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But is the sky not falling on geological scales of time? Maybe it's not nuclear holocaust and immediate destruction of the planet and humanity but something mor

But is the sky not falling on geological scales of time? Maybe it's not nuclear holocaust and immediate destruction of the planet and humanity but something more protracted over say 5,000 - 10,000 years?

DoreenMichele 7y ago
That makes a number of assumptions, such as: 1. It's irreversible. 2. Change is inherently bad. 3. Humans are incapable of adapting. We don't need all of these assumptions to be wrong. If just one of them is wrong, then we aren't "doomed." We have a long track record of being terrible at predicting the future. We also routinely predict negative outcomes and then move on to a new reason to hand wring when our prediction turns out to be wrong. When the Kuwaiti oil wells were lit on fire, it was predicted they would burn for years and be a global environmental catastrophe. When crack teams converged on Kuwait, invented new techniques and put them out in six months, this was not celebrated. It was a minor footnote in more dramatic stories. Y2K was supposed to cause a global financial meltdown. We look back on that and remember the folks who prepped for the Y2K Apocalypse as loonies. No one (but me)* gets up every day and goes "Thank God! We aren't living in the Y2K Post Apocalypse and my ATM still works!" We certainly need to work on resolving some things. We also are working on it. If you're scared, then give up your car, eat less meat, etc. You can be part of the problem or part of the solution. Your choice. * Technically, not even me. I only do that occasionally, not daily.
- cbkeller 7y ago
  Eh, I mean the silicate weathering feedback will definitely fix the CO2 issue on Myr timescales, but doesn't mean it mightn't be a bumpy ride. Then there's the issue of above-background extinction rates -- not entirely a CO2 / climate change issue, but arguably already irreversible unless we're about to go all Jurassic-Park-style Pleistocene rewilding over here.
  - DoreenMichele 7y ago
    Then there's the issue of above-background extinction rates ... arguably already irreversible unless we're about to go all Jurassic-Park-style Pleistocene rewilding over here. Lions have adapted to hunt seals and seabirds in Namibia, study finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/28/lions-adapted-hunt-seals-seabirds-namibia-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/28/lions-ad... India’s wild tiger population rises 33% in four years https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/29/india-wild-tiger-population-rises-conservation https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/29/india-wild-tig... Science has identified some 2 million species of plants, animals and microbes on Earth, but scientists estimated there are millions more left to discover, and new species are constantly discovered and described. https://www.livescience.com/topics/newfound-species https://www.livescience.com/topics/newfound-species First wild polar-grizzly bear hybrid offspring discovered https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/first-wild-polar-grizzly-bear-hybrid-offspring-discovered https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/first-wild... New wolf coyote hybrid https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-new-wolf-coyote-hybrid-is-infiltrating-our-cities https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-new-wolf-coyote-hybr... I posit that some of our hysteria is rooted in our egomaniacal fantasy that we already know everything. We don't.
    - cbkeller 7y ago
      ? Assuming you meant to reply to me, I think this is orthogonal to what I posted ETA since we seem to have reached maximum comment depth: To clarify, the context suggests you mean to disagree with me, but I don't see any incompatibility between your comment and mine. These examples are not bringing back species that are currently extinct. That is not to say that life is not adaptable or that vacated ecological niches will not eventually be re-filled. Judging from the paleontological record, they definitely will -- sometimes rapidly and sometimes not for many Myr. Sometimes, due to convergent evolution, the replacements for a given niche are shockingly close in appearance to the extinct originals, but it's never quite the same as before. I think the only thing I actually disagree with here is the apparent (implied?) suggestion that folks concerned about climate change are in a state of "hysteria." The climate scientists I know would be among the first to agree that we don't know everything!
- aaronbrethorst 7y ago
  If you're scared, then give up your car, eat less meat, etc. You can be part of the problem or part of the solution. Your choice. Vote. Individual behavioral changes are fine and good, but structural change is the only way to meaningfully address the magnitude of the crisis modern civilization faces.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    "Structural change" actually means "letting so-called experts who have made every prediction wrong so far, control public policy based on their new predictions". No, thanks. Or, to put it another way: you think the crisis modern civilization faces is that we don't have enough central coordination to enforce what needs to be done. I think the crisis modern civilization faces is that we have too much central coordination, so people who don't actually have the knowledge and predictive power they claim to have can mess up everyone's life instead of just their own.
