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It’s not a theoretical science thing. We have farms and cities and towns and bridges and dams and reservoirs in particular places, and we are accelerating the depreciation of many of them. The result will be tremendous loss of wealth, movement of populations, and the associated social consequences of those.
Humanity doesn’t hate itself, we like ourselves, which is why we are so concerned about what we are doing to ourselves.
Yeah. The argument that single cellular life or some small animals might survive and eventually evolve into something else is a bit weird for people who are hoping they don't die out like many species have in the past when there have been major changes to climate and carbon levels.
Preventing climate change is about saving humanity, not the planet.
Because it forces us to recognize that the risk isn't to "the Earth" as a separate entity, but to ourselves specifically (well, our future descendants).
We've already confirmed through our behavior that humans largely don't care about any other part of the Earth ecosystem, so asking people to basically do the right thing as a favor to the Earth are probably wasting their time.
But Climate change is different, it speaks to the psyche of humans, the modern story of the flood. And in the same way it gives people meaning & without religion in the West they form morality around it. Those for it, are good, those against it, are bad.
That doesn't mean its not something important or real, and we have to solve it. But it's one of the many things for us humans to solve.
*In worst prognoses, climate changes will affect 10 mil deaths per year, which is the same amount cancer is doing every year today.
[1] this is just one I found from a quick search, there is a lot more out there: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/aug/18/century-climate...
UN org claims 3.4 million per year by the end of the century: https://www.v-20.org/new-health-data-shows-unabated-climate-...
See other one here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dishashetty/2021/07/30/climate-...
In general it's very rough, many things are hard to predict
The worst case projection for 2100 for just sea rise is 4-5m on global average (but much higher in some areas) https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/acb504
To put that into perspective the average altitude of Bangladesh is 9m above sea level, but the majority of the population lives in he south at about 0-1m of altitude. So there would just in Bangladesh alone be more people (let's say 50% of 160M) directly affected by climate change than alzheimer world wide. We are not even talking about the indirect effects of displacing 60M people, all the other countries and all the other effects of climate change.
Apart from that, the argument is under the false premise that we shouldnt do anything anyway because there is worse things. By that argument we should also not do something about alzheimer, because more people die of cancer.
So I question what your aim was with your argument. It was clearly using wrong facts and was under a false premise.
Whole of Holland is below sea level at the moment. Yet we are miraculously sitil alive.
To take it further, in a 100 years every house in Holland that's here now will still be standing.
Now certain countries don't have the skills that the Dutch have, and we should help them. But this isn't something that will come unexpected, so we have the time to do so. Half of Dubai was created out of the sea.
But, even then 4-5 meters is too much. Worst case is less then 1m. Till now we got 20cm. Expectance by Dutch gov. is this between another 20 and 86 cm in the next century: https://www.knmi.nl/kennis-en-datacentrum/uitleg/zeespiegels...
Back to the medical argument. Even if parts are flooded, which is terrible. Moving away is not the same as not being able to use your brain or dying.
So although the human species will probably survive a drastic climate change, many individuals will not due to famine, lack of medical supplies and care, and war over the remaining resources.
Oh shut it. You can't have any knowledge at all about this issue and not appreciate that the problem is not temperature as such but the rapidity of the change - over 150 years rather than 15000. Your troll post is an insult to intelligence.
Folks, don't waste your time trying to reason with such bad-faith arguments. It's a form of theft, because the time cost to refute bullshit is about 10x that to spew bullshit. And the above post is just that - bullshit.
Before someone invokes the HN guidelines and talks about curious conversation, recognize that throwing phrases like 'doomsday cult' into a discussion of a serious scientific project that has hit a milestone after many years of effort has only one purpose, and that is to derail. Flagging and downvoting are all very well, but there are also times when it's necessary to call bullshit.
There is plenty of criticism over relying on mathematical models that fail to accurately predict the future (all of the glaciers were predicted to have melted 3 years ago, snow was supposed to have been a thing of the past, etc.), cherry picking data, questionable measurement & sampling, not considering other forcing inputs, etc. It's a complicated claim that has valid criticism on it's foundational pieces If any foundational premise of the claim is invalidated, the entire model is invalidated. The consensus models are complicated so I'm not surprised that it has a difficult time standing up against scrutiny & needs to be adjusted frequently.
There is also dissent among scientists, including from Nobel Laureates (who had opportunities cancelled after dissenting). "The doomsday cult" reference comes from the doom & gloom sensationalism. For example, I a heard chorus of "we are fucked" from coworkers in the office about 15 years ago in response to some news back then. I don't agree that "we are fucked". Humans have been through more environmentally challenging times with less technology & global knowledge.
The climate is changing...always has changed & always will change. What are we going to do about it? Are we going to pretend that we can stave off the inevitable, taxing/restricting the population which weakens their ability to adjust to these inevitable changes...while wealth is concentrated to the elites? There is a widespread perception that is happening. When the issues reach it's crescendo later in this decade & the fallout in the 2030s (winter occurs after the Solar Solstice, solar exposure increases during winter), there will be many who will not buy the APGW narrative as the reason for their problems. The peaceful solution is a decoupling from systems that don't benefit the person/group, which I expect to happen. Others, such as Peter Turchin think there is a high probability of violent uprising & he seems to think addressing APGW is a unifying force...I disagree on both premises but I think his analysis is valid & worth getting into.
