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Comment by pk-protect-ai | Hacker News Reader

I no longer worry. I'm extremely pessimistic about the impending climate change. I believe Sabine isn't pessimistic enough about what to anticipate. Consider the tundra methane emissions and the explosive release of methane-hydrates from the oceans, along with water vapor, a potent greenhouse gas. The disaster looming over all ecosystems (a mass extinction event) that will happen in decades and the doom-phase could last for 200,000 years. The chances of humanity surviving are incredibly slim, IMO. We can't colonize Greenland or Antarctica due to the lack of fertile soil, and it would take thousands of years to develop it. Without saying so, we don't have this amount of time.

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The IPCC 6 says "It is very unlikely that gas clathrates (mostly methane) in deeper terrestrial permafrost and subsea clathrates will lead to a detectable departure from the emissions trajectory during this century".

Your pessimism may be trendy but it isn't supported by the bear available evidence.

Don't misunderstand me here. I'd rather be wrong regarding my "doomism," and I no longer worry about climate change; it doesn't make sense to worry about something that can't be changed. However, I observe that people aren't scared enough to take action. They continue to dance around the issue in political euphoria. The changes to our lifestyle are happening too slowly to be effective. The gas and oil industry is doing a lot of carbon emission washing, like CSS. Many optimists argue, "We can't predict it, therefore we shouldn't be worried."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_engineering

Perhaps this is fundamental attribution error:

You don’t worry because it’s inevitable. You perceive them not worrying, but they aren’t scared enough?

What if they also have the (intuitive, but not necessarily correct) sense that it’s inevitable?

> I observe that people aren't scared enough to take action. They continue to dance around the issue in political euphoria. The changes to our lifestyle are happening too slowly to be effective.

These are all reasonable observations, but they don't remotely substantiate "The chances of humanity surviving are incredibly slim, IMO."

Just tone down the hyperbole. No serious informed science exists to predict human extinction, though lots of ecosystems and most large wild animals are at high risk.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis

Citation: The associated period of massive carbon release into the atmosphere has been estimated to have lasted from 20,000 to 50,000 years. The entire warm period lasted for about 200,000 years. Global temperatures increased by 5–8 °C.[21]

The hot-models Sabine referred to are in range of 4.8 - 5.6 if I'm not mistaken...

So, to avoid engaging in a Gish Gallop on this issue, I'm going to ignore the specifics except to point out that neither of those links says anything about human extinction at all.

It is reasonable to be concerned. But deploying easily-refuted hyperbole makes your (our!) cause MORE likely to be ignored as crackpot nonsense, not less.

Do you really mean that humans can survive without ecosystem? Mass extinction events are causing chain reactions ... I do not care about the causes. I'm not a climate activist. I'm just an average guy that can't do a squat and tired to be afraid for my children's future. I just accepted the fact that humanity will destroy itself sooner or later. I do not see any point in expecting wonders.

Maybe people aren't scared because they disagree with your wild, unscientific assertion that "the chances of humanity surviving are incredibly slim, IMO"

Now refute ocean acidification and burning forests.

Climate change is a catastrophe, but it's not going to be the apocalypse and if we keep working on mititgation, there is a good chance it will merely be a "normal" scale disaster.

For example - it's possible that tundra methane emissions in many areas could be mitigated relatively quickly by the regrowth of birch and pine scrubland whose increased evapotranspiration will reduce water tables and eliminate methane emissions. And aboveground carbon sequestration in woody tree mass could outweigh losses from belowground oxidation. This already occurs in fenlands in Southern Finland (paper I read)

We don't know enough about methane hydrates to assess their stability.

Many ecosystems will be reasonably resilient to climate change - maybe up to 2/3 of them, although some specific species groups like tropical amphibians are going to have a really bad time.

What was that story about a frog which was slowly boiled in a pot and didn't know it about it until it was too late?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7069279/

Oh the frog knows in our case, it knows perfectly well. But it's so nice and warm in the pot and freezing outside, plus it's sure that if it concentrates real hard it'll come up with a solution to being cooked alive while still being able to stay in the pot.

Funny how everyone always leaves out the part where in the original experiment, said frog's brain was removed before putting it in the pot :)

Well that only makes it even more relevant.

