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Comment by AJRF | Hacker News Reader

"I’ve been thinking about 12 Monkeys a lot lately. It seems, these days, as though the human race has passed a Rubicon and is now on a straight path toward the end of days, or at least the end of the social order as we know it."

This feels a little unsubstantiated.

Historically speaking, this is the greatest time on earth to be alive. This pessimism is toxic and unrealistic.

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Historically speaking, the best time to own Bitcoin was back in January. Things always look great at the top of a bubble.

CO2 is higher than in the past several million years and we're still adding more at our usual pace. We've killed 60% of wild vertebrate life since 1970, wiped out a large percentage of the insect population, and we're continuing the practices that caused that as well. None of this can go on forever.

Almost everybody misses the main finding of the Club of Rome study: if you model a simple assumption that resources get more expensive to extract over time and environmental destruction gets more expensive to deal with, you don't get a gradual decline. You get continued improvement up to a peak, and then it suddenly crashes down.

What's really toxic: enjoying that run up to the peak and assuming everything's fine, instead of buckling down and fixing the problems before it's too late.

The root cause of all of this: an economic system predicated on the notion of growth. Unrestrained greed, sole focus on maximization of profit, and unlimited growth. It's not enough to sell as many mobile phones as you did last year, no, you must sell 10% more each quarter, or whatever. Doesn't matter if you're mining the earth bare, generating millions of tons of garbage, optimising for inferior products that break sooner, treating workers like slaves in a race to the bottom... in other words making the world objectively worse. All social considerations, moral, ecological, of welfare, of justice, all those considerations don't enter the calculations. All that matters is the quarterly shareholder report.

Like some guy said, "the only people who believe in infinite growth on a finite planet are madmen and economists".

I don't think seeking growth is the root cause. We all want things to be better tomorrow than today, and a large part of the way we experience "better" is captured in economic notions of value. And as Jesse Ausubel points out [1], use of many resources has been decoupled from economic growth. Take video games as an example. It's a $100bn/year industry. At worst its resource usage is modest. But I suspect it's net negative: every hour people are driving in-game vehicles is an hour they aren't driving ones that burn fossil fuels; virtual purchases replace goods that get shipped or bought in stores.

I think you're more on target with the shortsightedness that relates purposefully wrong accounting and unchecked drives for dominance and greed. But I don't think ending that is incompatible with creating a system where we keep improving the amount of value we create for each other.

[1] http://longnow.org/seminars/02015/jan/13/nature-rebounding-l...

""" It's not enough to sell as many mobile phones as you did last year, no, you must sell 10% more each quarter, or whatever. """

But if the next gen of phones use 30% less resources, it's still possible to grow without increasing the rate of resource consumption. GDP growth has been driven much more by innovation than added resource consumption for years.

However with Jevon's Paradox, we get the opposite consequence and people consume even more. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox

I think you're missing his point.

I love the animations of Steve Cutts that demonstrate some of this quite well, like:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTTr7RGH37c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uG8bNDw6Ftc

http://www.stevecutts.com/

>"the only people who believe in infinite growth on a finite planet are madmen and economists"

There are 10 more planets in the neighbourhood. And even more some lightyears away..

I used to base a lot of hope on things like asteroid mining and solar power satellites, but we frittered away the decades and now I'm worried it's too late for that stuff to save us.

If you don't produce more than you consume (i.e. grow), how do you sustain yourself?

Sustenance is not the same thing as unrestrained growth.

There's a difference between growing enough food to have enough to eat plus some reserves and buying a new smartphone every year, a new car every few years, new clothes every month, etc.

So are you going to stop accumulating wealth in your own life and just sustain at your current level based on your basic bodily needs?

I don't know about you but my current level covers a lot more than my basic bodily needs. I'd love to trade any future wealth increases for a healthy planet.

So you're saying this is a tragedy of the commons, principal-agent scenario then?

You will continue to accumulate unless everyone else stops accumulating.

I think that's overly simplistic. There are systemic forces beyond our individual control that pretty much force us to consume at irresponsibly unsustainable rates. Planned obsolescence is an obvious one when it comes to technology products. Fast fashion is another.

