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Okay, this comes up sometimes in climate-related topics, usually because of a combination of misunderstanding and a need to be the clever contrarian that's thou

Okay, this comes up sometimes in climate-related topics, usually because of a combination of misunderstanding and a need to be the clever contrarian that's thought of something nobody else has. The question isn't whether Earth will survive these CO2 levels. Earth will (probably) be just fine. It's common knowledge, especially among the scientists that publish claims about rising CO2 levels, that Earth has had much higher levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the past, and that at those times, there was lots of life. The question isn't necessarily even whether humans will survive much higher CO2 levels. We're resourceful, we have the ability to shape our environment. Some people will survive. The question is how much we're going to enjoy all of the adverse effects of this global climate change. It is going to cause or contribute to a lot of natural disasters: hurricanes, tornadoes, extreme storms, droughts, flooding, massive wildfires. There are going to be migrations. Wars. There are some solid arguments that climate change contributed to the Syrian civil war [1]. Many species are going to disappear as they fail to adapt quickly enough to the changing environment; it will take much longer for new species to take their place. We will see, for example, an environment with fewer butterflies and more mosquitoes -- many more. Nobody is going to get out of this unscathed. It's going to cause widespread political and economic instability and unrest. Even if you manage to find yourself a nice little spot untouched by the most direct effects of climate change, it's going to cause enough suffering in enough other parts of our globally interconnected human society that you'll see the costs somewhere. The US spent a record $306 billion on disaster response last year. Where do you think that money comes from? [1]: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-hastened-the-syrian-war/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-ha...

