It’s 2020 and You’re in the Future | Hacker News Reader

It’s 2020 and You’re in the Future

waitbutwhy.com

32 pointsamacneil11 comments

What I'm surprised wasn't mentioned is that the year 2020 seemed really futuristic to most of the people who are now reading this -- but from now on, the year 2020 will start being in the past.

> But the weirdest thing about kids today: most of them will live to see the 2100s.

If they don't starve when civilization collapses in 2030 or 2040. Or 2060 or 2080. (Opinions differ on when, and how many.)

Intrigued how your comment seems to imply that civilization will collapse no matter what before 2100. Am I reading that right?

You truly believe there is an extremely high probability that the world will starve in the next 80 years?

It looks increasingly likely.

My go-to scenario is mass migration out of the tropics, as they become (literally) uninhabitable, drives fascist governments into power in temperate countries, which leads directly to world war, thence to thermonuclear devastation. We already see the beginnings of this scenario unfolding.

The species will certainly survive.

I hope it does not go this way, but I don't know how to prevent it. Ideas welcome. Downvoting me will certainly not help.

There's the basic fact that almost no hard data of any kind exists to back up your apocalyptic claim. If anything, by all major metrics, human well-being is dramatically improving, not just in the north but also in these supposedly infernal tropics. And data indicates that this will in most ways continue, in terms of reductions in the population explosion, better access to technology, better health and welfare and even better environmental practices becoming more common in the developing world, just as they did in the developed world over previous decades.

You remind me of people like Paul Ehrlich back in the 70's. Predicting doom and disaster because it was fashionable, extrapolating without good supporting evidence or consideration for human development and innovation, then later just shrugging off their nonsense when it proves to have been totally, absurdly wrong.

The climate change crisis is a serious problem for our species and societies, but it too has possible solutions that are already in development. It's not simply a pre-ordained act of god.

We can leave God and scurrilous accusations out of this. I didn't make up "supposedly infernal" tropics. They are right there in the (always over-conservative) IPCC report. I also did not make up Fascist leanings in response to migration -- we already see it happening, and increasing, while the migration rate is a tiny fraction of what will be. There is no expectation of reduced population growth in Africa, or increased wealth, in the coming decade.

If you have any suggestions that might help prevent further development of the scenario, I am all ears, but Pollyanna proclamations are the opposite.

That is a belief, an opinion of yours. Another opinionon could be that the development and innovation you are speaking of was in the ever more clever externalizing of environmental cost to 'somewhere else' like in a giant pyramid scheme, and thereby oversaturing several interconnected systems up to their tipping points.

Where the 70ies doomsayers were wrong was the lack of anticipating those pyramid schemes, and their superficial covering up of bad things 'gonna happen.

Welcome to the Idiocracy, maybe in the Wall-E fanedit.

errr ... oversaturATing

Here's some actual facts from an IPCC report [0]:

-The planet has warmed approximately 1.0C since pre industrial times

-It is likely this will reach 1.5C of total warming between 2030-2052

-"6% of insects, 8% of plants and 4% of vertebrates are projected to lose over half of their climatically determined geographic range for global warming of 1.5°C"

-The biggest impacts will be to unique ecosystems like coral reefs or mountain glaciers

-Overall global impact of 1.5C warming is expected to be "detectable" with medium confidence

Nowhere does it come anywhere close to saying that the additional 0.5C increase in temperatures in the next 10-30 years will make currently inhabited regions "literally uninhabitable".

[0] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/05/SR15...

There is no reasonable expectation that temperature increase will be limited to 1.5 degrees, because the recommended reductions in CO2 emissions are not, in fact, occurring, and in fact they are still increasing.

Thus far, events have turned out to reliably hug the high side of IPCC projections, each year.

Out-migration from tropical areas is already occurring, and already generating fascist leanings in destination countries. There is no reason to believe either will spontaneously reverse.

Impact on coral reefs implies reduced fish stocks, and thus reduced protein availability.

Continued denial of observable effects at all levels does not inspire expectation of an effective response.

I wouldn't expect an effective response unless or until there is a mainstream estimate of the economic cost of climate change that would exceed the amount necessary to motivate action applied to the cost of energy.

Are you aware of one? Like, I'm saying, (1) what is the price of energy that would reduce CO2 output enough to "effectively" address warming, and (2) what is the source that says the annual net cost of not addressing the climate in several decades is more than the yearly cost of killing demand at the price in (1)?

This seems like a very important question no matter what you think the answer should be, because it would affect strategy for addressing climate change. Is effectively stopping climate change a matter of better accounting, or of changing what billions of people value and how much?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com