That's what the standard of living is, although it varies. Prior to 1850 is was stagnant although the record aren't exactly the greatest. The turning point varies from country to country as well, in the UK it's 1820, in India it's 1940.
You have claimed that quality of life is improving at a greater speed now than ever before. If we gave quality of life a value, say 50x in 1900 and 100x in 2000, your claim was that we're adding more x per year now than ever before. Back that up, because your above paragraph is nonsensical.
No it's not "bad enough already". People are living longer than they ever have with more food on their table and better education than any time in history. In this area we're reporting record crops. You've been mislead to believe it's worse than it is, that's what alarmists do. I was saying the same crap an 1995 and it wasn't true then either.
I pointed out that climate change is predicted to cause a higher frequency of chaotic weather, and you say that hurricanes etc are only going to get worse with rising population anyway. I respond by saying lets not add to that problem, and your response is to say that actually there is no problem? I get the impression you're having trouble following your own arguments here.
And if you screw with the economy you risk sending us into a world wide depression that will kill millions.
Explain to me how cutting $350bn out of the US military budget (an area that employs but does not produce), and putting it into any low carbon energy or research sector (which would both employ and produce) would cause a global depression and kill millions.
How about "It ain't broke so don't get in there with a monkey wrench a muck up the works"?
But it is broke. 97% of climate scientists agree.
It doesn't matter, you just shift emissions to others places in the world that are desperate for cheap energy so they can improve their standard of living. In the process you hurt your own economy.
No, if the western world starts using cleaner energy sources, that doesn't automatically mean that the developing world will use far more energy to make up for it. They might use more energy as a result of lower oil prices, but there are diplomatic options such as offering free technology developed by the suggested investment that could be used as an incentive to avoid this eventuality.
The climate models don't account for human ingenuity. There have been significant technological advancements in every decade since the 1900's and not a single model can account for that. It's not a matter of relying on technology rather it's foolish to so grossly underestimate it when we're trying to make such monumental changes to society and the environment.
You appear to be suggesting that we gamble with our children and our grandchildrens futures, in the hope that a technological advance will turn up and save us. Firstly, a large investment in cleaner technology would be far more likely to make this technological advance occur within a short enough timeframe, and secondly, even if this advance does occur without any extra investment how can we be sure it will be possible to actually implement it quickly enough to be able to deploy it as a global clean energy solution? If we wait 20 years to invent cold fusion, it could easily take another 10 to deploy a useful number of cold fusion plants around the world, and by then we've allowed 30 years of high emissions and could have passed the tipping point.
And if we're going by the logic of "wait and see", will we ever be satisfied with the conclusion? If/when we invent cold fusion, won't there still be people saying to wait another 20 years for it to become cheaper before we actually start using it? And then saying we should wait for the next miracle cure to come along, instead of bothering with this old technology, etc etc. And in the meantime, you do nothing and we go over 2 degrees.
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