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Comment by asabjorn | Hacker News Reader

Climate change has affected society for as long as we have records, and even before that. Drought overthrew pharaos [1], the Romans experienced a little ice age that contributed to their fall [2] in the 500s, Mayans form drought in the 1100s [3], and climate affected Chinese dynasties [5]. Even some of the expansions and contractions of viking migratory behavior was climate related.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...

[2] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-climate-ch...

[3] https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/11/121109-maya...

[4] https://blogs.ei.columbia.edu/2017/09/26/climate-change-some...

[5] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/monsoon-climate-c...

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And there are all small things. We have never had this much heat in the neolithic era.

https://www.iflscience.com/plants-and-animals/last-time-eart... https://www.inquisitr.com/5111067/what-the-earth-was-like-th... https://mashable.com/article/earth-warmest-temperatures-clim...

In much more primitive societies. Again what scientifically demonstrated (not speculated) consequences of climate change are you worried we can't deal with when it happens?

I think that millions of people running out of water due to glaciers disappearing could be a bit of an issue that will, at the very least cause massive social problems. How much of North America is reliant on glacier waters?

And this has been scientifically demonstrated or are you speculating? When will this happen?

Yes, the glaciers are disappearing.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-rocky-mountai... https://abcnews.go.com/International/canadas-glaciers-shrink... https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warmin... https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/may/11/us-glaci... https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/earth-ice-melting-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retreat_of_glaciers_since_1850

Yes, they are and they have been doing that before. But that was not the claim you made. You said it affect our ability to get water.

Millions of people around the world use glaciers to get their drinking water. It's pretty easy to see that those disappearing would affect their ability to get water.

We can deal with that so while it might effect it that doesn't mean they won't be able to get access to water. That's one thing we've become better and better at making drinkable.

Making it harder to get water that we previously got for free is not a great solution. Making drinkable water or moving it fundamentally requires time, energy, and money.

We've never gotten water for free. All resources come at a cost.

The water in your tap is not free. Again. Please try and stop just for a minute and rethink your position.

> The water in your tap is not free.

But it sure is a lot cheaper than trying to desalinate the ocean water next to me.

> Please try and stop just for a minute and rethink your position.

On what? I am struggling to see your argument here. We have an issue that you are claiming doesn't need to be solved, and are trying to convince people to ignore, and I am repeatedly providing you with evidence that there is this is a real issue that at the very least would have some impact on us. Trying to "fix" the issues we cause 50 years in the future is going to be much, much more difficult than trying to improve today.

My point is that you arent actually making an argument here, just saying things that doesent support your claim.

https://www.21stcentech.com/climate-change-impact-worlds-maj...

The North Saskatchewan has lost 40% of its volume and continues to decrease.

And it started in the 50'es long before humans had any impact.

The 50's are not when anthropogenic warming began. It's just accelerated since the 50's.

https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/ https://www.carbonbrief.org/scientists-clarify-starting-poin... https://climateatlas.ca/climate-change-basics

Again yes and so what? What are the scientifically demonstrated consequences of that acceleration that we can't deal with? Why is it so hard for you or any other to answer that simply question? I of course know the answer but it's quite astounding that you don't stop just for a second to reflect on whether you position is as grounded in science and how much of it is based on speculating on top of that science.

I of course know the answer

You will then, of course, share that answer with us, in detail, with the same kind of scientific proof that you are asking for.

> What are the scientifically demonstrated consequences of that acceleration that we can't deal with? Why is it so hard for you or any other to answer that simply question?

If it's happening in the future and a novel event it's going to be speculation.

> I of course know the answer but it's quite astounding that you don't stop just for a second to reflect on whether you position is as grounded in science and how much of it is based on speculating on top of that science.

Please explain then, with links to all the relevant scientific information required to demonstrate that your understanding of the issue is the correct one.

How can I prove a negative?

My point is that there ISN"T a scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change that we can't deal with.

So far neither you nor anyone else have provided something which is scientifically demonstrated to be happening and which we can't deal with.

I am not the one claiming. You and others are.

Mass starvation, mass dehydration, yes those are big concerns. But they can be overcome. For water, for instance, desalination exists, as do pipes, as do pumps. It would be expensive, someone's gotta pay for it -- what are millions of lives worth? But it's a reasonably well-defined engineering solution that doesn't require new technology or better understanding of the sciences to create e.g. atmosphere scrubbers or whatever. I'm biased as an engineer, big engineering projects seem a lot more feasible than international political ones. If those political ones are backed by threat of war, that's also a lot more worrying to me on the prospect of ways the planet can be rendered uninhabitable.

Have you looked into the environmental effects of desalination?

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/01/desal...

"here’s why that’s a potential problem."

The important word there is potential.

There's a potential chance of you dying if you play Russian roulette. Does that mean you'd like to ignore the concerns because of them not being certainties?

Not really. I don't see why it'd be any harder to overcome them though, especially for known classes of effects like "what about waste?" I'll defer to the engineer quoted at the end of that article that at least for the issue of brine it's probably not a problem.

