7 ms·

The near universal consensus of people who study natural systems is that we’re way, way, way behind. Unfortunately the science is pretty bleak.

by gbrown 6y ago

Grimm1 6y ago
Mind providing me some of that research? I've heard this a few times but when I go looking for it nothing really pops up, it's mostly things saying we need to act now but can avoid the biggest issues.
- gbrown 6y ago
  Pick an area of science which intersects with human development and I'll find you something - the underlying truth is that we can't hope to disrupt such a huge percentage of our biosphere without nasty consequences, and we can't hope to have remediation efforts compete with the global engine of human development. We've essentially organized an entire global society around the injection of carbon into the atmosphere, while turning habitat into development at astonishing rates. To make things worse, humans are really good at adapting, so we're (by and large) comfortable while the world burns. Press releases and pop-science articles tend to try to strike a more hopeful tone, because it's extremely tiring and depressing just hearing "we're screwed" all day. I try to stay hopeful, but my faith that enough people will care soon enough is basically gone.
  - exporectomy 6y ago
    How bad are "nasty consequences" and "the world burns"? Maybe it doesn't matter if those things happen.
    - franga2000 6y ago
      I can't tell if this is a joke or not. Where do we start? Do you think running out of oil will go smoothly? We already can't stand still for 5 minutes without blowing someone up in a resource war and basically all of our resources are plentiful for now. Rising sea levels decreasing usable land. Rising temperatures destroying key organisms in the food chain. Mass deforestation is destroying the very things that allow us to breathe. How much climate change affects you is a function of your wealth and your country's wealth (cost of basic resources as well as required countermeasures are growing). Anyone who's been on the low side of one or both of those variables will tell you that it's already miserable. Imagine, if you even can, what being in a poor country will be like when all the oil is gone, food can't grow the usual way (you need either hydroponics or serious genetic modification), increasingly unstable weather destroys everything you build and everyone else is out to get you to squeeze out every last drop of resources you might have? What people with no such experience don't realize is that unlike our economic system, which funnels resources upwards, ecosystem collapse doesn't funnel them anywhere. It's just an endless pit and eventually, everyone is poor.
      - why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
        One of the greatest features of mankind is the response to disasters. When situation gets really bad, we are capable of achieving incredible things that would normally be impossible. Example: Second world war. You might argue that it was not disaster comparable to climate change, but it did turn entire world upside down, disrupting everything aspect of life of vast majority of world's population. But it also led to incredible advancements in many areas, new discoveries in all sciences, new technologies, massive changes in societies as well. So I don't see the situation as gloomy, we will survive, because we always do.
        GustafR 6y ago
        Oh ffs. Yes, "we" will survive, as in there will not be a human race extinction event, most likely. However, that's ignoring the hunger, suffering, and deaths that are coming our way. Many of "us" won't survive, and/or will have miserable lives, especially those of us who happen to be poor. As just one example of many, have a look at the potential of large regions reaching a wet-bulb-temperature above human tolerability: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/19/eaaw1838 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/19/eaaw1838 Taking an approach that "we will sort it out" ignores that the disaster is already unrolling, just too slow for most of us to notice. The longer we linger, the worse the situation, and the higher the human toll.
        why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
        Sorry, I meant it differently. What I was trying to say was that we (mankind) respond best to disasters = sudden catastrophic events, but really bad to frog-boiling ones. It would be best to do nothing and let it all reach a critical point to trigger that survival instinct, because nothing short of that will be able to force us to do anything about it, other than some weak, irrelevant attempts.
        gbrown 6y ago
        One of the worst features of humanity is that we’ve proven ourselves incapable of planning more than a few years ahead. The fact that it takes acute crises to get us to take dramatic action is the problem: climate change and biosphere collapse take a while to start affecting people (especially the global rich), and once things get bad enough for mass action it’s probably too late to save our civilization. I look at the insanity in how the US responds to small movements of people now and despair at the thought of how we’ll deal with simultaneous waves of millions of climate refugees alongside the predictable handful of domestic crises.
  - eric_cc 6y ago
    OP asked for you to provide research and yet you've entirely evaded doing so.
    - gbrown 6y ago
      I made a more specific offer which received no response, meanwhile others have posted a number of research articles in this very thread. Nothing I’ve said disagrees with the scientific consensus, so you could also just Google it rather than whining that someone on the internet isn’t holding your hand.
      - Grimm1 6y ago
        Hi OP here way too many different talking points going on in the thread, your offer went right past me. I'd love to know more about our energy generation and how that is working against our climate change goals. I know that at the start of 2020 we produced 25% of our energy from renewable in the US and that we're moving more of that percentage yearly but understand we have more to do globally among other nations. I figure that's a perfectly specific topic that if you have all this damning research that we won't get there you can just quickly drop it on me.
      - eric_cc 6y ago
        > the scientific consensus Can you prove what the scientific consensus is? What if I were claim the scientific consensus is different than what you claim it to be?
- rizzom5000 6y ago
  Maybe this isn't a big issue? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
  - overboard2 6y ago