There are also many ways in which artificial scarcity forces us to consume more than we otherwise would. If things like handtools were "common" property, then not everyone would have to buy a hammer or drill for each house which they then only use once or twice a year. There are many ways this could be different but they are just not profitable so our current system won't allow it. In the past, for instance, even things like ovens were common property, fired up once a week for everyone in the community to bake their loaves in.

Absolutely it's a tragedy of the commons. That's why it's such a hard problem to solve.

But one way we often solve these problems is with taxes. We pay for all sorts of public goods with taxes and it works pretty well. So I completely support a high tax on carbon, even if it significantly impacts my personal wealth.

Well put.

The ironic thing about all numbers-oriented folks in extractive enterprises (regardless of whether they're extracting natural resources, capital, or labor), is their blind spot to the fact that ALL resources are finite. There's no "free-refill" when the big-gulp runs out.

I can only speak to the minerals extraction industry (oil & gas, specifically), but they (we) are well aware that hydrocarbons are a finite resource. The industry as a whole is arguably short sighted, but it’s not because they think the supply of oil is endless.

Really a bigger issue is that huge amounts of hydrocarbons still exist to be tapped. Which then get turned into atmospheric CO2.

Coal is particularly problematic. Oil may peak soon... Australia alone has like 400 years worth of coal in known reserves alone. We won't run out of it anytime soon - we absolutely should not dig it all up and burn it though.

> ALL resources are finite

Not in a world where matter/energy is conserved over time.

The Second Law of Thermodynamics would like a word with you...

> if you model a simple assumption that resources get more expensive to extract over time

Why would you make this assumption? Resources get cheaper to extract over time as technology improves...

Technology improves but resources get more scarce. Oil is getting more expensive to extract, for example. The same is true of many mineral resources, as we're forced to move to lower-grade ores.

But your point is a good one. I basically see us as being in a race between technological improvement and environmental catastrophe. I'm not at all sure which side will win. It'd be nice if policy makers would help weight the race in our favor.

I don't think the pessimism is unrealistic. Unless there is a scientific miracle, we are headed toward significant increases in global temperature over the next 50-100 years. The temperature rise itself probably won't kill us, or at least most of us. But the temperature rise itself is not what we have to worry about. Think about the events that triggered WWI and WWII--they will pale in comparison to the consequences of climate change. How is climate change going to affect China and India (two nuclear powers) and their neighbors?

Climate change and the resulting water shortages aren't going to leave the West unscathed either, even leaving aside the political issues elsewhere. At the rate the Ogallala aquifer is being depleted, farm production in the Midwest of the U.S. will peak in 2040. Farmers in Kansas will have to drop their groundwater pumping by 80% in order to preserve the aquifer indefinitely. There is a real possibility that water shortages will get very ugly. Then of course you have major west coast cities that depend on the Colorado river for drinking water, and are already fighting over a resource that's at capacity. I don't think it would be out of the question to see civil unrest or outright military action between U.S. states within a century if some scientific advance doesn't change the course of the water situation in the U.S.

These scenarios are not unrealistic or unduly speculative. Major environmental stressors will happen this century absent some unforeseen technological interventions.

Humans will always find something to fight over. If it's not the water supply it's the religion. If it's not religion it's something else. Envirentment won't kill us. We will.

A whole lot of factors are better now than they've ever been, and that's genuinely wonderful and cause for optimism.

It's naive to therefore ignore all other factors. The great strides we're making in access to food and clean water and medical care won't stop unchecked global warming from devastating human civilization. It's not just a matter of rising sea levels; if things continue apace, large parts of the equator will be too hot for humans to survive by the end of this century, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees will be seeking sanctuary somewhere, anywhere.

Acknowledge our successes and keep fighting.

>"The great strides we're making in access to food and clean water and medical care won't stop unchecked global warming from devastating human civilization. It's not just a matter of rising sea levels; if things continue apace, large parts of the equator will be too hot for humans to survive by the end of this century, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees will be seeking sanctuary somewhere, anywhere."

