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Your comment feels very doom and gloom for me living in the Northeast USA. Where specifically do you live? If you look at the forecasted outcomes of climate cha
by WhompingWindows 7y ago
Your comment feels very doom and gloom for me living in the Northeast USA. Where specifically do you live? If you look at the forecasted outcomes of climate change, the most likely losers are NOT in USA/Europe, which is where most of HN readers are based. India, the Middle East, parts of Africa, parts of Mexico, low-lying island nations - these are the really scary places to be based out of in the next 100+ years. I don't think rich folks in the developed nations have the most cause for alarm, sad to say.
Still, there's reason for hope. Many people care very strongly about saving the planet/biosphere, new businesses and research are cropping up all the time in this space. By the time 2050 rolls around, we very well may have technical solutions to some of our pressing environmental issues that seem to be killers now. Just consider 2019 -> 2050, that's 31 years. Back in 1988, wind and solar were a dream, EVs were nonexistent outside the golf course, and very very few people were passionate about fighting climate change.
- patientplatypus 7y agoExcept of course, with rising sea levels due to glacier melt many of the major US cities will be underwater. You mentioned the Northeast? Here's an article about how New York is going to be underwater (https://gothamist.com/2019/05/21/new_climate_report_suggests_we_migh.php https://gothamist.com/2019/05/21/new_climate_report_suggests...). Also, climate change doesn't have to hit your area specifically to be harmful. Crop failures will lead to wars and displaced people. Water shortages in India lead to angry people that want to fight over Kashmir, increased migration from climate affected areas to richer areas cause ethnic tension (from North Africa to Europe, from South America to the US). As an aside, clearly the policies of nationalists are abhorrent, but they don't occur in a vacuum, and, in the US at least, the left hasn't provided a clear path to a solution to this issue. Here's the CIA being worried about such things (https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30012019/worldwide-threat-assessment-climate-change-intelligence-agencies-national-security https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30012019/worldwide-threat...). Yes, this is very doom and gloom. The facts are gloomy and connecting the dots on our possible futures spells out, in all likelihood, doom. How can you not see this?
- selectstatement 7y agoHumans are a very adaptable species and there are no guarantees that the environment should continue as it once was perpetually. The situations in theses articles are just as likely to not happen as they are to come true.
- patientplatypus 7y agoThe situations in theses articles are just as likely to not happen as they are to come true. Um, what? On what are you basing this likelihood on? These are scientists that study this for a living. This sounds like complete fabrication.
- selectstatement 7y agoThat doesn't mean that they can predict the future with high accuracy. They might have some chance slightly above random but there are way too many variables unconsidered. All it takes is one asteroid to invalidate all the predictions. Or one war. Or one biological contagion. Or one technological innovation.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoThen we should just lay down and die from the fear.
- inawarminister 7y agoIt's important to mention that the current-ish (started 10,000 years ago in the Younger Dryas) warmth of Interglacial era made us able to settle down and practise agriculture. Before that, for millions of years - we're stuck as Hunter-Gatherers, forever in the mercy of Nature. Perhaps in the days of tomorrow, we will once again be in the mercy of Nature? Of course not, as long as we retain our technologies. Ergo, even if you (and I agree) don't think climate change will doom humanity as a whole, I'd still be sympathetic to rational campaigns reducing it's effects.
- kaesar14 7y ago
- Fomite 7y ago"the most likely losers are NOT in USA/Europe, which is where most of HN readers are based" Indeed. We'll just get to deal with a rehash of the anti-immigrant rhetoric we're seeing now thanks to a refugee crisis our policies and consumption rates created.
- Fjolsvith 7y agoEurope needs to build themselves a wall, too.
- redisman 7y agoWhere do you think people will go from the regions that get destroyed by climate change? Or will they just disappear into thin air rather than causing the largest refugee wave we have ever seen?