3 ms·

Serious questions. What is wrong with a hypothetical scenario that our children will have to move to Antarctica and northern Russia to grow corn and grapes? I m

by mudil 7y ago

Serious questions. What is wrong with a hypothetical scenario that our children will have to move to Antarctica and northern Russia to grow corn and grapes? I mean after all, people moved all the time. Civilizations collapsed in the past from lack of water where it used to be plentiful, and other natural disasters wiped out entire civilizations. And we are still here, living well, eating organic food, drinking clean water and watching Netflix. And we are living longer and better, and in the West we have more forests than a century ago. How do we even know that these naysayers are correct while those that blamed witches and proclaimed impending apocalypses were wrong?

mudil 7y ago
Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us (2004) (theguardian.com) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.t...
- mudil 7y ago
  "Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.. A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world."
  - pochamago 7y ago
    Glad that was an overzealous estimation
    - renjimen 7y ago
      Still 4 years to go! Don't speak to soon (though the Siberian climate probably not going to happen)
  - Udik 7y ago
    It's 2020, and the climate of Britain is not "Siberian" by any stretch of the imagination. Reading these lines makes my blood boil: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'" This is a report by a military complex that has waged endless wars in the last 20 years. And they're steadily working towards a new major war right now. We don't talk about that on HN, but please spare me their reports about how climate change will cause as many deaths as their willfully engineered on false pretexts wars.
Symmetry 7y ago
Because the Earth is a sphere there's a lot less land between 70 and 80 degrees latitude than between 0 and 10. Quite apart from the difficulty in moving people.
- mudil 7y ago
  That's flimsy considerations, if you ask me. Japan does well with little land. Agriculture nowadays uses way less land than it used to.
  - merpnderp 7y ago
    If the whole world used Japanese farming techniques, we could easily cut land use in half. It's quite possible to use far less land, it's just not a priority to most people to pay more for food.
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    > "Japan does well with little land. Agriculture nowadays uses way less land than it used to." Surely you are joking. Japan is not self-sufficient with respect to food; they have to import around 63% currently and it is of great concern to them, see https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/08/20/editorials/japans-falling-food-self-sufficiency/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/08/20/editorials/j... .
NeedMoreTea 7y ago
Drinking clean water, watching Netflix and utilising over 50% of the earth's entire landmass. The best, most fertile, most productive half. What are we planning on doing, digging up a trillion tonnes of the formerly fertile soil from previous areas and transporting it? I very much doubt that Antarctica and northern Russia have soils that are as amenable to agriculture after a few millennia frozen solid. Even if the area were enough, which it isn't, yields would likely plummet. Civilisations collapsed in the distant past, migrated and fell, yet there was a glut of available land everywhere. So hardly surprising here we still are -- we were nowhere near limit. Somewhere else fertile and usable could be found. Borders weren't controlled. To give a rough example, the UK currently has a population around 68,000,000. The black death in the 1350s led to the population falling from around 3m to 1-1.5m. London's population fell 60% from 120,000. I don't know the population during the Roman civilisation period, but well under a million. 200k perhaps? That's a hell of a lot more area per person, and a huge amount of scope to relocate come catastrophe. p.s. The West has more forest than a century ago because most of Europe's forest was clear cut centuries ago. What's been planted particularly in the 19th and first half of the 20th century is monoculture forestry, completely unrelated to the former temperate rain forests and other mature native forests that once thrived, long ago. It's certainly nothing to crow about.
- vraid 7y ago
  The population of roman Britain is estimated at 2-3 million at its peak. Well above the early medieval population. https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom/Roman-Britain https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom/Roman-Britai... https://books.google.se/books?id=t7KeBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT260&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.se/books?id=t7KeBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT260&redir...
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    Thanks. Have to say I'm surprised, think I have a new period of history to read up on for 2020!
  - ncmncm 7y ago
    Historical population estimates necessarily have a very large admixture of conjecture. Direction of changes, short term, are more reliable where there is information, but with long periods without information, so only rare baselines.
pink_surfer 7y ago
The problem is that we cannot comprehend how fast things can shift. I just came across this video in another thread that I think illustrates the problem very well: https://youtu.be/kZA9Hnp3aV4 https://youtu.be/kZA9Hnp3aV4 Basically, we can’t see something growing exponentially for the disaster they it will unleash until the last minute (literally) For instance, if something doubles every hour, we don’t realize there is any problem until the very last moment: one hour before, half the resources were free, and the hour before, 3/4. But two hours later, it’s 0% and we never saw it coming. The point is well illustrated in the talk, I highly recommend it.
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  The late Albert Bartlett, who debunks infinite growth so easily. If you haven't seen it I agree it's highly recommended. It should be compulsory viewing for all politicians.

