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This is severely fucked. Wellness programs do little or no good but do allow employers to offer incentives for participation. This on the other hand is GATTACA level fuckery. GINA took many years to be put in place; now the proposal put forward will potentially cause people to lose health coverage or their job based on things they cannot control. Potentially their kids, too, since these idiotic "wellness" programs are administered by poorly regulated third parties.

This is very, very bad stuff.

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To be fair, kids born today are pretty fucked for so many reasons. In a way, this kind of dystopian future is averted when you consider the rate of accelerating ocean warming, permafrost melting, etc. It seems likely that all problems short of that which is going to end us, sort of gets subsumed.

All of these social problems are in the context of a failing ecosystem that is being increasingly overtaxed. So... the kids never had a chance.

Is there any credible research that climate change is going to "end us"?

By "end us" I mean end our civilization... extinction is unlikely.

In that case, my question still stands.

I'm asking because I frequently see this kind of climate change alarmism on forums (it's the end of civilization, billions will die, etc) but my sense from an admittedly cursory reading of the estimates is that the dangers of climate change are likely to be an epic refugee crisis from coastal flooding, famine, and war. Hundreds of millions will die, and many more will see a substantial decrease in quality of life for generations.

So, horrible. But I think it's wrong to say that it represents the end of civilization. For one thing, like most things, the consequences of climate change will be felt very unequally. The richest countries of the world are likely to see a much smaller impact in terms of famine and death.

Granted, no one knows for sure, but as someone who is NOT skeptical of the cause and effects of climate change, I am somewhat skeptical that in 100 years it'll be as bad as many internet chicken little types seem to think.

I probably sound more dogmatic than I am though, so please do share some research and change my view :)

So over the next 85 years we're expecting a rise of 2-10m based on current warming with the low end hoping that we maintain only 2c by the end of the century, which currently seems unlikely. Follow the link at the bottom and ask yourself what the US is going to do without Florida, or how much the dams across the Golden Gate (and Houston, New York, DC, Shanghai, London) are going to cost to prevent the inundation of Sacramento and the destruction of California farming.

We're ignoring poor places like Bangladesh with a population of 200Mil (or Indonesia with 1Bil), which will likely be largely depopulated.

I'm now going to past text I used in an earlier comment: _Florida is porous. You can build walls but they don't do much. The water will rise to cover the entire peninsula. Long before that tides and storm surge will destroy all of the surface roads to coastal cities. I personally wouldn't lend money there for longer than 30years._ http://geology.com/sea-level-rise/florida.shtml

I also don't think that global warming will end civilization for the same reasons as you. However, a refuge crisis, wars over food and water and hundreds of millions dead will be a heavy blow that might set us back for a long time. There is little money for colonizing Mars when you have to spend it all for killing revolutionaries.

Agreed. This is not an argument for not taking climate change seriously and doing all we reasonably can.

It'll also be pretty hard to colonize Mars when SpaceX and Florida no longer exist.

I would just say in response to your post: the start of Syria's troubles are considered by some to begin with an unseasonable and sustained drought.

That's one country's population sudden injection into the rich Western world you consider to be facing limited fallout, and we've witnessed the results and the reactions.

I don't think most people can picture the real effects of sustained and mass migration, even if you're fortunate enough to enjoy the perks of Western life.

I agree, but look at the backlash in Europe and the US. Does it seem likely that a 10x increase in the turmoil that caused Syria will result in more migrants and refugees to western countries? I highly doubt it.

Unfortunately, I think it highly likely that rich western democracies will turn their backs on developing nations and their tens of millions of refugees. North America, Japan, Australia, and NZ are particularly well suited for this geographically, but Europe will isolate itself as much as possible as well.

I think you're going to find that as huge parts of Africa and the Middle East cease to be capable of supporting the large number of people who live there, you will see migration like never before. You think people fleeing from absolute misery are going to care that their welcome will be less than warm?

For now it's a relative trickle, but given time and a lack of care and you'll see floods. As you say, look at the backlash... imagine what a 10x or 100x backlash will look like. Now remember that we all have nuclear weapons on a hair trigger.

The ability to isolate yourself comes with its own costs. Turning away refugees is one thing; but what happens when people are sufficiently desperate that they will be willing to take up arms to secure a place under the sun for themselves and their kin?

