Hacker News Reader

Comment by netjiro | Hacker News Reader

> The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now

Key here is rate of change, and what humans can survive. We are changing the climate many many times faster than ever before. Nature does not have the time to adapt. And the wars, famines and mass displacements coming from ecosystem collapse is like nothing we've seen in human history. Think we have a problem with a few million migrants? Try a billion or two!

P-T Extinction event "The Great Dying" took on the order of 100 000 years to elevate CO2 and still killed off 96% of marine species and 70% of land vertebrates. The largest mass extinction ever(?) We're going strong in that direction over a few hundred years.

And a very hot earth will have large areas that are not survivable by humans, by traditional crops and food animals, and so on. Storms and floods massively more powerful than we see today.

Frankly, how can you not be afraid of that future? It's very likely your descendants won't survive it.

View on HN

Earth will be fine.

Life on Earth will be fine, but that life will be different to the life we have today.

The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have brought about.

But in there is a kind of beautiful justice that the universe has in it's self-correcting algorithm... if you create imbalance, the imbalance will correct in time but perhaps to do so it kills you.

If we care about the human race, it means to care about the whole ecosystem and all other life on Earth. But the evidence of behaviour by people and governments is that they only care for themselves as individuals and not the wider human race, and other life on Earth.

I no longer see hope for significant change in the behaviour of humans, and I've shifted my view to believing that what is needed to provide massively long-term stability in the ecosystem for life on Earth is another mass extinction that includes humans.

Which sounds depressing, but doesn't feel it. I'm positive about life on Earth, just not about humans.

> Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine...

TBH statements like these really grate on me. Yes, Earth will be fine in the same sense that you'd be fine if you surgically removed your arms, legs, eyeballs, ears, and tongue and then were fed intravenously and your waste disposed of for you. You might live a long life and have lots of nice dreams.

The reality is that we are in early stages of kicking off a cascade of effects that could wipe out the majority of the food web on Earth--let's say, everything larger than your finger. Yeah sure, insects and microbes will reboot it all--in a hundred millions years, if ever. Wonderful!

To make such flippant remarks about so profoundly annihilating the bioversity of this very special planet is not helpful in the dialogue.

Let's please work on this problem seriously.

I’d love to see a credible source suggesting that climate change has any kind of remote chance of wiping out all life on earth larger than a few cm.

It's not just climate change, it's the combined effects of a lot of different things, not the least of which is overfishing, deforestation, loss of habitat, and selective destruction of ecosystems.

So far we've really only scratched the surface, but there have been hundreds of local mass die-offs (billions of individual animals each). https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150113-mass...

The Great Barrier Reef is about half dead now. In two years. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/since-20...

But look at what happened at the end of the Permian age. 96% of species were lost. It was due to CO2/methane causing climate change. https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinction...

(btw we still have no idea what caused the extinction at the end of the Triassic).

We're basically on the way to combining all of these causes of mass extinctions in a super-short timeframe that may mushroom into one super-massive extinction.

And as far as what-if's go, if climate change sets off a global conflict, and there's a nuclear war, forget it.

All those things are horrible. None of them have the remotest chance of wiping out all life larger than a few cm.

Phytoplankton seems to decline due to warming[1]. If this trend continues we're going to have a bad time. Phytoplankton produces at least half of the oxygen we breathe and is key to the oceanic food web.

[1] https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/news.2010.379.h...

I worked a bit around the data, and I am very sceptical about humanity ability to produce enough CO2 for The Climate Change. Volcanic activity was, is, and will be the main contributor to the CO2 pool. Humanity is not the geological force, regretfully.

That's simply incorrect.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/volcano-carbon-emissions/

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits...

https://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warmin...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/06/06/how-...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcan...

Ah, Forbes always was an authoritative source on climate change. I am not in the mood for battling over the authors who are unable to consider 250 000 underwater volcanoes. You know, 250 000 underwater volcanoes cannot be wrong.

That's a nice cherry-picking over the sources you're doing here. From Scientific American, quoting USGS:

> According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the world’s volcanoes, both on land and undersea, generate about 200 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, while our automotive and industrial activities cause some 24 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year worldwide

But I guess you're more knowledgeable on the subject than the US geological survey?

> On average, human activities put out in just three to five days, the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide that volcanoes produce globally each year

https://www.usgs.gov/news/human-activities-produce-more-carb...

So you‘re biased against one source and ignore all the others given here?

This sources disagree:

https://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warmin...

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcan...

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=compare+human+emissions+volcanic+e...

> The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have brought about.

Humans will be fine, as a species. But the human and economic costs will be large.

Compare it to the Hurricane Katrina: most people in New Orleans weathered it fine (i.e. by evacuating the city). The city itself also survived mostly okay (it's still there). But the economic cost of cleanup was huge; and while most people survived without injury, many did not for various reasons.

