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Comment by hn_throwaway_99 | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to understand this perspective. The predictions I've seen, even for a worse case scenario, would result in huge levels of sea rise inundating coastal areas, large parts of the Earth becoming uninhabitable for humans, massive ocean die offs, climate-change induced wars, etc.

This would quite obviously result in death and misery for billions (again, this is the worst case scenario), but I haven't seen any evidence that the Earth will become fundamentally uninhabitable a la Venus.

So it would be a disaster in any sense of the word, but I don't see how it would become a humanity-ending event. I'd like to understand why people think otherwise.

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The current thought patterns that seem to be the dominant ones for the majority of ordinary people seem to assume that there are no feedback loops or tipping points. While the evidence from other planets directly contradicts this.

Also with end of history, I didn't mean the end of the human race. Just the end of the current civilization and possibly written history. Another dark age, so to speak.

> While the evidence from other planets directly contradicts this.

To echo what another reply said, our own planet contradicts the idea that we would turn into a Venus for some reason. In that all the carbon we're putting back into the atmosphere is from organic processes that took it out of the atmosphere eons ago.

So, again, yes, the change will be enormously traumatic for humanity, but I don't see any evidence that written history will somehow disappear, for example.

I wonder about this. As carbon we are now emitting must have been at one point in atmosphere? And at that point there was some sort of equilibrium. So could we really push it all to atmosphere again? And would that really lead to loop-back?

Is it scientifically possible that present conditions on Venus were caused by a civilization that triggered a runaway greenhouse effect artificially?

Just to ‘second’ your perspective - humanity has an uncanny ability to adapt. Climate Change will be a monstrous stimulus to adapt to, but I don’t see where it ‘ends our kind.’

On the whole, the same folks who fear climate change the most, praise the mission to make life multi-planetary. Those two beliefs held concurrently are a head scratcher to me... if you believe in our ability to make life multi-planetary, then surely we can adapt here. Mars is much more unforgiving than any forest fire, hurricane, or massive earth bound event.

Venice and New Orleans might be a write-off, and NYC will have sea walls, but folks must have some drive to adapt beyond just bland acceptance.

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