    While it's not good, it's not that bad. A lack of biodiversity may, if taken to extremes, limit the variety of things humans have access to. However, even in that case, we should be able to rely on our wind pollinated crops (possibly with more genetic modification, if required) to feed us while we research synthetic alternatives to anything we start to loose access to.
- IgorPartola 6y ago
  Not proper research but this is as visual as it gets: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
  - Grimm1 6y ago
    And here's NASA and the general gov saying what I said in my last comment, https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/16/is-it-too-late-to-prevent-climate-change/ https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/16/is-it-too-late-to-prevent-cl... https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/can-we-slow-or-even-reverse-global-warming https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/can-we-slow... Going to need something a little stronger than xkcd here. I'm not a climate scientist but a lot of the names attached to both links seem to be and they're saying if we act decisively in the next 29 years we can avoid the worst effects, which in that second link is defined as < 1.5C change this century Edit: I also want to make it clear just in case anyone misinterprets my skepticism over the depth of the effects as skepticism in climate change or the urgency of it in general. I agree we need to do what we can to make sure things like this don't come to pass because I happen to like our somewhat diverse ecosystem and that we continue to damage it isn't great.
    - jiofih 6y ago
      The first link says we can learn to adapt to the massive changes brought about by global warming. The second link says we are unlikely to keep global warming in this century below 2.7° Fahrenheit (1.5° Celsius) which has severe consequences for the environment. I think you’re reading into their optimistic language a bit too much. Do you watch the news? Have you seen a completely ice-free North Pole earlier in January? The ice in Norway, Russia and Iceland melting completely, permanently damaging the permafrost and releasing huge amounts of methane? Might be hard to notice from your apartment but the weather is going absolutely nuts in most of the world. Insect populations down by up to 90%. These are not “feelings”.
      - Grimm1 6y ago
        "It’s true that without dramatic action in the next couple of decades..." You missed the first part of their sentence. On the flipside perhaps you're a little too much into doomsday scenarios? We've quite literally transformed the entire planet and way of living inside of 30 years since personal computation technology took off. I really don't see it as particularly farfetched that we can correct for our negative consumptive habits inside of the same timeframe, considering our rate of advance and change only accelerated within that same timeframe. I'll live out just the end of this century if I'm lucky so I'll be able to eat my words just fine if I'm wrong, but I'll bet you I'm not.
- justatdotin 6y ago
  some highly advanced extinction experiments include large-scale rainforest fragmentation, and the collapse of coral reefs, with accompanied dieback of mangroves and seagrass. These are highly significant because of their advanced progress and the anticipated downstream planetary impact.
exporectomy 6y ago
"way way behind" and "pretty bleak" are completely subjective and thus meaningless for trying to understand nature. If you can't quantify it, you're only able to think using feelings and feelings can't tell you important answers like what we should do. They can make you believe you know what we should do, but you'll be wrong because your feelings won't be accurately tuned to the reality.
- gbrown 6y ago
  Congratulations, you've discovered that I'm commenting on an internet forum rather than submitting something for publication. My assessment is based on my own reading, and on being involved in conservation efforts and trying to stay educated generally. Sorry I didn't prepare a set of bullet points for you, and instead went with an informal an easily intelligible lay summary. To the best of my knowledge, my language (while imprecise) is completely and totally uncontroversial in the scientific community.
  - exporectomy 6y ago
    It's not an easily intelligible lay summary because the meaning could be anything. It only conveys emotion, not knowledge about nature. I suppose you're being an activist trying to convert people to your religion of doom. In that case, you do need to convey emotions like fear to fool people into imagining things are unboundedly bad. Quantitative predictions put a cap on how bad it is so they're not as scary as the unknown.
    - gbrown 6y ago
      Are you seriously suggesting that every mention of a negative issue needs to be a self contained and cited polemic piece? Stop being absurd. If you want to talk specifics, make a specific objection, or at least narrow in on an issue you want to get into in more depth.
      - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
        Sometimes it's better not to respond, gbrown.
caseysoftware 6y ago
> In a word, sustainable. An advanced civilization should be able to develop.. > The near universal consensus of people who study natural systems is that we’re way, way, way behind. What other advanced civilization is our benchmark for making such an assessment?
- gbrown 6y ago
  In terms of the definition of "advanced", the question I was answering was a subjective one. I think it's appropriate to use the term "advanced" for societies that can plan for their long term futures and continue to exist in stable equilibria in a given environment. The second point isn't dependent on an external comparison.
  - caseysoftware 6y ago
    Ok, then what is the baseline for comparison aka where we are vs where we should be? If the goal/definition is concrete, then we can plan better and understand what is "enough" once we're caught up.
    - gbrown 6y ago
      I'm not sure what point you're trying to make or if you're objecting to anything in particular, but being global carbon negative seems like a good start.
      - caseysoftware 6y ago
        If you're calling for action then we need to have clear metrics, goals, and standards that we can prioritize, plan for, evaluate decisions against, and measure the results against. Thank you for adding one. Alternatively, if you're simply putting out a Vision to inspire enthusiasm or incite fear, then "we're behind" is sufficient and doesn't require anything more because at best, it's the "race to the moon" and at worst, it's the "missile gap."
        6y ago

