13 ms·

So I'm honestly not as concerned about this as I once was. Don't get me wrong: the climate is going to change, arguably we're in a mass extinction event alread

by cletus 8y ago

So I'm honestly not as concerned about this as I once was. Don't get me wrong: the climate is going to change, arguably we're in a mass extinction event already and people aren't going to suddenly start acting in the collective long term welfare of humanity. One of the things I like about futurism is the levelheaded optimism and pragmatism you tend to get. And I'll call out Isaac Arthur as a well-known example of this. Think there's too many people? You can easily show that the world could easily produce enough to feed a population 10 times what we have now in the very near future, thanks largely to automation. Think we're dumping too much CO2 into the atmosphere? We no doubt are but that problem basically goes away immediately if we ever get economic fusion power. Even if we don't, the plummetting cost of wind and solar may solve that anyway (by "solve" I mean that as soon as non-fossil fuel power production is cheaper than fossil fuels it becomes economic to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and turn into hydrocarbons). Too expensive to get to space? Eventually the cost of this will go down to dollars per kilogram. Worried about how we'll produce all that power? When getting stuff into orbit is sufficiently cheap it'll become economic to put solar collectors in orbit and beam energy back to Earth. And all you need for this kind of optimism is the kind of technology we're widely expected to have this century. So it's kind of sad that a lot of the larger fauna is doomed but you're not going to change people's appetites for rhino horns, fish bladders, tiger oil or pangolin dishes. Then again, maybe future genetics can restore some or all of those species. The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now so I have trouble believing the doomsday scenarios of runaway climate change that'll turn the Earth into Venus just because the Earth has been here for 4-5 billion years, has been hotter than now and hasn't become Venus yet. We also seem to have a pretty poor history of predictions when it comes to climate change too. Fundamentally this also seems like a "betting with the Mayans" type scenario too. Either the doomsayers are right and we're screwed. If so, you'll be right but who cares? We're still screwed. You're probably better off just hoping things will work out because, honestly, I think there's a pretty decent chance they will.