...And then, after slaughtering those people and years of insularity, nationalism, and populism... what's going to be left, but for those insular nations to fight over remaining resources?

I can't see a nuclear nation shrugging and saying, "Well I guess we're conquered! Here are the keys..."

Using a nuke to fight off a tide of refugees is like bringing a grenade to a fist fight. Do you think the people who are already here are going to tolerate the wholesale slaughter of their family members who are trying to rejoin them? What about all of their friends? No. If we don't find some way to rescue everybody we will be torn apart by civil war.

Using a nuke to fight off a tide of refugees is like bringing a grenade to a fist fight.

Yeah, or firebombing a defeated nation. Who would do such a thing? Oh right... humanity.

Sounds like a good argument to not let even one of them in.

You must must've missed the part where I mentioned that they are already here. They are us.

We aren't going to be able to pull up the ladder. People will try, though, and it will get very ugly, very fast.

If by "here" you mean North America and Western Europe then yes, they will pay the price for their diversity. Places like Japan and China that people say are "xenophobic" might turn out to have the better survival strategy.

Exactly, and then there will be war.

Of course not. But do understand that we're talking about large scale warfare here. Even if you're willing to set moral issues aside, it's not going to be cheap. Those who want to isolate their countries from "third world problems" are going to pay for it in cold hard cash. Thus, even they cannot truly claim to be unaffected.

Average temperature rises, icecaps melt, sea levels rise, shores recede. Think about where most of the global tech and financial infrastructure currently is.

edit: Apparently I didn't read your comment; you understand that the coasts will be lost. Not only do the more sparsely populated inland regions not have the infrastructure to take in the coast dwellers, but the core instruments of modern civilization will literally be underwater.

The question is how accurate are the estimates?

Estimating in a complex system where one problem triggers another, cascading with feedback loops, is a messy business.

So the outcome could be either far more or far less dire than we think.

As you put it, know one knows for sure. So it's prudent to assume the worst.

Thank you. I would personally be beyond thrilled if I ended up being, "That cranky bastard who always brought up environmental and social doom." I would feel pretty foolish however, if I bet on that outcome, and just hoped for it to materialize.

You think given the way things are going today, civilization as we know it will survive this?

> an epic refugee crisis from coastal flooding, famine, and war. Hundreds of millions will die, and many more will see a substantial decrease in quality of life for generations.

You phrase this as a rhetorical question, as if it's obvious that given "the way things are going today", of course we won't survive.

I don't really know what you're referring to. On a century-long scale, what is "going on today" that is so abnormally terrible?

In a world with mandatory genetic testing, genetic engineering in order to "give your child the best possible start" will definitely ring true.

I wonder what traits we'll program for? Intelligence, maybe, but that's tough to manage and I'd guess that without a complete understanding you'd get a lot of madness. Physical traits will be easier to select for, especially gross ones like size and overall strength. Selecting out congenital illness would be another step.

If you could though, if you had a clear understanding of how Trait A and cluster of genes/epigenetic factors Z were related... then what traits would be valued? Some would want attractive, intelligent offspring. After a while though, I wonder if people would really want that?

If you're the kind of person who wants to control the development of your kid's moral/religious/political/etc. views (and lots of people do) then you're not going to get what you want out of that. You might want to select for traits that are just... like you.

> I wonder what traits we'll program for? Intelligence, maybe, but that's tough to manage and I'd guess that without a complete understanding you'd get a lot of madness.

That's an understatement that belies human laziness. The real predictor of success, almost no matter how you define success, is about the effort you put in. Good genetics is usually a micro-optimization on effort expended. But if you ever told people that they were genetically Destined™ or Guaranteed™ to succeed, that's precisely what will cause them to discredit effort, sit back on their laurels, and wait for the not-so-inevitable money to start rolling in. When it doesn't, their failure will breed resentment and conflict.

> I wonder if people would really want that?