Do you realize you are just like one of the crazy dudes yelling about doomsday on the corner? Just because you are online doesn't make it any more convincing, actually it makes it less convincing.

I assume you are repeating similar stuff over and over, so you should at least have some sources for each claim you include in these posts.

EDIT:

And I don't mean this in a non-constructive way. There are a few topics where I have found myself making the same arguments over and over online (measles, gene "editing", NHST) and so have saved a list of citations and quotes from them that resulted from my research into the topic. It can all be done quite informally and is not at all a hassle.

It's not hard to find sources. For example:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/the-countries-tha...

http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-...

A great book on the effects of climate change is Six Degrees by Mark Lynas, who read 3000 peer-reviewed papers on the effects of climate change and summarized them, one chapter per degree, with extensive references.

One reason we know what to expect is that the Earth has gone through warming cycles before and we can see what happened in the geological evidence. A good presentation of that evidence is in Hansen's Storms of My Grandchildren.

I mean something like this. It seems like just one person needs to do it, then it could be boilerplate since I see similar posts all over the place:

> "The great strides we're making in access to food and clean water and medical care"

-- What evidence is there for great strides being made?

-- Regarding medical "care", there is an implication that care is a good thing. How well is this "care" translating to health, rather than putting people on more pills and causing an obesity crisis?

> "[Improved access to food, clean water, and medical care] won't stop unchecked global warming from devastating human civilization.

-- Why couldn't it? I have often heard the argument that improved standard of living leads to lower birthrates.

> "It's not just a matter of rising sea levels"

-- What evidence is there for rising sea levels? I have heard they were rising before humans started pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

> "if things continue apace,

-- Why should we expect climate change to continue apace? Looking at the vostok ice core data it looks like there is some negative feedback that leads to a glacial period once it gets too hot. In fact it looks like we are due for one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_core#/media/File:Vostok_Pe...

-- There is also the grand solar minimum we may be due for as well...

> "large parts of the equator will be too hot for humans to survive"

-- Needs source: If humans can find ways to survive in antarctica, submarines, and outer space I doubt this true.

> "By the end of this century, and hundreds of millions of climate refugees will be seeking sanctuary somewhere, anywhere."

-- Why, exactly? Are they incapable of planning ahead or building air conditioned structures? Does this assume some sort of energy crisis?

> What evidence is there for rising sea levels?

Google "evidence for rising sea levels". Do your own homework. It's reasonable to ask for sources for new or little-known claims; if you've somehow missed decades of well-established science, that's on you.

> Needs source: If humans can find ways to survive in antarctica, submarines, and outer space I doubt this true.

So it's no big deal to just build air-conditioned arcologies to house two billion-plus people? In some of the poorest places on Earth?

You're not being serious; this is knee-jerk contrarianism. Let us know if you want to discuss this in good faith.

> "Do your own homework."

Sorry, but both claims I followed to original research articles in this thread did not contain the supposed info. I gave you guys another chance to convince someone, even giving explicit instructions and an example of the format, and instead I walk away thinking the people concerned about this don't actually know what they are talking about.

First, was that if things continue apace large areas will be unlivable

-- The primary source said if temperatures rose an additional 7 degrees C, which is twice the rise expected by the IPCC, something like that may happen.

Second, was that 99.99% of scientists say that we're screwed.

-- Instead it was the percent of papers with global warming in the title/abstract that didnt include a claim like "global warming is BS" in the title/abstract, or something. Either way it had to do with the existence of warming, not the consequences.

That's why I have the rule. To prevent from wasting each others time it is best to quote the exact line or figure you think is relevant. And if you look through my post history you can see I do indeed treat others how I would like to be treated when it comes to these types of topics.

IPCC's business-as-usual scenario presents a range. You were correct that 4C is about the median but 6.4C is the upper end: https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/spmsspm...

That's by the end of the century, not the highest it will ever go.

And honestly, I hope you're not going to base your views on what links a couple jokers on HN have handy. Read books with real references or by actual scientists. We can't provide a couple web articles that will be sufficient to convince you, if that's not what convinced us.