annadane 8y ago
And before someone replies with "How can you possibly say that", you can do both - be optimistic about the future and also change your own personal habits and become educated on the topic in general anyway.
quickthrower2 8y ago
> The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now so I have trouble believing the doomsday scenarios of runaway climate change that'll turn the Earth into Venus just because the Earth has been here for 4-5 billion years, has been hotter than now and hasn't become Venus yet. We also seem to have a pretty poor history of predictions when it comes to climate change too. This is disingenuous because humans have been around say 2M years, and those hot climate years were >5M years ago. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record). We don't need Earth to have Venus conditions for it to be a big problem for us.
netjiro 8y ago
> The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now Key here is rate of change, and what humans can survive. We are changing the climate many many times faster than ever before. Nature does not have the time to adapt. And the wars, famines and mass displacements coming from ecosystem collapse is like nothing we've seen in human history. Think we have a problem with a few million migrants? Try a billion or two! P-T Extinction event "The Great Dying" took on the order of 100 000 years to elevate CO2 and still killed off 96% of marine species and 70% of land vertebrates. The largest mass extinction ever(?) We're going strong in that direction over a few hundred years. And a very hot earth will have large areas that are not survivable by humans, by traditional crops and food animals, and so on. Storms and floods massively more powerful than we see today. Frankly, how can you not be afraid of that future? It's very likely your descendants won't survive it.
- buro9 8y ago
  Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine, but that life will be different to the life we have today. The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have brought about. But in there is a kind of beautiful justice that the universe has in it's self-correcting algorithm... if you create imbalance, the imbalance will correct in time but perhaps to do so it kills you. If we care about the human race, it means to care about the whole ecosystem and all other life on Earth. But the evidence of behaviour by people and governments is that they only care for themselves as individuals and not the wider human race, and other life on Earth. I no longer see hope for significant change in the behaviour of humans, and I've shifted my view to believing that what is needed to provide massively long-term stability in the ecosystem for life on Earth is another mass extinction that includes humans. Which sounds depressing, but doesn't feel it. I'm positive about life on Earth, just not about humans.
  - AznHisoka 8y ago
    “The planet has been through a lot worse than us. And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!”
  - 8y ago
askafriend 8y ago
This is such a beautiful and fresh perspective. Too often there is a cheap optimism that doesn't quite feel genuine - laziness and ignorance feels like the easy alternative route. But sometimes a brand of pragmatic, disciplined optimism serves to inspire without diminishing the urgency or importance of the matter at hand. This hit that mark pretty well.
cthulha 8y ago
This seems like a psychological defence against anxiety/depression rather than an actual foundation for real action. You're looking at big, broad patterns and assuming they will work out on the huge scales necessary for civilisation to continue. Other people are looking at the big broad patterns and assuming that cascading failures will make problems accelerate.
- starbugs 8y ago
  No, it's not. It's a mindset and a positive attitude that is constructive instead of spreading fear and doom, which does not yield any positive outcome at all.
  - gns24 8y ago
    I don't see how believing it will all work out fine and not worrying is constructive, yet spreading fear (which might actually encourage people to act) is not.
    - starbugs 8y ago
      I did not say that you should not worry. Still, spreading fear can yield very dangerous decisions.
  - tralarpa 8y ago
    > spreading fear and doom, which does not yield any positive outcome at all. That's not true. You are keeping saying that in several of your comments. There are many examples where things have changed because of Spreading fear and doom -> Politicians pass laws -> Industry is forced to react -> New technologies developed/deployed/... What you and some others here are proposing is basically to wait that things crash and then directly jump to the "New technologies" part. Like a child waiting for christmas.
    - starbugs 8y ago
      No that's not what I propose and I also don't think that's what op proposed. If you read the comments again you will see that all that was said is "you won't change the outcome this way", which means that political action alone is not enough. Look at what's happening currently. All that fear and doom may lead to political decisions, but have they changed the carbon level in our atmosphere? You try to regulate something without looking at the overall outcome. If you want to do something, it's much better to do something positive, e.g. passing subsidies for renewable energy tech. I think it doesn't make sense anymore to discuss this here. HN is not a good place to discuss different opinions which could be interpreted as being political. The people with the downvote power decide what's valid and what's not. It's sad as otherwise we could have a fruitful discussion here.
baddox 8y ago
I think the biggest counter to that optimism is that while those necessary technologies are being developed, civilization will perhaps be going through major disruption that causes lots of suffering and death. Humans will almost certainly not go extinct, and may even get some great technological advancements out of the ordeal, but at the scale of human lives there will be a lot of suffering.
- cletus 8y ago
  Oh sure. No argument. My point isn't that it should happen (it shouldn't) or that I don't care (I do). Not that there isn't and won't be suffering (there is and there will be). My point is that this is unfortunately what human nature is and I don't see any great change tool that unless we get to some kind of post-scarcity situation but I'm reasonably optimistic about that.
- AznHisoka 8y ago
  “Humans will almost certainly not go extinct” I wish there was a prediction market where I could bet against you on this outcome...
  - dmytrish 8y ago
    If you are a human, you will not be able to collect your win anyway.
sshine 8y ago
> Too expensive to get to space? Eventually the cost of this will go down to dollars per kilogram. You speak of this as if space migration is going to be scalable.
- cletus 8y ago
  The likely end result of orbital systems looks something like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E The thing about the that is that it's not high tech. It's an engineering problem not a science problem. A massive engineering solution I'll grant you. I'll also concede that there are going to be a lot of steps on between.
  - imtringued 8y ago