    - nothrabannosir 7y ago
      Decentralisation is beautiful but it has one fatal weak spot: tragedy of the commons. That isn't some politicophilosophising; it is a mathematical fact (see game theory, which is consistently vindicated in this model). The only way to combat this is centralising governance of the resource being overused. Fishing is an example, and CO2 (a "negative" resource use which follows the same patterns). I won't argue that the people in power are doing great, but I can guarantee you that throwing our hands in the air and giving up on centralisation entirely is not the answer. For the above reason. It's throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
      - pdonis 7y ago
        > The only way to combat this is centralising governance of the resource being overused. "Centralizing governance" can mean one of two things: political control by a government, or private ownership. The latter does indeed work as a solution. The former always ends up making things worse instead of better, because special interests can capture the government's regulatory power.
- colordrops 7y ago
  The Kuwaiti oil wells and Y2K are not great analogies. They are both orders of magnitude easier to address, there aren't wealthy and powerful elites stymying efforts to stop them, and they don't require everyone changing their lives drastically to make a dent in the problem. I've heard this idea from more than one libertarian friend that "change is not bad" in relation to climate change in the last month, so it makes me wonder whether a think tank is spreading this talking point virally. To counter with another analogy - this attitude is like living in a crackhouse steadily filling with trash and roaches and termites and not addressing the problem because "change is good" and "we can adapt".
- adrianN 7y ago
  If the Greenland ice sheet melts or the permafrost releases its carbon, it is very unlikely that humans can do anything to stop that. Once we reach those tipping points, climate change is effectively irreversible on human time scales.
- mirimir 7y ago
  > If you're scared, then give up your car, eat less meat, etc. You can be part of the problem or part of the solution. Your choice. If I weren't 10-15 yr short of dead, with no descendants, I'd be scared. But even then, why should I give up my modest comforts? Let all the 1% jerks who consume 10x what I do live considerably leaner.
  - jamesknelson 7y ago
    > Let all the 1% jerks who consume 10x what I do live considerably leaner. Okay, but what percentage are you in? Judging by your comment history, I'm going to assume you're in the US. That already puts you pretty close to the top 1% on a global scale. Should everyone in the world look at Americans living a standard American lifestyle and think, "let all the 5% jerks who consume 5x what I do live considerably leaner"? While that may actually be a fairly reasonable response, the problem is that the same excuse can be used basically wherever you are on the ladder. Then there's those of us who do live without cars, with little or no meat, with small houses that use little cooling/heating. What does that make us? Fools for even trying?
    - mirimir 7y ago
      I'm talking about the global ~1%, who control about half of the world's wealth.[0] Sure, I'm in the US. But I live in a ~70 m^2 apartment, which is highly insulated. I do own a car, but it's small and old. I don't commute, and fly very rarely. It's true that having little money drives much of that. I've never liked working, unless it was something that interested me. And I've rarely (maybe 3-5 years, out of 50 adult years) had a 9-5 job. But conversely, being OK with a fairly simple life gave me freedom to not care much about money. Anyway, I'd say that I'm pretty close to the global middle class. Close enough, at least. 0) https://www.visualcapitalist.com/global-wealth-concentration/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/global-wealth-concentration...
- banku_brougham 7y ago
  >If you're scared, then give up your car, eat less meat, etc. You can be part of the problem or part of the solution. Your choice. Global problems can’t be solved by the virtuous behavior of individuals. This is a policy problem on a scale three or four orders of magnitude larger than the success stories you have pointed out.
- lazyjones 7y ago
  > If you're scared, then give up your car, eat less meat, etc. You can be part of the problem or part of the solution. Your choice. But if you are an important celebrity, you should by all means (i.e. typically a private jet) fly to Google Camp in Sicily to talk about global warming. https://palermo.gds.it/articoli/economia/2019/07/28/effetto-google-camp-114-jet-privati-allaeroporto-di-palermo-1be6fa00-48d0-4efd-be60-f84d4d0a6fad/ https://palermo.gds.it/articoli/economia/2019/07/28/effetto-...

