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Comment by csallen | Hacker News Reader

And what are the consequences of that? I would guess significantly milder than the predictions of mass starvation that we managed to avert.

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The consequences could include things like forced mass migrations, wars over water rights, and an increase in territorial disputes among nations as land becomes more scarce than it already is. In addition, the byproducts of coal burning cause cancers and death, regardless of whether the previous stuff I mentioned actually happens (hint: it's already starting to happen).

Nobody knows, the destruction of the entire planet most likely.

The earth is dying, you can see it everywhere you look if you open your eyes.

Agreed. If the bomb has been defused then it's only because it has already gone off.

The scientists do indeed know. The scientific consensus is that sea levels will rise by a meter or 2 over the next 200 years, and cause damages measured in the couple trillions of dollars. This is all laid out in the IPCC report. Thats a lower cost than an Iraq war.

That is the scientific consensus of the IPCC, which is the official authority on climate change. And the scientific consensus is that the world is definitely not going to end, nor is it even going to come close. Listen to the science and the scientific consensus!

You're taking the mean consensus prediction as gospel. There is a smaller but still very much possible chance of much more catastrophic consequences than that. It would be irresponsible for the IPCC to present only the most dire predictions, but I think it's also unwise for us to ignore them.

The earth isn't dying. It may become uninhabitable for humans, but that is quite different than the earth being dead.

Read between the lines. Nobody is that dumb to literally say that the earth is dying.

> Nobody knows, the destruction of the entire planet most likely.

Entire planet? False.

> The earth is dying, you can see it everywhere you look if you open your eyes.

All I see when I "open my eyes" is people with your disposition making alarmist predictions based on either faulty reasoning, and/or ignorance, and/or out of fear.

How is how you and other extreme pessimists like you behave not equivalent to yelling 'fire!' in a crowded theatre? If the Earth is our crowded theatre then you're being socially irresponsible with your doom and gloom scenarios, and the Earth is humanity's crowded theatre.

My religious father used to predict the end of times, the end of the world as we know it, every few years. When the date came and went rather than revise his beliefs he'd move the date forward a couple of years. That is bonkers. Belief and identity are humanity's worst enemy: not birth-rates, not nukes, not CO2 emissions, not A(G)I, not any of these things but our own crappy cognitive mechanisms.

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