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Dentin comments on California Drought thread - Less Wrong Discussion
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Being unreasonable how? Unless you actually live there and are currently being affected by it, it is -not an important problem-. It is not a life or death situation. There is enough water for everybody to drink, flush toilets, and shower.
What there isn't, is enough water to do all that and grow subsidized water inefficient crops that shouldn't have been planted in the same place. That has been a known issue for at least a decade, and California elected not to fix that issue when it would have been easier. Now it will be harder and more painful, but it's not catastrophic by any means. If anything, this is pretty much the minimum required level of pain to get anything done in California anyway.
How come we can talk about fiction threads and risk in far mode but not this? Even if it is a political situation we can still discuss it. We talk about all sorts of x-risk this and that, I think it's more than alright to discussion a drought affecting where the most of us live.
For me personally, it's because this is completely, utterly, a political problem. Only political solutions will fix it. That puts it pretty firmly in the 'uninteresting' category, and as it's politics I'd rather not see it on LW.
However, there is a way to slightly change the topic to make it interesting: just go out one meta-level. Instead of worrying about the current stupidity, talk about the x-risk of politics in general. Use this scenario as an example or case study of how political failure is/can/will be a problem for the human race. Use this scenario to evaluate new structures and apply existing best practices to determine what a proper outcome should be.
Finding ways to structure society in the future such that this sort of situation is less likely? Now that's interesting! Discussing governance structures capable of resolving these kinds of situations when they come up? Also very interesting. Discussing the current problem? Not really very interesting at all.
Then just start talking about it. I'm very happy to respond and talk about stuff like that, it definitely does sound interesting.
So doesn't that make this issue appropriate for a blog devoted to rational decision making? Plus, global warming could create massive water shortages in China and India so over the long run figuring out rational ways of politically dealing with this issue is important.
The political system in California is radically different then the one in China. Political solutions are likely to look different.
How would global warming create water shortages? Warmer weather means stronger monsoons, according to the geological record.
Climate change is more than just warming.
The IPCC report says:
A few pages afterwards they list high confidence for climate change attributed water issues in the US West Coast.
The IPCC report is a really nice document and might be one of the best sources for understanding climate change.
FWIW, [I heard that] arid ecosystems might arise from cooler and drier climate, not only warmer and drier ones. Thus, if global warming makes Gulf Stream disappear and it leads to cooling of some areas it used to affect, they may become arid geologically soon. But I am not an expert, this is just how I imagine it could happen.
So would you find the reverse, i.e., climates becoming wetter due to global warming, equally plausible?
I think that in some parts of the world, for example Maritime Antarctica, it will plausibly grow wetter, and in others, like Europe, drier. On average.
I'm not sure, but I heard this and asked an expert I know (an economist who studies global warming) who confirmed it.
Yes, if you ask a global warming expert whether some observation confirms his theory, he'll say yes, even if yesterday he said the opposite observation confirms it.