DoreenMichele 7y ago

That makes a number of assumptions, such as: 1. It's irreversible. 2. Change is inherently bad. 3. Humans are incapable of adapting. We don't need all of these assumptions to be wrong. If just one of them is wrong, then we aren't "doomed." We have a long track record of being terrible at predicting the future. We also routinely predict negative outcomes and then move on to a new reason to hand wring when our prediction turns out to be wrong. When the Kuwaiti oil wells were lit on fire, it was predicted they would burn for years and be a global environmental catastrophe. When crack teams converged on Kuwait, invented new techniques and put them out in six months, this was not celebrated. It was a minor footnote in more dramatic stories. Y2K was supposed to cause a global financial meltdown. We look back on that and remember the folks who prepped for the Y2K Apocalypse as loonies. No one (but me)* gets up every day and goes "Thank God! We aren't living in the Y2K Post Apocalypse and my ATM still works!" We certainly need to work on resolving some things. We also are working on it. If you're scared, then give up your car, eat less meat, etc. You can be part of the problem or part of the solution. Your choice. * Technically, not even me. I only do that occasionally, not daily.

cbkeller 7y ago
Eh, I mean the silicate weathering feedback will definitely fix the CO2 issue on Myr timescales, but doesn't mean it mightn't be a bumpy ride. Then there's the issue of above-background extinction rates -- not entirely a CO2 / climate change issue, but arguably already irreversible unless we're about to go all Jurassic-Park-style Pleistocene rewilding over here.
- DoreenMichele 7y ago
  Then there's the issue of above-background extinction rates ... arguably already irreversible unless we're about to go all Jurassic-Park-style Pleistocene rewilding over here. Lions have adapted to hunt seals and seabirds in Namibia, study finds https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/28/lions-adapted-hunt-seals-seabirds-namibia-study https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/28/lions-ad... India’s wild tiger population rises 33% in four years https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/29/india-wild-tiger-population-rises-conservation https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/29/india-wild-tig... Science has identified some 2 million species of plants, animals and microbes on Earth, but scientists estimated there are millions more left to discover, and new species are constantly discovered and described. https://www.livescience.com/topics/newfound-species https://www.livescience.com/topics/newfound-species First wild polar-grizzly bear hybrid offspring discovered https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/first-wild-polar-grizzly-bear-hybrid-offspring-discovered https://www.mnn.com/earth-matters/animals/stories/first-wild... New wolf coyote hybrid https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-new-wolf-coyote-hybrid-is-infiltrating-our-cities https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/a-new-wolf-coyote-hybr... I posit that some of our hysteria is rooted in our egomaniacal fantasy that we already know everything. We don't.
  - cbkeller 7y ago
    ? Assuming you meant to reply to me, I think this is orthogonal to what I posted ETA since we seem to have reached maximum comment depth: To clarify, the context suggests you mean to disagree with me, but I don't see any incompatibility between your comment and mine. These examples are not bringing back species that are currently extinct. That is not to say that life is not adaptable or that vacated ecological niches will not eventually be re-filled. Judging from the paleontological record, they definitely will -- sometimes rapidly and sometimes not for many Myr. Sometimes, due to convergent evolution, the replacements for a given niche are shockingly close in appearance to the extinct originals, but it's never quite the same as before. I think the only thing I actually disagree with here is the apparent (implied?) suggestion that folks concerned about climate change are in a state of "hysteria." The climate scientists I know would be among the first to agree that we don't know everything!
aaronbrethorst 7y ago
If you're scared, then give up your car, eat less meat, etc. You can be part of the problem or part of the solution. Your choice. Vote. Individual behavioral changes are fine and good, but structural change is the only way to meaningfully address the magnitude of the crisis modern civilization faces.
- pdonis 7y ago
  "Structural change" actually means "letting so-called experts who have made every prediction wrong so far, control public policy based on their new predictions". No, thanks. Or, to put it another way: you think the crisis modern civilization faces is that we don't have enough central coordination to enforce what needs to be done. I think the crisis modern civilization faces is that we have too much central coordination, so people who don't actually have the knowledge and predictive power they claim to have can mess up everyone's life instead of just their own.
