3 ms·

'High likelihood of human civilisation coming to end' by 2050, report finds

26 points by ForHackernews 7y ago

mdorazio 7y ago
For those who haven't read the article, the prediction is based solely on climate change, not on other factors (predicting up to 3 degrees centigrade increase in mean temps globally by 2050 in comparison to pre-industrial levels, which as far as I know is on the extreme side of most predictions). It is also from Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, which obviously is probably slightly biased toward alarmism regarding climate change. To me as a pragmatist, climate change is a foregone conclusion at this point and we should be exploring ways to cope with it and engineer around it.
yongjik 7y ago
I hate this kind of headlines. There's very little chance that civilization will "end" by 2050: the two world wars barely made any dent on "human civilization". This kind of rhetoric only sets up an impossible bar and serves to invite the anti-rhetoric that is "Of course it will be fine, because humanity will not end!"
- notfromhere 7y ago
  two world wars couldn't impact the ability of agriculture to feed 7+ billion people
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    Well, I guess then that depends on what you mean by “civilization” ending. If the food runs out, humans will continue to exist, but probably not in a way that we would consider to be particularly civilized by modern standards. If 3.5 billion people need to turn against the other 3.5 billion to survive, it’s pretty likely that they will.
    - notfromhere 7y ago
      civilization ending means the end of large-scale, complex human societies built around the specialization of labor
- LinuxBender 7y ago
  Agreed. We can certainly engineer around climate changes. About the only thing that might end us would be another asteroid impact of notable size. i.e. Indian Ocean 5k BC, Greenland 12.6k BC. Even then our current hunter-gatherers outside the immediate blast area and not near the coastlines would likely survive.
4bpp 7y ago
It seems to me that most of the recent wave of climate change alarmist articles take it for granted that a mean temperature increase of +4°C or more would result in a collapse of the functioning of Earth's ecosystems/render the planet uninhabitable/cause in a runaway effect where more carbon is released and the planet heats until it turns into Mercury or Arrakis. However, based on our best knowledge [1], it seems that during the Cretaceous period and for a while after, temperatures were well in excess of this (~+10°C or more?), but the global ecosystem was closer to being tropical and extremely fertile than to being barren, and there was no runaway warming. What is the argument that this isn't going to happen in our current iteration of climate change? If there is none, is it safe to dismiss any documents that claim or imply an uninhabitable Earth as a consequence of climate change as primarily ideological rather than scientific? (I'd be much more willing to entertain arguments that a rapid transition to a Cretaceous-style planet would be a political catastrophe for the "global south"/equatorial countries that are already struggling with drought, but then I'd need to see reasoning why we should expect any threat to human civilisation as a whole rather than "just" a massive humanitarian crisis through which the residents of the currently-temperate northern hemisphere can just sit back on their pile of futuristic weaponry and laugh.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...
- popularrecluse 7y ago
  Glass half-full. I like it. Also on the positive side, a lot of us will possibly learn the answer to this question.
- earthicus 7y ago
  I think the claim that Earth is going to turn into Venus or Arrakis is absurd - I haven't heard anyone argue that, but I have heard the claim that it will cause a mass extinction on a geologic scale that could affect humans and our 'pets' as well. I don't know if it is accurate and based on good science, but I believe that the argument revolves around the timescale that the change is occurring compared to natural climate shifts: that the temperature is increasing so fast there is not enough time for plants and animals to evolve, or even for ecosystems to gradually migrate their locales. For example, one reason you can't simply replace farms with land in, say, the Canadian shield is the lack of good topsoil. According to [1] it takes at least 100 years to form an inch of topsoil in wet, hot climates, and the process is much slower in cold or dry climates. Thus if we render our existing farmland unfit for our existing crops in timescales measured in tens of years, we would have to rely on manually bringing a literal continent's worth of soil north - whatever process was at work during the Cretaceous cannot be relied on to solve this particular problem. [1] https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/wa/soils/?cid=nrcs144p2_036333 https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/wa/soils/?c...
LinuxBender 7y ago
As mentioned for a few other articles, it may be worth correlating CO2 levels to the Milankovitch cycles relative to our current orbit. NASA track this, though I don't have a graph link handy. Depending on our current phase, the oceans may be about to release a lot of CO2.
bayareanative 7y ago
$8-20 trillion would be the cost for BeCSS to return CO2 to pre-industrial levels. This is less than the cost of the endless wars. It's doable, but it won't happen without extreme public pressure or the violent overthrow of the vampiric, corporate, inverted totalitarian cabal.
mimixco 7y ago
To quote Mark Twain, "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."
d1ffuz0r 7y ago
Maybe they should say "Western Civilization coming to end", it would be correct. But the rest of the world will be fine

