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Comment by snowwrestler | Hacker News Reader

People worry about accelerating climate change now because we live here now.

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.

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> 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.

Exactly. People often get lost in this "we must save the planet" argument, but realistically, the planet is gonna be fine.

Preventing climate change is about saving humanity, not the planet.

How is this pedantic point useful in any way?

> How is this pedantic point useful in any way?

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.

I swear, if one more person quotes an old George Carlin bit, as if it were still clever or useful...or as if said person didn't know what was meant by the statement.

Yeah but there is more to it. There are active crisis, like cancer & heart disease. Or upcoming ones like Alzeimer & Parkinson. That in the current day already affect more people per year, then the climate crisis will affect in the worst prognoses in a 100 years*.

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.

Can you provide the citations for that? Migration forecasts are absolutely enormous [1] and 10 million seems very low in terms of relation to the numbers and how humanity will react to it all. Just think of the current reactions to migration currently and multiply that 10-fold or more. And I can see that happening in the next 20 years.

[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...

I mean there are a bunch of studies and articles, with an extreme wide range. It also difficult to count. For instance if a heat wave leads to heart attack in an obese person, should that be included, etc.

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

Thanks. For me, I just do not think humanity in its current state could handle the the massive amount of migration that could potentially happen without ugly political upheavals and conflict. I guess we will find out.

Except that neither of the things you mention affects more people than climate change will. The estimate is that there are about 54 M people World wide suffering from alzheimer.

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.

Just because they will below sea level doesn't mean they will all die. That's a bit ludicrous. Even more ludicrous are your nrs 4-5 meters, will get to that.

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.

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