People want to be at the intersection of attractive and unique. Attractive is more or less easy to control for - genes for attractive figures, full heads of hair, clear skin, no disabilities. Unique is far more difficult, and would only get more difficult if sizable pluralities or majorities of parents started to select on the same Recommended™ or Best Choice™ genes, and generations start to look like cookie cutter clones of each other. Most probably, you'd end up with some classic tragedy of the commons, and the government would have to step in to regulate what would end up being a finite resource (being genetically unique, with a genetic monoculture being especially dangerous considering the Darwinian requirement for genetic diversity to promote survival) if the market's natural price pressures didn't self-correct. And if you think the rich and powerful will allow the government to allow anybody but their children to have the beauty and desirable qualities which will keep them at the head of their parents' empires, well, I have a history book on feudalism to sell you.

> The real predictor of success, almost no matter how you define success, is about the effort you put in.

That, and how well you choose your parents. Unless you honestly believe black people just didn't try hard enough to be president for the first 230 or so years of the USA's existence.

Christ these Horatio Alger "just so" stories are ridiculous. And if we repeal GINA, it'll make it that much harder for people to escape their supposed "destiny". Genetics interacting with environment makes us who we are. I'm of the opinion that the latter is more important, and I hold a doctorate in statistical genetics so this is not purely an off-the-cuff opinion. It may or may not be right in a specific case (evidence >> eminence, credentials are at best a proxy for expertise) but it happens to agree with yours, if you think about it.

The amount of grit you develop is going to be a function in large part of your childhood (or other major environmental influences; in the field, "environment" is shorthand for "everything that isn't genetics"). So locking in an ignorance of its importance is just astoundingly stupid. If we want a sclerotic European aristocracy or a caste system in America, this is the way to get it.

And of course the rich and powerful will do anything to perpetuate their position. On average, however, the American dynasty half-life is 3-4 generations. Compare that to Europe and I think we know which better favors social mobility.

Health, physical attractiveness and intelligence are the obvious ones. We already know many genes that are associated with cancer and other illnesses, so screening for those and discarding embryos could already be done with today's technology. I suspect eye, hair and skin color aren't very difficult either. Seeing how popular skin bleaching products are I could see many parents paying money for lighter offspring. Intelligence is more difficult as you already said, but as we get better at reading the genetic code, that'll become possible as well. If this kind of genetic engineering became legal and socially accepted, there surely would be a lot of money for researching these kinds of things.

...But physical attractiveness has some serious variability, even within culture. I agree though, that some things like lighter skin in many parts of the world would be a likely big seller.

So? Parents choose what they find attractive.

Right. Like genital mutilation, or foot binding, or neck-stretching...

Except that you could do it at a genetic level. People, like Pugs and Pomeranians, because that's how we do things. We'll create fashions and fuck around before we figure out the fine details.

"Oh Mandy is so lovely and pale, so thin and tall! What a pity she slobbers and can't breath very well."

Even worse, lets imagine...

Uganda bans "Gay genes"

Parts of the world now produce girls who are naturally born "pre-mutilated", or maybe you bypass that and just make them unable to experience sexual pleasure.

Maybe people would finally get their dream, and have a child who would stay a child for a very long time.

Then you have the people with a plan... the "best golfer" or "best football player" stuff, but now genetically loaded before conception. Todd Marinovich, but even more intense.

Just take all of the insane, controlling shit that people do, and now give them as much control (and as much fallibility) as you can imagine over our own genes.

What parents will want will be informed by the environment around them.

For example, when parents perceive the economy to be closer to zero sum, with clear "winners and losers", they tend to push their children more to get every edge they can in credentialing and jockeying for the best position for financial security (read: Tiger Moms).

Hard to say what said environment will be in the future when more tools are available.

Then maybe you want a kid who doesn't sleep much, has a high drive, and low empathy. That assumes you want success uber alle though, what if you want your kid to believe that handling poisonous snakes is the key to salvation, or something like that?

Then you might need to breed a very different kind of mind.

Well exactly. Hence its hard to say what we'll desire given that we don't really know what things will be like.

Who knows, pale skin may sadly be more desirable than ever before if things continue their current course. :(

It's weird to think about... people already try to look like particular types so much with just makeup, clothing, and surgery. As you say, it might be that we get some weird genetic monocultures for a while.

Then of course, maybe they'll all die off. Breeding is a tricky business, as any farmer or botanist will tell you, and at least there you're taking it slowly.

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