    That is your answer? Some crazy science fiction colossal international space structure that will require all countries of humanity working together to build? The future is going to be very mundane. Conventional reusable rockets are going to be enough. The fuel cost of a launch is orders of magnitude lower than the cost of whatever satellites you're bringing into orbit.
starbugs 8y ago
> Fundamentally this also seems like a "betting with the Mayans" type scenario too. Either the doomsayers are right and we're screwed. If so, you'll be right but who cares? We're still screwed. You're probably better off just hoping things will work out because, honestly, I think there's a pretty decent chance they will. Exactly. You can spread doom as much as you want and it won't help. You won't get a critical mass to listen to you. They won't change their behavior based on some event that will most likely happen in the far future. Sad, but true. As a species, we don't have a history of planning and preventing. Instead we have always been adapting to change as things happen. This is essentially the same. If technology caused a problem, technology can also solve it.
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  > If technology caused a problem, technology can also solve it. Sometimes. If it's economically viable. Sometimes many decades later. Take PCBs as an example. Their absurd longevity means nearly all of it is still around, causing a long list of harms, and will probably continue for decades more. Long after production ceased.
  - starbugs 8y ago
    Gentle reminder: op of this thread mentioned Isaac Arthur and futurism in general as a source of inspiration as to how one can positively think about things like climate change. In that context: * Economic viability is a matter of time. Have commercially viable fusion reactors? You better recalculate your econ viability all over. * PCBs: Nanotechnology, robotics, AI
- brylie 8y ago
  We keep trying to shift accountability from ourselves to technology. It is our responsibility to change our lifestyles now. Not in a generation when some hypothetical technical savior may emerge and deliver us from danger.
  - starbugs 8y ago
    It's our technology. We made it. We are responsible. I don't see your point. What do you want people to do? Stop living their lives and give up tech? To what level? Can we keep the wheel? That's not how things work in reality.
brylie 8y ago
While I appreciate your optimism, it comes at the risk of failing to take personal action. The general sentiment is that people are uninterested in, or incapable of, making meaningful lifestyle changes , and that some future technological developments will transcend the Earth's carrying capacity to sustain us while cleaning up our collective mess. While there may be some shades of truth to that sentiment, it is still within our power and responsibility to live sustainably.
- jsingleton 8y ago
  This is a good point. Optimism is good for motivation but it has to result in action and not be simply ignoring a problem. Pessimism paralyses people into inaction but by understanding the psychology we can change that. I wrote a series of posts on this recently with more to come. Far more than I can fit in here. It's a classic tragedy of the commons but there is hope. https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-a-technologist-part-1/ https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-a-t...
- hueving 8y ago
  That's better than taking action that is actually meaningless and thinking you've done something (e.g. the CA unsolicited drinking water ban or people unplugging inactive phone chargers). People who do things like this to get their virtue signaling credit do even less to make meaningful changes because they "already helped". There are things you can do to take personal action. The ones that actually matter are usually disruptive (e.g. eliminating your daily commute is orders of magnitude better than eating local). Most of the mainstream 'sustainable living' tips are just a drop in the bucket designed around minimizing disruption and maximizing showing off.
pokemongoaway 8y ago
Yep, and if you notice every "solution" suggested is just an increase in government power and decrease in liberty. They'll have to explain why investment strategies for nice properties at sea level haven't really changed while they can claim that voting for globally controlled taxation plans is going to cure us.
lozenge 8y ago
Ah, techno utopianism. It ignores reality in many ways, here are two. First, if we have clean energy, are we going to shut down fossil fuel plants that have already been built? If not, then fossil fuel will just become cheaper as demand drops, making burning fossil fuels attractive again. Countries currently plan to reduce their emissions, but none are planning to reduce their fossil fuel exports. They just hope it will show up on another country's emissions balance sheet. Even if we did develop super cheap clean energy, that would only reduce emissions in the future. Past emissions hang around for centuries and contribute to warm the planet (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhouse-gases-remain-air https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhou...). We would need to pay huge amounts to sequester that CO2 and I don't see anybody volunteering to foot that bill. This paper summarises both issues well: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0081648 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... Both are just aspects of the fundamental issue - although technological solutions perhaps could be developed, there is no political or economic will to do so, and no indication that will change.
- ben_w 8y ago
  > First, if we have clean energy, are we going to shut down fossil fuel plants that have already been built? That depends entirely on how cheap the alternatives are. Fossil fuel mining is not zero cost in itself, so there is a minimum price it can’t go below. Indeed, quite a lot of coal plants are being shut down — they can’t compete as the fuel itself is too expensive. This is not universal as not all coal is the same price and transport costs are also relevant, but it is happening.
  - ed_balls 8y ago
    10$ for Saudis, 25$ for shell, 50$ from the Artic sea.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - ben_w 8y ago
plopilop 8y ago
