Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

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Not getting how that's possible at all. An ice age would be far more devastating to the human race than a warming period. Crop yields are up:

1) https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Field_Crops/cornyl... 2) https://www.nass.usda.gov/Charts_and_Maps/Field_Crops/riceyl...

Ok, so food looks safe and secure. Um, lets see, what are the other basic needs? Shelter? Water? We've had the rainiest year in 125 years: https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2019/05/08/united-sta...

So uhh...water looks good. We also happen to find ourselves on a planet that's covered in 70% water...so there's always that as a back up supply...

Hmm...maybe our 21st century sensibilities require energy as a basic necessity. We've got tons of resources for energy (more than ever in history).

Hmm. I'm really not seeing a reason to panic.

EDIT: Sea level is rising at 3.3 mm a year: https://climate.nasa.gov/vital-signs/sea-level/

Look, I do think some coastal communities may need to engineer some solutions to prevent damage, or some cities may need to "retract" inland...but it's not like ocean levels have ever been static. http://www.kwaad.net/SeaLevel-MiddleAges-LittleIceAge.html

You need to look beyond just US corn. Crop yields need to continue increasing globally just to keep up with population growth, which going to be a significant challenge. At the same time, farmland is being lost to urbanization and desertification every single day. On top of that, weeds and pests are developing resistance to chemicals, and pollinating insects are dying off rapidly. Plus, GMO notwithstanding, conventional intensification methods are running into diminishing returns. So: farming ain't getting any easier.

Now, enter climate change. Droughts are bad. Downpours (cf. rainiest year) are arguably worse, because they accelerate soil erosion. Many places have lost half or more of their arable soil over the past half century, and rebuilding soil takes many, many years. No soil, no harvest.

So I don't share your optimism. Perhaps there are high tech solutions to all of the above problems, but they're (currently) too expensive for most of the world.

While it's true that there's an abundance of water, the issue is that there's limited drinking water.

You can't survive on drinking ocean water. There's currently no energy-efficient process to remove salt and other impurities from unpotable water. That's a real issue.

Increased rainfall could be good, but could cause flooding and doesn't do much benefit when it's acidic.

Well we really don't have very good predictions for how much rainfall will occur over the next century, but we have no reason to believe that droughts will become standard. Especially since we just experienced record rainfall in the midst of the 4th hottest year in modern records.

There are ways to remove salt from ocean water. It's just almost always more expensive than extracting from the widely available fresh water sources on the planet.

As long as the water cycle is going, we'll still have fresh water.

Rainfall is good, but flooding is a localized issue. It's not a global concern. CO2 doesn't cause acid rain.

> We've got tons of resources for energy (more than ever in history).

Europe is already past its peak, and it already has some effects on its economy. (GPD is roughly proportional to the energy we spend: less energy, less stuff.) Unless we have some technological breakthrough, available energy will go down, and the economy will soon follow.

Malthus was wrong only because we found fossil fuels, allowing our crop yields to follow the exponential growth of the population (the growth used to be linear). If we're not careful, we could very well face a Malthusian collapse.Hmm.

> I'm really not seeing a reason to panic.

Certainly. Panicking only makes things worse. And the "time to panic" is precisely the time when we must not panic.

But it is when we should do something, and stop debating whether anything is happening.

The productive and habitable locations will move and our governments will probably not keep up with migration crises. The issue is that there well be a dramatic reshuffling, even if total output remains strong.

Time will tell.

Honestly, I don't care much, because I'll be dead.

But I do expect considerable lulz, before I die.

That does come off as harsh. But in my defense, I did spend a decade in the NGO sector, at nominal wage, trying to build support for reducing CO2 etc emissions. Some decades ago.

Although there's been some progress since -- such as improved energy efficiency, and dramatic increases in solar and wind generation -- it's been overall totally inadequate. We're still heading for civilization-threatening changes in global climate.

Am I not entitled to some "I told you so" lulz?

Also, the "I don't care much, because I'll be dead." attitude has arguably been common among US industrial management. That plus "Hey, we can make good money by gaming the changes."

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