Comment by reallydude | Hacker News Reader

Comment by reallydude | Hacker News Reader

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The survival of our technological civilization is very much uncertain. It has been since the nuclear age. If someone wanted to take meaningful action, they would be sinking container ships. In aggregate, they contribute to more pollution (of all kinds), than most singular countries. Nobody is going to war over this, so it's inevitable. If it's inevitable, it's not healthy to pretend otherwise. The earth will survive, humans will survive, and maybe technological action will allow us to terraform the earth in a different or unexpected way (eg Snowpiercer).

This "debate" about what to do is always toothless and desperate and pointless until the death toll starts to mount. Even then, the wealthy will make the same old arguments about irresponsibility and willful ignorance of those with nothing, blaming the victims, which seems to work generation after generation...until finally we get multinational instability and with smaller populations, some semblance of change too late (eg states of the USSR) to recover from the devastation. What's the mini-state of lower california going to do about 150 degree weather and no water? Nothing.

Serious question: I always see 'humans will survive' in these kinds of posts. Why? We know most of the past species are extinct, we are in the middle of a mass extinction event, the climate crisis hasn't even fully begun, and there are other serious problems coming.

So I don't want to be negative, but I do want to stay realistic. Does someone know why humans will survive, and on which time scale this prediction is valid .

If push comes to shove a breeding population can survive for millenia in underground caves huddled around breeder reactors.

Citing a post in this same discussion: warming by 5 degrees will cause all phytoplankton to die off and as a result we'll run out of oxygen. So no, that's not enough.

Even if it would be, how would you feed these people? How would their underground cave get power for light etc in a CO2-negative world?

AFAIK, the 'biosphere 2' experiment and the experiences with the space stations demonstrated humanity is not capable of surviving long term without mother earth. There are plenty of unknown unknowns.

Breeder reactors are really nice in that they produce lots of energy that you can use to produce food and oxygen. Biosphere 2 was a hippy project that tried to reproduce a complex ecosystem that nobody really understood. The Russians had much more pragmatic approaches. For this project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BIOS-3 it's much easier to see how it could scale up to true self-containment.

We don't have reliable data that an advanced civilization of our level (yes, we're advanced comparing to many our ancestors) goes extinct. Particularly for reasons like this. So we naturally not sure. On the other hand, we see some examples of wonderful inventiveness - say, in time of a war, but also in time of great geographical discoveries, technology and science achievements etc. So for many it feels like an open question.

As for validity time scale, I'd like to see research myself.

We have some examples. Just look at Petra and some Mayan cities... They fell because climate stopped spring people there - they ran out of water and fell to either starvation or disease.

Mostly they moved elsewhere, but on planet scale that would be much more problematic.

People have been inhabiting the Arctic for millennia, and that's a pretty inhospitable place. Granted, it's technologically easier to heat than to cool (just eat lots of fat)

Interestingly, from a technological standpoint, container ships could switch to nuclear propulsion tomorrow if they wanted to. The 2 main reasons they haven't is the large up front cost, and the fact that very few nations like the idea of a ship with a nuclear reactor being highjacked by pirates.

> 150 degree weather

Now that's a hyperbole.

> No water

Invest in desalination, like Israel and other rich middle eastern countries.

> 150 degree weather

I guess that depends on what you consider "weather" If I said "ground temperature", would it matter to the discussion? 60C (140F) was the Average temp in the triassic. With the amount of water in the air plus the carbon dioxide, I expect to see that in places a couple generations after I die...which is the time period I've referenced (political instability).

The highest ground temperature recorded was 201 degrees at Furnace Creek on July 15, 1972, according to the National Park Service. The maximum air temperature for that day was 128. All types of bad things happen at that point. Water evaporates rapidly at 150, so who cares where the water comes from. It's gone or containers rupture as it turns gaseous. What temperature the air is, doesn't matter.

When people talk about "temperature" they mean air temperature, look at any weather forecast. Human survival is largely dependent on air temperature. While water does evaporate faster at 150 than at, say, 100, it is still well below boiling and not hard to contain -- 150 is a somewhat cooled cup of tea/coffee. Underground piping will be much colder than ground temperature.

At any rate, temperature increase forecasts for the next 100 years are all in the O(1 degree C) range. There are many reasons to mitigate climate change/decrease green house gas output/fight pollution, but let's not spread FUD.

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