Comment by salt-thrower | Hacker News Reader

Comment by salt-thrower | Hacker News Reader

This article comes across as extremely tone-deaf, and the author seems unaware of the existential scale of the problems humanity is facing. The fact that the phrase "climate change" only appears once - at the beginning, as a throwaway line - really speaks volumes.

If the only problems we face were war and rising Christian fascism, I would also be optimistic, because those things can and have been fought successfully in the past. However...

The very real situation of climate change, described by leading scientists as "code red for humanity," cannot be waved away by comparing our current struggles to that of medieval peasants seeking freedom from monarchy. We're talking about a collapsing biosphere. We're talking about mass extinction. We're talking about large areas of the Earth becoming functionally uninhabitable.

I would even be optimistic about that, too, if world leaders (economic and political) seemed to take any of it seriously. But they don't, so I'm not. And I think the author is conveniently ignoring this entire subject.

Does the IPCC report anywhere claim that climate change is an existential threat? What does a "code red" actually entail for the next century? Where in the climate science does it actually say that large ares of Earth will become functionally uninhabitable and the biosphere will collapse? Outside of hothouse Earth scenarios, which are deemed unlikely at this point within the 2.5-3.7 degrees warming scenarios, I'm not aware of any such doomsday predictions by the actual mainstream climate science.

IPCC AR6 (2022)'s summary for policymakers [1] makes such a claim.

Here is the last paragraph:

"The cumulative scientific evidence is unequivocal: Climate change is a threat to human well-being and planetary health. Any further delay in concerted anticipatory global action on adaptation and mitigation will miss a brief and rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all. (very high confidence)"

You can find more information here: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/sixth-assessment-report-working-g...

[1]: https://report.ipcc.ch/ar6wg2/pdf/IPCC_AR6_WGII_SummaryForPo...

I don't see where in that sentence it says large parts of the planet will become functionally inhabitable or that climate change is an existential threat.

"rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all"

It literally says "livable future." As in, a future that is as livable for humanity in general as the present currently is.

There are numerous scientists that predict sea level rise coupled with lethal wet-bulb temperatures in the tropics will make living around the equator difficult if not impossible. Here is a direct quote if you need it:

"SSP5-8.5 — Imagine a world where humanity doesn’t just do nothing about climate change but continues to make it worse... The net result would be 4.4°C of warming, with a range between 3.3°C and 5.7°C. As if large-scale coastal inundation and extremely destructive weather weren’t enough, parts of the planet would become unlivable during the hottest times of the year."

Source: https://www.vox.com/22620706/climate-change-ipcc-report-2021...

That's a timeline in which we continue to increase emissions year over year and actively double down on business-as-usual. So far, that has been the case (emissions dipped in 2020 during lockdown, but we are now back to emitting more than ever before).

Human civilization will survive mass extinctions and change of habitability of some places. Humans are resilient.

And if they won’t, life itself is even more resilient.

> And if they won’t, life itself is even more resilient.

You realize that's hardly reassuring, right? You're right though - life is resilient. Life has survived worse.

But our fragile global civilization, propped up by fossil fuels at a core level, is not resilient in the worst case outcomes of climate change. And keep in mind: in order to avoid the worst case scenarios, massive economic and political change needs to happen. No such changes are happening yet, though.

So yeah, I agree that humans and life in general will probably survive, but not in any way that would be recognizable to us now.

Humans have still suffered far worse. At one point, around 70kya, there were only an estimated maximum of 10,000 humans, and it is from that population that sprung forth 8 billion today. I highly doubt with even all the damage climate change will cause that we will go back to such numbers.

Your goalposts are still apocalyptic. Even going from 8 billion to 4 billion would be catastrophic amounts of suffering. The raw number of humans that currently exist is not a good measure for quality of life in general.

Hey, we are all going to die anyway, so that’s a baseline. The bar is pretty low :)

Now, I believe that human civilization is not there yet for coordinated global action. At the very least, it requires world peace, and we are on the brink of the next world war. Civilization can disappear even before we’ll feel consequences from climate change. Nothing is permanent.

Having said that, I think we should do everything to improve our prospects and our long-term quality of life, like building a lot of climate-safe nuclear power plants, stopping burning fossil fuels, and preparing for mass climate migration (which will not even be the first in humanity’s history). I think we’ll manage. But if not — I’m pretty sure that there are many other fine civilizations in the universe that will pass this particular test. We are not that important on the cosmic scale, and everything there is temporary anyway.

This is a very, very annoying strawman. Nobody believes that life, or even humanity will be wiped off the face of the earth. It's the tremendous amount suffering it'll have to endure that we'd rather avoid.

The tremendous amount of suffering will be there soon enough in the form of the next world war. Judging from observations in human history, mass suffering is normal, and the relatively peaceful environment of the “end of history” is quite an anomaly.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t do anything, converting our energy needs to nuclear and solar is the first priority. But yes, there’s a significant probability that it won’t happen soon enough, so we might want to think how to live when famines and mass climate migrations will happen. Linear progress is an exception, not a rule.

"it's not the end of all life" isn't much of a consolation for those that will have to live through the shitshow

Some people are used to such a good life that the concept of actual, intense, long-term suffering doesn't even register as something that can happen to them. And even when it is pointed out to them there's no gut feeling for how shit life can be

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