I think the animus generated by climate alarmism putting the blame on the population reduces effective cooperation among people & will be exasperated as the climate does change, as the Geomagnetic wander deepens in it's cycle, as magnetic fields fluctuate in our solar system, etc. A spirit of cooperation will unify humanity while the blame game will cause conflict. Doom & gloom is unhelpful. The "doomsday cult" will increase in their doom & gloom as people walk away from their petulance & their social leverage wanes.
I don't think any mainstream models predicted that? Which model was that?
Also remember that our actions are influenced by models. "If current trends persist, then in 20 years [...]" may very well be true, but if we take action based on those predictions (e.g. change the trend) then the outcome will be different.
You can see this clearly in population levels of things like elephants[1] or whales[2]: people who were predicting the extinction of whales and elephants weren't wrong.
[1]: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/african-elephants
[2]: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/General-estimated-popula...
The most outlandish sensationalist claims grab mainstream attention (no snow by 2020) and when the predictions turn out not to be true, the advocates retreat to "well it was never a mainstream model". Classic Motte & Bailey. So in this case, the models that predict doom & gloom in the mid-term future saturate the media (Bailey) and when the predictions turn out to be false, it was claimed to never be a mainstream model (Motte).
If it's not a mainstream model, why are news outlets scaring the population with these fringe models? Even the IPCC director is chiding the doomsayers to not be so extreme in their prognostications.
Weather reports now use scary red color schemes to represent highs when a few years ago, higher highs were represented with a sun & blue color scheme. News coverage of heat outweigh coverage of summer time record lows & record sized hail in the mid US & Europe.
> Also, the ozone holes, acid rain, and things like Y2K. “This thing would have been very bad, but we (expensively, with great effort) fixed it, so it was okay” somehow becomes, in the public imagination, “this was not a real thing”.
The decrease in large volcanic eruptions had a large impact on the restoration of the ozone layer, which coincided with the ban on CFCs in 1987.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_volcanic_eruptions_150...
Don't get me wrong, I'm in favor of reducing air pollution. However, there are other factors. A new ozone hole was recently discovered & the "Cosmic Ray Electron Reaction" model shows that non-human factors have a significant impact. So we have three factors, such as volcanic eruptions, CFCs, & Cosmic Rays which can deplete the ozone layer.
https://bgr.com/science/scientists-found-a-massive-new-hole-...
I think this drives at the heart of this discussion. Even if we ban CFCs, holes in the ozone layer will still occur. Even if we ban CO2, climate change will still occur. Due to change being inevitable, the best investment is in adaptation. An effective system of adaptation covers all of the possible cases. Banning CO2/CFCs does not stop climate change/ozone layer depletion, leaving us in the same position of needing to adapt.
Adaption is pro-people while bans are pro-institutions. I favor helping the people in tangible ways instead of funneling money to large capital interests & the elite cadre. Funneling money to the elites always enables corruption & waste. I would rather everyone be strengthened to adapt to the coming changes to the climate instead of forcing them to have faith in institutions led by the elites that will be unable to stop the climate changes, but have promoted fringe models to scare the people into complying with funneling money to the elites.
The major ecological shifts may bring change humanity does not bounce back from.
I'm not saying humans won't be fine but we've never been so dependent on the stability of the climate before. People will die, get displaced, suffer economically, etc as far as I understand.
[0] https://www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth%27s_at...
Of course, there were also mass migrations and extinctions as the environment changed so radically, which seems like something that would be nice to avoid.
> On the positive, the earth has been much warmer and much colder, and has had more carbon and less carbon in the atmosphere.
the way I read it suggesting that it'll be fine. But it won't be, if co2 increased to 4000 ppm quickly enough, humans would not be fine. There were no humans during the time you were describing.
Of course, for earth it doesn't matter at all.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
Is not doomsday as the world won't change overnight, but some areas of the globe will suffer a lot from the higher intensity of the weather and this will probably create a lot of global challenges and might bring (mostly) overcome tragedies, like widespread famine, back to the news
When temperature rises slowly, ecosystems adapt in parallel to the change. When temperature rises fast, ecosystems don't. And so we have major die-offs of coral and trees, without corresponding colonization in places where they could now live.
When CO2 rises slowly, the ocean's pH is buffered by large deposits of calcium carbonate on the bottom. When CO2 rises fast, we get ocean acidification, which is on track to be the most extreme shellfish extinction event in the last 50 million years.
Therefore larger absolute past climate changes were less likely to have extreme impacts than faster present climate changes.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
Life will go on. Humans? Maybe. Human civilization will be disrupted for sure
Also: here's a visualization of how fast the climate changed in the last 20000 years vs today
The short term effects are all about the slope. And the short term is all that matter to us, because if we don't pass through this bottleneck we won't have a long term (it may well be our "great filter" preventing us from spreading through the stars)
The problem with this argument is that 'humans' surviving, is different than 'our nice comfortable human society' surviving.
Yes, the human species as an animal that can survive by foraging, probably will survive. That isn't a great argument.
NONE of them happened at anything approaching the RATE of today's anthropogenic warming.
Our climate is warming literally orders of magnitude faster than any previous change. This is overwhelming the ability of ecosystems to adapt.
Moreover, this is entirely preventable — we're doing it, we can stop it.
The concern is, during these hotter/colder periods of earth's existence - what happened to life on earth during that time?
Did populations decline? Was life nearly run into extinction (dinosaurs, etc)?