3 ms·

"...it should be noted that the Earth has been here before and come back from it at the end of the last ice age when sea levels rapidly rose 400 feet and drowne

"...it should be noted that the Earth has been here before and come back from it at the end of the last ice age when sea levels rapidly rose 400 feet and drowned all of Earth's reefs at the time." No one is seriously arguing that the earth is going to be literally destroyed, despite what anti-science Republicans would lead you to believe. People are saying "the Earth that we know, love, have co-evolved with will be destroyed, and the assumptions that we built our cities, countries, and societies around will be turned on their heads. This will be replaced with a harsh world with wild extremes, natural disasters in places that aren't built for them, and more intense natural disasters in places that might be used to current, weaker ones. Perpetuating this willful misinterpretation, even by acknowledging it, is a disservice to the future.

basetop 8y ago
Democrats are just as anti-science as republicans. I wish people would leave politics out of this because it gets us nowhere. Insulting half of the political structure isn't going to help anything. Also, the Earth as we "know, love, have co-evolved with" has been destroyed many times just in the past few thousand years. Climate change isn't a new phenomenon. The earth wasn't this magical garden of eden with perfect climate just for us. We just got out of an ice age just a few decades ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age
- crispinb 8y ago
  > Insulting half of the political structure isn't going to help anything Bear in mind that having 'half of the political structure' maintaining prescientific views re our planet's climate systems has become quite eccentric in 2019 - the US and Australia being the worst offenders. Most of the rest of the world has moved on from outright primitivism to mere obfuscation. Which is some kind of progress, but not enough. Anyway, at this stage the US far right Republican party is now enough of a worldwide laughing stock for insults to potentially be worthwhile. At some point there's a chance that half the US citizenry may come to see themselves reflected back as obscurantist and backward. > Climate change isn't a new phenomenon. The earth wasn't this magical garden of eden with perfect climate just for us No, but agricultural civilisation emerged from a background of a relatively stable climate. The range of possible near-term consequences of our current GHG gas emissions include (at scary probabilities, rising as new research comes in) ones that all but eliminate large scale agriculture. This has not been faced in the last 10k years, not with a 7-12 billion population, and not with the additional insults of soil and fresh water loss, habitat destruction, insect population collapses etc. Most ecological scientists are pretty terrified of what's coming at us at this point.
  - basetop 7y ago
    I agree that the anti-science Republicans are a laughing stock. But so are the anti-science Democrats. That's my point. Stop making it political because everyone is a laughing stock at this point. And agricultural civilization didn't emerge from a stable climate. As best as we know, it started in anatolia 11000 years ago during a global warming phase when most of the glaciers melted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-urine-reveals-timeline-turkeys-agricultural-revolution-180971990/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-urine-reve... And agriculture survived ices and warmings in the past 10000 years. As I noted, we experienced a little ice age from around 1300s to the 1800s. We had 500 years of ice age and agriculture is still around. Well people have always been terrified about something. Go read about Malthus and what he predicted. Hell, you don't even have to go that far. Do you remember peak oil? I do. Do you remember Y2K? I do? Remember that asteroid scare? Which one you ask? Exactly. Climate change is going to be devastating for sure. But not the politicized "human climate change", the real natural climate change. And the natural climate change isn't anything we can really control, no more than the orbit of the planets.
dang 8y ago
Please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar. It only leads to predictable places and doesn't help. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

basetop 8y ago

Democrats are just as anti-science as republicans. I wish people would leave politics out of this because it gets us nowhere. Insulting half of the political structure isn't going to help anything. Also, the Earth as we "know, love, have co-evolved with" has been destroyed many times just in the past few thousand years. Climate change isn't a new phenomenon. The earth wasn't this magical garden of eden with perfect climate just for us. We just got out of an ice age just a few decades ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

crispinb 8y ago
> Insulting half of the political structure isn't going to help anything Bear in mind that having 'half of the political structure' maintaining prescientific views re our planet's climate systems has become quite eccentric in 2019 - the US and Australia being the worst offenders. Most of the rest of the world has moved on from outright primitivism to mere obfuscation. Which is some kind of progress, but not enough. Anyway, at this stage the US far right Republican party is now enough of a worldwide laughing stock for insults to potentially be worthwhile. At some point there's a chance that half the US citizenry may come to see themselves reflected back as obscurantist and backward. > Climate change isn't a new phenomenon. The earth wasn't this magical garden of eden with perfect climate just for us No, but agricultural civilisation emerged from a background of a relatively stable climate. The range of possible near-term consequences of our current GHG gas emissions include (at scary probabilities, rising as new research comes in) ones that all but eliminate large scale agriculture. This has not been faced in the last 10k years, not with a 7-12 billion population, and not with the additional insults of soil and fresh water loss, habitat destruction, insect population collapses etc. Most ecological scientists are pretty terrified of what's coming at us at this point.
- basetop 7y ago
  I agree that the anti-science Republicans are a laughing stock. But so are the anti-science Democrats. That's my point. Stop making it political because everyone is a laughing stock at this point. And agricultural civilization didn't emerge from a stable climate. As best as we know, it started in anatolia 11000 years ago during a global warming phase when most of the glaciers melted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-urine-reveals-timeline-turkeys-agricultural-revolution-180971990/ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ancient-urine-reve... And agriculture survived ices and warmings in the past 10000 years. As I noted, we experienced a little ice age from around 1300s to the 1800s. We had 500 years of ice age and agriculture is still around. Well people have always been terrified about something. Go read about Malthus and what he predicted. Hell, you don't even have to go that far. Do you remember peak oil? I do. Do you remember Y2K? I do? Remember that asteroid scare? Which one you ask? Exactly. Climate change is going to be devastating for sure. But not the politicized "human climate change", the real natural climate change. And the natural climate change isn't anything we can really control, no more than the orbit of the planets.

dang 8y ago

Please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar. It only leads to predictable places and doesn't help. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html