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Imagine an asteroid would be on trajectory to collide with earth in (say) 2025. Possible order of hypothetical events: 1. Scientist discover the asteroid. Cal
by linuxhansl 5y ago
Imagine an asteroid would be on trajectory to collide with earth in (say) 2025.
Possible order of hypothetical events:
1. Scientist discover the asteroid. Calculate risk of collision.
2. Asteroid comes closer, probability of impact is calculated as high.
3. People will start saying that we cannot let our economy be controlled by the specter of an asteroid.
4. The asteroid becomes visible. You can see it with your bare eyes.
5. Still people start claiming it's fake news: The scientists are lying, it's a great conspiracy, it's all just to control us all.
6. Destroying or diverting the asteroid is estimated to be so expensive that it will change our way of life.
7. Anti-Asteroid-Action demonstrations would start all over the planet, to protest any expensive actions against the asteroid.
8. News outlets will be asked to be keep the bias out of their reporting, because they would support "asteroid believers".
9. Countries will create treaties to stop the impact by 2030, or perhaps delay it to 2040.
10. Scientists report new data. Impact is certain. Models about consequences are increasingly accurate and dire.
11. These scientists are labeled as alarmists.
12. The rich countries refuse to take the financial burden, because they feel it's unfair.
13. Impact is now a few weeks away. Nothing happened. Nobody did anything.
Update: Layout and spelling.
- bishnu 5y agoI believe this is the premise of an upcoming Netflix movie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Look_Up_(2021_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don't_Look_Up_(2021_film)
- linuxhansl 5y agoCool. I'll watch that one! (Case in point that everything I have ever thought of has been thought of already by someone else. :) )
- UncleOxidant 5y agoGiven the experience of the last couple of years, I think this would be a very plausible scenario. And we'd deserve to go extinct like the dinosaurs did.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- przeor 5y agoyou can start writing your book
- gambiting 5y agoHonestly, given our track record I don't understand how we've actually managed to ban fluorocarbons globally.
- ls612 5y agoBecause unlike the cost of mitigating climate change (or covid for that matter) the global cost of switching to other chemicals was very small, on the order of single digit billions of dollars. It turns out most people don’t want to radically upend their lives for the benefit of others who knew?
- randomdata 5y agoGood marketing likely helped. A hole in the ozone layer? We had better patch it at once! Global warming? I never liked winter much anyway.
- jacquesm 5y agoBecause it was a very small problem compared to this one. On the order of a broken leg versus having to cure cancer.
- ip26 5y agoThe conspiratorial explanation is that freon was cheap to make & not patented, while new more atmosphere friendly replacements were patented. The new refrigerants were also fairly drop-in.
- gremloni 5y agoThat was a decade ago when there was no real way for the loony opposition to come together.
- ndesaulniers 5y agoIs this a pitch for a script for Idiocracy 2: Electric Bugaloo?
- yvdriess 5y agoYes, but this time they don't need time travel.
- anoplus 5y agoHuman beings are so bad at responding to intangible threats. The worried minority have no choice but to take the unpleasant role of waking up the others
- briantakita 5y agoReplace an Asteroid with a weakening Geomagnetic field due to a Geomagnetic Excursion. Geomagnetic excursions are correlated with mass extinction in the Paleotological record. This makes sense since the Geomagnetic field shields Earth from space weather & a weakened Geomagnetic field means less protection from space weather. https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018RG000629 https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2018RG00... Uh oh, we are currently going through a Geomagnetic Excursion. Why are we not doing anything about it? Why is the population at large not alerted? https://www.sciencealert.com/new-study-shows-that-earth-s-magnetic-field-is-weakening-more-rapidly-than-we-thought https://www.sciencealert.com/new-study-shows-that-earth-s-ma...
- rekwah 5y agoThis makes me of Melancholia[0] although the outcome may or may not be different (#nospoilers) [0]https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527186/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1527186/
- polote 5y agoI doubt something like that can happen actually. Global warming is less obvious risk than an asteroid and still today most of the big economies start transitioning to greener energy. Not at a fast pace, but still a lot of work is being done. It doesn't mean enough effort is being done to not destroy humankind but there are things happening
- Tarsul 5y agothe asteroid doesn't necessarily destroy the whole population of the earth.. just like climate change probably won't kill everyone.
- cthaeh 5y agoDisclaimer, I'm all for stopping climate change and think it's the biggest issue facing our generation. But nothing indicates non runaway climate change is an existential level event for humanity. Nothing. By comparing it to asteroids, and then 10, 20, 30 years in the future, when what happens is nowhere near to the complete eradication of all humans on earth that you are predicting with this comparison, why are you surprised that people don't take activists and scientists seriously. Stop with the hyperbole. Stick with the facts and only the facts and you may notice that we will have more support then ever in the fight against climate change.
- turing_complete 5y agoWhy is this comment being downvoted? Valid point.
