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We Can't Destroy Planet Earth
- sixothree 7y agoThere is not much here to support his argument.
- keldaris 7y agoHe isn't so much making an argument as stating a simple and fairly trivial observation. It's rather sad that hysterical alarmism has grown to such proportions as to even necessitate such observations. My only objection to his thesis is that, if I was being pedantic, I could note that with a highly organized research and engineering effort, we could technically construct sufficient supplies of cobalt salted nuclear weapons to theoretically wipe out all organized human life on this planet if they were all launched at once. That's a purely academic counterpoint, of course, as no such supplies are likely to ever be constructed, let alone used.
- everyone 7y agoYeah, Ive made a note not the bother reading any of his books. He does not seem to do any research into his ideas.
- perfmode 7y ago> I like reducing poverty and war, because their reduction lifts the global economy and makes travel safer and more enjoyable a tad bit self interested, no?
- pmalynin 7y agoAnd why is that an issue?
- lumberjack 7y agoBecause a lack of empathy for other human beings is problematic, because it means that as soon as your self interest does not perfectly align with their well being you will think nothing of harming them.
- matz1 7y agoYes, every concious goal/action is self interest.
- perfmode 7y agoThis is asserted without any evidence. What makes you believe this to be true? This seems to be a popular notion in some "western" thought but runs counter to many other intellectual and spiritual traditions.
- matz1 7y agoCan you give any example where this is not true?
- throwaway2048 7y agoPlenty of examples of completely anonymous altruism where the person can not possibly benefit, or hope to benefit.
- matz1 7y agoOk, can you give me one example?
- perfmode 7y agosince it seems you possess neither the knowledge nor experience to support your assertion, why don't you learn up on the topic: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egoism https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/egoism
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- throwaway2048 7y agoheres a great example https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H9b7HZQcUw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9H9b7HZQcUw stuff like this really does happen all the time.
- rurounijones 7y agoI am not worried about wiping out humanity. I am worried about wiping out enough humans thst our modern civilization crumbles and never recovers, relegating us to a single planet species forever. We have fought against entropy to get this far using the relatively easily available resources. If we fail now those won't be available for future generations. I want future generations to lead better lives than we do, not regress. I want them to live the optimistic sci-fi future, not the post-apocalyptic ones
- zzo38computer 7y agoEarth should not be destroy, and, I am not worried about wiping out humanity either; currently, it is instead too much humanity, but if later it is too not enough compared to another species then we can worry about it. I decide to don't have any children. Therefore, we can try to reduce the future human population, in this way.
- Causality1 7y agoWe can't destroy humanity. We can, however, destroy any hope that human or human-descended life makes it off this planet.
- spodek 7y agoAnnoying pedantry. Everyone knows "destroy the planet" means something like "decrease Earth's ability to sustain life, especially human society" as is clear from every context it's used. Of course there are edge cases, which amount to rounding errors. Yes, people would communicate more effectively by speaking more precisely, but this post doesn't merit meaningful discussion.
- rimliu 7y agoWe cannot destroy life either.
- labster 7y agoYeah, yeah. Tell it to the judge.
- nydel 7y agowell-said & hear hear! ..excuse my not knowing where better to ask: when i see a submission as what i would classify as "clickbait"-ish at hackernews, what is the right thing to do? is that what flagging is for? a cursory search hasn't returned me a FAQ or anything & i'm relatively new to commenting. thank y'all in advance if there's such a document available to link to.
- dmos62 7y agoThere's a link to the FAQ on the bottom of the page: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
- 781 7y agoNot everybody is a scientist who understands that it's just a metaphor. > Majority of Britons believe climate-change could end human race. ... 54 percent of adults agreed that climate-change threatens our extinction as a species https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-protests-climate-change-poll/majority-of-britons-believe-climate-change-could-end-human-race-poll-idUKKCN1S73Y8 https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-britain-protests-climate-c...
- baxtr 7y agoAs a tautology that might be true. We can’t destroy the planet, we “just” change its appearance and its composition. Will it be a great place to live on? Not so sure about many parts of it.
- lalaithion 7y agoTo destroy the Earth: https://qntm.org/destro https://qntm.org/destro
- julienreszka 7y agougly rant
- Lowkeyloki 7y agoAlthough I'm sure Howey is technically correct, I don't think what amounts to semantic quibbling is actually adding anything to the discussion. Okay, so humanity won't be eliminated. But there will be a dramatic increase in death and suffering and overall quality of life will be drastically diminished except for those already in the top 1% of wealth. How does that distinction change the overall discussion or the importance of fighting climate change?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- phreeza 7y agoIn the time before the hydrogen bomb there was discussion that such a device may ignite the atmosphere. If we managed to somehow do that, it may do the trick.
- perfunctory 7y agoYou don't have to worry about wiping out all of humanity to worry about climate change. Impending human suffering is reason enough to worry. "Climate is an existential threat" is obviously a hyperbole. If somebody doesn't understand it, too bad. > What I don’t like is when we exaggerate and undermine our good intentions. I don't see how that undermines anything.