> Think we're dumping too much CO2 into the atmosphere? We no doubt are but that problem basically goes away immediately if we ever get economic fusion power. That's an enormous "if". Fusion research has been underfunded for decades, we don't even know if we can sustain it, and for a reason I don't get, many ecologists are anti-nuclear. Plus fusion won't solve everything. You won't put a sun core into your car nor your plane, not in the next centuries. > Even if we don't, the plummetting cost of wind and solar may solve that anyway (by "solve" I mean that as soon as non-fossil fuel power production is cheaper than fossil fuels it becomes economic to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and turn into hydrocarbons). Oh, you mean the unreliable power sources that sometimes provide electricity, sometimes don't? > The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now Well yes but 5°C is also the difference between an ice age and a hot age. We're currently in a hot age and the 4°C increase we're heading to are not very engaging. (Remainder, during ice age North America down to NY and Northern Europe down to Paris were covered by enormous glaciers. So what will the climate be in 4°C?). https://xkcd.com/1379/ https://xkcd.com/1379/ Also in human history the Earth has never been this hot. > Too expensive to get to space? Eventually the cost of this will go down to dollars per kilogram. Ha. To escape Earth gravity you still need to spend 6.2*10^7 J/kg. That's gonna be a long time before we get to 1$/kg given that rocket propulsion is extremely costly (and as far as we know can't rely on atomic energy either). We're still at ~25 000 $/kg. And anyway recent studies show that the human body is unlikely to bear a trip to Mars, let alone the health issues caused by weightless environment. Edit, source: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/26/1807522115 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/26/1807522115. Basically the study suggests heavy ion irradiation is dangerous for the digestive system. The only thing is I'm not sure about the number of mice they used. > We also seem to have a pretty poor history of predictions when it comes to climate change too. I mean it's not as if oil companies conducted their own research and reached the very same conclusion in 1977. Oh wait. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-... I'm sorry but you're just burying your head in the sand, making the problem someone else's.
- doon123 8y ago
  >> And anyway recent studies show that the human body is unlikely to bear a trip to Mars, let alone the health issues caused by weightless environment. citations please..
perfunctory 8y ago
> When getting stuff into orbit is sufficiently cheap it'll become economic to put solar collectors in orbit and beam energy back to Earth. Can we have that before 2040 please https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-repo...
Carpetsmoker 8y ago
Sounds very optimistic, but also depends on a lot of "if"s and "maybe"s. Fact is that while a lot of hard problems do get solved by new innovations, not all of them are, and systems do fail catastrophically sometimes. Who knows what the future will bring. I have little doubt that the planet and human species will survive in the longer term, but the ecological, human, and economic costs will be huge. It's a stupid gamble: the benefits to ignoring climate change are small, and the dangers are huge. It bothers me to no end that even in Europe many parties that acknowledge that climate change is real and a serious problem (basically everyone, only the US/GOP is a mainstream source of climate denial) kind of ignore it because "zomg the economy might shrink 0.001% the next quarter". It's spectacularly short-sighted, and it's one of several examples where our democratic system is failing massively in addressing serious problems.
boomlinde 8y ago
> Fundamentally this also seems like a "betting with the Mayans" type scenario too. Either the doomsayers are right and we're screwed. If so, you'll be right but who cares? We're still screwed. You're probably better off just hoping things will work out because, honestly, I think there's a pretty decent chance they will. I think you are fundamentally missing the point of the question. The question is what we can do to prevent climate change, not how we should align our beliefs not to worry about it. > So it's kind of sad that a lot of the larger fauna is doomed but you're not going to change people's appetites for rhino horns, fish bladders, tiger oil or pangolin dishes. Then again, maybe future genetics can restore some or all of those species. This perfectly exemplifies my problem with this attitude. You call this "levelheaded optimism", but you're basically throwing your hands up hoping for someone to apply some sort of sci-fi solution to the problem at some point in the future. Calling for Jurassic Park to restore extinct species is the opposite of levelheaded. To say that there's nothing we can do about it now is really just thinly veiled defeatism and not at all optimistic. Meanwhile, for example, the demand and supply of rhino horns is decreasing overall, not because people are content with speculating about how someone else in a future generation will solve the problem, but because deliberate action is being taken to change the attitudes towards rhino horns, campaigning to educate people about the medicinal myths surrounding them, to destroy smuggled horns and to protect the animals from poachers. If the people engaging in these actions had just laid back, convinced that someone will be able to beam rhinos from a parallel universe by 2100AD anyway, they'd probably have been extinct by now.
drjesusphd 8y ago
> Worried about how we'll produce all that power? When getting stuff into orbit is sufficiently cheap it'll become economic to put solar collectors in orbit and beam energy back to Earth. I used to be a big believer in this. But, from a pure waste heat standpoint, if we ever have to worry about having enough area in Earth's surface for solar panels, we have much bigger problems. We are nowhere near that point now, but given a small but steady exponential growth in the energy supply, we'll get there in a couple hundred years. However, space based solar power could help with intermittently of solar/wind if battery tech doesn't outpace enonomic orbital launches.
WhompingWindows 8y ago
You don't have to turn the Earth into Venus. You just have to raise the Earth from 283 Kelvin to 285 Kelvin, and you'll get massive flooding and ice melt which technology won't be able to wave away. Look at hurricanes today, they are deadly, where is the tech saving us from them?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- seiferteric 8y ago
  Cars, weather satellites etc... We can evacuate a hurricane, we can't evacuate the planet.
- PeterisP 8y ago
  The thing is, hurricanes are remarkably not deadly compared to the scale of social change that preventing climate change would require. For example, in the currently worst recent hurricane years, cars killed something like 10 times more people in USA than these hurricanes. If we got people to drive half as much (which would help but not be sufficient), then the most impact on deaths and injuries would come directly from the change in habits, not from the effect on global warming. If we're not willing to drastically reduce driving so as we'd save some of the 40000 USA road vehicle deaths/year (and we're obviously not), then why would we be willing to drastically reduce emissions just to save some of the 2000-4000 hurricane deaths/year? The same goes for massive flooding. OK, Bangladesh will plausibly get many deaths from the sea level rise. USA? Not so much; it can probably afford a massive infrastructure investment to do Netherland-style dams for all densely populated coastal areas.
pier25 8y ago
It all sounds great, except for: 1) We don't have enough time to wait for those solutions to be implemented. 2) Climate lag. We're now only seeing the consequences from the emissions from the 80s. Since then we've emitted a lot more CO2. Not only we need to reach zero emissions asap, as in in the next decade, but we also need to reach strong negative emissions very soon. Don't get me wrong. I think if all humanity was focused working towards that goal it might be possible to get a shot at this, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

