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Nature has never been stable especially not for humans so that's hardly a useful premise. If anything we have made it more stable because we are better at handl

Nature has never been stable especially not for humans so that's hardly a useful premise. If anything we have made it more stable because we are better at handling all the things it throws at us. I would still ask those most worried to point to a scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change we don't know how to deal with or that they believe we won't be able to find solutions for over the next 50-100 years or so. Edit: It's funny how downvotes are being used instead of argument by people I assume consider themselves on the side of science.

titzer 8y ago
You're being downvoted for trotting out well-worn and eye-roll inducing ignorance. It'd be one thing to approach this conversation with an open mind, but just stating blanket nonsense raises hackles. > Nature has never been stable especially not for humans Yeah, it changes on geologic timescales, i.e. thousands and millions of years. We've subjected nature to catastrophic shocks 1000x faster. It does not respond well. It collapses. We're in the middle of shit storm because of our own actions. It is absolutely not business as usual for Earth. > I would still ask those most worried to point to a scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change We're not really sure how Earth is gonna function if the oceans are dead and there are no insects, and parts of it are literally uninhabitable for humans because it will be too hot to go outside (~130F). > If anything we have made it more stable Nonsense. We chopped down most of the forests in the US [1] to make farmland. Literally. My home state of Indiana was _literally_ solid hardwood forest 250 years ago. Take a look at it on Google maps sometime. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_United_St... Edit: added handy reference
- explainplease 8y ago
  > Nonsense. We chopped down most of the forests in the US to make farmland. Literally. My home state of Indiana was _literally_ solid hardwood forest 250 years ago. Take a look at it on Google maps sometime. That's the only evidentiary argument you tried to make, and it's factually wrong. More of North America is forested now than 250 years ago. The rest of your comment is argument to absurdity and bare nonsense. Your beliefs are like a religion.
  - titzer 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_United_St... Prior to European colonization: 1,023,000,000 acres Today: 766,000,000 acres If that is too complicated for you to process, please take a look at the graphics on the page. Btw I don't do religion. Let's do facts instead.
    - ThomPete 8y ago
      In what world is that in any way supporting your claim that: "We chopped down most of the forests in the US [1] to make farmland. Literally. My home state of Indiana was _literally_ solid hardwood forest 250 years ago. Take a look at it on Google maps sometime." So 25%
      - titzer 8y ago
        Look at the graphic on Wikipedia from 1926. There were virtually no virgin forests in Indiana left at that time.
        ThomPete 8y ago
        I am looking at your claim which was and I repeat "We chopped down most of the forests in the US" That's factually wrong in so many ways especially seen in the light of your entire comment to me.
        titzer 8y ago
        Look, if you don't understand what "virgin forest" means and don't want to actually follow links and instead want to argue endlessly hoping for some kind of silly gotcha, I'll just spell it out for you: yes my original statement that we absolutely did chop down most of the forests of the US stands; it was informed by facts beforehand and I provided them afterwards. You can read the gory details on your own time. Spoiler alert, forest grows back, but never the same. Lots of species perish in the process. It's incredibly destructive. Technically, yes, today we have more forest than we did in ~1910, making today's loss about 25% of what was there in 1600. But this is a long sidetrack; whatever in the heck you were trying to argue in the OP about us making the environment more stable, it's just plain not the case. We upend every ecosystem we ever encounter. I would recommend reading "Sapiens" by Yuval Harari. But at this point this level of discussion isn't productive, as you are currently burning karma all over this thread. HN is a nice community. Stop being a troll.
- ThomPete 8y ago
  And yet all you are doing here is proving my point. You take the most catastrophic interpretations as gospel while at the same time admitting we have no idea what the consequences will actually be. That's exactly the point here. So instead of jumping to conclusions like you are doing perhaps it would help if you started being concrete. The quesiton still stands. What scientifically demonstrated problem which will arise over the next 100 years can't we deal with?
  - ip26 8y ago
