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Climate Change Could Trigger the Next Global Financial Crisis

41 points| dankohn1 | 6 years ago |theatlantic.com | reply

16 comments

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[+] nateburke|6 years ago|reply
Title is obviously built to trigger for many, but the interview itself is a fascinating analysis of the relative plasticity of the Fed's mandate.

Many forget that the Fed is just a few generations old. Its operating principles can and will change over time. Fascinating read!

[+] sambull|6 years ago|reply
Climate destruction is consolidating and destroying the industry our product is aimed towards. Good for us now, eventually it'll catch up. The bans of single use and obvious longterm downsides of plastics seem to be throwing the whole industry into abrupt disarray. Stuff like our 100k+ month aws bill is going to shrink fast.
[+] Zenst|6 years ago|reply
Kinda depressing but there are people out there who would sit up and take note about climate change, once it affects the financial market. But the way we measure countries via GDP, import and exports and rate those countries based upon financial makeup alone. That's kinda the crux. Sure there are other metrics out there, but none that feedback into how the World operates - financially.
[+] erikpukinskis|6 years ago|reply
There is plenty of money to be made placing bets on climate change. Those people are already locking in as we speak.

Climate change denial is part of a financial scheme. A lot f money is being made, and will be made at every stage. It’s only the riff-raff that actually believe it. The people who own the big accounts know it’s happening and are making money off it.

Not to mention certain nation states with large arctic holdings.

[+] howard941|6 years ago|reply
Why is this flagged?

EDIT - OK I get it. It would be helpful to have levels of flagging. This was flagged because violated the clickbaitish title rule, but that rule is always in tension with the mandate to use the headline from the article. Next spin of HN would be enhanced IMO with a class of flags that offer the opportunity to propose a superior, alternate headline.

Of course I don't have to code the next spin so it's easy for lazy bums like me to heckle from the sidelines or flag trigger headlines instead of fixing things.

[+] hi5eyes|6 years ago|reply
insert topic Could Trigger the Next Global Financial Crisis (

waste of space

[+] mkagenius|6 years ago|reply
or Climate change will <insert topic>
[+] graycat|6 years ago|reply
> Could Trigger the Next Global Financial Crisis

So could a new eruption of Yellowstone, e.g., put a layer of ash 1000' thick 1000 miles downwind, another flu like in 1918, a nuclear war, a supernova explosion only a few light years away, same for a gamma ray burst (blow the atmosphere off the earth, since it comes at the speed of light, can't see it coming until it is already here), a marauding black hole (tough to see coming until too late), some bump in the asteroid belt that knocks a rock to the earth like 65 million years ago, etc.

More generally for lots of cases of event A, as above and many more, we have the true statement

Event A Could Trigger the Next Global Financial Crisis

Yup. But there is a nice result in stochastic processes, the renewal theorem, in

William Feller, An Introduction to Probability Theory and Its Applications, Second Edition, Volume II, ISBN 0-471-25709-5, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1971.

that shows that the events that

"Could Trigger the Next Global Financial Crisis"

arrive as a Poisson arrival process (e.g., like Geiger counter clicks). Moreover, without looking up the details, we have an estimator for the arrival rate, and it is low except for the stock market doing again what it did in 1929 and 2008, and by now with those two examples we're supposed to know better. So, we can worry instead about Yellowstone, asteroids, black holes, etc.

For a simpler explanation of the original post, poor Atlantic magazine needs "click bait".

Or the consequences of human caused climate change are totally irrelevant if human caused climate change doesn't happen, and the evidence now is that such climate change is no threat at all.

What about the chances of "climate change"? The review I trust is

The Great Global Warming Swindle

at

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52Mx0_8YEtg\

In particular pay close attention to MIT prof Lindzen.

That is, the whole concern about humans having any significant effect on the climate, past, present, or foreseeable future, is just a flim-flam, fraud scam driven heavily by people after a hidden agenda on other issues for which big responses, e.g., the $1 T for AOC or Gillibrand, to human caused climate change is a means to power and/or money.

Net, there is no good evidence at all that humans have had anything at all significant to do with the climate, in the past or recent present. Indeed, as in the video documentary, all the good scientific evidence is that there has been no significant climate change due to humans nor will there be for the foreseeable future. In a word the whole concern about the climate is just a scam.

Don't put up with the scam. JUNK IT. CALL IT OUT.

[+] grandridge|6 years ago|reply
This is the most ridiculous headline I've ever seen.
[+] benj111|6 years ago|reply
Why?

Can you not see any mechanism whereby climate change leads to a financial crisis?

[+] SubiculumCode|6 years ago|reply
Give people resources so they can move to higher ground. Not just from rising sea levels, but more immediately from the increasing floods and storms that threaten the flood plains where our most vulnerable reside.

edit: Fighting climate change and providing resources are not mutually exclusive policies, clearly. Both should be pursued, in my opinion.

[+] jxf|6 years ago|reply
Doesn't that seem like an extremely temporary solution, at best? You can't outrun Nature — our best shot is to slow down fossil fuel emissions, contain the damage we've already done, and reverse what we can.
[+] blimey74|6 years ago|reply
I'd say a financial crisis is the least of our worries.
[+] magicalhippo|6 years ago|reply
But they also have to be careful of mud/landslides, which could increase due to climate change.