Yep, it’s bleak, says expert who tested 1970s end-of-the-world prediction

Yeah I wouldn’t put too much stock in the world3 model. They have variables like “resources” with no units and they start out the variable at some arbitrary number like 100k. There’s nothing measurable there.

Given the time constants (decades to centuries), it's almost certainly too late already! The time to "do something" was back in the 1970s.

Of course, the reality is that 1) it's only a problem for humans - nature doesn't care and will be fine, and 2) even losing 99% of humanity is not the end of the species. Some will adapt and thrive.

A lot of this comes form "Me the center of the universe" along with "Me living forever" thinking. Neither is a viable axiom for any decision making.

If temperatures keep going the way they have been going, it is dire.

Right now, in some areas of Washington and Idaho, crops are yielding half of normal, due to the heat.

If such temperatures were to happen across the USA, just for a week or two, and this killed 50% of staple crops, that would be very bad indeed. Prices would shoot up, the poorest would not be able to afford food at all. If this happens multiple years in a row, tens of millions would die in the USA of famine.

I'll take an optimistic outlook and say this only looks bleak to us now, but will be a net-postive for human society in the long run. I see it as less of an end-of-the-world event and more as a gradual age of reckoning on a planetary scale. You can deny climate change and social unrest all you want until these things boil over and force changes to occur.

Meanwhile, Americans are apparently happier than ever!

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27949658

Can we stop with Guardian articles? It's a tabloid rag that routinely pumps out sensationalist bullshit...