    I at least am not trying to argue that we're utterly doomed. But wouldn't it be a hell of a lot easier to not have to damn every ex-glacier? To not have to build sea walls on every coast, and deal with year round hurricane & fire seasons, and desalinate massive quantities of water, and everything else? Yeah, we can survive on the moon and grow crops in Antarctica. But notice, most people prefer living in Palm Beach and cultivating the Midwest. It's like with bees. Some people go, who cares if neonicotinoids wipe them out, we'll simply make a billion incredibly advanced miniature robot bees to replace them. Ok, sure, we can probably figure that out in the next fifty years. But that seems like way more of a pain in the ass than just cutting it out with the neonicotinoids. P.S. the insect populations are already massively cratered. That part isn't wild speculation about 2100, that's today. I'm sure you remember the headlines about the study in Europe finding 75% reduction in insect biomass over the last twenty five years. Oh, and the year round fire season is here in California.
    - ThomPete 8y ago
      There are a lot of things in life that would be a lot easier if only they were different. The problem is that we are dealing with a wicked problem. We need energy to survive especially being as many as we are, poor countries are depending on cheap reliable energy and don't care about the climate. They are trying to survive today. So it all comes back to what the consequences will be of what you are going to propose as a solution. If for ex. the choice was between making fossil fuel illegal or allow it to be used as it is being used today then I would definitely be choosing the latter so that we can continue to have growth and create the surplus to come up with better solutions.
- dang 8y ago
  > You're being downvoted for trotting out well-worn and eye-roll inducing ignorance Please do not break the site guidelines like this, regardless of how wrong or annoying other comments may be. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
saagarjha 8y ago
> Nature has never been stable especially not for humans so that's hardly a useful premise. Sure, but making it more unstable is clearly worse for us. Sure, we have ways of making even the most unstable environments survivable (like the Moon!) but saying that we should just make things worse and hope that we can undo it in 50 years isn't a really good strategy.
- ThomPete 8y ago
  Again how is the world more unstable?
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    Global warming increases the extremes of natural disasters, doing things like making deserts drier and creating larger storms.
    - ThomPete 8y ago
      But we are better at dealing with extreme weather. More people survive extreme weather than before. http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats/resources/weather_fatalities.pdf http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats/resources/weather_fatali... I would really encourage you to stop for a minute and start digging into the data. You will be shocked when you realize how little is based on actual facts.
BLKNSLVR 8y ago
You dismissed mass migration and civil war with a single sentence. You're either being intentionally inflammatory or in denial about how close to home these effects are going to be. Humanity may survive, yes, but civilisation as we know it will regress to a large degree if the world leaders are as flippant about the issue as you are. Software will not solve climate change, no matter how many startups you create and sell. Climate Change is a human lifestyle addiction problem that affects the suppliers of the lifestyle more than the consumers - until the number of suppliers start dwindling and then the consumers wonder why their coffee habit starts costing so much. Addictions and habits aren't easy to break even individually, much less for a whole society. Rising oceans, changing climate zones, less arable land, fewer food resources, civil unrest, mass migration, resource wars, economic collapse. (edit: the first three are things in the above list are already occurring, the rest are logical extensions).
- ThomPete 8y ago
  I didn't dismiss them I just don't believe they are impossible to deal with. Again you are just listing a bunch of things that might or might not happen without any evidence: 1) that they will happen, 2) that we can't deal with them if they happen. 3) when they will happen. Yet you consider yourself the rational one.
  - germinalphrase 8y ago
    Legitimately curious: how do you "deal with" mass migration? Societies don't deal particularly well with large influxes of migrants.
    - ThomPete 8y ago
      You deal with it as it happens. It's not like it will happen one day. It will also happen over time and yes create tensions. But the solution is not as some ex want to stop the moderns world and growth. On the contrary it's to make those countries richer so they can deal with the other consequences of a changing climate like the resto of us. Again we are discussing the difference between accepting there are some consequences of the climate changing and then these catastrophist claims that the world is going to end and we can't deal with it.

