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Aside from probably being plain wrong, this sort of thinking is also a germ for boundless evil; from saying "we can lose 80% of the population..." to saying "we

• kortilla 6y ago
  FFS it’s just a simple refutation of the “human extinction” bullshit. It’s horrific enough without making shit up. There is no scientific evidence for climate change being an extinction event for humans so there is no substance backing your “probably wrong” statement.
  • jbotz 6y ago
    Of course there is no "scientific evidence" for exactly what it will take to drive humans to extinction seeing as that that's never happened yet. But some things we need to consider even if we can't "scientifically" define their probability, and many people who are quite well versed in scientific thinking don't think the probability of human extinction as a direct or indirect consequence of global warming (especially combined with other forms of environmental destruction that are also happening) is too low to bother talking about. Anyway, even if "human extinction" is unscientific, the rest of your comment is rather even less scientific than that. Let me see now... 1) "We don’t need a biosphere to live in a 5C warmer planet." What scientific evidence is there that we can survive without a biosphere (regardless of temperature for a moment)? I know! We'll do it just like the Martian colonists did it. Oh, wait! (facepalm) Or are you saying that a 5C warmer planet will making living easier, because somehow agriculture will work better when it's warmer even without the "natural" biosphere? It's a bit hard to understand what you really meant with that statement, but I'm pretty sure nobody who studies agriculture or ecology would agree with that statement any way you parse it. So: unscientific, I'm afraid. 2) "we can lose 80% of the population and barely be set back 1-2 centuries." Oh, so that's what happened last time we lost 80% of the population? Oh, wait! (facepalm again) Seriously, if you want a scientific, or at least scholarly take on that question, read Joseph Tainter's "The collapse of complex societies"... sometimes when societies collapse they settle on a lower level of complexity, but other times they just disappear. Also, there simply is no such thing as just being set back 1-2 centuries... we no longer have the technology of the 19th century and it's nowhere nearly as easy to recreate as you might think. And we no longer have the same resources; in your scenario fossil fuels would be gone, at least those that can be accessed with 19th century technology, and that 19th century technology ran on coal. Go back to wood and charcoal and you have to go back more centuries, too. 3) "massive unrest and famine due to crop shortages leading to a significant population decline" There's another problem with this... you know what usually happens when you have massive unrest and famine? Especially when some of those people who are starving happen to be heavily armed? I'll give you a hint... they don't just starve to death quietly. Again, there are quite a few illustrative examples from past civilizations in Tainter's book. Human extinction may have war as its proximate cause and still be due to global warming at the same time.