Maybe we can stretch the metaphor to a number of frogs in the pot, and the frogs need to work collectively to escape the pot. It is hotter in the middle of the pot, the frogs there are already in the panic, while the frogs at the sides are like "I sincerely hope you get the help you need. You dont have to feel like that."

Not a biologist, but won't the tropical amphibians migrate away from the equator? It seems to me that polar bears and penguins have bigger problems

Amphibians have low dispersal speeds. Precipitation changes are a big driver, more than temperature:

Paper reference:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/40419628

Humanity is quite resilient. I’m confident that we’ll survive. However I’m much more pessimistic about technological civilization surviving.

There’s more than just humans and their tech here to worry about though. I get so depressed when I hear people describe the gravity of climate change only in terms of the chance of survival of us humans.

Mass extinction events have happened many times before. The tragedy here is that it is the first preventable mass extinction event. If speaking about it in self-centered terms gets people to act then we should do it. Pragmatism is essential.

> The tragedy here is that it is the first preventable mass extinction event

I think that being responsibles for it is even more of a tragedy.

If climate change didn't affect humans we wouldn't care. Did we care when the skies started to glow at night due to air pollution and destroyed the ecology, or the importation of European honeybees, or effects of toxins on fauna. No it was "marvelous" a "triumph against nature".

The ONLY question to most people is: what will happen to me from it, if it will, why me changing anything will help?

I’m not disagreeing. This is exactly how it is. I’m just saying that this way of thinking (not yours, but the one you describe) is depressing.

You can make it a bit less depressing by thinking on the scale of the universe. Life on this planet has at most a billion years left, after that it's gone even if humans never existed. Humans are likely the only species that can save anything from this planet for the trillion years of life that is possible in the universe after this planet is gone.

The current extinction event is the most depressing part. A lot of environmental changes can be undone, but bringing back thousands of species is impossible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

That's the only silver lining. Finally people stop staring at their phones, and restaurants get rid of this QR-code nonsense.

Honestly curious, why the focus on the QR-code menus? Is that the most important adverse effect of tech?

Not the most important, it is just symptomatic.

I get what you're saying. Although I find that referring to humanity as a collective, or using "we" as in "we are in this together" in discussions like these runs the risk of homogenising human societies into one, even though a large part of humanity's historical impacts on the environment has been heterogeneous (i.e., industrial revolution beginning in Western societies). You can find the same criticism surrounding the term "Anthropocene" in academic and general settings.

Countries such as Pakistan and Pacific island countries that have contributed the least to climate change are among the most impacted, which is why two questions (among many others) have loomed climate politics over the past 30 years: "Where does the liability fall?" (Ex: loss and damage fund) and "How can I, as a country, be in a better position within a global crisis?" (Ex: disagreement over the global warming potential of non-CO2 emissions due to different chosen time horizons between countries; GWP100 vs. GWP*; this greatly affects carbon accounting in agricultural countries that rely on cattle for instance)

What is your point? My point is, there will be no escape for humanity with no regard to their contribution to the climate change... We are in this together, though 99% of the human population can't do a thing about it.

I am glad that I survived oil outage, sour rain, the Ozone hole, mass famine because of overpopulation. All in a lifetime. I must have had sheer luck.

A bear is chasing you. “Glad I survived crossing a dangerous road, smoking a cigarette and unprotected sex”

There was massive concerted effort to stop acid rain and ozone depletion. Maybe we should try that for the climate crisis if we want similar success at preventing catastrophe.

Amazing how the ozone hole repaired itself despite China releasing thousands of tons of CFCs.

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2019/may/23/china-factorie...

The article doesn’t seem to support your claim.

“After the ban came into force, global concentrations of CFC-11 declined steadily until about 2012. However, last year scientists discovered the pace of that slowdown slowed by half between 2013 and 2017. Because the chemical is not naturally occurring, the change could only have been produced by new emissions.”

“If emissions do not decline, it will delay the recovery of the Antarctic ozone hole, possibly for decades”

CFC-11 is one specific CFC, you need to look at all of them. Overall they’re increasing, yet the ozone layer has continue to “heal”.

