6 ms·

It's probably safer to assume that we're pretty much screwed at keeping the status quo and we need to start researching ways for humanity to survive the resulti

It's probably safer to assume that we're pretty much screwed at keeping the status quo and we need to start researching ways for humanity to survive the resulting changes. Of course, we should still keep ongoing efforts to curb and eventually eliminate the emission of greenhouse gases in effect, but we're past the point of pretending the worst case isn't possible.

lutorm 9y ago
There isn't really a "worst" case here. We can always make it worser...
- lisper 9y ago
  The destruction of civilization will probably cap our ability to do further significant damage. If not, then our extinction surely will.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Yes, that's the fundamental negative feedback on anthropogenic carbon emissions.
  - stale2002 9y ago
    Nobody believes that global warming will cause the literal extinction of the human race. The scientific consensus is that sea levels will rise by a couple feet over the next 2 hundred years. That's the science. Doesn't sound like doomsday to me.
    - ForHackernews 9y ago
      http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-...
      - tempestn 9y ago
        The first paragraph: > It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. And yet the swelling seas — and the cities they will drown — have so dominated the picture of global warming, and so overwhelmed our capacity for climate panic, that they have occluded our perception of other threats, many much closer at hand. Rising oceans are bad, in fact very bad; but fleeing the coastline will not be enough.
      - fencepost 9y ago
        The annotated version with links to source data is probably a better option to link. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans-annotated.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-...
        stale2002 9y ago
        The guy is talking about 10 degrees C scenarios, aka scenarios that nobody believes is going to happen. The IPCC, which is the official authority on climate change, believes that there will be 2-3 degrees C increase in temperature over the next century. When someone can rationally talk about what will happen in the IPCC predicted scenarios, which is the scientific consensus, then I will listen to them. If you are some crank, who is talking about 1000 parts per million of C02, and 10 degrees C temp increase by 2100, well then you shouldn't be taken seriously.
        ForHackernews 9y ago
        Elsewhere in this thread, it's been stated that the IPCC has omitted runaway positive-feedback loop scenarios from their predictions, either because they're too poorly understood, or because they're too depressing. The doomsday scenarios may be uncertain, but they do not (to my layman's understand) seem impossible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
        9y ago
    - notfromhere 9y ago
      we have 7 billion people with a new billion every decade. 1-2C differences in temperature are going to have a huge impact on agriculture.
    - arnoooooo 9y ago
      http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2015/december/global-warming-disaster-could-suffocate-life-on-planet-earth-research-shows http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2015/decem... "a sufficiently large warming (roughly estimated as 5–6 ◦C, see Robinson 2000) would inevitably lead to an ecological disaster resulting in a complete depletion of oxygen."
2OEH8eoCRo 9y ago
We need to invent fusion like yesterday and use that to power efforts to extract CO2 from the atmosphere.
- gwbas1c 9y ago
  We can just use Fusion to drop a giant ice cube in the Arctic, just like in Futurama.
- Florin_Andrei 9y ago
  I'm a big proponent of huge increases in funding for fusion research. But I think a better "extreme measures" project to mitigate global warming is the space sunshade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade
  - simonh 9y ago
    The fusion Manhattan project? The problem with that is the Manhattan project scientists knew exactly what they wanted to do and how to do it. With fusion research there are already dozens of active research efforts, but we have absolutely no idea if any of them will work, or if we need a new approach nobody has thought of. In this situation throwing money at the problem simply isn't the solution. Meanwhile new solar infrastructure projects are already cheaper than coal. This is a problem that technology is already solving for us.
    - yongjik 9y ago
      I don't think scientists in the Manhattan project knew exactly how to do it. That's why they ended up having (at least) two totally different types of bombs, one with a Plutonium core using spherical implosion and another with a Uranium core using cannon-like ignition. Why try one scheme when you can try two at twice the price?
      - simonh 9y ago
        But both worked fine. So yes, they really did know what they were doing. The reason to do two versions wasn't really in case one didn't work, they had very good reason to believe both would work. It was a matter of which would offer the best combination of efficient fission, weight, cost and reliability. We do not have two clearly viable different routes to practical fusion reactors. We don't even have one at this point.

