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Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

Reading this in the NYT this morning, added to other coming global disasters, it occurred to me that given there isn't a whole lot I can do, my only regret is that I won't live long enough to see the end of the movie.

Choke ourselves with CO2? Kill all the insects and the crops die off? (Maybe that was the disaster in _The Road_.) Something else even worse that we're currently fucking up, and don't even know it yet? Growing up, I thought it was going to be nuclear war, but I'm starting to think it will be not with a bang, but a whimper. But unfortunately, I can't flip to the last chapter. I just want to know how it ends. :-)

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> Choke ourselves with CO2? If you look at the units of the Keeling Curvy [1] you will notice that we are around 410 ppm of CO2. The PEL is 5000 ppm [2], so no, we won't choke soon especially because plants grow faster[3] with more CO2 so there is a negative feedback loop (to some extend).

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeling_Curve

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide

[3] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-experts-d...

It was more a figure of speech rather than a real concern that we will literally poison ourselves with high CO2 concentrations. A more literal statement would probably be "fry ourselves with CO2", but didn't have the same punch, IMO.

Your second link says that 1000ppm CO2 has significant negative effects on human cognition after only 2.5 hours exposure.

Your third link says that while increased CO2 in isolation makes plants grow faster, the negative effects that come with it would overwhelm any positive effects. Negative effects include drought, heat stress, invasive insects and disease, and increased forest fires.

It also says that for wild plants that don't get artificial fertilizer, availability of materials like nitrogen limits their growth regardless of CO2 availability.

> my only regret is that I won't live long enough to see the end of the movie.

Wow, that's a new perspective! Never looked at it this way. I've been pretty depressed about the whole climate situation. This attitude is a good way to cheer yourself up.

Unfortunately this attitude is part of the reason why the old people who run the world won't do anything about it.

Unfortunately this attitude of assuming that old people are running the world is why young people don't do things that matter (e.g. voting).

Being chill about something is not equivalent to being apathetic. And cheering yourself up does not preclude you from doing something about the problem. I definately don’t believe the attitude of people-who-run-the-world and mine are comparable.

Easy there, young feller. I'll put my lifetime carbon footprint up against yours any day of the week. My fellow other old people won't do anything about it because money, don't fool yourself (nor absolve your own self of responsibility). Attitude has little to do with it. It just so happens that those at the top with profits to protect are primarily, well, old.

Although, I must add, it's hard to be humorous about this when one has children.

> my only regret is that I won't live long enough to see the end of the movie.

Unless you’re very elderly, I think there’s a good chance you will.

55, and I plan to see the start of the third act (which is arguably, umm, now), but I'm confident I won't get to see the credits roll. For the sake of everyone else, OMG I hope I don't, at least.

A good chance humans will be extinct or killed off enough for civilization to end in the next 70 years? Highly unlikely.

Even worst case global warming scenarios would just cull the population back a hundred years or so.

"Just"

Yep, scary but still nowhere near extinction.

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