Recently I survived covid exponential deaths apocalypse and Al Gore's sea levels rising in 2016.

Covid was no joke, 3 million people died despite the entire world grinding to a halt and hiding in their houses for months. Sea levels are up 10 cm since Gore was VP and it's accelerating.

61 milion people died in 2023 with and without covid. Al Gore predicted 20ft by 2016 not 10cm.

> Al Gore predicted

I see no predictions by him.

What I do see are examples of him selectively quoting other people and that he was in turn selectively quoted himself.

This is also why you shouldn't rely on politicians for anything.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-caps-melt-gore-2014/

Al Gore got Nobel prize for PowerPoint presentation.

"Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel peace prize."

Which was extra ironic, given Kissinger reportedly said to Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin "I figure it like Groucho Marx said 'any club that took him in he would not want to join'. I would say that anything Lê Đức Thọ is eligible for, there must be something wrong with it." while Lê Đức Thọ declined the prize, on grounds that such "bourgeois sentimentalities" were not for him and that the Paris Peace Accords (for which he and Kissinger had been awarded the prize) were not being adhered to in full.

No matter how you spin this covid brought up 25 mln of excess death. That massive event, which is so foreign to "normies" minds that the majority just ignore the number.

25 mln of excess death.

Where did you get that number? I initially just looked up WHO's estimate which turns out quite the lowball compared to what everyone else is listing, but most sources I can find seem to say something around 5-9M. I suppose it most depends on just how much China is fudging their numbers since they had the most people exposed at the worst time.

right here: 15 mln between 2020 and 2022 (https://www.who.int/data/stories/global-excess-deaths-associ...). For better, more up to date data check analysises by Ariel Karlinsky and The Economist.

Your list is a 1.75. What's occurring and coming fast is a 9.9. Thanks for sharing the kind of naivete that helped get us here.

Also you’re in what, likely the top 10-20% of the wealthiest people on Earth?

Yeah, but are you building a bunker in Hawaii? Because Mark Zuckerberg is building a bunker in Hawaii.

There won't be an extinction event. We already know that warm periods in Earth's history are the most friendly for all kinds of life. And we know that cold periods kill species and reduce biodiversity. In the most catastrophic case Earth will end up as a tropical paradise, resembling the Eocene period [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene#Flora

This is naive. It's not the absolute temperature that's the problem, it's the rate of change. Temperature is going to change faster than most species can adapt, and that's why the food chain could collapse in the worst case.

That's true, but I think it's quite debatable what would actually happen. Most species wouldn't need to adapt, but just migrate. There are a lot of species which already thrive in warm / tropical climates, and those species would increase in numbers.

And what about the species that do not warm nor thrive in tropical climates? Or those that cannot migrate? Even if some species increase in numbers, it still means that all other species would get lost, reducing biodiversity and effectively meaning an extinction-level event.

> ...all other species would get lost, reducing biodiversity and effectively meaning an extinction-level event.

Reducing biodiversity doesn't equate to an extension-level event though. It also doesn't mean all species who didn't thrive would be lost - many would be affected but not existentially so.

I'm reminded of George Carlin's joke about the planet being fine long-term, we're the ones who will be screwed.

> Reducing biodiversity doesn't equate to an extension-level event though

From the Encyclopaedia Britannica [0]: __These conspicuous declines in diversity are referred to as mass extinctions__

> It also doesn't mean all species who didn't thrive would be lost - many would be affected but not existentially so.

But this is not a fact, it is a conjecture. On the other hand, we do have declining numbers of a big number of species. Unless the tendency reverts, constant long-term declining numbers will be an existential threat.

> I'm reminded of George Carlin's joke about the planet being fine long-term, we're the ones who will be screwed.

That's true, for sure. But asides from "the planet" and "we", there are also all the others.

This all will absolutely disrupt agriculture and food chains. Also humans are political creatures which cannot easily migrate. These migrations usually end up with things, called wars.

What "the food chain"? IMHO there are many relatively disconnected food chains.

There are many natural ecosystems which could and would be severely disrupted as the food chains there break up.