26 points by ForHackernews 7y ago

For those who haven't read the article, the prediction is based solely on climate change, not on other factors (predicting up to 3 degrees centigrade increase in mean temps globally by 2050 in comparison to pre-industrial levels, which as far as I know is on the extreme side of most predictions). It is also from Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, which obviously is probably slightly biased toward alarmism regarding climate change. To me as a pragmatist, climate change is a foregone conclusion at this point and we should be exploring ways to cope with it and engineer around it.

yongjik 7y ago

I hate this kind of headlines. There's very little chance that civilization will "end" by 2050: the two world wars barely made any dent on "human civilization". This kind of rhetoric only sets up an impossible bar and serves to invite the anti-rhetoric that is "Of course it will be fine, because humanity will not end!"

notfromhere 7y ago
two world wars couldn't impact the ability of agriculture to feed 7+ billion people
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  Well, I guess then that depends on what you mean by “civilization” ending. If the food runs out, humans will continue to exist, but probably not in a way that we would consider to be particularly civilized by modern standards. If 3.5 billion people need to turn against the other 3.5 billion to survive, it’s pretty likely that they will.
  - notfromhere 7y ago
    civilization ending means the end of large-scale, complex human societies built around the specialization of labor
LinuxBender 7y ago
Agreed. We can certainly engineer around climate changes. About the only thing that might end us would be another asteroid impact of notable size. i.e. Indian Ocean 5k BC, Greenland 12.6k BC. Even then our current hunter-gatherers outside the immediate blast area and not near the coastlines would likely survive.

4bpp 7y ago

It seems to me that most of the recent wave of climate change alarmist articles take it for granted that a mean temperature increase of +4°C or more would result in a collapse of the functioning of Earth's ecosystems/render the planet uninhabitable/cause in a runaway effect where more carbon is released and the planet heats until it turns into Mercury or Arrakis. However, based on our best knowledge [1], it seems that during the Cretaceous period and for a while after, temperatures were well in excess of this (~+10°C or more?), but the global ecosystem was closer to being tropical and extremely fertile than to being barren, and there was no runaway warming. What is the argument that this isn't going to happen in our current iteration of climate change? If there is none, is it safe to dismiss any documents that claim or imply an uninhabitable Earth as a consequence of climate change as primarily ideological rather than scientific? (I'd be much more willing to entertain arguments that a rapid transition to a Cretaceous-style planet would be a political catastrophe for the "global south"/equatorial countries that are already struggling with drought, but then I'd need to see reasoning why we should expect any threat to human civilisation as a whole rather than "just" a massive humanitarian crisis through which the residents of the currently-temperate northern hemisphere can just sit back on their pile of futuristic weaponry and laugh.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...

popularrecluse 7y ago
Glass half-full. I like it. Also on the positive side, a lot of us will possibly learn the answer to this question.
earthicus 7y ago
I think the claim that Earth is going to turn into Venus or Arrakis is absurd - I haven't heard anyone argue that, but I have heard the claim that it will cause a mass extinction on a geologic scale that could affect humans and our 'pets' as well. I don't know if it is accurate and based on good science, but I believe that the argument revolves around the timescale that the change is occurring compared to natural climate shifts: that the temperature is increasing so fast there is not enough time for plants and animals to evolve, or even for ecosystems to gradually migrate their locales. For example, one reason you can't simply replace farms with land in, say, the Canadian shield is the lack of good topsoil. According to [1] it takes at least 100 years to form an inch of topsoil in wet, hot climates, and the process is much slower in cold or dry climates. Thus if we render our existing farmland unfit for our existing crops in timescales measured in tens of years, we would have to rely on manually bringing a literal continent's worth of soil north - whatever process was at work during the Cretaceous cannot be relied on to solve this particular problem. [1] https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/wa/soils/?cid=nrcs144p2_036333 https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/wps/portal/nrcs/detail/wa/soils/?c...

LinuxBender 7y ago

As mentioned for a few other articles, it may be worth correlating CO2 levels to the Milankovitch cycles relative to our current orbit. NASA track this, though I don't have a graph link handy. Depending on our current phase, the oceans may be about to release a lot of CO2.

bayareanative 7y ago

$8-20 trillion would be the cost for BeCSS to return CO2 to pre-industrial levels. This is less than the cost of the endless wars. It's doable, but it won't happen without extreme public pressure or the violent overthrow of the vampiric, corporate, inverted totalitarian cabal.

mimixco 7y ago

To quote Mark Twain, "Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated."

d1ffuz0r 7y ago

Maybe they should say "Western Civilization coming to end", it would be correct. But the rest of the world will be fine