by cletus 8y ago

annadane 8y ago

And before someone replies with "How can you possibly say that", you can do both - be optimistic about the future and also change your own personal habits and become educated on the topic in general anyway.

quickthrower2 8y ago

> The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now so I have trouble believing the doomsday scenarios of runaway climate change that'll turn the Earth into Venus just because the Earth has been here for 4-5 billion years, has been hotter than now and hasn't become Venus yet. We also seem to have a pretty poor history of predictions when it comes to climate change too. This is disingenuous because humans have been around say 2M years, and those hot climate years were >5M years ago. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record). We don't need Earth to have Venus conditions for it to be a big problem for us.

netjiro 8y ago

> The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now Key here is rate of change, and what humans can survive. We are changing the climate many many times faster than ever before. Nature does not have the time to adapt. And the wars, famines and mass displacements coming from ecosystem collapse is like nothing we've seen in human history. Think we have a problem with a few million migrants? Try a billion or two! P-T Extinction event "The Great Dying" took on the order of 100 000 years to elevate CO2 and still killed off 96% of marine species and 70% of land vertebrates. The largest mass extinction ever(?) We're going strong in that direction over a few hundred years. And a very hot earth will have large areas that are not survivable by humans, by traditional crops and food animals, and so on. Storms and floods massively more powerful than we see today. Frankly, how can you not be afraid of that future? It's very likely your descendants won't survive it.

buro9 8y ago
Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine, but that life will be different to the life we have today. The only thing not fine is whether humans survive what they/we ultimately have brought about. But in there is a kind of beautiful justice that the universe has in it's self-correcting algorithm... if you create imbalance, the imbalance will correct in time but perhaps to do so it kills you. If we care about the human race, it means to care about the whole ecosystem and all other life on Earth. But the evidence of behaviour by people and governments is that they only care for themselves as individuals and not the wider human race, and other life on Earth. I no longer see hope for significant change in the behaviour of humans, and I've shifted my view to believing that what is needed to provide massively long-term stability in the ecosystem for life on Earth is another mass extinction that includes humans. Which sounds depressing, but doesn't feel it. I'm positive about life on Earth, just not about humans.
- AznHisoka 8y ago
  “The planet has been through a lot worse than us. And we think some plastic bags and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet isn’t going anywhere. WE are!”
- 8y ago

askafriend 8y ago

This is such a beautiful and fresh perspective. Too often there is a cheap optimism that doesn't quite feel genuine - laziness and ignorance feels like the easy alternative route. But sometimes a brand of pragmatic, disciplined optimism serves to inspire without diminishing the urgency or importance of the matter at hand. This hit that mark pretty well.

cthulha 8y ago

This seems like a psychological defence against anxiety/depression rather than an actual foundation for real action. You're looking at big, broad patterns and assuming they will work out on the huge scales necessary for civilisation to continue. Other people are looking at the big broad patterns and assuming that cascading failures will make problems accelerate.

