4 ms·

The timescales are completely different. Past climate changes have been on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years. Now we are seeing it on the scale of a h

The timescales are completely different. Past climate changes have been on the scale of hundreds of thousands of years. Now we are seeing it on the scale of a hundred years. Life on Earth will most likely exist after climate change but it won't be any of the life as we know it.

ncmncm 7y ago
Most of life will adapt. Thousands of species will go extinct, probably not including us, but including the other apes. Likely, billions will die, only a few million by nuclear incineration. Most will starve. The stragglers, probably mostly primitives plus a bunch of rich bastards, will repopulate the Earth and pick up in what is left.
Yetanfou 7y ago
Nonsense, simply put. Past climate change has been driven by all sorts of factors, from bolide impacts through volcanic eruptions to large-scale forest fires. In several cases these changes came abruptly, far more so than the change caused by human activity. Also, the previous interglacial period was warmer than the current. During the Viking age wine was being grown in Scandinavia. The Roman empire arose and thrived during a warmer period, its fall coincided with a marked cooling which only lifted at the end of the 'little ice age' - when the Thames was frozen and all those famous Dutch masters painted scenes of Dutchmen and -women skating over canals and lakes. May I suggest looking back into the rich history of doomsaying? All the way back to Malthus who, even though he was wrong in his prediction of the planet being incapable of feeding more than a billion human beings, actually did touch upon the problem of overpopulation which is a larger threat than any of the ones subsequently dragged up by the latest crop of doomsayers. To name a few causes more worthy of attention than the current CO₂ hysteria: - Population growth. Malthus thought the planet could not feed more than 1 billion people. He was wrong, he failed to foresee the industrial revolution which makes it possible to feed 7 billion and has the potential to feed the 10 billion which is expected to be the number of humans reached before population starts to decline. - That industrial revolution has given its blessings but it also came with the curse of large-scale environmental pollution. While these problems are being tackled in some parts of the world the same can unfortunately not be said about others. - Population growth also leads to increased migration which has the potential to lead to increased conflicts which has the potential to lead to the undoing of many of the efforts currently put in the negation of the negative aspects of the industrial revolution. People at war have different priorities from those at peace. Just like with the doomsayers it makes sense to use history as a guide here. Genghis Khan (who, when seen in the percentage of the world population killed (estimates range from 5% to ~10%) still reigns supreme as the biggest killer of them all [1]) started a wave of migration which was felt all the way to the west and north of Europe with one displaced population on the move jostling for space with the next. So, what can be done about these? The population growth will, bar the intervention of any catastrophic events, probably follow the predicted curve with the total world population reaching about 10 billion people somewhere in the 2100s. It took the west more than a century to realise than unbridled industrial growth and the accompanying pollution was a recipe for disaster, hopefully the now industrialising parts of the world will have learned this lesson well so they don't continue to make the same mistakes. Migration will lead to conflicts, this is probably unavoidable. It can only be hoped that these conflicts don't escalate too far. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_E...
- ben_w 7y ago
  Every doomsayer who was right was either: 1. Listened to, or 2: part of a civilisation which no longer exists.
  - papermachete 7y ago
    Kaczynski is still alive.
- ncmncm 7y ago
  There is no reason to suppose that the mass migrations will not lead to global thermonuclear war. We are already witnessing a rise of fascism in response to the barest beginning of that migration. Fascism always ends in genocide and war.
  - Yetanfou 7y ago
    Fascism has a specific meaning and should not be abused to indicate a state form which you find disagreeable. There have not been that many true fascist states, Italy under Mussolini and Spain under Franco are examples of such, Germany under the National Socialist party was variation on a fascist state. The Soviet Union under communist rule was not a fascist state although the ideologies have many similarities, the same goes for China under communist rule and the Russian Federation under Putin's oligarchy. Those who use the term fascist to indicate states like the United Kingdom under Boris Johnson or the United States of America under Donald Trump have no idea what fascism actually means. For one, it does not mean 'resistance against immigration from non-western states'. Here's a good start on what Fascism is, the definition of the doctrine as declared by its originator, Benito Mussolini. http://www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.html http://www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.html More can be found in Britannica's article on the subject: https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism In short - and mostly from Britannica's definition, supported by Mussolini's words Fascism is characterised by an extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a 'Volksgemeinschaft' (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation. Even shorter would be 'a militaristic nationalist dictatorial ideology which subjugates the individual for the (perceived) good of the nation'. It is such a close cousin to Communism and Islamism (and other similarly structured doctrines) that this short characterisation also applies to those ideologies.

ncmncm 7y ago

Most of life will adapt. Thousands of species will go extinct, probably not including us, but including the other apes. Likely, billions will die, only a few million by nuclear incineration. Most will starve. The stragglers, probably mostly primitives plus a bunch of rich bastards, will repopulate the Earth and pick up in what is left.

