Hacker News Reader

Comment by friseurtermin | Hacker News Reader

> Now, almost 30 years later, in what might be the most profound shift of all, the power dynamic between humans and Yosemite has changed. To see nature so vulnerable not only feels depressing, but wrong, disorienting and scary.

Beautiful piece, but that's hardly the whole story. Nature doesn't care about climate change and it couldn't care less about us. Sure, it might kill all the birds, trees, landscapes, but our planet will adapt. We, humans, won't be able to. What we're destroying is our own future, both the beauty in the world and the environment we live in.

View on HN

> our planet will adapt. We, humans, won't be able to.

We are by far Nature’s most adaptable creation, we live everywhere from the harshest deserts to the frozen tundra. I find the idea that we won’t adapt remarkably laughable.

Humans have been around 6M years. The Earth has been around 4.5B years. I find the idea “we” will adapt because of humans’ success in adapting over a minute fraction of the Earth’s existence remarkably laughable.

People are also concerned about quality of life, not just survival.

We adapted to its harshest climates over a remarkably small timeframe, something that took other species eons. I think you’ve made my point.

The dataset is too small to “make” any point. 6M years out of 4.5B years( or even more if you expand out into the universe) is a fluke.

The climate can change faster than we can, and we can destroy each other or set each other pretty far back technologically. Either way, there are myriad reasons that the relatively recent past need not be indicative of the future.

It's not about timescales, it's about technology. We're sophisticated enough to maintain populations in pretty much every environment at this point, albeit at greater cost depending on which environment.

As for quality of life, those unwilling to adjust their expectations will filter themselves out. There are plenty of anti-natalists on Reddit proudly proclaiming they'll never have kids because the world already sucks too much. Well fine, but don't think everyone's going to go that route. Humanity got by for most of its existence with essentially no economic growth or quality of life improvements. Would suck to go back to that, but the species would continue.

“Time” is a parameter in the equation for maintaining an environment suitable for human life.

See Easter Island’s history for an example.

Can we please just stop laughing for a minute? We pretty much dominate the Earth, it's odd you don't think we have been adapting every step of the way and will continue to do so far more competently than almost any other organism thanks to our reasoning power and its fruit, a highly capable advanced civilization. If the next pandemic hits and 7 billion people are wiped out that's adapting too because 1 billion survived. Please stop conflating improving quality of life vs survivability of our specie which is what the discussion about adaptability is always anchored in.

> Can we please just stop laughing for a minute?

It was tongue in cheek because the person I responded to wrote that.

> We pretty much dominate the Earth, it's odd you don't think we have been adapting every step of the way and will continue to do so far more competently than almost any other organism thanks to our reasoning power and its fruit, a highly capable advanced civilization.

Humans have been adapting, but not “every step of the way” was my point. It very well could be that we are living in a favorable span of a few million years out of few billion that are inhospitable to human life, with no guarantee of innovating technology to outmaneuver nature. The claim is humans’ survival has a large luck component to it.

> If the next pandemic hits and 7 billion people are wiped out that's adapting too because 1 billion survived.

That is not what most people mean when they say “adapted”.

> Please stop conflating improving quality of life vs survivability of our specie which is what the discussion about adaptability is always anchored in.

Again, the claim is that humans have been around for a microscopic amount of time in the grand scheme of things, and there are things outside of our control that could cause extinction level events at any time, to which humans would not have the time/intelligence to avoid. For example, asteroids/solar flare/disease/other things changes in the habitat that are greater than us.

Adaptability does not mean 100% survivability. If a billion people survive what do you call that? Extinction level event that did not extinct? Instead of saying humans are not adaptable you probably are trying to say be scared you tiny creatures you could die any moment, which is true but you’re not saying anything other than what religions have been stuffing into people’s heads for thousands of years, so I get worried. I don’t like to argue this point with you as I see you’re just repeating yourself and not seriously engaging with the points I raised.

I interpreted friseurtermin's usage of the word "adapt" to mean living in a future with similar or few sacrifices to the modern standards of living. I think when most people express worry about adapting to changes in the environment, they do not mean 1B out of 7B surviving, they mean large portions of the population losing access to clean water, hospitable temperatures, quality and easy access to food, etc.

For example, we can adapt to volatility in rain by developing irrigation, or volatility in soil quality by using synthetic fertilizer. But you cannot adapt to zero water, or extreme weather, or poor air quality, at least not without war, which also creates its own problems.

And yes, some will survive and "adapt" in that sense, but the notable difference is "adapting" in the recent past meant innovations that did not necessarily take away from others (at least in the short term). In the future, it would be more zero sum, and hence uglier.

Exactly. We'll survive, as a species, even if many will suffer - droughts, famine, mass migrations, conflicts stemming from both, extreme hot and cold weather in houses designed for more temperate climates for people used to temperate climates.

Or to put it more harshly, the wealthy will be able to adapt. A lot of people will suffer and/or die.

Are you implying all those Inuits and desert tribes are clearly loaded?

Pretty sure they’re implying that in this day and age wealthy people can more easily move/acquire resources to survive than those with fewer.

The thinking though feels a little narrow. If the non-wealthy (i.e. the vast majority of the planet) are driven to tribalism, rioting, war or otherwise die off what sustains the "wealthy"? A vast underground bomb-hardened prepper cache?

The wealthy fleeing global warming feels like it will merely be a footnote in Chapter 1 of what will eventually play out.

I worry not simply for the planet but for my children, my grandchildren, and yours, all of ours, as well.

When inuits and desert tribes adapted, my understanding is they were either able to adapt on their own timeline (moving gradually into harsher climates as they figured out how to stay in their summer camps longer into the fall) or they suffered immense population loss during the move, and it was a small number of survivors that rebuilt the population. There aren't a lot of records from when humans first moved to now-populated parts of the world, so I could be wrong.

That said, climate change is going to force us all into rapid adaption as plant and animal life die off, glacial streams and rivers dry up for good, sea level rises, etc. It will be easier to survive if you can afford the more expensive food and water, can afford to install the most-effective fire break around your home, can afford the expensive land in still-habitable places.

Inuits and Bedouins are at or near (or some meaningful fraction of) carrying capacity for their environment.

Reducing (formerly) temperate-area population density to Inuit levels would be catastrophic.

Yes, humans as a species would survive. But that's about all you can say.

> Or to put it more harshly, the wealthy will be able to adapt. A lot of people will suffer and/or die.

Sounds like evolution :/

Adaptation says nothing about the quality of life and a life worth living.

Adapt to weather is easy. Adapting our thinking...well...hasn't happened yet. We continue to bury ourselves in trash and consume our home to death.

If you look at it from a global perspective, there are more forests now, up by 7% since 1982. Some regions see decreased life, others increased life:

"Here we analyse 35 years’ worth of satellite data and provide a comprehensive record of global land-change dynamics during the period 1982–2016. We show that—contrary to the prevailing view that forest area has declined globally—tree cover has increased by 2.24 million km2 (+7.1% relative to the 1982 level). This overall net gain is the result of a net loss in the tropics being outweighed by a net gain in the extratropics."

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0411-9

Reply on news.ycombinator.com