Pilfer 8y ago
>It's common knowledge, especially among the scientists that publish claims about rising CO2 levels, that Earth has had much higher levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the past, and that at those times, there was lots of life. This isn't common knowledge at all among non-scientists. Most people have no clue that CO2 levels were many times higher than today, and that earth and the ecosystem in general were just fine. Scientists may be aware of this fact, but why don't they inform the general public of this? Take the submitted article for example. Instead of publishing an article stating, "CO2 levels are higher than 800,000 years ago; but are likely lower than they were at any point from 20-200 million years ago" they only leave in the scary, doomsaying first part and neglect to inform the second part. It is the equivalent of looking at a 24 hour geological clock and only telling people about the past minute while neglecting datapoints from minutes or hours ago. Why aren't scientists informing the public of the historical data? I understand why the climate change community may not want to bring up this point (it detracts from other issues) but people should be aware of this fact. Humanity, and life in general, will survive increased CO2 levels. >The question isn't whether [X], it's whether [Y]. I am paraphrasing, but that's largely what your comment is saying. The article premise and its title, is about [X], where [X] is CO2 levels. It seems like the response to historical CO2 levels is to change the topic. Edit: I don't want to reply to several comments, so I'll respond here. Why do I believe the discussion should inform people about historical CO2 levels? Largely because I firmly believe CO2 emissions will not decrease through 2040. The incentives to cut emissions are just not there. Petroleum is simply too useful as a resource. The current projections I have seen predict 500ppm by 2050, and likely 600ppm by 2100. Given those numbers, I ask myself the question, how likely is it that humanity will face extinction in the next century? How should I interpret these numbers? Given the geological data, I find it reassuring that biology and life on earth survived for hundreds of millions of years with CO2 levels between 1000-2000ppm. It means that increased CO2 levels will not cause the extinction of humanity.
- Diederich 8y ago
  > It seems like the response to historical CO2 levels is to change the topic. How does a detailed discussion about CO2 levels 100m years ago help push us toward drastically cutting emissions now?
- graeme 8y ago
  People are concerned mainly about how CO2 will affect humans + our current ecosystem. On that measure, 800,000 years is a relevant timeframe: it covers when our civilizatiom arose, when humans left africa, etc I do think it would be good if people knew that CO2 was even higher in the past. But, that doesn't make this article wrong. An article can't cover every single topic, and earlier CO2 in the non-human era is just tangentially related.
- gameswithgo 8y ago
  >. Humanity, and life in general, will survive increased CO2 levels. In the few past instances when temperatures increased this fast there were mass extinction events. Yes, life can exist on a warmer earth just fine. But rapid change kills a lot of things. Scientists don't focus on informing people that the earth used to be much warmer and it was fine, because they are focusing on the fact that rapid change is dangerous.
- ScottBurson 8y ago
  > Humanity [...] will survive increased CO2 levels. I don't know that we can take this as a given. It would have been easier two or three hundred years ago; now we have industrial civilization and 7.3 billion people, the combination giving us an unprecedented ability to do damage to the ecosphere. I can imagine a scenario in which climate change leads to political unrest which leads to wars — we may already be seeing some of this, and it could get a lot worse — that eventually spirals out of control into thermonuclear war. Unlikely? I sure hope so! But I don't think we can rule it out completely. Sure, the cockroaches will survive. But that's not much consolation. I think we need to figure out a way for all of humanity to work together on this problem. If we fail to do that pretty soon, I don't think it will bode well for our doing it in the future either. Continued denial and fractiousness will make the nightmare scenario more likely.
- 8y ago
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
I think your framing of the question is very fair and absolutely how the topic should be considered. But at the same time, I think you're assuming much more from the average person than is realistic when you state that whether Earth (and implicitly humanity) will survive or not, is not the question. People are becoming radicalized in everything. And radicalism tends to be intrinsically connected with ignorance. See the top of this thread (well currently at least) for a line of discussion where somebody not only thinks climate will imminently lead to earth becoming uninhabitable but wondering how and where people could survive [away from Earth] until the planet does become habitable again. Or consider the fact that the comment you're responding to, though factually accurate and contextually relevant, is being downvoted for stating facts that mitigate this sort of hysteria. Sure, it's a sample of one - but I'm sure a survey of the views in this thread will show the question is indeed far more elementary than the nuanced and accurate view you're discussing!
- thaumaturgy 8y ago
  People are becoming radicalized in large part, maybe even entirely, because of forums like this one. A really good article along these lines was submitted to HN, but unfortunately didn't get much traction: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/all-american-nazis-fascist-youth-united-states-w519651 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/all-american-nazi... I think people can handle nuance just fine. Since everyone's gotten it into their heads that policing online discussions is exactly the same as censorship and limiting free speech, it's up to us, the participants, to restrain ourselves from the radicalizing shouting matches that usually happen on so many topics. > See the top of this thread (well currently at least) for a line of discussion where somebody not only thinks climate will imminently lead to earth becoming uninhabitable but wondering how and where people could survive [away from Earth] until the planet does become habitable again. I'm not seeing that anywhere in the comments on this article. Can you link to it? > Or consider the fact that the comment you're responding to, though factually accurate and contextually relevant, is being downvoted for stating facts that mitigate this sort of hysteria. Well, no. I disagree that it's relevant, and hope at least some of the downvotes are for that reason alone. "Stating facts" doesn't automatically make something relevant; good statements of relevant facts would have been, "the researchers didn't take ____ into account during the 800,000 period they're talking about", or, "there's another paper by respected researchers that disagrees with this one", or, "I know a lot about this field and I think I see an error in their methodology", or, "this is all correct but there's no cause for alarm because [body of evidence that global warming is somehow beneficial]" (it's not). It's also not mitigating hysteria. There are good reasons to be extremely alarmed for our future generations. That's not a hysterical position. Some people may be couching it in alarmist statements, but given the opposing number of people who still believe that all of this data is an outright lie anyway [+], that's sort of unavoidable for political topics. [+]: Including HN, during the CRU email breach a few years ago, where the popular opinion was that climate researchers were fabricating data so that they could get more money for further research.

Pilfer 8y ago

>It's common knowledge, especially among the scientists that publish claims about rising CO2 levels, that Earth has had much higher levels of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the past, and that at those times, there was lots of life. This isn't common knowledge at all among non-scientists. Most people have no clue that CO2 levels were many times higher than today, and that earth and the ecosystem in general were just fine. Scientists may be aware of this fact, but why don't they inform the general public of this? Take the submitted article for example. Instead of publishing an article stating, "CO2 levels are higher than 800,000 years ago; but are likely lower than they were at any point from 20-200 million years ago" they only leave in the scary, doomsaying first part and neglect to inform the second part. It is the equivalent of looking at a 24 hour geological clock and only telling people about the past minute while neglecting datapoints from minutes or hours ago. Why aren't scientists informing the public of the historical data? I understand why the climate change community may not want to bring up this point (it detracts from other issues) but people should be aware of this fact. Humanity, and life in general, will survive increased CO2 levels. >The question isn't whether [X], it's whether [Y]. I am paraphrasing, but that's largely what your comment is saying. The article premise and its title, is about [X], where [X] is CO2 levels. It seems like the response to historical CO2 levels is to change the topic. Edit: I don't want to reply to several comments, so I'll respond here. Why do I believe the discussion should inform people about historical CO2 levels? Largely because I firmly believe CO2 emissions will not decrease through 2040. The incentives to cut emissions are just not there. Petroleum is simply too useful as a resource. The current projections I have seen predict 500ppm by 2050, and likely 600ppm by 2100. Given those numbers, I ask myself the question, how likely is it that humanity will face extinction in the next century? How should I interpret these numbers? Given the geological data, I find it reassuring that biology and life on earth survived for hundreds of millions of years with CO2 levels between 1000-2000ppm. It means that increased CO2 levels will not cause the extinction of humanity.