> "6.4C is the upper end"

Upper end is going to be defined arbitrarily, but either way its still less than the 7 degrees and 11-12 degrees considered in the primary source.

> "Read books with real references or by actual scientists"

Books are going to be secondary sources, no one really puts primary research into them and hasn't for about a century. The primary research is almost all available online.

Yes but books sum up a large amount of research and give you references to it. That's a way better start than cherrypicking a few studies online.

Why would there be any cherry picking? There are a number of people in this thread (and also many downvoters) who apparently believe very strongly about this stuff.

Why can't they point me to the exact evidence that convinced them? And while you are one of the better ones "the references are somewhere in this one book" is not very helpful. People are busy, you need to make it as easy as possible for them if you actually care about convincing them.

I can’t help but notice you ignored the content of the parent post entirely and answered the grandfather post instead.

The first link doesnt even contain a proper link/reference to their primary source (unless I missed it).

The second (at least the annotated version) does contain some good links, eg to the IPCC AR5 homepage. The AR5 is a thousand pages long document... and this page itself is also quite long (nothing wrong with that, but you should quote the section of interest).

But lets look at the second source a bit closer. Their first cited claim is:

"Indeed, absent a significant adjustment to how billions of humans conduct their lives, parts of the Earth will likely become close to uninhabitable, and other parts horrifically inhospitable, as soon as the end of this century."

If you hover over that they say the IPCC says a median (median meaning ~ 50-50 odds higher or lower) warming of ~4 C by the end of the century, yet that paper talks about at least 7 C of warming. So this first claim is simply not supported by the citations and I didnt bother going on.

It wasn't me who made the claim. It's what I found with a 30-second google. Here's another with links to two primary sources. https://www.cyi.ac.cy/index.php/in-focus/climate-exodus-expe...

There's plenty more. To really dive in, go with Six Degrees.

Sorry, it is even clear which claim you are referring to at this point. Also, if you believe something so strongly why do you not have a go-to source for the information that lead to that belief? Why, exactly do I believe this is an important question to ask yourself (about everything)? It is just something unimaginable to me to not really know why I thought civilization is going to collapse and resort to 30 second googlings.

I guess in the end it is that book 6 degrees for you. If so, ok. I will check it out.

That book, Hansen's, and a stack of others. I resort to googlings because most people online appreciate something they can read immediately.

But I don't think civilization is going to collapse. I think it is at high risk of collapsing if we don't take strong preventive measures.

All right!

https://www.globalcitizen.org/en/content/india-climate-chang...

https://qz.com/india/1049730/heatwaves-could-turn-parts-of-i...

https://www.cnn.com/2016/12/07/africa/sudan-climate-change/i...

I'm curious why you felt that such a hostile response was justified. You could have just said "I'd like to see a source for that" and I would happily have provided. Did you really think I was just making up lies, and would slink away in defeat when challenged?

The facts are a keystroke away, plain as day, shouted for years upon deaf ears. People who ask you to Google for them these answers aren't arguing in good faith. There's nothing left to debate, the details were figured out a long time ago.

At this point, I'm convinced that there are zero climate skeptics who really want to find answers; it's all willful ignorance or malice. It's comically stupid how the obvious truth is met with so much resistance. The desire to preserve the status quo is the strongest force in civilization.

On one side you have 99.9% of scientists saying that we're screwed. On the other side you have 0.1% of scientists paid by oil megacorp lobbyists saying it's fine. Hmm... what should one conclude?

On one hand you have politicians and the ultrarich saying everything is okay. on the other hand, the same politicians and rich people are quietly buying safe houses and building seawalls and preparing for doomsday. Oh and the military is training for and developing technologies to deal with the new scenarios. Hmm... what could it mean?

We're boiling alive fast enough that we can't handle it, but slow enough that we won't do anything about it. The last two people on earth are going to die arguing about why it's so hot.

It isn't about facts or "truth" or "99.9% of scientists saying" we are screwed. That isn't how science/engineering works, its how politics works. Perhaps that is why there is difficulty communicating across the gap.