I don't eat seafood, but a lot of people around the world rely on it as a primary food source. Warm water cannot hold as much oxygen as cold water. We can already see that seafood populations are plummeting dramatically.

There are many other reasons that affect that not the least fishing.

Pointing to one problem doesn't mean the other problems don't exist. Multiple problems will have a multiplier effect on each other.

If there are five different reasons for fish population decline, and one of them gets worse, then the others may become magnified.

If commercial fishing is governed by quotas then if there are fewer fish in the sea due to population decline reason 1, then "overfishing" will become a worse problem without re-adjustment of fishing quotas. Re-adjustment of fishing quotas won't happen if there's a prevailing attitude of "we can deal with dwindling fish populations".

No one said that. I was responding to claim that made it about that when it's clearly about a lot of other things and thus the argument isn't as clear cut as it was attempted.

Not sure where the other guy said it was clear cut. He merely stated some facts about what happens to water when it gets warmer - scientific facts, like what you've been asking for.

The backhanded good news is that with fish populations declining, there doesn't need to be as much oxygen in the water...

Some places, like the US, can afford to pay substantial amounts for mitigation. It can build a lot of seawalls and desalination plants and probably even relocate Miami (or at least some of it).

Other places like Bangladesh, cannot. Its per capita GDP is 2.5% of the US's, is incredibly low lying and incredibly densely populated. A 3 foot rise in sea level would displace 30 million people [0]. That would make Syria's refugee crisis look like peanuts, its hard to imagine it occurring without millions dying and a regional war. Would this be considered something we can deal with?

[0] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/the-unfoldin...

Yes, of course, we can deal with it. Just like we have done in the developed countries.

Because look how well the Syria thing has worked out?

I think you have a problem seeing the scale of humanity that could be affected, and the scale of engineering and infrastructure effort would be required to support relocating 30 million people. Bangladesh doesn't have the money to do it, and the US will be too busy working on the Mexico wall.

Unless of course you're only concerned about the species surviving, rather than a large percentage of the population surviving.

Even if we know what a solution is, there's an ocean separating knowing a solution from implementing a solution.

Is the world ending because of Syria?

No, but it's bad enough that the US wants to extricate itself from the situation.

The tip of the spear only causes a small wound.

You are mixing your political opinion into this which makes it impossible to debate this rationally.

It's inescapably a political issue, but my point wasn't based on politics, it was based on the complexity and duration of the situation. Highlighting that the time scales involved to solve these issues are longer than it appears you are giving credence to.

You could point to Germany as an example of a country that's dealt fairly well with an influx of refugees from 2015, at 890,000 refugee applications, but it takes time to process them all, it's far from a smooth transition[0], plus there's a human toll associated with mass migration that falls along a purely subjective 'scale of acceptability':

More than 5,000 asylum seekers died in sea crossings, either by drowning, fuel inhalation or suffocation in overcrowded and unseaworthy boats.[1]

The issues of integration into the community, work, language barriers, and other cultural differences will mean there will be a limit at which a population will tolerate an influx of refugees.

There will also be a limit to what governments can afford to provide to refugees finding their feet. Elections are already won or lost on refugee and immigration policy, with the 'more restrictive' policies generally being more popular amongst voters.

These things aren't new, but the scale has the strong potential to be much greater.

[0]: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-03/germanys-open-door-re...

[1]: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-cris...

None of those things are even close to being unsolvable though and that's really the point here.

I am being downvoted for not panicking which is fine and just shows how religious people are treating this topic.

With regards to limits, the cost of that is absolutely nothing compared to the cost of using inferior technologies to solve a problem we don't even know will be a problem in a 100 years from now.

Your arguments are very absolute.

None of those things are even close to being unsolvable

nothing compared to the cost of using inferior technologies

solve a problem we don't even know will be a problem in a 100 years from now

None of those comments ring true with me.

So, the evidence suggests climate change causes societal collapse?

The evidence suggests that the parent commenter was wrong when indicating that the last significant climate change happened 125000 years ago.

No, the last time this earth was this hot was that long ago.

And yet life managed to persist despite being much more primitive.

yes "life" did. Lots didn't. If climate change ends up being the worst end of that reported of what "might" happen. Life would still survive. Millions / billions of humans will not.

Primitive life. We are much better equipped to deal with it, that's the point.

Again what are you basing the claims of millions/billions on cause it's certainly not science?

In none of those cases were the effects global and permanent.

I get the "global" part, but what makes you think the current climate change will be permanent?

Permanent in terms of all the people who otherwise would remain alive, who instead will be dead.

Climate change doesn't affect the world the same way globally and never have.

[citation needed, because fossil records seriously conflict with your statement]

Precisely. I couldn't agree with your point more wholeheartedly. Why, only last winter I solved my own personal encounter with climate change by playing the travel-insurance card when nature couldn't be counted on to guarantee my ski vacation. We as a society should buck up and similarly snap our fingers at this little bump in our existence. Show some fortitude, humans! Less hand wringing and more hand waving!

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