The choice of "spend a bit of money now, save a Katrina later" versus "save money now, have a Katrina later" is pretty clear. Unfortunately in the case of Katrina we didn't have much of a choice, but for climate change we do. If we invest resources now we can save a lot of problems later on. Or we can spend our resources on other things now, and pay a huge price later.

Alarming "zomg we might all die" stuff isn't really all that helpful or likely to convince politicians or businesses to actually do something. It also invites the "meh, the earth has been warmer" counter-argument, which is missing the point. I think more level-headed risk analysis which lists potential costs/benefits is more useful.

If the main argument is economic costs, then this turns the discussion from a global to a localized problem, whether the required actions or sacrifices justify the local risks.

For example, is it worth for some country to "invest", say, $100 billion in reducing emissions - which, at least unilaterally, won't be sufficient to prevent the effects of climate change but just mitigate them - or can they achieve better mitigation by a comparable investment in reinforcing their shoreline, updating or relocating buildings, etc?

If USA had to vote on whether to spend (or lose by restricting growth) $1 trillion of USA resources to prevent $10 trillion of future losses in SE Asia, then I'd assume that such proposals would be swiftly declined; spending our resources on other things now and having someone else pay a huge price later would be considered a quite good deal by many governments, as the countries that most need to take action are not the same countries that will bear the harshest consequences.

> If the main argument is economic costs

Economic, human, and ecological costs. I am not hugely in favour of reducing everything to economics (although it's definitely an important part).

I also don't think that it's as simple as "$1 trillion of USA resources to prevent $10 trillion of future losses in SE Asia". Globalisation means that "local" economies aren't really all that local; so problems in e.g. SE Asia will also affect other parts of the world.

Humans are the ultimate adapters. Heck, we can survive in the vacuum of space, the highest peaks and some of the lowest parts of the ocean. We live in deserts and rain forests and tundra and remote islands.

Humans will survive. They will adapt. It may not be in the same numbers and lifestyle as today, but the human race will likely be here for a very long time.

Human societies can have individuals doing all that. Stable, large societies. The astronauts can survive in the vacuum of space because of technology, and they can get to space because of technology - technology that is backed by hundreds of thousands of people all across the greater economic machine that built the rocket and the space suits, and supplied and fed everyone involved.

As individuals, we're not much more interesting than any other animal. It's our technological civilization that makes us interesting in the grand scheme of things, and that civilization is both hard to bootstrap and extremely fragile.

Without our technology, we can still run farther and longer than any other species, use our delicate fingers and opposable thumbs, control fire, and make and use tools and solve relatively complex puzzles. As a species, without our tech, we are head and shoulders above most species.

Sort of. But fire and tools are technology, the very lowest tier. Our ability to stack technology, to use tools to build better tools, is what makes us interesting - as long as we actually make use of this ability.

> Humans are the ultimate adapters.

Well yes, nearly ('extreme' perhaps: 'ultimate' sounds a bit magical), but that's the problem. Darwinian evolution has created a creature than can avoid most sources of population limits that permit ecosystem stability. This same creature has the flexibility to repeat the trick in all regions on the planet, crashing one after another.

And then although our species is (for better or worse) remarkably resilient, agricultural civilisation is far too new to be able to make similar claims about it. The 21st century signs aren't good. It's hard to imagine major climate collapse convulsions not resulting in ongoing wars, probably nuclear.

So yes, literal extinction of humans doesn't seem likely. Some people may enjoy the idea of a dystopic 'The Road' style rag-tag dog-eat-dog existence (though they're probably mostly pale wormy teens who in real life panic when out of reach of a screen). But the breakdown of a planetary society of 7-12 billion (depending on how far into this process we can jury rig nations to hold together) is going to be nothing but a litany of sorrow & pain.

Humans have survived fine these extremes only because there is normal ecosystem outside from it. Now imagine that after climate collapse the vacuum of space, top of the peak or bottom of the ocean is the only environment we have. You don't even have a single remote island with reasonable nature. No, humans will not survive it for long.

Humans cannot survive in the vacuum of space. Check the twin experiment NASA done lately.

“The planet has been through a lot worse than us. And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!”

Nice, dark if not nihilist summary.

Have to agree with you there. Things will probably get much worse before they get better. Now there are 2 possible attitudes, either depression from obvious lack of adequate action, or acceptance of what's about to come will come, whatever it is.

By acceptance I don't mean ignorance, by all means promote moral, 'green' solutions, recycle, vote for sane people who at least pretend to care (I am looking at you, US). Or do gazillion of other things that help, and avoid those which don't. I know I do my part, however insignificant.