lutorm 9y ago

There isn't really a "worst" case here. We can always make it worser...

lisper 9y ago
The destruction of civilization will probably cap our ability to do further significant damage. If not, then our extinction surely will.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Yes, that's the fundamental negative feedback on anthropogenic carbon emissions.
- stale2002 9y ago
  Nobody believes that global warming will cause the literal extinction of the human race. The scientific consensus is that sea levels will rise by a couple feet over the next 2 hundred years. That's the science. Doesn't sound like doomsday to me.
  - ForHackernews 9y ago
    http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-...
    - tempestn 9y ago
      The first paragraph: > It is, I promise, worse than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible, even within the lifetime of a teenager today. And yet the swelling seas — and the cities they will drown — have so dominated the picture of global warming, and so overwhelmed our capacity for climate panic, that they have occluded our perception of other threats, many much closer at hand. Rising oceans are bad, in fact very bad; but fleeing the coastline will not be enough.
    - fencepost 9y ago
      The annotated version with links to source data is probably a better option to link. http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans-annotated.html http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-...
      - stale2002 9y ago
        The guy is talking about 10 degrees C scenarios, aka scenarios that nobody believes is going to happen. The IPCC, which is the official authority on climate change, believes that there will be 2-3 degrees C increase in temperature over the next century. When someone can rationally talk about what will happen in the IPCC predicted scenarios, which is the scientific consensus, then I will listen to them. If you are some crank, who is talking about 1000 parts per million of C02, and 10 degrees C temp increase by 2100, well then you shouldn't be taken seriously.
        ForHackernews 9y ago
        Elsewhere in this thread, it's been stated that the IPCC has omitted runaway positive-feedback loop scenarios from their predictions, either because they're too poorly understood, or because they're too depressing. The doomsday scenarios may be uncertain, but they do not (to my layman's understand) seem impossible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
        9y ago
  - notfromhere 9y ago
    we have 7 billion people with a new billion every decade. 1-2C differences in temperature are going to have a huge impact on agriculture.
  - arnoooooo 9y ago
    http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2015/december/global-warming-disaster-could-suffocate-life-on-planet-earth-research-shows http://www2.le.ac.uk/offices/press/press-releases/2015/decem... "a sufficiently large warming (roughly estimated as 5–6 ◦C, see Robinson 2000) would inevitably lead to an ecological disaster resulting in a complete depletion of oxygen."

2OEH8eoCRo 9y ago

We need to invent fusion like yesterday and use that to power efforts to extract CO2 from the atmosphere.

gwbas1c 9y ago
We can just use Fusion to drop a giant ice cube in the Arctic, just like in Futurama.
Florin_Andrei 9y ago
I'm a big proponent of huge increases in funding for fusion research. But I think a better "extreme measures" project to mitigate global warming is the space sunshade: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_sunshade
- simonh 9y ago
  The fusion Manhattan project? The problem with that is the Manhattan project scientists knew exactly what they wanted to do and how to do it. With fusion research there are already dozens of active research efforts, but we have absolutely no idea if any of them will work, or if we need a new approach nobody has thought of. In this situation throwing money at the problem simply isn't the solution. Meanwhile new solar infrastructure projects are already cheaper than coal. This is a problem that technology is already solving for us.
  - yongjik 9y ago
    I don't think scientists in the Manhattan project knew exactly how to do it. That's why they ended up having (at least) two totally different types of bombs, one with a Plutonium core using spherical implosion and another with a Uranium core using cannon-like ignition. Why try one scheme when you can try two at twice the price?
    - simonh 9y ago
      But both worked fine. So yes, they really did know what they were doing. The reason to do two versions wasn't really in case one didn't work, they had very good reason to believe both would work. It was a matter of which would offer the best combination of efficient fission, weight, cost and reliability. We do not have two clearly viable different routes to practical fusion reactors. We don't even have one at this point.