by mudil 7y ago

mudil 7y ago

Now the Pentagon tells Bush: climate change will destroy us (2004) (theguardian.com) https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.t...

mudil 7y ago
"Climate change over the next 20 years could result in a global catastrophe costing millions of lives in wars and natural disasters.. A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world."
- pochamago 7y ago
  Glad that was an overzealous estimation
  - renjimen 7y ago
    Still 4 years to go! Don't speak to soon (though the Siberian climate probably not going to happen)
- Udik 7y ago
  It's 2020, and the climate of Britain is not "Siberian" by any stretch of the imagination. Reading these lines makes my blood boil: "Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'" This is a report by a military complex that has waged endless wars in the last 20 years. And they're steadily working towards a new major war right now. We don't talk about that on HN, but please spare me their reports about how climate change will cause as many deaths as their willfully engineered on false pretexts wars.

Symmetry 7y ago

Because the Earth is a sphere there's a lot less land between 70 and 80 degrees latitude than between 0 and 10. Quite apart from the difficulty in moving people.

mudil 7y ago
That's flimsy considerations, if you ask me. Japan does well with little land. Agriculture nowadays uses way less land than it used to.
- merpnderp 7y ago
  If the whole world used Japanese farming techniques, we could easily cut land use in half. It's quite possible to use far less land, it's just not a priority to most people to pay more for food.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  > "Japan does well with little land. Agriculture nowadays uses way less land than it used to." Surely you are joking. Japan is not self-sufficient with respect to food; they have to import around 63% currently and it is of great concern to them, see https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/08/20/editorials/japans-falling-food-self-sufficiency/ https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2019/08/20/editorials/j... .

NeedMoreTea 7y ago

Drinking clean water, watching Netflix and utilising over 50% of the earth's entire landmass. The best, most fertile, most productive half. What are we planning on doing, digging up a trillion tonnes of the formerly fertile soil from previous areas and transporting it? I very much doubt that Antarctica and northern Russia have soils that are as amenable to agriculture after a few millennia frozen solid. Even if the area were enough, which it isn't, yields would likely plummet. Civilisations collapsed in the distant past, migrated and fell, yet there was a glut of available land everywhere. So hardly surprising here we still are -- we were nowhere near limit. Somewhere else fertile and usable could be found. Borders weren't controlled. To give a rough example, the UK currently has a population around 68,000,000. The black death in the 1350s led to the population falling from around 3m to 1-1.5m. London's population fell 60% from 120,000. I don't know the population during the Roman civilisation period, but well under a million. 200k perhaps? That's a hell of a lot more area per person, and a huge amount of scope to relocate come catastrophe. p.s. The West has more forest than a century ago because most of Europe's forest was clear cut centuries ago. What's been planted particularly in the 19th and first half of the 20th century is monoculture forestry, completely unrelated to the former temperate rain forests and other mature native forests that once thrived, long ago. It's certainly nothing to crow about.

vraid 7y ago
The population of roman Britain is estimated at 2-3 million at its peak. Well above the early medieval population. https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom/Roman-Britain https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom/Roman-Britai... https://books.google.se/books?id=t7KeBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT260&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.se/books?id=t7KeBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT260&redir...
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  Thanks. Have to say I'm surprised, think I have a new period of history to read up on for 2020!
- ncmncm 7y ago
  Historical population estimates necessarily have a very large admixture of conjecture. Direction of changes, short term, are more reliable where there is information, but with long periods without information, so only rare baselines.

pink_surfer 7y ago

The problem is that we cannot comprehend how fast things can shift. I just came across this video in another thread that I think illustrates the problem very well: https://youtu.be/kZA9Hnp3aV4 https://youtu.be/kZA9Hnp3aV4 Basically, we can’t see something growing exponentially for the disaster they it will unleash until the last minute (literally) For instance, if something doubles every hour, we don’t realize there is any problem until the very last moment: one hour before, half the resources were free, and the hour before, 3/4. But two hours later, it’s 0% and we never saw it coming. The point is well illustrated in the talk, I highly recommend it.

NeedMoreTea 7y ago
The late Albert Bartlett, who debunks infinite growth so easily. If you haven't seen it I agree it's highly recommended. It should be compulsory viewing for all politicians.