titzer 8y ago

You're being downvoted for trotting out well-worn and eye-roll inducing ignorance. It'd be one thing to approach this conversation with an open mind, but just stating blanket nonsense raises hackles. > Nature has never been stable especially not for humans Yeah, it changes on geologic timescales, i.e. thousands and millions of years. We've subjected nature to catastrophic shocks 1000x faster. It does not respond well. It collapses. We're in the middle of shit storm because of our own actions. It is absolutely not business as usual for Earth. > I would still ask those most worried to point to a scientifically demonstrated consequence of climate change We're not really sure how Earth is gonna function if the oceans are dead and there are no insects, and parts of it are literally uninhabitable for humans because it will be too hot to go outside (~130F). > If anything we have made it more stable Nonsense. We chopped down most of the forests in the US [1] to make farmland. Literally. My home state of Indiana was _literally_ solid hardwood forest 250 years ago. Take a look at it on Google maps sometime. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_United_St... Edit: added handy reference

explainplease 8y ago
> Nonsense. We chopped down most of the forests in the US to make farmland. Literally. My home state of Indiana was _literally_ solid hardwood forest 250 years ago. Take a look at it on Google maps sometime. That's the only evidentiary argument you tried to make, and it's factually wrong. More of North America is forested now than 250 years ago. The rest of your comment is argument to absurdity and bare nonsense. Your beliefs are like a religion.
- titzer 8y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deforestation_in_the_United_St... Prior to European colonization: 1,023,000,000 acres Today: 766,000,000 acres If that is too complicated for you to process, please take a look at the graphics on the page. Btw I don't do religion. Let's do facts instead.
  - ThomPete 8y ago
    In what world is that in any way supporting your claim that: "We chopped down most of the forests in the US [1] to make farmland. Literally. My home state of Indiana was _literally_ solid hardwood forest 250 years ago. Take a look at it on Google maps sometime." So 25%
    - titzer 8y ago
      Look at the graphic on Wikipedia from 1926. There were virtually no virgin forests in Indiana left at that time.
      - ThomPete 8y ago
        I am looking at your claim which was and I repeat "We chopped down most of the forests in the US" That's factually wrong in so many ways especially seen in the light of your entire comment to me.
        titzer 8y ago
        Look, if you don't understand what "virgin forest" means and don't want to actually follow links and instead want to argue endlessly hoping for some kind of silly gotcha, I'll just spell it out for you: yes my original statement that we absolutely did chop down most of the forests of the US stands; it was informed by facts beforehand and I provided them afterwards. You can read the gory details on your own time. Spoiler alert, forest grows back, but never the same. Lots of species perish in the process. It's incredibly destructive. Technically, yes, today we have more forest than we did in ~1910, making today's loss about 25% of what was there in 1600. But this is a long sidetrack; whatever in the heck you were trying to argue in the OP about us making the environment more stable, it's just plain not the case. We upend every ecosystem we ever encounter. I would recommend reading "Sapiens" by Yuval Harari. But at this point this level of discussion isn't productive, as you are currently burning karma all over this thread. HN is a nice community. Stop being a troll.
ThomPete 8y ago
And yet all you are doing here is proving my point. You take the most catastrophic interpretations as gospel while at the same time admitting we have no idea what the consequences will actually be. That's exactly the point here. So instead of jumping to conclusions like you are doing perhaps it would help if you started being concrete. The quesiton still stands. What scientifically demonstrated problem which will arise over the next 100 years can't we deal with?
- ip26 8y ago
  I at least am not trying to argue that we're utterly doomed. But wouldn't it be a hell of a lot easier to not have to damn every ex-glacier? To not have to build sea walls on every coast, and deal with year round hurricane & fire seasons, and desalinate massive quantities of water, and everything else? Yeah, we can survive on the moon and grow crops in Antarctica. But notice, most people prefer living in Palm Beach and cultivating the Midwest. It's like with bees. Some people go, who cares if neonicotinoids wipe them out, we'll simply make a billion incredibly advanced miniature robot bees to replace them. Ok, sure, we can probably figure that out in the next fifty years. But that seems like way more of a pain in the ass than just cutting it out with the neonicotinoids. P.S. the insect populations are already massively cratered. That part isn't wild speculation about 2100, that's today. I'm sure you remember the headlines about the study in Europe finding 75% reduction in insect biomass over the last twenty five years. Oh, and the year round fire season is here in California.
  - ThomPete 8y ago
    There are a lot of things in life that would be a lot easier if only they were different. The problem is that we are dealing with a wicked problem. We need energy to survive especially being as many as we are, poor countries are depending on cheap reliable energy and don't care about the climate. They are trying to survive today. So it all comes back to what the consequences will be of what you are going to propose as a solution. If for ex. the choice was between making fossil fuel illegal or allow it to be used as it is being used today then I would definitely be choosing the latter so that we can continue to have growth and create the surplus to come up with better solutions.
dang 8y ago
> You're being downvoted for trotting out well-worn and eye-roll inducing ignorance Please do not break the site guidelines like this, regardless of how wrong or annoying other comments may be. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

saagarjha 8y ago

> Nature has never been stable especially not for humans so that's hardly a useful premise. Sure, but making it more unstable is clearly worse for us. Sure, we have ways of making even the most unstable environments survivable (like the Moon!) but saying that we should just make things worse and hope that we can undo it in 50 years isn't a really good strategy.

ThomPete 8y ago
Again how is the world more unstable?
- saagarjha 8y ago
  Global warming increases the extremes of natural disasters, doing things like making deserts drier and creating larger storms.
  - ThomPete 8y ago
    But we are better at dealing with extreme weather. More people survive extreme weather than before. http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats/resources/weather_fatalities.pdf http://www.nws.noaa.gov/om/hazstats/resources/weather_fatali... I would really encourage you to stop for a minute and start digging into the data. You will be shocked when you realize how little is based on actual facts.

BLKNSLVR 8y ago

You dismissed mass migration and civil war with a single sentence. You're either being intentionally inflammatory or in denial about how close to home these effects are going to be. Humanity may survive, yes, but civilisation as we know it will regress to a large degree if the world leaders are as flippant about the issue as you are. Software will not solve climate change, no matter how many startups you create and sell. Climate Change is a human lifestyle addiction problem that affects the suppliers of the lifestyle more than the consumers - until the number of suppliers start dwindling and then the consumers wonder why their coffee habit starts costing so much. Addictions and habits aren't easy to break even individually, much less for a whole society. Rising oceans, changing climate zones, less arable land, fewer food resources, civil unrest, mass migration, resource wars, economic collapse. (edit: the first three are things in the above list are already occurring, the rest are logical extensions).

ThomPete 8y ago
I didn't dismiss them I just don't believe they are impossible to deal with. Again you are just listing a bunch of things that might or might not happen without any evidence: 1) that they will happen, 2) that we can't deal with them if they happen. 3) when they will happen. Yet you consider yourself the rational one.
- germinalphrase 8y ago
  Legitimately curious: how do you "deal with" mass migration? Societies don't deal particularly well with large influxes of migrants.
  - ThomPete 8y ago
    You deal with it as it happens. It's not like it will happen one day. It will also happen over time and yes create tensions. But the solution is not as some ex want to stop the moderns world and growth. On the contrary it's to make those countries richer so they can deal with the other consequences of a changing climate like the resto of us. Again we are discussing the difference between accepting there are some consequences of the climate changing and then these catastrophist claims that the world is going to end and we can't deal with it.