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Comment by Joeri | Hacker News Reader

Whether climate change is disastrous or not is a value judgment. The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs was disastrous for them but beneficial for us. Radical climate change will be beneficial to some species, but humanity isn’t likely to be among them, as our civilization is rather fragile and built on the assumption of a stable ecosystem. It is self-interest that should drive us to “protect” ecosystems from exploitation and radical change.

I believe the reason this isn’t discussed much is because it is assumed to be common knowledge.

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Humanities adaptability is on par with that of the cockroaches. Give us 30 years of prep time and we can cope with nearly anything climate change is predicted to throw at us.

The difficult assumption isn't that we have a stable ecosystem - we survive in a very broad range of ecosystems. The one that risks killing modern societies is the assumption that cheap and abundant energy is available. Sufficient energy could overcome any challenge.

Sufficient energy could over come many challenges, but an abundance of energy also allows the creation of new issues.

Case in point: the age of cheap oil. Without that abundance in energy there would have been no crisis now, and we'd be looking at a much lower number of people on the planet.

If you want to change 'sufficient energy' to 'sufficient clean energy' then the needle will shift, but maybe not as far as you'd like: even then there is a limit as to how much energy we can get rid off once it has been used and turned into heat.

There still is no crisis and nothing scientifically demonstrated with regards to the climate we cant handle.

Uncertainty does not favor inaction.

Claiming otherwise is fundamentally dishonest. "The instruments say our jet engines are overheating. Let's wait to be certain, instead of heading for the nearest airport. Who knows, it might be nothing!" Said nobody ever.

Jet engines overheating is something that can be proven scientifically, catastrophic climate change is not so acting as if it's been proven is what is dishonest.

Catastrophic climate change is proven. Looks at what's happening in Australia right now. It is catastrophic. And the burden of proof that it would not be caused by climate change is on you. Just read the damn science from 1824 until today.

Please point to scientifically demonstrated evidence of catastrophic climate change not just speculation.

Check out jancovici.com, realclimate, just open your eyes. Identity may be what's not negotiable, but your reckoning will come, no matter how lucky you've been so far.

I'm waiting for the bushfire season to end before trying to form any serious arguments; the worst fires are usually in February.

That elephant-in-the-room aside, this season is arguably less catastrophic than bushfires from the late 19th and early 20th century [0]. To date there are less deaths, less houses destroyed and the economic damage is uncertain. Even the area burned is not unprecedented; yet (Victoria in 1851 holds the record). This might be weather rather than climate - bushfires in Australia are not exactly a jaw dropping development and a once-in-a-generation fire happens about once every generation.

It would be wise to wait for the benefit of hindsight and not try to guess while a crisis is still unfolding. That is just a fast way to form bad conclusions.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bushfires_in_Australia

There will always be excuses to "wait and see" just as there always have been, going back to the 19th century. After the instant crisis, it will be even easier to make the excuse. It is just more of the same denialism, and just as dishonest as any.

That's pretty much it - have enough energy and you can solve any environmental issues - sort an filter out any poisons, catch all the excess CO2 and turn it into somwthing useful, etc.

That's why it worries me that scaling energy production is not getting the focus it needs. We don't need to reduce our energy needs and replace dirty sources of energy, rather we need to get at leas one magnitude of energy more & in a clean manner, to solve all our environmental issues.

Thermodynamics dictates that constant 3% growth of energy yoy (correlating with markets and gdp is left as an excercise for the reader) will boil the oceans in few hundred years. Sustainability means energy consumption must stop growing, perhaps by the end of this century.

Edit: some math https://dothemath.ucsd.edu/2011/07/galactic-scale-energy/

While I look upon scenes in Bladerunner with a feeling of anemoia, I think that for the majority of people in such a future, daily life would be pretty miserable. I'm sure that everyone intellectualizing about our adaptability would appreciate clean air, less death, hunger, and an easier life, in practice.

I dont think there is a single scientifically demonstrated consequence of the climate changing we dont know how to deal with today.

Do you assume we will always be able to use as many kWh per head as we do now? Please show your work, energy availability has started going down many places.

I am assuming that we will be able to use much more kWh than we are today but not if we continue to chase insufficient technologies like windmill and solar energy. We haven't even started converting the universe into energy.

Please show any evidence that we are running out of energy.

There are gigantic amounts of stats available. Start at jancovici.com but any half decent honest search on the web will show we're scraping the barrel of easy oil, and the rest follows. Why do you think shales and fracking have seen a boom, do you think this is the cheapest way to get oil/gas? Same for deep seas drilling. How do you propose we convert the universe into energy, more tokamak or stellerator? When/how will that work can you show any evidence that it will help, and by when?

just point to anything that proves this.

Like I said, please honestly check out the contents of site jancovici.com check out Gail Tverberg's site, Hugo Bardi, etc.

30 years is an underestimate. Homo sapiens have been around 350,000 years. We've only had indoor plumbing for the last 200 or so.

It took 349,800 years for us to install a toilet. Constructing a pyramid took 346,000 years. Granted, the survivors of climate disaster will have the benefit of legacy technology, but surviving in these new conditions well enough to create a society capable of widescale adaptation of our current society's abilities will take several thousand years at best. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day.

>We've only had indoor plumbing for the last 200 or so.

Ancient Rome had indoor plumbing. What they didn't have is an industrial manufacturing base or the scientific insight that would have made sanitation effective. Those innovations are definitely recent, and something we could lose in a generation or two.

Oh, I stand corrected: Indoor plumbing will only take 347,000 years.

How could we not adapt? We can move our houses. We can heat and cool them. Grow food.

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