The near universal consensus of people who study natural systems is that we’re way, way, way behind. Unfortunately the science is pretty bleak.

by gbrown 6y ago

The near universal consensus of people who study natural systems is that we’re way, way, way behind. Unfortunately the science is pretty bleak.

Grimm1 6y ago

Mind providing me some of that research? I've heard this a few times but when I go looking for it nothing really pops up, it's mostly things saying we need to act now but can avoid the biggest issues.

gbrown 6y ago
Pick an area of science which intersects with human development and I'll find you something - the underlying truth is that we can't hope to disrupt such a huge percentage of our biosphere without nasty consequences, and we can't hope to have remediation efforts compete with the global engine of human development. We've essentially organized an entire global society around the injection of carbon into the atmosphere, while turning habitat into development at astonishing rates. To make things worse, humans are really good at adapting, so we're (by and large) comfortable while the world burns. Press releases and pop-science articles tend to try to strike a more hopeful tone, because it's extremely tiring and depressing just hearing "we're screwed" all day. I try to stay hopeful, but my faith that enough people will care soon enough is basically gone.
- exporectomy 6y ago
  How bad are "nasty consequences" and "the world burns"? Maybe it doesn't matter if those things happen.
  - franga2000 6y ago
    I can't tell if this is a joke or not. Where do we start? Do you think running out of oil will go smoothly? We already can't stand still for 5 minutes without blowing someone up in a resource war and basically all of our resources are plentiful for now. Rising sea levels decreasing usable land. Rising temperatures destroying key organisms in the food chain. Mass deforestation is destroying the very things that allow us to breathe. How much climate change affects you is a function of your wealth and your country's wealth (cost of basic resources as well as required countermeasures are growing). Anyone who's been on the low side of one or both of those variables will tell you that it's already miserable. Imagine, if you even can, what being in a poor country will be like when all the oil is gone, food can't grow the usual way (you need either hydroponics or serious genetic modification), increasingly unstable weather destroys everything you build and everyone else is out to get you to squeeze out every last drop of resources you might have? What people with no such experience don't realize is that unlike our economic system, which funnels resources upwards, ecosystem collapse doesn't funnel them anywhere. It's just an endless pit and eventually, everyone is poor.
    - why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
      One of the greatest features of mankind is the response to disasters. When situation gets really bad, we are capable of achieving incredible things that would normally be impossible. Example: Second world war. You might argue that it was not disaster comparable to climate change, but it did turn entire world upside down, disrupting everything aspect of life of vast majority of world's population. But it also led to incredible advancements in many areas, new discoveries in all sciences, new technologies, massive changes in societies as well. So I don't see the situation as gloomy, we will survive, because we always do.
      - GustafR 6y ago
        Oh ffs. Yes, "we" will survive, as in there will not be a human race extinction event, most likely. However, that's ignoring the hunger, suffering, and deaths that are coming our way. Many of "us" won't survive, and/or will have miserable lives, especially those of us who happen to be poor. As just one example of many, have a look at the potential of large regions reaching a wet-bulb-temperature above human tolerability: https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/19/eaaw1838 https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/6/19/eaaw1838 Taking an approach that "we will sort it out" ignores that the disaster is already unrolling, just too slow for most of us to notice. The longer we linger, the worse the situation, and the higher the human toll.
        why_Mr_Anderson 6y ago
        Sorry, I meant it differently. What I was trying to say was that we (mankind) respond best to disasters = sudden catastrophic events, but really bad to frog-boiling ones. It would be best to do nothing and let it all reach a critical point to trigger that survival instinct, because nothing short of that will be able to force us to do anything about it, other than some weak, irrelevant attempts.
      - gbrown 6y ago