- LargoLasskhyfv 5y agoWhat about the fact that Methane is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2? And with climbing average temperatures more and more of it will be released all over the Arctic due to thawing permafrost. Where 'Arctic' means Sibira, Alaska, Canada, not only north-pole. Some say this is a feedback loop. For some others this is an abstraction which has no concrete meaning. Why? Haven't you ever experienced an acoustic feedback loop, where the setup began to screech and howl because the microphone amplification was too strong and/or the speakers too loud? I think now is the time where we begin to hear the first upswings of that, and it will get louder and louder. Deafening. Until we pull the plug. Considering the inertia of the systems involved it's already too late. So our plug will be pulled instead, sooner or later. Except by sucking all that shit out of the air with excess electricty by whichever means, and turning it into something which makes it stay out of the air. That may make it bearable, maybe.
- Tarsul 5y agoI laughed out loud when I read that in the end the result was layout and spelling :) crisis averted!
- throwayaaaa 5y agoNobody wants to solve the technological problem of pulling carbon from the air. Carbon sequestration consumes more power than bitcoin mining ?
- slg 5y agoThe difference is that an asteroid is an existential threat to humanity while climate change is just short of that. The rich and powerful are always going to be protected from experiencing the worst aspects of climate change. They won't be the ones working outside when the air quality is dangerous from wildfires. They aren't going to be the ones who can't sleep because it is 90 degrees in their home. They won't be stuck in the path of a hurricane without anywhere to evacuate to. They won't be the ones who are left homeless and penniless due to a flood. They won't be the ones who can no longer afford the high prices of food or water. They won't be the ones fighting in wars over dwindling resources. Short of those future resource wars going nuclear, they don't really have to fear climate change the same way the rest of us do. And if their primary fear of climate change is decreased wealth, it isn't a surprise why that wouldn't be enough for them to sacrifice their current wealth.
- Diederich 5y ago> The difference is that an asteroid is an existential threat to humanity while climate change is just short of that. This is a valid point. To clarify, though, I don't think climate change is likely to make humans extinct, but I believe it has a non-trivial chance of destroying our civilization. If/when the climate gets really bad, human irrationality will go into overdrive, and we'll be a massive danger to ourselves.
- taylodl 5y agoWho knows if climate change will be an extinction event for humanity? When things get dire humanity turns to war and there's a lot of nuclear armaments at our disposal. Would it be insane to wage such warfare? Yes. But when crops are failing, cattle are dying and our civilization is undergoing extreme duress don't rule out our resorting to the insane. I think the hope is we're 50-150 years (or more) from things getting that dire and perhaps we'll have a technological solution to the problem. I hope so, but hope is not a strategy.
- Bombthecat 5y agoIt will destroy our civilization, i dont know what people expect when we hit 4 plus..
- jacquesm 5y agoWe're at 13, on a slightly longer timescale.
- flowerlad 5y agoActually there won't be any problem getting support for dealing with the asteroid. Asteroid collision is easy to understand, even for uneducated people. Political support depends on average people understanding the cause, and not needing to change behavior too much. Asteroid collision satisfies both requirements, but climate change satisfies neither.
- throwawaysea 5y agoClimate change is not an existential threat, although it is a serious problem. I suspect that while millions or even hundreds of millions may be impacted, the majority of humans will survive and adapt to it. A reduction in the population, even if forced upon us without choice, would help correct the problem. There is much debate about which humans exactly are impacted (the poor in third-world low-lying countries?) or if the ones causing the most impact will be the ones killed (from rich Western countries?), but there is some population threshold beyond which our per capita consumption levels and high standard lifestyles will come into balance with the realities of climate and the environments around us. This is different from facing a large asteroid, where one such impact can literally end all terrestrial animal life on the planet on a much shorter time scale. More on the notion that climate change is not an existential threat here, from a Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Washington: https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/08/is-global-warming-existential-threat.html https://cliffmass.blogspot.com/2019/08/is-global-warming-exi...
- foobiekr 5y agoThe challenge with this analogy is that the rich countries could unilaterally solve this asteroid problem. If that was true for global warming, I think we might have a chance, but not only isn't it true, the rich countries don't even _matter_ at this point. (Yes, they matter _per capita_ but that's a fairness discussion not a capability discussion.)
- jokoon 5y agoI don't like this analogy. You can show a picture of an asteroid, but you can't really explain the greenhouse effect to consumers and voters. It's easy to take action against an asteroid, but fighting CO2 emissions is far trickier.
- jrslv 5y agoI believe you could explain greenhouse effect to consumers and voters. The basics are elementary/highschool physics and chemistry. And there are useful analogies too. The issue is that schools in too many countries don't seem to try to explain mechanisms of climate change to pupils. > It's easy to take action against an asteroid, but fighting CO2 emissions is far trickier. Really?