4 ms·

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

by 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?

by gbrown 6y ago

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?