        One of the worst features of humanity is that we’ve proven ourselves incapable of planning more than a few years ahead. The fact that it takes acute crises to get us to take dramatic action is the problem: climate change and biosphere collapse take a while to start affecting people (especially the global rich), and once things get bad enough for mass action it’s probably too late to save our civilization. I look at the insanity in how the US responds to small movements of people now and despair at the thought of how we’ll deal with simultaneous waves of millions of climate refugees alongside the predictable handful of domestic crises.
- eric_cc 6y ago
  OP asked for you to provide research and yet you've entirely evaded doing so.
  - gbrown 6y ago
    I made a more specific offer which received no response, meanwhile others have posted a number of research articles in this very thread. Nothing I’ve said disagrees with the scientific consensus, so you could also just Google it rather than whining that someone on the internet isn’t holding your hand.
    - Grimm1 6y ago
      Hi OP here way too many different talking points going on in the thread, your offer went right past me. I'd love to know more about our energy generation and how that is working against our climate change goals. I know that at the start of 2020 we produced 25% of our energy from renewable in the US and that we're moving more of that percentage yearly but understand we have more to do globally among other nations. I figure that's a perfectly specific topic that if you have all this damning research that we won't get there you can just quickly drop it on me.
    - eric_cc 6y ago
      > the scientific consensus Can you prove what the scientific consensus is? What if I were claim the scientific consensus is different than what you claim it to be?
rizzom5000 6y ago
Maybe this isn't a big issue? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
- overboard2 6y ago
  While it's not good, it's not that bad. A lack of biodiversity may, if taken to extremes, limit the variety of things humans have access to. However, even in that case, we should be able to rely on our wind pollinated crops (possibly with more genetic modification, if required) to feed us while we research synthetic alternatives to anything we start to loose access to.
IgorPartola 6y ago
Not proper research but this is as visual as it gets: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- Grimm1 6y ago
  And here's NASA and the general gov saying what I said in my last comment, https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/16/is-it-too-late-to-prevent-climate-change/ https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/16/is-it-too-late-to-prevent-cl... https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/can-we-slow-or-even-reverse-global-warming https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/can-we-slow... Going to need something a little stronger than xkcd here. I'm not a climate scientist but a lot of the names attached to both links seem to be and they're saying if we act decisively in the next 29 years we can avoid the worst effects, which in that second link is defined as < 1.5C change this century Edit: I also want to make it clear just in case anyone misinterprets my skepticism over the depth of the effects as skepticism in climate change or the urgency of it in general. I agree we need to do what we can to make sure things like this don't come to pass because I happen to like our somewhat diverse ecosystem and that we continue to damage it isn't great.
  - jiofih 6y ago
    The first link says we can learn to adapt to the massive changes brought about by global warming. The second link says we are unlikely to keep global warming in this century below 2.7° Fahrenheit (1.5° Celsius) which has severe consequences for the environment. I think you’re reading into their optimistic language a bit too much. Do you watch the news? Have you seen a completely ice-free North Pole earlier in January? The ice in Norway, Russia and Iceland melting completely, permanently damaging the permafrost and releasing huge amounts of methane? Might be hard to notice from your apartment but the weather is going absolutely nuts in most of the world. Insect populations down by up to 90%. These are not “feelings”.
    - Grimm1 6y ago
      "It’s true that without dramatic action in the next couple of decades..." You missed the first part of their sentence. On the flipside perhaps you're a little too much into doomsday scenarios? We've quite literally transformed the entire planet and way of living inside of 30 years since personal computation technology took off. I really don't see it as particularly farfetched that we can correct for our negative consumptive habits inside of the same timeframe, considering our rate of advance and change only accelerated within that same timeframe. I'll live out just the end of this century if I'm lucky so I'll be able to eat my words just fine if I'm wrong, but I'll bet you I'm not.
justatdotin 6y ago
some highly advanced extinction experiments include large-scale rainforest fragmentation, and the collapse of coral reefs, with accompanied dieback of mangroves and seagrass. These are highly significant because of their advanced progress and the anticipated downstream planetary impact.

