Are we doomed? It seems like we might be doomed
Read or listen to David Wallace-Wells' Uninhabitable Earth[1] and/or Jem Bendell's Deep Adaptation[2] and decide for yourself. Both a couple of years old, neither will leave you the slightest bit optimistic.
[1] http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-...
Edit: downvoted for technology optimism on this site?? Please explain.
The explanations in the doomsday articles here assume no technological progress.
We’ve only put minimal effort into geo-engineering solutions, but even with that minimal effort there’s been some good ideas, such as planting 130 trees per person [1], olovine rocks on beaches [2], and basalt dusting of farmland [3].
[1] https://m.phys.org/news/2019-07-climate-trillion-trees.html [2] https://projectvesta.org/ [3] https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/02/spreading-crushed-ro...
If part of your house is on fire, it will burn completely in, say, 5 hours, and you don't have the technology to stop the fire, assuming that "all will be OK" because you'll invent something in the meantime is idiotic.
It's also not science (science is actively working on a problem). Optimism of this kind is just wishful thinking that happens to concern scientific breakthroughs.
Soberly speaking:
- We might not find the necessary breakthroughs in time, same way we still don't have AI, human-like robot servants, flying cars, cold fusion, miracle drugs, and all kinds of other stuff we'd "surely have" or that's always "20 years in the future".
- If we find some breakthrough, it might need too much time, energy, resources to put into action. There's no guarantee from the universe that any technology we find is also immediately (or timely) applicable.
- A solution might have downsides (e.g social, economic, etc) for which there might be no consensus, political will, easy way to sell to masses or easy way to convince elites...
- A solution might require coordination across nations, which might be the inverse of what we will get (every country for itself, wars over diminishing resources, and so on). In fact already we see rifts into global coordination (from the China trade war, to Brexit and so on).
All of those are real concerns, it's not just "technology will save us", as if it owes us...
>there’s been some good ideas, such as planting 130 trees per person [1], olovine rocks on beaches [2], and basalt dusting of farmland [3].
LOL.
You may laugh but let’s tslk again in 30 years. When avg temps rise more than the 1 degree they have so far, political attitudes will change.
Overpopulation prophesy from 50 years ago. At the time 1 in 4 people globally were in famine and author prophecized it would only get worse. Instead global population has doubled while worldwide hunger reduced to 1 in 10, due to creativity and technology. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/book-incited-world...
Well, when discussing practical solutions to problems, creativity/technology is more or less same thing.
>You may laugh but let’s tslk again in 30 years. When avg temps rise more than the 1 degree they have so far, political attitudes will change.
They could very well change for the inverse: people/countries being more selfish, fiercely fighting to save their own (and why not? In a world of fewer resources / access to good stuff / areas with declining climate, that could be a wining move).
"Human creativity" didn't save the huge Babylonian empire from being reduced to dust, the huge Roman empire from declining (and entering centuries of "dark ages"), and so on. And those were just political issues, not political + environmental, like today.
And of course there's also the inverse argument: we haven't signed any contract that something that worked in the past (e.g. creativity solving some problem) will work in the future too.
Which is neither here nor there. We care for the part where its habitable and we're on it, not for the part when it was molten lava...
>It’s only technology that allows us to live where we are (unless you live in the great Rift Valley)
Not really, we've lived in most of the places we live now and had civilizations 2000 and 5000 and 10000 years ago. And animals more or less like us lived there far more.
Technology like fire, stone and iron tools helped made things more palatable, but it's not "only technology" that allows us to live in Africa (heck, tons of tribes lived there even 50-100 years ago with little/no technology), Asia, Europe, etc, and in no way it's only modern technology.
>Edit: downvoted for technology optimism on this site?? Please explain.
Perhaps people care more for scientific claims and concrete technologies, and less for magic thinking and faith, which "technological optimism" is, as if we have some certain contract with the universe to find just the right technologies, in the right time, to save us...
Imagine you were standing on the sidelines watching Notre Dame burning down and made a similar statement. Meanwhile a fire hydrant and fire hose were nearby, unused. And twenty bystanders like you were standing there facing the other way, unaware, chatting about trivia while (unknowingly) leaking gasoline out their butts right onto it. Your comment would be massively misplaced and probably overall harmful in the grand scheme of things.
We need to fight this.
Whether or not his tactic is ethical is worth debate perhaps, but whether his picture is reflective of what climate scientists believe is an answered question (its not). The situation is bad, but we need not become defeatist, lest we give up entirely.
> "It is clear in his response to being called too alarmist that he chooses to stretch the truth"
I think you misrepresent. He's made it clear he's a journalist who made effort to understand and present the science. There were a few mistakes as notably pointed out by Mann. Hardly "choosing to stretch the truth".
Given the IPCC's consistently conservative view, that encourages a too little, too late response, I would rather an excessively pessimistic view pushed us to respond "too soon". After all if some tipping points are passed, bringing it back from the brink will be just about impossible... If we overreact we get clean energy sooner.
Events in the two years since seem to reinforce the pessimistic view. Sea level rise tracks the worst case IPCC estimates. Etc.
I've never heard of any of his material, but is it really possibly to be too alarmist in our current state? I mean honestly, most of the world doesn't understands the magnitude and gravity of the events taking place and the runaway train that we're on.
And the world war's combined impact on global populations was only a couple of percentage points.
Neither remotely qualifies as being on the brink of annihilation.
The British government on the brink of capitulating to Hitler: https://www.historyextra.com/period/second-world-war/the-may...
The Allies and not Hitler getting the atomic bomb. Examples abound just in the past few generations.