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CronoDAS comments on You're Entitled to Arguments, But Not (That Particular) Proof - Less Wrong
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Global warming is benign, though. The changes are generally positive. The idea of warming causing an expensive disaster that stalls economic and technological development is a fearmongering fantasy - and is not supported by science. The faster warming happens, the more quickly the Earth's carrying capacity will go up, the more food we will be able to grow, the faster the deserts, arid regions and icy-wastelands will vanish, and the more minds and resources we will have to dedicate to our real problems.
Those who want to stop warming appear to have identified technological development as the cause of the problem in the first place - and seem to be doing what they can to sabotage development - by restricting the access to resources by businesses - thereby attempting to cut off their air supply. My assessment is that such behaviour is likely to have a destructive effect that increases the planet's risk of reglaciation.
In the long run, they may be positive. In the short run, melting the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets means that most of Manhattan Island, most of Florida, and plenty of other very valuable developed land will end up underwater. The cost of relocating the inhabitants and rebuilding the infrastructure would be enormous, easily reaching into the trillions of dollars. Might as well drop a hydrogen bomb on New York City!
ETA: The "hydrogen bomb" comment was stupid and gratuitous. I blame sleep deprivation.
Well thats of course not right. The primary loss in dropping an H-bomb on NYC is the loss of human life - both in a moral and an economic sense.
Here is a point to consider. Over the last 100 years the population of the earth has increased by 5 billion. We have created new places for all of those people to live and work. And that was done with a population much smaller than we have today. Over the next 100 years we may add 3 billion more and we will need place for those people to live and work.
Its not immediately clear that the costs of building all of this in a new location is that huge relatively speaking.
That would be a special sort of hydrogen bomb that expands by 3mm per year, I presume.
Okay, bad metaphor.
::sigh::
That's what I get for commenting when sleep deprived. :(