Yetanfou 7y ago

Nonsense, simply put. Past climate change has been driven by all sorts of factors, from bolide impacts through volcanic eruptions to large-scale forest fires. In several cases these changes came abruptly, far more so than the change caused by human activity. Also, the previous interglacial period was warmer than the current. During the Viking age wine was being grown in Scandinavia. The Roman empire arose and thrived during a warmer period, its fall coincided with a marked cooling which only lifted at the end of the 'little ice age' - when the Thames was frozen and all those famous Dutch masters painted scenes of Dutchmen and -women skating over canals and lakes. May I suggest looking back into the rich history of doomsaying? All the way back to Malthus who, even though he was wrong in his prediction of the planet being incapable of feeding more than a billion human beings, actually did touch upon the problem of overpopulation which is a larger threat than any of the ones subsequently dragged up by the latest crop of doomsayers. To name a few causes more worthy of attention than the current CO₂ hysteria: - Population growth. Malthus thought the planet could not feed more than 1 billion people. He was wrong, he failed to foresee the industrial revolution which makes it possible to feed 7 billion and has the potential to feed the 10 billion which is expected to be the number of humans reached before population starts to decline. - That industrial revolution has given its blessings but it also came with the curse of large-scale environmental pollution. While these problems are being tackled in some parts of the world the same can unfortunately not be said about others. - Population growth also leads to increased migration which has the potential to lead to increased conflicts which has the potential to lead to the undoing of many of the efforts currently put in the negation of the negative aspects of the industrial revolution. People at war have different priorities from those at peace. Just like with the doomsayers it makes sense to use history as a guide here. Genghis Khan (who, when seen in the percentage of the world population killed (estimates range from 5% to ~10%) still reigns supreme as the biggest killer of them all [1]) started a wave of migration which was felt all the way to the west and north of Europe with one displaced population on the move jostling for space with the next. So, what can be done about these? The population growth will, bar the intervention of any catastrophic events, probably follow the predicted curve with the total world population reaching about 10 billion people somewhere in the 2100s. It took the west more than a century to realise than unbridled industrial growth and the accompanying pollution was a recipe for disaster, hopefully the now industrialising parts of the world will have learned this lesson well so they don't continue to make the same mistakes. Migration will lead to conflicts, this is probably unavoidable. It can only be hoped that these conflicts don't escalate too far. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_E...

ben_w 7y ago
Every doomsayer who was right was either: 1. Listened to, or 2: part of a civilisation which no longer exists.
- papermachete 7y ago
  Kaczynski is still alive.
ncmncm 7y ago
There is no reason to suppose that the mass migrations will not lead to global thermonuclear war. We are already witnessing a rise of fascism in response to the barest beginning of that migration. Fascism always ends in genocide and war.
- Yetanfou 7y ago
  Fascism has a specific meaning and should not be abused to indicate a state form which you find disagreeable. There have not been that many true fascist states, Italy under Mussolini and Spain under Franco are examples of such, Germany under the National Socialist party was variation on a fascist state. The Soviet Union under communist rule was not a fascist state although the ideologies have many similarities, the same goes for China under communist rule and the Russian Federation under Putin's oligarchy. Those who use the term fascist to indicate states like the United Kingdom under Boris Johnson or the United States of America under Donald Trump have no idea what fascism actually means. For one, it does not mean 'resistance against immigration from non-western states'. Here's a good start on what Fascism is, the definition of the doctrine as declared by its originator, Benito Mussolini. http://www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.html http://www.historyguide.org/europe/duce.html More can be found in Britannica's article on the subject: https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism In short - and mostly from Britannica's definition, supported by Mussolini's words Fascism is characterised by an extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy and the rule of elites, and the desire to create a 'Volksgemeinschaft' (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation. Even shorter would be 'a militaristic nationalist dictatorial ideology which subjugates the individual for the (perceived) good of the nation'. It is such a close cousin to Communism and Islamism (and other similarly structured doctrines) that this short characterisation also applies to those ideologies.