Diederich 8y ago
> It seems like the response to historical CO2 levels is to change the topic. How does a detailed discussion about CO2 levels 100m years ago help push us toward drastically cutting emissions now?
graeme 8y ago
People are concerned mainly about how CO2 will affect humans + our current ecosystem. On that measure, 800,000 years is a relevant timeframe: it covers when our civilizatiom arose, when humans left africa, etc I do think it would be good if people knew that CO2 was even higher in the past. But, that doesn't make this article wrong. An article can't cover every single topic, and earlier CO2 in the non-human era is just tangentially related.
gameswithgo 8y ago
>. Humanity, and life in general, will survive increased CO2 levels. In the few past instances when temperatures increased this fast there were mass extinction events. Yes, life can exist on a warmer earth just fine. But rapid change kills a lot of things. Scientists don't focus on informing people that the earth used to be much warmer and it was fine, because they are focusing on the fact that rapid change is dangerous.
ScottBurson 8y ago
> Humanity [...] will survive increased CO2 levels. I don't know that we can take this as a given. It would have been easier two or three hundred years ago; now we have industrial civilization and 7.3 billion people, the combination giving us an unprecedented ability to do damage to the ecosphere. I can imagine a scenario in which climate change leads to political unrest which leads to wars — we may already be seeing some of this, and it could get a lot worse — that eventually spirals out of control into thermonuclear war. Unlikely? I sure hope so! But I don't think we can rule it out completely. Sure, the cockroaches will survive. But that's not much consolation. I think we need to figure out a way for all of humanity to work together on this problem. If we fail to do that pretty soon, I don't think it will bode well for our doing it in the future either. Continued denial and fractiousness will make the nightmare scenario more likely.
8y ago

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

I think your framing of the question is very fair and absolutely how the topic should be considered. But at the same time, I think you're assuming much more from the average person than is realistic when you state that whether Earth (and implicitly humanity) will survive or not, is not the question. People are becoming radicalized in everything. And radicalism tends to be intrinsically connected with ignorance. See the top of this thread (well currently at least) for a line of discussion where somebody not only thinks climate will imminently lead to earth becoming uninhabitable but wondering how and where people could survive [away from Earth] until the planet does become habitable again. Or consider the fact that the comment you're responding to, though factually accurate and contextually relevant, is being downvoted for stating facts that mitigate this sort of hysteria. Sure, it's a sample of one - but I'm sure a survey of the views in this thread will show the question is indeed far more elementary than the nuanced and accurate view you're discussing!

thaumaturgy 8y ago
People are becoming radicalized in large part, maybe even entirely, because of forums like this one. A really good article along these lines was submitted to HN, but unfortunately didn't get much traction: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/all-american-nazis-fascist-youth-united-states-w519651 https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/all-american-nazi... I think people can handle nuance just fine. Since everyone's gotten it into their heads that policing online discussions is exactly the same as censorship and limiting free speech, it's up to us, the participants, to restrain ourselves from the radicalizing shouting matches that usually happen on so many topics. > See the top of this thread (well currently at least) for a line of discussion where somebody not only thinks climate will imminently lead to earth becoming uninhabitable but wondering how and where people could survive [away from Earth] until the planet does become habitable again. I'm not seeing that anywhere in the comments on this article. Can you link to it? > Or consider the fact that the comment you're responding to, though factually accurate and contextually relevant, is being downvoted for stating facts that mitigate this sort of hysteria. Well, no. I disagree that it's relevant, and hope at least some of the downvotes are for that reason alone. "Stating facts" doesn't automatically make something relevant; good statements of relevant facts would have been, "the researchers didn't take ____ into account during the 800,000 period they're talking about", or, "there's another paper by respected researchers that disagrees with this one", or, "I know a lot about this field and I think I see an error in their methodology", or, "this is all correct but there's no cause for alarm because [body of evidence that global warming is somehow beneficial]" (it's not). It's also not mitigating hysteria. There are good reasons to be extremely alarmed for our future generations. That's not a hysterical position. Some people may be couching it in alarmist statements, but given the opposing number of people who still believe that all of this data is an outright lie anyway [+], that's sort of unavoidable for political topics. [+]: Including HN, during the CRU email breach a few years ago, where the popular opinion was that climate researchers were fabricating data so that they could get more money for further research.