- Creationer 7y agoClimate change will benefit some countries according to Stanford: https://web.stanford.edu/~mburke/climate/map.php https://web.stanford.edu/~mburke/climate/map.php Russia: +419% to GDP. Hmmm....
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jaredklewis 7y agoA lot of complaints here about "semantic quibbling" and the like, but I found Howey's principled relationship with language refreshing. Today, we get bombarded with an endless stream of clickbait that routinely stretches words to the very limit of their meanings and beyond. In politics especially, double speak is now the standard. "Fake news" probably isn't fake. A "Clean Air Act" bill probably isn't about clean air. The "middle class" probably isn't really in the middle. "Job creators" probably aren't creating jobs. And on and on. Why shouldn't we all strive to use words in a precise, straightforward way? Why embellish our argument when the plain truth is already horrifying enough?
- everyone 7y agoIt is apparently possible that runaway global warming (the very kind we are currently initiating (perhaps irreversibly initiated already)) could render Earth like Venus. The sun is hotter now than the last time the clathrates got released at the Permian–Triassic extinction event. This is not espoused much by mainstream climatologists but real non-crank climatologists have work supporting the fact that it is possible. Steven Hawking even publicly brought this up.
- furgooswft13 7y ago> Steven Hawking even publicly brought this up. And was rebuked for it. https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/earth-is-not-at-risk-of-becoming-a-hothouse-like-venus-as-stephen-hawking-claimed-bbc/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/earth-is-not-at-risk... Even in the absolute worse case scenarios we'd expect to see a temperature increase of around 10C, which is nowhere close to Venus levels. Also he threw in "raining sulphuric acid" just to make it sound even more apocalyptic I guess. Earth becoming Venus is not even a "less likely" to happen scenario, it's a completely implausible scenario even if 100% of humanity dedicated itself to releasing all carbon into the atmosphere as quick as possible tomorrow just for kicks. Prominent scientists like Hawking publicly making such groundless and hyperbolic statements IS hurting case for action against climate change, and that's exactly what this article is talking about.
- jordanbeiber 7y agoIs the author claiming that the complete destruction of planet earth and all human kind is what the environmental debate is about? For me it’s about my grand children not ending up in Mad Max or Blade Runner. That would truly suck... for them. In both these scenarios the earth is around, humans are living and pretty much everything else is dead or dying. You can always argue that whatever takes place within the boundaries of this universe is a natural progression. My bother is that we as a species know a lot of things, probably more than anything that ever lived on earth, still we keep doing obviously stupid things at scale. This makes my computer say “no”, and it’s hard to rationalize as natural progression, considering this accumulation of knowledge. My program tells me to do what I believe is best for my offspring and this seems rather natural to me.
- cthalupa 7y ago>The universe will collapse into a single black hole. Basically no one believes the Big Crunch theory is likely to be accurate these days, which is what I imagine he is referring to here - but it's also inaccurately stated even for that theory, because the laws of physics are so different when the universe becomes that compact that the properties that allow black holes to exist are incredibly different. Not all singularities are black holes, and indeed, the universe would not condense into a single black hole if the Big Crunch were true. If he's not talking about the Big Crunch, I have no idea what he could mean, since there's no conceivable theory in which all of the matter ends up collected in one big black hole otherwise. I know astrophysics and climate science are very different fields, but someone writing about how Thing X but not Thing Y is actually an existential crisis, some basic understanding about the ultimate fate of the universe would be nice. >It turns out that planetary life is a downhill chemical process if you have sunlight and liquid water. All evidence we have is that life, or at least intelligent life, is quite rare. We don't understand abiogenesis, either. Between these two things, acting like it's a given that we'll have life in short order if we have sunlight and liquid water is absolutely silly. >I have a short story in an upcoming anthology inspired by this point. The third entry in the fantastic WASTELANDS series by John Joseph Adams will have a story by me about a place where our worst case scenario has already happened. > (If you want to read my solution for how to wipe out all of humanity, check out WOOL and the Silo Saga. Spoiler: it ain’t pretty) Oh. It's just a long form advertisement for his writing. As others have pointed out, no one is really arguing about whether or not humanity might survive in some shape or form in these scenarios, but it wouldn't be anything like modern civilization. Our entire modern way of life ceasing to exist is plenty existential, and there's no guarantee that if we were reduced to a population of 2000 or so again that we would survive. See again the fact that as far as we can tell, intelligent life is incredibly rare - if intelligent life can keep hitting the 'restart' button when they fuck things up, we'd probably see evidence of life existing elsewhere in the galaxy.
- xaduha 7y agoBiggest changes will be geopolitical driven by humanitarian catastrophes. It's very much in the interest of the Western World not to allow it to happen.
- rtkwe 7y agoSure, if we're taking 'existential threat' literally it's probably not in the sense that it won't end all human life on Earth. If we take it a little looser though it is a big threat to modern civilization and that will be pretty difficult to restart just because we've mined so many of the easily available energy sources and resources.