However, the food chain for homo sapiens largely relies on artificial monocultures that can be moved around and replaced on a large scale if the local conditions change. Natural environment can't switch to a "warmer climate biome" overnight, but a farmer can and will plant an entirely different crop in the next season if that suits the place better now, with only some expenses in retooling tractor attachments. And while there are many food industries which are relatively brittle, these are relatively niche 'luxury' foods which often are economically very valuable, but not the staple foods which actually feed the population. Like, if California had to abandon growing almonds due to water issues and instead grow something less demanding (and less profitable), that would destroy a huge industry but wouldn't cause food insecurity.

> However, the food chain for homo sapiens largely relies on artificial monocultures that can be moved around and replaced

As just one example, ocean acidification could kill a lot of the algae. Pretty much everything is upstream of algae. It would be catastrophic, even for us.

Are cereals, tubers and legumes upstream of algae? They are "pretty much everything* as far as food security is concerned, they constitute 90% of calories consumed by humanity; the three main species - rice, maize, and wheat - currently form 2/3 and in case of a catastrophe probably could cover nearly 100%.

The paleontologist Peter Ward has made a fairly compelling argument (in both academic research and the popular science book Under a Green Sky), that virtually all major extinction events are related to sudden rises in atmospheric CO2. A lot more happens when CO2 rises quickly other than it getting warmer. A major issue is it's impact on the oceans, which can become anoxic [0], causing them to emit hydrogen sulfide instead of oxygen. Such an event would be devastating to our current ecosystem.

> There won't be an extinction event.

This also ignores the fact that we are currently in the 6th largest extinction event in the history of life on this planet [1]. Elizabeth Kolbert's The Sixth Extinction is a great book on this (and the history of our understanding of species extinction as well).

So aside for being naive about the science, your comment reads a bit like claiming you don't think it will rain today while in the midst of being soaked in a massive rain storm.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

That isn't true. 5 major exctinction events are related to giant volcanic eruptions. 7 are due to sea-level falls, and one is due to an asteroid impact. In all cases there might be a correlation to ocean anoxidation, but I doubt it as a cause.

Eocenic period had high CO2 levels, but it didn't lead to ocean anoxidation. In fact, at the end of the period, the eocene-oligocene exctinction event happened in connection with reduced CO2 and global cooling of the climate. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eocene–Oligocene_extinction_ev...

Two things can be true at the same time:

1. significantly increased amount of 'life' on earth (as in: total kg of biomass, number of living specimens, total area with some amount of green stuff on it) due to warmer climate.

2. significantly reduced number of extant species on earth due to (geologically) fast changes in climate.

Edit: formating.

We are already in the midst of a massive extinction event. It’s called the holocene extinction, you can research it. There is an ongoing collapse of biodiversity at a rapid rate.

Yes, and the inhabitants of this new tropical Earth will do recreational dives to see the ruins of the places where the vast majority of people live now.

This might just be the same thing as apocalyptic religious predictions, I think? But environmentalism this time?

https://slatestarcodex.com/2015/03/25/is-everything-a-religi...

But that said, religious apocalypse scenarios usually aren't quite as specific as "methane hydrate runaway feedbacks".

Depends a lot on your relationship with religion. For some religious people, yes.

In fact religious belief in apocalypse might contribute to the apathy about climate policy from the voters, people can either conflate the two or think the religious apocalypse is nearer so no need to address the climate catastrophe: https://www.newsweek.com/shocking-number-americans-believe-l...

Religious predictions never come with data to support them. That’s an important difference.

Pythagoreans did. If it is truthful, do such "religious" beliefs stops being religion?

Climate change people seem like a doomsday cult anyways, but if what if they're right?

I looked at the overall actions of the group of people, instead of what they are saying.

If we were looking at data we wouldn’t be

- banning plastic bags and straws - buying expensive electrical vehicles - ignoring other risks in our circle of influence - listening to public figures and scientists who gave us “point of no return” dates several times in the last 30 years

If we were listening to data we would have started the energy transition sometime in the seventies and er world have this discussion now.

Exactly people are even using phrases like “when shit hits the fan”.

You don’t need soil, you need fertilizer and water. We farm outside now because it’s cheap. If you move to a temporarily inhospitable place then farming outside is no longer cheap so it is better to do it inside or in outdoor hydroponic or aeroponic systems if the weather is nice enough.