starbugs 8y ago
No, it's not. It's a mindset and a positive attitude that is constructive instead of spreading fear and doom, which does not yield any positive outcome at all.
- gns24 8y ago
  I don't see how believing it will all work out fine and not worrying is constructive, yet spreading fear (which might actually encourage people to act) is not.
  - starbugs 8y ago
    I did not say that you should not worry. Still, spreading fear can yield very dangerous decisions.
- tralarpa 8y ago
  > spreading fear and doom, which does not yield any positive outcome at all. That's not true. You are keeping saying that in several of your comments. There are many examples where things have changed because of Spreading fear and doom -> Politicians pass laws -> Industry is forced to react -> New technologies developed/deployed/... What you and some others here are proposing is basically to wait that things crash and then directly jump to the "New technologies" part. Like a child waiting for christmas.
  - starbugs 8y ago
    No that's not what I propose and I also don't think that's what op proposed. If you read the comments again you will see that all that was said is "you won't change the outcome this way", which means that political action alone is not enough. Look at what's happening currently. All that fear and doom may lead to political decisions, but have they changed the carbon level in our atmosphere? You try to regulate something without looking at the overall outcome. If you want to do something, it's much better to do something positive, e.g. passing subsidies for renewable energy tech. I think it doesn't make sense anymore to discuss this here. HN is not a good place to discuss different opinions which could be interpreted as being political. The people with the downvote power decide what's valid and what's not. It's sad as otherwise we could have a fruitful discussion here.

baddox 8y ago

I think the biggest counter to that optimism is that while those necessary technologies are being developed, civilization will perhaps be going through major disruption that causes lots of suffering and death. Humans will almost certainly not go extinct, and may even get some great technological advancements out of the ordeal, but at the scale of human lives there will be a lot of suffering.

cletus 8y ago
Oh sure. No argument. My point isn't that it should happen (it shouldn't) or that I don't care (I do). Not that there isn't and won't be suffering (there is and there will be). My point is that this is unfortunately what human nature is and I don't see any great change tool that unless we get to some kind of post-scarcity situation but I'm reasonably optimistic about that.
AznHisoka 8y ago
“Humans will almost certainly not go extinct” I wish there was a prediction market where I could bet against you on this outcome...
- dmytrish 8y ago
  If you are a human, you will not be able to collect your win anyway.

sshine 8y ago

> Too expensive to get to space? Eventually the cost of this will go down to dollars per kilogram. You speak of this as if space migration is going to be scalable.

cletus 8y ago
The likely end result of orbital systems looks something like this: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LMbI6sk-62E The thing about the that is that it's not high tech. It's an engineering problem not a science problem. A massive engineering solution I'll grant you. I'll also concede that there are going to be a lot of steps on between.
- imtringued 8y ago
  That is your answer? Some crazy science fiction colossal international space structure that will require all countries of humanity working together to build? The future is going to be very mundane. Conventional reusable rockets are going to be enough. The fuel cost of a launch is orders of magnitude lower than the cost of whatever satellites you're bringing into orbit.

starbugs 8y ago

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
> If technology caused a problem, technology can also solve it. Sometimes. If it's economically viable. Sometimes many decades later. Take PCBs as an example. Their absurd longevity means nearly all of it is still around, causing a long list of harms, and will probably continue for decades more. Long after production ceased.
- starbugs 8y ago
  Gentle reminder: op of this thread mentioned Isaac Arthur and futurism in general as a source of inspiration as to how one can positively think about things like climate change. In that context: * Economic viability is a matter of time. Have commercially viable fusion reactors? You better recalculate your econ viability all over. * PCBs: Nanotechnology, robotics, AI
brylie 8y ago
We keep trying to shift accountability from ourselves to technology. It is our responsibility to change our lifestyles now. Not in a generation when some hypothetical technical savior may emerge and deliver us from danger.
- starbugs 8y ago
  It's our technology. We made it. We are responsible. I don't see your point. What do you want people to do? Stop living their lives and give up tech? To what level? Can we keep the wheel? That's not how things work in reality.

brylie 8y ago

While I appreciate your optimism, it comes at the risk of failing to take personal action. The general sentiment is that people are uninterested in, or incapable of, making meaningful lifestyle changes , and that some future technological developments will transcend the Earth's carrying capacity to sustain us while cleaning up our collective mess. While there may be some shades of truth to that sentiment, it is still within our power and responsibility to live sustainably.

jsingleton 8y ago
This is a good point. Optimism is good for motivation but it has to result in action and not be simply ignoring a problem. Pessimism paralyses people into inaction but by understanding the psychology we can change that. I wrote a series of posts on this recently with more to come. Far more than I can fit in here. It's a classic tragedy of the commons but there is hope. https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-a-technologist-part-1/ https://unop.uk/how-to-help-with-a-big-global-problem-as-a-t...
hueving 8y ago
That's better than taking action that is actually meaningless and thinking you've done something (e.g. the CA unsolicited drinking water ban or people unplugging inactive phone chargers). People who do things like this to get their virtue signaling credit do even less to make meaningful changes because they "already helped". There are things you can do to take personal action. The ones that actually matter are usually disruptive (e.g. eliminating your daily commute is orders of magnitude better than eating local). Most of the mainstream 'sustainable living' tips are just a drop in the bucket designed around minimizing disruption and maximizing showing off.

