For that to be important it is sufficient to have 50⁄50 risk of global warming Even probabilities less than 0.5 for the ‘strong’ warning scenarios still are a big factor—in terms of ‘expected deaths’ and ‘expected suffering’ considering how many humans on this planet lack access to air conditioning.
The main problem with global warming is not that people who can’t afford air conditioning will be less comfortable—the warming is a few degrees, so people wouldn’t even notice it without measurements. The problem is that the warming might lead to rising sea levels (and there are a helluva lot of people living near the sea), and maybe (I’m not sure these things are well-understood) more and stronger hurricanes, and stuff like that.
Nah, they simply won’t notice the death rate increase without statistics, doesn’t mean it won’t be increasing; when you have population of camels under the load that breaks significant percentage of camel backs… adding extra weight has linear effect for small weights.
The reason it is a fairly productive topic wrt charity (in general), is that it is easy to rationalize lack of action, but it is harder to rationalize positive action that kills. Yes, theoretically, biases are bad for giving, practically, eliminating biases in giving decreases the giving (i think there was even a link to a study posted here, about that). People are biased and imperfect and are more likely to donate to better causes if one is aware that one is committing action that kills, rather than mere inaction.
The main problem with global warming is not that people who can’t afford air conditioning will be less comfortable—the warming is a few degrees, so people wouldn’t even notice it without measurements. The problem is that the warming might lead to rising sea levels (and there are a helluva lot of people living near the sea), and maybe (I’m not sure these things are well-understood) more and stronger hurricanes, and stuff like that.
Nah, they simply won’t notice the death rate increase without statistics, doesn’t mean it won’t be increasing; when you have population of camels under the load that breaks significant percentage of camel backs… adding extra weight has linear effect for small weights.
The reason it is a fairly productive topic wrt charity (in general), is that it is easy to rationalize lack of action, but it is harder to rationalize positive action that kills. Yes, theoretically, biases are bad for giving, practically, eliminating biases in giving decreases the giving (i think there was even a link to a study posted here, about that). People are biased and imperfect and are more likely to donate to better causes if one is aware that one is committing action that kills, rather than mere inaction.