2 questions:

1. How does this perspective affect you today? Is it debilitating? Depressing? Affect your wellbeing and productivity?

2. What do you believe is the probability of what you say here? Estimate with a percentage.

Does the unknown associated to the percentage in #2 make the perspective rational and helpful?

Humanity not surviving? That seems completely unlinked to any sort of scientific consensus.

Oh... How many mass extinction events have humanity survived as a species so far? I would also like to see this data... pretty please?

There is no scientific consensus that global warming will be a mass extinction event that would threaten humanity.

You're in one right now.

Literally the Ice Age, with cave-man era technology.

There historically hasn't been much mass extinction in hot phases. It usually seems to happen when cold, especially if an asteroid has hit the place. I guess hot, life can move towards the poles, cold if everywhere freezes and plants die life is a bit screwed.

We should ask this to an archeologist, but If I remember correctly we dodge the bullet a few times. Almost gone 900.000 years ago. Human DNA points to several genetical bottlenecks.

> We can't colonize Greenland or Antarctica due to the lack of fertile soil, and it would take thousands of years to develop it.

I wonder if it would be possible to rip soil off places that are no longer habitable and transport it to Antarctica.

It's all about timing. You need the ice shields to be gone before you deploy the new soil; otherwise, it will be scraped or eroded. You also need to consider rising sea levels. You may need to think about bringing the soil first and storing it there until it's usable. Otherwise, you could lose it.

> We can't colonize Greenland or Antarctica due to the lack of fertile soil

Just on this example, you can physically pick soil up and move it. Enough for 9bn people? No. Enough for 100k? Yes.

Or just keep your intestine working actively

If the sea is fertile the soil can be hacked to be fertile. Any seabird could tell us how

But this is not the problem. The sea level will raise

I've thought about this as well. It's feasible to move soil only to certain regions. Greenland and Antarctica aren't among them (remember the ice shields; they will continue to scrape all the soil as they melt). Some islands in Antarctic Ocean could potentially sustain a population of 20-40k. However, you need to start moving the soil now, but you will also need to develop methods of preserving this soil until it is needed, because right now it will be useless and it will be eroded by wind and hydro factors. What might happen is a gradual migration towards the poles on the Americas and Eurasia, moving the soil as migration progresses. This will be bloody and ruthless. But none of these solutions take into account the "exponent", and there is no way to forecast if a Venus atmosphere scenario will occur or not due to the water vapor.

Edit: good point in the next comment, expect sea levels rising for at least 10m.

Aren't we hypothesizing a situation where there is no (or a much reduced) Greenland ice sheet? I'm imagining "hey, look at all this bare rock that's suddenly available, and it's gonna take a couple of thousand years for erosion and lichen to develop soil here, so lets take a short cut".

I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm saying it's a theoretically possible idea in the face of an extinction-level event.

Here is where you are incorrect in your anticipation. The amount of land usable for agriculture will be decreasing faster than the ice shields melt. The territory where the fertile soil is available will not be human-friendly for the entire season, if at all. You can't make people work at 50°C or even 45°C with 90° humidity. You can't breathe water...

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

But "usable for agriculture" implies "has soil" to me. We're talking about moving the soil to a more temperate zone, and we're not talking about the current population of the planet, we're talking about the human species surviving.

(I'm trying to find a sea rise map that looks right by eye and not having much luck. Here's the North Atlantic at 10m[1]. Surely that's not enough flooding?)

[1] https://coastal.climatecentral.org/map/4/-10.3532/51.4503/?t...

There's lots of room in Northern US, Canada and Russia. Not sure why Greenland and Antartica would be the only living places on Earth. There's also the Rockies, Andes, Himalayas and other mountain ranges. That's some extreme doomerism. I doubt most of Earth will become uninhabitable. Some places will be harder to maintain larger populations and grow crops.

Places without decent soil (i.e. Northern Russia, or high mountains) can only grow food in meaningful qualities if you bomb the soil with copious amounts of fertilizer. Fertilizer production requires fossil fuels and advanced civilization, both of which are not a given in the future.