But change is inevitable. Even though on paper we can still avoid most dark stuff, we won't. Mankind as a whole will react properly only when it really will start to hurt, globally, and rich won't be able to comfortably escape or hide from it.

Some will die because of this. Some will profit from it. On enough long-term scale, it won't matter unless mankind will go extinct which I don't believe will happen.

Do I like it? Not at all. Can I change it? Same answer. Am I content with it and not waste my time, energy and mood on being depressed about it? Absolutely.

Sounds like a job for Thanos (the last avenger movie) ;)

>We are changing the climate many many times faster than ever before

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080619142112.h...

The ice core showed the Northern Hemisphere briefly emerged from the last ice age some 14,700 years ago with a 22-degree-Fahrenheit spike in just 50 years...

The temp has definitely changed faster than this before and the hundred years people are worried about wouldn’t even show up in geological historic records.

For a recent example look up the younger dryas on Wikipedia. It seems like the average global temp moved about 5 degrees over a few decades.

“””The Younger Dryas … was a return to glacial conditions which temporarily reversed the gradual climatic warming after the Last Glacial Maximum started receding”””

Closest I can get to supporting your client is that the local temperature of Greenland went up a lot at the end of that period. Not global. And given the article talks a lot about global thermohaline circulation, extreme local variation is not surprising.

It is a bit of an educated guess because we can’t know the global average, but most of the local temps that are estimated moved in the same direction. The ones in Greenland were larger than most though.

Wikipedia — which you chose to suggest as a source — Does not at first glance provide citations for other locations. Can you please do so?

Sure, the text of this reference at least agrees with my claim of a general trend: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/abrupt-climate-change/The%20Younge...

Thanks.

I can’t follow the link from there to (Brauer et al. 2008) as that link is paywalled.

The Greenland graph is essentially vertical, but the Cariaco graph looks like it’s relatively spread out as well as being much smaller magnitude — though even then, the delta is double the current estimated maximum sustainable excess over pre-industrial temperatures.

Primates first developed when earth was 14°C warmer:

http://gergs.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/All_palaeotemps_...

How is that relevant?

Areas where more than a billion people live today will become uninhabitable to humans if they warm up by 14 degrees. Actually, much sooner than that.

They will. However, areas, where almost no one lives today, will be inhabitable instead. There's plenty of barely inhabited space on Earth.

That will be a giant migration crisis, on an unprecedented scale, sure. Maybe even a world war. Nothing good, not in slightest. Something best avoided at all costs.

Yet, the point is, if this won't be avoided - humanity as a whole is still not in danger. We're not going extinct if Earth will warm up. The world will change drastically, many millions will die, ecosystems will be shattered - but H.sapiens aren't going to disappear as a species.

I wouldn't be surprised of most of the western world will wait until the "Areas where more than a billion people live today will become uninhabitable to humans if they warm up" start taking drastic anti-climate-change sacrifices first. If they aren't willing to sacrifice economic growth to mitigate those consequences, then no one will.

Yeah I can totally see that kind of logic coming. But if everyone just waits for someone else to do something, nothing will change. That is the most likely outcome, I think.

But why? Why can't we adapt to those environments using technology? This is what the OP comment is saying.

Because our technology doesn't magically appear out of nowhere. Even the simple DIY "lifehack" you can assemble from $5 worth of RadioShack parts has huge supply chains hidden behind it, staffed by hundreds of thousands of people. On top of that, all those supply chains are full of circular dependencies. A chip needs a fab. A fab needs computers. Computers need chips... and screws. Screws need metal and precision manufacturing machines. Precision manufacturing machines need computers and screws. Metal mining needs computer and screws. Etc.

If the climate situation gets to the point of crashing global supply chains, say goodbye to all modern technology. Whatever's left will degrade quickly, and we'll be back to preindustrial levels, but with no easily accessible dense energy sources to bootstrap another industrial revolution.

This is why I keep saying that the most important goal right now is not to protect the planet, not to protect the human species, but to protect our technological civilization. If it collapses, we'll still be there (albeit in reduced numbers). But our civilization won't recover for millennia.

That's a common trope in Science Fiction. But modern technology is different from the Iron Age. It uses vastly less energy for the same result; its honestly simpler in many regards than what came before.

Sure there are dependencies, and some technologies will collapse and become unachievable for generations. But others are essentially free of dependencies - the germ theory of disease, the staff system, democracy, air travel, bicycles. Easy to bring back or keep, and with tremendous benefits.

I've always been sad that post-apocalyptic scenarios have no bicycles, and no biplanes. They just postulate people being the same as people were in the stone age, maybe with some recycled trash thrown in.