  - nothrabannosir 7y ago
    Decentralisation is beautiful but it has one fatal weak spot: tragedy of the commons. That isn't some politicophilosophising; it is a mathematical fact (see game theory, which is consistently vindicated in this model). The only way to combat this is centralising governance of the resource being overused. Fishing is an example, and CO2 (a "negative" resource use which follows the same patterns). I won't argue that the people in power are doing great, but I can guarantee you that throwing our hands in the air and giving up on centralisation entirely is not the answer. For the above reason. It's throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
    - pdonis 7y ago
      > The only way to combat this is centralising governance of the resource being overused. "Centralizing governance" can mean one of two things: political control by a government, or private ownership. The latter does indeed work as a solution. The former always ends up making things worse instead of better, because special interests can capture the government's regulatory power.
colordrops 7y ago
The Kuwaiti oil wells and Y2K are not great analogies. They are both orders of magnitude easier to address, there aren't wealthy and powerful elites stymying efforts to stop them, and they don't require everyone changing their lives drastically to make a dent in the problem. I've heard this idea from more than one libertarian friend that "change is not bad" in relation to climate change in the last month, so it makes me wonder whether a think tank is spreading this talking point virally. To counter with another analogy - this attitude is like living in a crackhouse steadily filling with trash and roaches and termites and not addressing the problem because "change is good" and "we can adapt".
adrianN 7y ago
If the Greenland ice sheet melts or the permafrost releases its carbon, it is very unlikely that humans can do anything to stop that. Once we reach those tipping points, climate change is effectively irreversible on human time scales.
mirimir 7y ago
> If you're scared, then give up your car, eat less meat, etc. You can be part of the problem or part of the solution. Your choice. If I weren't 10-15 yr short of dead, with no descendants, I'd be scared. But even then, why should I give up my modest comforts? Let all the 1% jerks who consume 10x what I do live considerably leaner.
- jamesknelson 7y ago
  > Let all the 1% jerks who consume 10x what I do live considerably leaner. Okay, but what percentage are you in? Judging by your comment history, I'm going to assume you're in the US. That already puts you pretty close to the top 1% on a global scale. Should everyone in the world look at Americans living a standard American lifestyle and think, "let all the 5% jerks who consume 5x what I do live considerably leaner"? While that may actually be a fairly reasonable response, the problem is that the same excuse can be used basically wherever you are on the ladder. Then there's those of us who do live without cars, with little or no meat, with small houses that use little cooling/heating. What does that make us? Fools for even trying?
  - mirimir 7y ago
    I'm talking about the global ~1%, who control about half of the world's wealth.[0] Sure, I'm in the US. But I live in a ~70 m^2 apartment, which is highly insulated. I do own a car, but it's small and old. I don't commute, and fly very rarely. It's true that having little money drives much of that. I've never liked working, unless it was something that interested me. And I've rarely (maybe 3-5 years, out of 50 adult years) had a 9-5 job. But conversely, being OK with a fairly simple life gave me freedom to not care much about money. Anyway, I'd say that I'm pretty close to the global middle class. Close enough, at least. 0) https://www.visualcapitalist.com/global-wealth-concentration/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/global-wealth-concentration...
banku_brougham 7y ago
>If you're scared, then give up your car, eat less meat, etc. You can be part of the problem or part of the solution. Your choice. Global problems can’t be solved by the virtuous behavior of individuals. This is a policy problem on a scale three or four orders of magnitude larger than the success stories you have pointed out.
lazyjones 7y ago
> If you're scared, then give up your car, eat less meat, etc. You can be part of the problem or part of the solution. Your choice. But if you are an important celebrity, you should by all means (i.e. typically a private jet) fly to Google Camp in Sicily to talk about global warming. https://palermo.gds.it/articoli/economia/2019/07/28/effetto-google-camp-114-jet-privati-allaeroporto-di-palermo-1be6fa00-48d0-4efd-be60-f84d4d0a6fad/ https://palermo.gds.it/articoli/economia/2019/07/28/effetto-...