I think extreme doomers like this create a shitty world to live in where you're surrounded by people that adopted an extreme "nothing matters the world is doomed soon" perspective that is depressing.

Ok, but are they wrong?

They are correct:

Daily Sea Surface Temperature (notice the new paradigm started in 2023 and extending into 2024):

https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/

Daily Surface Air Temperature:

https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/t2_daily/?dm_id=world

Daily Sea Ice Extent (click on "Show Southern Hemisphere", also showing concerns of being low in 2023):

https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/seaice/

The most shocking is the sea surface temperature, but we see rising temperature in all layers of the troposphere. A factor that has dampened global warming for very long, since the last ice age, is the ocean's capacity for absorbing heat. If this gets saturated, and since surface waters don't mix much with deep waters.. If the same surplus heat equivalent to 15 hiroshima bombs per second today hits the surface, and rising. All that goes into heating air and surface, it's going to accellerate warming going forward. Early projections are in fact showing accelleration already.

That most people are incapable of emotionally processing this, is part of the problem.

There's a good chance that the sudden bump in sea surface temperature is a consequence of us cleaning up marine diesel. Which is at least interesting, because it suggests we were doing geoengineering without even knowing it.

(Random thought: what's the sulphur content of automotive diesel? I know it's cleaner, but there are so many more cars than boats. Could we see another sea surface temperature bump as we phase out diesel cars?)

It could be that (removing sulphur from shipping fuel):

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jan/01/shipping...

It could be the underwater Tonga volcano erruption, which put alot of water into the atmosphere. Water is also a GHG.

https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/goddard/tonga-er...

It could be El Nino part of the ENSO-cycle in addition.

https://www.npr.org/2023/06/08/1181086972/el-nino-has-offici...

All these are temporary masking conditions. They also add to feedback effects, for increased warming. So could be partly accellerating heating as well.

I think some researchers are seeing accelleration in the overall trend. You can eyeball this with a ruler as well. Even though it might be too early to tell, it's hard to find any negative feedback loops to counter all these positive ones.

For cars, I think we'd probably see increase in surface temperature on land. People might care a bit more then. It could be removed from both gas and diesel. That would bring pollution down, but also remove aerosols currently masking effects from GHG.

https://www.futurity.org/potassium-fuel-sulfur-1369772-2/

UPDATE: As noted in another comment here. Car fuel is quite a bit different category than bunker fuel (heavy fuel oil). We might still observe "unmasking"-impacts if implemented generally though. We'd notice it more too, as the impact would be right where we use our cars.

No useful comment, except to say I thought that was a great response. Thoughtful and detailed despite being an extended "it's complicated". My ignorance feels much better informed ;)

I don't think ships are burning "diesel", but basically crude oil. It's not even in the same category as car fuel.

Is 1+ enough of a trend to disregard most of the models? Is there no other explanation for the "new paradigm" of accelerating warming? You're saying that extreme warming scenario is now the correct science. I don't think there is a consensus about this.

It's not enough to call it a change of trend. I have another comment here where there are other, more temporary factors that also came into play. There's not consensus until after we see the new trend. Likely there are some temporary factors that will make the lines go down again when they wear out. But the overall trend might still be accellerating, just that it's going slower than normal human reference of time.

The increasing sea surface temperature is concerning because it directly is starting to harm millions of sea creatures that cannot adapt fast enough. There are multiple die-offs happening already that might be due to this.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/ocean...

What's concerning is that all the arrows are pointing just one way. The discussion is now wether it's accellerating or not..

Yes, because it isn't so expensive to turn things around. An estimated 100-200% in global GDP is needed to reach carbon net zero by 2050. Annually we need to spend 2-6% of GDP to solve this.

We’re screwed then. The 99% can’t afford to go one to two years without an income, and the 1% simply never will because they don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves.

It's not about going without that GDP, it's about redirecting it.

Simplified example: pay 6% of the population to plant trees.

> and the 1% simply never will because they don’t give a shit about anyone but themselves.

That's a lot closer to why we won't do it. Because as a species we can't act for the long term.

Not wrong the science, but on the doomerism, that was my comment. I have a few friends on this extreme-depression-due-to-climate-change and it's not helpful to their health.