That's a fair observation. In fact, applying modern scientific and engineering knowledge to tech built from ground-up is something I'm interested in[0]. The post-collapse life would be better thanks to all this knowledge (as long as people keep copying books instead of burning them), but I still maintain we'd end up in a pretty dire situation.

Consider that food production is very much dependent and looped with all the existing supply chains. As some say, modern agriculture is essentially pouring petroleum into the ground and harvesting crops that grow from it. Could we use our scientific knowledge to get better results than preindustrial people did with the same tech level? Sure. Will it be enough to feed even 20% of current population, especially given the battered climate? I doubt it. And the way I see it, a lot of our "social technologies" - as well as more "physical" ones - seem to depend on population size and density.

Speaking of science fiction tropes, I read an interesting book once - "The Windup Girl". It featured a post-climate-change world with depleted fossil fuels and collapsed technology, that still sort-of worked thanks to machines being powered by mechanical work (with spring systems for storage and special breeds of animals providing muscle power). I wish more books and movies would go into this territory.

[0] - not just because it's what we'll need come climatepocalypse, but also because I believe there are many unexplored "low-tech/hi-science" solutions that could let us achieve similar results in many areas of life, while using much less energy, or with much less dependence on existing infrastructure. For instance, I feel that mechanical energy storage (springs) and gliders are underexplored and underapplied, since energy today is too cheap to bother.

EDIT and a tangent: I am really interested in the possibility of combining gliders with computers and sensors to enable extremely energy-efficient (if not time-efficient) flight. If anyone knows of work being done in this space, I'd love to get some directions or resources about it.

I'm on the same page. The easiest thing to do once the collapse comes will be to give up and die instead of change - and maybe 80% is too conservative an estimate of the number of folks that will take this route.

Farming is more of a 'trickle petroleum into the ground and harvest crops'. Its one of the most efficient of technologies now. With good timing and no-till and ammonia fertilizer, even eroded clay hillsides produce bumper crops. It is a fragile technology tree but much simpler trees could be forged, having a good whack of the same benefits.

RE the 80%, I expect the food shortage pressures to cause immediate wars that would quickly help shed the excess population. I fully expect to die in such a conflict (or be forced to eat a bullet to avoid the pain of starvation).

RE farming and other technology trees, it might be worth it to hedge our bets by trying to develop such simpler tech trees right now. In the worst case, we'd be making life much easier for the survivors. In the best case, maybe we could reapply some of those ideas to further reduce energy waste.

Just come to my place in the country, here in Iowa. That's what all the family are expecting to do. It's our gathering place. Remote from centers of population, food production facilities and stores everywhere, inhospitable enough to discourage refugees (winter), personal firearm ownership the norm. And our family includes doctors, soldiers, farmers and managers. Kind of the perfect mix!

Thanks :). Would love to come and help you fortify. Alas, it'll involve catching a flight from central Europe before shit hits the fan.

All about the timing. Maybe make a dry run before it gets that far, work the kinks out? Honestly, you'd be welcome.

I'd be happy to. Can you send me an e-mail?

Ideas get lost too. The way out of the dark ages was made by monasteries who saved libraries. It still took forever to recover.

Maybe we’ll have a rennasaince. Maybe we won’t; but Paper Books will be critical

Are we going to adapt all the world's flora and fauna to the changed conditions too?

If so it's simply cheaper to entirely fix global warming. If not, what are we planning on eating?

We're already seeing species can't react quickly enough to changing conditions. Flora especially takes time to move. If it's only humanity that is adapting, isn't the point rather moot?

The principle species that can't react quickly enough is Homo Sapiens, sadly. At least lower mammals don't have to deal with denial and demagogues.

Most of the people who live in places that will become uninhabitable, can either not or can barely afford clear water and food. They will not be able to afford hi tech solutions. Since Humanity does not help them now, it is not reasonable to assume that we will help them in the future.

They're not saying that these people will survive, just that the human kind will survive

One immediate reason is our physiological limit (see wet bulb temperature), which is achieved at air temperatures as low as 45 degrees C depending on humidity.

Another is sea level rise. For +14C that's on the order of +30 meters as currently predicted.

And of course such drastic changes don't come alone. Weather patterns will change, food production will be threatened, governments will be destabilized, wars will happen.

We can tech our way out of some of this but who's to say that we will be given enough time and resources. The universe doesn't owe us anything.

Coral reefs and their ecosystem lie at a precise depth - where water clarity, temperature and sea floor cooperate to provide enough sunlight and energy to allow corals to grow. A change in sea temperature of a degree or two, or a rise or fall of a few inches, and existing coral reefs collapse. And it takes centuries for them to regrow.

Many things are like that. And we don't have decades to wait for the Earth to become congenial again, we need to eat every day.

Sure.

What about industrial civilization?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com