pokemongoaway 8y ago

Yep, and if you notice every "solution" suggested is just an increase in government power and decrease in liberty. They'll have to explain why investment strategies for nice properties at sea level haven't really changed while they can claim that voting for globally controlled taxation plans is going to cure us.

lozenge 8y ago

Ah, techno utopianism. It ignores reality in many ways, here are two. First, if we have clean energy, are we going to shut down fossil fuel plants that have already been built? If not, then fossil fuel will just become cheaper as demand drops, making burning fossil fuels attractive again. Countries currently plan to reduce their emissions, but none are planning to reduce their fossil fuel exports. They just hope it will show up on another country's emissions balance sheet. Even if we did develop super cheap clean energy, that would only reduce emissions in the future. Past emissions hang around for centuries and contribute to warm the planet (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhouse-gases-remain-air https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/jan/16/greenhou...). We would need to pay huge amounts to sequester that CO2 and I don't see anybody volunteering to foot that bill. This paper summarises both issues well: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0081648 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... Both are just aspects of the fundamental issue - although technological solutions perhaps could be developed, there is no political or economic will to do so, and no indication that will change.

ben_w 8y ago
> First, if we have clean energy, are we going to shut down fossil fuel plants that have already been built? That depends entirely on how cheap the alternatives are. Fossil fuel mining is not zero cost in itself, so there is a minimum price it can’t go below. Indeed, quite a lot of coal plants are being shut down — they can’t compete as the fuel itself is too expensive. This is not universal as not all coal is the same price and transport costs are also relevant, but it is happening.
- ed_balls 8y ago
  10$ for Saudis, 25$ for shell, 50$ from the Artic sea.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - ben_w 8y ago

plopilop 8y ago

> Think we're dumping too much CO2 into the atmosphere? We no doubt are but that problem basically goes away immediately if we ever get economic fusion power. That's an enormous "if". Fusion research has been underfunded for decades, we don't even know if we can sustain it, and for a reason I don't get, many ecologists are anti-nuclear. Plus fusion won't solve everything. You won't put a sun core into your car nor your plane, not in the next centuries. > Even if we don't, the plummetting cost of wind and solar may solve that anyway (by "solve" I mean that as soon as non-fossil fuel power production is cheaper than fossil fuels it becomes economic to remove CO2 from the atmosphere and turn into hydrocarbons). Oh, you mean the unreliable power sources that sometimes provide electricity, sometimes don't? > The Earth has also been a lot warmer than it is now Well yes but 5°C is also the difference between an ice age and a hot age. We're currently in a hot age and the 4°C increase we're heading to are not very engaging. (Remainder, during ice age North America down to NY and Northern Europe down to Paris were covered by enormous glaciers. So what will the climate be in 4°C?). https://xkcd.com/1379/ https://xkcd.com/1379/ Also in human history the Earth has never been this hot. > Too expensive to get to space? Eventually the cost of this will go down to dollars per kilogram. Ha. To escape Earth gravity you still need to spend 6.2*10^7 J/kg. That's gonna be a long time before we get to 1$/kg given that rocket propulsion is extremely costly (and as far as we know can't rely on atomic energy either). We're still at ~25 000 $/kg. And anyway recent studies show that the human body is unlikely to bear a trip to Mars, let alone the health issues caused by weightless environment. Edit, source: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/26/1807522115 http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/09/26/1807522115. Basically the study suggests heavy ion irradiation is dangerous for the digestive system. The only thing is I'm not sure about the number of mice they used. > We also seem to have a pretty poor history of predictions when it comes to climate change too. I mean it's not as if oil companies conducted their own research and reached the very same conclusion in 1977. Oh wait. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-climate-change-almost-40-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/exxon-knew-about-... I'm sorry but you're just burying your head in the sand, making the problem someone else's.

doon123 8y ago
>> And anyway recent studies show that the human body is unlikely to bear a trip to Mars, let alone the health issues caused by weightless environment. citations please..

perfunctory 8y ago

> When getting stuff into orbit is sufficiently cheap it'll become economic to put solar collectors in orbit and beam energy back to Earth. Can we have that before 2040 please https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-repo...

