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Comment by disneygibson | Hacker News Reader

The exact same conversation could be had at an obscure religious cult ranch in the middle of the desert. Remember, these people are completely serious.

“Dad, I’m depressed and unmotivated about going to college.”

“Son, the world is ending in the near future in sci-fi fashion and I want to make sure you survive in the dome.”

No matter how bad climate change is, I can assure you, we won’t be living in a dome to escape the hellscape in 20 years. People who believe this are exhibiting cultish behavior.

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The "fi" part in "sci-fi" stands for "fiction". While it could be said that we're not sure about precisely how the world is ending, we can certainly make some projections. Making sure your children can survive even a pessimistic projection isn't necessarily cultish behaviour, especially if it's based on evidence-based modeling (whether or not this specific example is I cannot say, I'm not terribly interested in finding out what fresh hell the future has planned for me. Reality as it is is bad enough).

My complaint is that the author has forgotten what fiction is and seems to think it correlates to reality.

What are you talking about? I'm sure he's being metaphorical.

Do you have anything to support the assurance? If we have to spend whole lives indoors with A/C and CO2 scrubbers that is practically as bad as the domes.

(It is likely that elevated CO2 levels will harm human cognition, it isn't widely known probably because it's too depressing. There are counterarguments like "oh that happens only above 1000ppm we're far from that" but they're based only on short-term experiments.)

Do you honestly believe that everyone will spend their lives inside an air conditioned room and with CO2 scrubbers?

My assurance is reality. Reality isn’t a science fiction novel.

Interestingly you only get these absurd predictions from a very narrow group of people, which lines up quite well with what my original comment said. It’s a religious movement, not an accurate assessment of climate science.

The reality is that worldwide CO2 production isn't going to decline anytime soon. What's absurd about predicting that? And if it's only agenda of narrow group of people, where are the majority voices supported by research?

Because absolutely no climate science says that increased CO2 in the next twenty years will lead to humans living entirely inside with AC’d units? Again, this is basic science.

The real effects of climate change will be difficult enough. We don’t need to waste energy on inventing fantastical ones.

Dismissing everything you don't like as fantasies is the surest way to eventual harm.

https://penntoday.upenn.edu/news/continued-CO2-emissions-wil...

Combine this with wetbulb temperatures which force everyone to stay in airconditioned indoors for weeks or months in large part of world (this too is supported by climate science). Fantasies? I hope so but expect the worst.

You’ve moved the goal posts about five times now. First it was our entire lives indoors. Now it’s just a few months a year in some parts of the world. First it was in the next 20 years. Now it’s by the end of the century.

A single study that predicts brain damage from CO2 “by the end of the century” is pure speculation at this point. The link you shared even says it’s still very unclear what the effect is.

I’ll say it again; the actual science says that climate change is a serious problem. It doesn’t say that we are headed into the apocalypse in the next decade.

Ok sorry I was unclear. In 20 years it could be just a few months indoors, and by end of century all the time.

The actual paper linked from the article links to some research like: "systematic relationships were found between most of the cognitive function scores and CO2 concentration, including from 550–945 ppm". Thinking that in 20 years we could go over 550ppm outside certainly isn't a fantasy, or?

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