftx.html which is definitely not some summary or compilation of mainstream views on global warming effects, but to a philosopher’s review of What We Owe the Future. Perhaps this is a mistake. Note 14 does link to an article by none other than E. Torres on ‘What “longtermism” gets wrong about climate change’ which seems to be the authority produced for the thesis that Ord and MacAskill’s views are far from the scientific mainstream on this. Torres states having contacted with ‘a number of leading researchers’ he cherrypicks—selective expert sourcing via Torres, not by systematic IPCC consensus.