Do you have a source for that last one by the way (99.9 % of scientists saying we are screwed)?

Info: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/027046761770707...

And the paper itself: https://www.dropbox.com/s/j0roqfsrx4tz4nd/Powell-2015.pdf?dl...

Can you quote the part of the paper where you think it claims "99.9% of scientists [are] saying that we're screwed."

I just looked and didn't see it.

> "All right!"

It isnt exceptional to ask for a source, no need for sarcasm.

> "I'm curious why you felt that such a hostile response was justified. You could have just said "I'd like to see a source for that" and I would happily have provided."

There was nothing hostile about it, just facts. Making those posts without sources is worse than useless if your goal is really to convince people you are correct.

> "Did you really think I was just making up lies, and would slink away in defeat when challenged?"

No, I wanted to see where you were getting these ideas. Now I know...

I can tell right away that none of those sources are going to contain enough info to really tell how those conclusions were drawn but nevertheless, can you extract the most relevant quotes from each and attach to your claims? I mean if you really want to convince people, don't give them secondary sources and make them dig into the primary sources. Go get the direct quotes from the research literature or researchers involved yourself. BTW, I have never had the experience of journalists being able to accurately describe anything I am an expert about.

It isnt exceptional to ask for a source, no need for sarcasm.

It is exceptional to expect or require sources for well-known ideas to be attached to every comment that alludes to or evokes them. None of us needed sources to understand the point that the OP was making.

can you extract the most relevant quotes from each and attach to your claims?

The trend here is that it will not be good enough for you. You asked for sources and got them. Now you are expanding your request. What's next in your list of demands after he extracts the most relevant quotes from each?

I'm baffled that you have made it this guy's job to hunt down and feed you primary sources because he wrote a comment that assumes some baseline knowledge.

>"The trend here is that it will not be good enough for you. You asked for sources and got them. Now you are expanding your request. What's next in your list of demands after he extracts the most relevant quotes from each?"

I said, "at least" have sources. That is like the bare minimum. Here is a post I made earlier today that meets my standards: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18522479

You can find many posts in my history that have a similar format.

> There was nothing hostile about it, just facts.

You said I was just like a crazy person ranting on a street corner. If you didn't intend to sound hostile, you did a very poor job of communicating.

People have told me similar about other topics and I learned from it. I interpreted it as a fact about how just claiming something is wrong appears to some people. The doomsday aspect definately accentuates it though.

> Historically speaking, this is the greatest time on earth to be alive.

This feels a little unsubstantiated.

Wealth inequality has never been higher than it is today. Species extinction rates have never been higher than today. There are plenty of good reasons to be skeptical about the future.

> Wealth inequality has never been higher than it is today

Honest question: is that true?

I mean practical weather (in)equality, not just comparing how many billion of dollars some few billionaires have vs the poorest people on Earth.

In the past there were Kings and peasants, Masters and slaves, people who had everything by birth right and other people who had nothing and never could have it, not even the right to education. I'm not saying nowadays there are not instances of that in still too many contexts (not only in far away countries), but claiming that wealth inequality was never so big as today sounds quite odd to me.

>Wealth inequality has never been higher than it is today

Wealth increased to an extent that inequality little matters. If homeless beggars have smartphones with access to unlimited knowledge, enough to eat and access to medical treatment superior to everything before, how do they compare to the kings of the past?

Beggars may have smart phones but they still don't have a sanitary place to defecate or stable access to food.

When the beggars have indoor plumbing, refrigerators, and food we can discuss whether having a smartphone means inequality is not a problem.

> Historically speaking, this is the greatest time on earth to be alive. This pessimism is toxic and unrealistic.

Perhaps you haven't been following the news about the rise of authoritarianism [1][2] and the revitalization of ethnic nationalism? Historically speaking, those have led to enormous suffering.

[1] If you like video, John Oliver had a great summary in his last show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ximgPmJ9A5s

[2] Or if you prefer numbers, we are in a "global democratic recession": https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/01/31/democrac...

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