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Comment by dwighttk | Hacker News Reader

Production is not the same as existence

Every year global we discover fewer additional oil reserves than what we are currently burning.

Not that it matters. If we burn what we’ve already discovered, we’ll already be completely fucked from a greenhouse gas perspective.

We were heading into an ice age, which would be just as bad for humans. The issue is that we built a bunch of things that depend on the current climate, but the climate has been changing for a long time and will keep changing. We need to adapt to it or find a way to adapt it.

The holocene is an incredibly small period compared to the age of the Earth. Nature doesn't gaf, it'll cycle in and out and we'll have to adapt.

It's not the direction, it's the velocity.

Not taking the extreme and unprecedented rate of temperature change into account is either ignorance or disingenuity.

https://xkcd.com/1732/

It's probable that very few species will be able to adapt to such an abrupt change.

Adaptation happens when it's forced to happen.

They also happen when they're not forced to (competition), and sometimes they don't happen when they're forced to (extinction).

Yes, but there is always the second half of “adapt or die” to consider

Yes, that's how evolution works. Those with a survival advantage succeed. Mother Nature doesn't hand out consolation prizes.

It sounds like you're advocating we don't compete and instead just die/go extinct

This literally doesn’t mean anything

The rate at which the temperature is changing is probably at historic highs, but both the current temperature and atmospheric CO2 concentrations are close to historic lows.

See [1], that xkcd is picking a really biased starting point by using the last ice age as a baseline. Ice ages themselves being extreme abnormalities from the general historic trend.

1. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Global-Temperature-and-C...

That xkcd is not demonstrating the amount of warming, it is demonstrating the velocity of warming. Historic temperatures on a time scale of millions of years are completely irrelevant to the current discussion of climate change, unless you think we have a chance to evolve into dinosaurs in the next few centuries (/s).

The temperature and CO2 concentrations are also unusually low for the Cenozoic Era. That's the post-Dinosaur era (if we're not including avians): https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Dynamics-of-global-surfa...

The rise of mammals happened almost immediately after the extinction of dinosaurs, when the average surface temperature was around 10°C hotter than today.

I had hoped that my point was clear without too much elaboration, and that you were joining this discussion in good faith.

My understanding: At the moment, climate projections are that within the next few centuries we will reach temperatures not seen since the eocene. The mammals of the eocene were quite small, because larger mammals had trouble surviving the hot climate. While the broad categories of animals that still exist today also existed back then, in aggregate they looked very different from today. Given current trends, the majority of animals of today will be unable to adapt to the new climate, and will die off.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, and then also follow that up with correcting the scientific consensus of experts who are forecasting drastic and damaging changes to the earth caused by humans.

You no longer believe that we're conversing in good faith?

> At the moment, climate projections are that within the next few centuries we will reach temperatures not seen since the eocene.

That seems about right, see e.g.: https://www.marum.de/en/Dr.-thomas-westerhold/CENOGRID.html

> The mammals of the eocene were quite small, because larger mammals had trouble surviving the hot climate.

What makes you think mammal size was limited by the temperature differences we're discussing?

I think the predominant theory is that the asteroid impact killed off the larger ones, and it took a while for larger mammals to evolve. See e.g.: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7645244/

In any case, even if the Earth as a whole was much warmer on average that just means that you'd get the average temperatures that now occur closer to the equator (where some of the largest land mammals presently live) closer to the poles.

So higher average surface temperatures shouldn't preclude the existence of larger mammals.

> Given current trends, the majority of animals of today will be unable to adapt to the new climate, and will die off.

I think this has less to do with climate change per-se, and more to do with the widespread ecological destruction that's followed industrialization, and the reduction in wild habitats.

Although there's surely some species that'll go extinct mainly due to temperature changes, e.g. ones confined to a small atoll that'll get overrun by sea levels rising.

Based on the context of your first comment I thought you were trying to argue that the environment isn't really in trouble. If you agree that humans are negatively impacting the environment, that's good enough for me :)

This is a very common misconception. Production is all that matters and existence is completely irrelevant independently. Production factors in existence and future expected existence. For example if any oil rich nation thinks oil going to run out they will hoard it for future so they can make money.

But some get pedantic and ask "But isnt number of Oil molecules in earth finite?"

Such pedantism can be easily blowm away by responding with pedantism. Oil molecules on "earth" might be finite but in universe they are infinite. Even if the molecules are finite atoms of Carbon and Hydrogen are vastly infinite in universe. We already know how to merge these atoms to form hydrocarbons.

These arguments then get into the saner territory of "but isnt it too expensive to bring water from Jupiter and turn it into Oil on moon and then ship it to earth?", yes it is compared to fracking but fracking was considered too expensive compared to drilling which was considered too expensive compared to using mined coal etc.

Ignore existence and focus on "production". As far as production is concerned we are not going to run out of oil ever. Unless we stop "needing" it.

While the resources are out there it's very feasible that we could become locked into a scenario where it is out of reach. I don't particularly care for letting the cost stop us from taking it from outside Earth, but the prerequisite for doing so is having enough energy available to accomplish the goal. Which is a path we could easily close off for ourselves.

Nothing you have said contradicts what I have said. I said the same thing.

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