Carpetsmoker 8y ago

Sounds very optimistic, but also depends on a lot of "if"s and "maybe"s. Fact is that while a lot of hard problems do get solved by new innovations, not all of them are, and systems do fail catastrophically sometimes. Who knows what the future will bring. I have little doubt that the planet and human species will survive in the longer term, but the ecological, human, and economic costs will be huge. It's a stupid gamble: the benefits to ignoring climate change are small, and the dangers are huge. It bothers me to no end that even in Europe many parties that acknowledge that climate change is real and a serious problem (basically everyone, only the US/GOP is a mainstream source of climate denial) kind of ignore it because "zomg the economy might shrink 0.001% the next quarter". It's spectacularly short-sighted, and it's one of several examples where our democratic system is failing massively in addressing serious problems.

boomlinde 8y ago

> Fundamentally this also seems like a "betting with the Mayans" type scenario too. Either the doomsayers are right and we're screwed. If so, you'll be right but who cares? We're still screwed. You're probably better off just hoping things will work out because, honestly, I think there's a pretty decent chance they will. I think you are fundamentally missing the point of the question. The question is what we can do to prevent climate change, not how we should align our beliefs not to worry about it. > So it's kind of sad that a lot of the larger fauna is doomed but you're not going to change people's appetites for rhino horns, fish bladders, tiger oil or pangolin dishes. Then again, maybe future genetics can restore some or all of those species. This perfectly exemplifies my problem with this attitude. You call this "levelheaded optimism", but you're basically throwing your hands up hoping for someone to apply some sort of sci-fi solution to the problem at some point in the future. Calling for Jurassic Park to restore extinct species is the opposite of levelheaded. To say that there's nothing we can do about it now is really just thinly veiled defeatism and not at all optimistic. Meanwhile, for example, the demand and supply of rhino horns is decreasing overall, not because people are content with speculating about how someone else in a future generation will solve the problem, but because deliberate action is being taken to change the attitudes towards rhino horns, campaigning to educate people about the medicinal myths surrounding them, to destroy smuggled horns and to protect the animals from poachers. If the people engaging in these actions had just laid back, convinced that someone will be able to beam rhinos from a parallel universe by 2100AD anyway, they'd probably have been extinct by now.

drjesusphd 8y ago

> Worried about how we'll produce all that power? When getting stuff into orbit is sufficiently cheap it'll become economic to put solar collectors in orbit and beam energy back to Earth. I used to be a big believer in this. But, from a pure waste heat standpoint, if we ever have to worry about having enough area in Earth's surface for solar panels, we have much bigger problems. We are nowhere near that point now, but given a small but steady exponential growth in the energy supply, we'll get there in a couple hundred years. However, space based solar power could help with intermittently of solar/wind if battery tech doesn't outpace enonomic orbital launches.

WhompingWindows 8y ago

You don't have to turn the Earth into Venus. You just have to raise the Earth from 283 Kelvin to 285 Kelvin, and you'll get massive flooding and ice melt which technology won't be able to wave away. Look at hurricanes today, they are deadly, where is the tech saving us from them?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
seiferteric 8y ago
Cars, weather satellites etc... We can evacuate a hurricane, we can't evacuate the planet.
PeterisP 8y ago
The thing is, hurricanes are remarkably not deadly compared to the scale of social change that preventing climate change would require. For example, in the currently worst recent hurricane years, cars killed something like 10 times more people in USA than these hurricanes. If we got people to drive half as much (which would help but not be sufficient), then the most impact on deaths and injuries would come directly from the change in habits, not from the effect on global warming. If we're not willing to drastically reduce driving so as we'd save some of the 40000 USA road vehicle deaths/year (and we're obviously not), then why would we be willing to drastically reduce emissions just to save some of the 2000-4000 hurricane deaths/year? The same goes for massive flooding. OK, Bangladesh will plausibly get many deaths from the sea level rise. USA? Not so much; it can probably afford a massive infrastructure investment to do Netherland-style dams for all densely populated coastal areas.

pier25 8y ago

It all sounds great, except for: 1) We don't have enough time to wait for those solutions to be implemented. 2) Climate lag. We're now only seeing the consequences from the emissions from the 80s. Since then we've emitted a lot more CO2. Not only we need to reach zero emissions asap, as in in the next decade, but we also need to reach strong negative emissions very soon. Don't get me wrong. I think if all humanity was focused working towards that goal it might be possible to get a shot at this, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.