exporectomy 6y ago

"way way behind" and "pretty bleak" are completely subjective and thus meaningless for trying to understand nature. If you can't quantify it, you're only able to think using feelings and feelings can't tell you important answers like what we should do. They can make you believe you know what we should do, but you'll be wrong because your feelings won't be accurately tuned to the reality.

gbrown 6y ago
Congratulations, you've discovered that I'm commenting on an internet forum rather than submitting something for publication. My assessment is based on my own reading, and on being involved in conservation efforts and trying to stay educated generally. Sorry I didn't prepare a set of bullet points for you, and instead went with an informal an easily intelligible lay summary. To the best of my knowledge, my language (while imprecise) is completely and totally uncontroversial in the scientific community.
- exporectomy 6y ago
  It's not an easily intelligible lay summary because the meaning could be anything. It only conveys emotion, not knowledge about nature. I suppose you're being an activist trying to convert people to your religion of doom. In that case, you do need to convey emotions like fear to fool people into imagining things are unboundedly bad. Quantitative predictions put a cap on how bad it is so they're not as scary as the unknown.
  - gbrown 6y ago
    Are you seriously suggesting that every mention of a negative issue needs to be a self contained and cited polemic piece? Stop being absurd. If you want to talk specifics, make a specific objection, or at least narrow in on an issue you want to get into in more depth.
    - TedDoesntTalk 6y ago
      Sometimes it's better not to respond, gbrown.

caseysoftware 6y ago

> In a word, sustainable. An advanced civilization should be able to develop.. > The near universal consensus of people who study natural systems is that we’re way, way, way behind. What other advanced civilization is our benchmark for making such an assessment?

gbrown 6y ago
In terms of the definition of "advanced", the question I was answering was a subjective one. I think it's appropriate to use the term "advanced" for societies that can plan for their long term futures and continue to exist in stable equilibria in a given environment. The second point isn't dependent on an external comparison.
- caseysoftware 6y ago
  Ok, then what is the baseline for comparison aka where we are vs where we should be? If the goal/definition is concrete, then we can plan better and understand what is "enough" once we're caught up.
  - gbrown 6y ago
    I'm not sure what point you're trying to make or if you're objecting to anything in particular, but being global carbon negative seems like a good start.
    - caseysoftware 6y ago
      If you're calling for action then we need to have clear metrics, goals, and standards that we can prioritize, plan for, evaluate decisions against, and measure the results against. Thank you for adding one. Alternatively, if you're simply putting out a Vision to inspire enthusiasm or incite fear, then "we're behind" is sufficient and doesn't require anything more because at best, it's the "race to the moon" and at worst, it's the "missile gap."
      - 6y ago