Think of it like this, death is unpreventable and we still live our lives. So even if the world collapse was totally unpreventable (I think we can still turn it around), it's still better to go down fighting and living life.

How many of your extremely depressed friends are willing to abandon civilization as we know it and relinquish capitalism, transforming political systems into dictatorships focused solely on achieving net zero emissions by 2035 through drastic measures that could potentially result in millions of deaths (indirectly)? None. Consequently, worrying about this issue is as futile as fretting about snow being white. The crypto miners will continue mining, the gas and oil industries will prosper, and the wealthy will ponder the feasibility of establishing bunkers and retreats in New Zealand (which would not offer protection). Our selfishness extends to the point of sheer stupidity; each of us thinks, "What can I do? Nothing," and only a handful among us will take action that doesn't contribute to solving the problem at all. I suppose this is what the great filter looks like.

Comments like we need to “relinquish capitalism” cement the fact for me that climate change doomerism is a thinly veiled attempt to push a collectivist economic system, not an honest attempt to actually help the environment.

I’ll stick with the economic system that has reduced global poverty by 80% in the last century, and brought us everything from clean water to smartphones. Not the economic system that resulted in the genocide of millions, the systematic theft from the working class and which continues to oppress people under crushing dictatorships in places like Cuba and Venezuela.

When I was a kid, I heard that the sun is going to eventually explode, destroying planet Earth and us all. This was deeply saddening for me on a deep level, I remember crying and all. My parents tried explaining this will take 5 billion years, and we will all be long dead anyway but this wasn't really helping. Prior to that I had a major shock when I learned about death, and this was kind of a relapse.

Looking at it now, I think doomerism, preppers, apocalyptic religions and the guy that stands on the street shouting "it's the end of the world" are all a basic part of the human experience. It's not a coincidence every cult eventually reaches the narrative of the impending end of the world.

Death is suppressed and finds other avenues to pop out in

I'm nearly a doomer and the bullshit "it'll all be fine" or "human ingenuity will fix it!" Crowd have caused us to waste precious decades. I'm doing carbonthirteen now to try to find a way to help fix it and I encourage everyone who can to do similar. Action is the antidote to despair, but unfounded optimism and stupidity are the fuel for laziness

Yes, they always were. Predicting the end of the wrld is a very old game. Long before the industrial revolution, when people didnt even know about poluton, they already predicted the downfall of everything. It is a mental illness that creeps up on some of us. These people need help.

They might be wrong. And since they might be, and we have a chance to mitigate things somewhat, doom is not a useful response. It is paralysing.

Imagine fighting a war. If you and your fellow troops believe you will definitely lose, what happens to morale and the outcome? Morale collapses and you create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The situation is serious but extreme doom predictions are the outlier in all credible models.

It’s funny how tech bros pretend to be ultra-rational about anything they like to think about and “oh just look on the bright side” on the things that makes them a little sad.

If I call it Dunning-Kruger to point out that they think their expertise in tech translates to expertise everywhere else, they'll come back with some weaksauce akshually about what DK actually is.

I don't think it's "funny" that they waste time, energy, and resources on building bigger machines to make them more money and shit out hopium when it won't mean anything on a planet unfit for human habitation come century's end. I think it's a crime against humanity that deserves to be treated as such.

> "nothing matters the world is doomed soon"

What you're describing is people experiencing grief. I'm what you would call an "extreme doomer", and did feel this way about a decade ago when I first realized the dire situation we are in.

But your first reaction is not the end. Waking up and accepting our state, and the despair that came with it, was the first stage in a long process of learning to live, and be comfortable in the world the way it is.

What you are suggesting is that we just ignore grief and pretend nothing is happening. I suppose this is just the denial stage of grieving, but it's worth recognizing that the people you know feeling this way are working through a process.

Pretending that someone isn't dead isn't a long term solution to accepting loss, even if it means in the short term you are in a dark place emotionally. It's unfortunately it upsets you to see people experiencing this, but those people, given enough time, might be in a better place to help you when you finally have to let go of denial.

> We can't colonize Greenland

But we can dig it up fast enough ro build all those batteries we need.

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