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Better than being headed into a new medieval era because climate change caused civilization to collapse.
by adrianN 5y ago
Better than being headed into a new medieval era because climate change caused civilization to collapse.
- baggy_trough 5y agoHysterical nonsense.
- klyrs 5y agoHow many of your assumptions about food logistics do you expect to survive the collapse of the gulf stream?
- kybernetyk 5y agoI’ve seen that movie.
- baggy_trough 5y agoYou honestly believe that we will return to a medieval era if the gulf stream is disrupted?
- klyrs 5y agoThe gulf stream is predicted to collapse in about 40 years. You won't catch me making strong predictions about what happens that far in the future, but the gulf stream is responsible for keeping North America's farm belt temperate, aka, farmable. The North is expected to cool dramatically, and closer to the equator is expected to warm dramatically -- perhaps inhospitably so. Additionally, the oxygen levels in the ocean may deplete to produce mass extinction in another major food source. I'm not sure what all is implied by "medieval era" to you, but all together, it looks pretty damned bleak. Evolution doesn't turn on a dime, but the weather might.
- baggy_trough 5y ago"Medieval era" implies a regression to subsistence farming and the end of today's technological civilization. Even a severe disruption to food production would result in substitution of foods, not a destruction of civilization.
- quotemstr 5y agoThere is no universe where climate change causes the literal collapse of civilization. Exaggerating the risks of something just destroys the credibility of the people doing the exaggerating: consider DARE and drugs.
- enraged_camel 5y ago>> There is no universe where climate change causes the literal collapse of civilization. The confidence of this statement reeks of arrogance. How can you even claim to know what the potential impacts of climate change do not include? It's not like modern humans have lived in any era that was remotely similar.
- fighterpilot 5y agoIf it indirectly triggers nuclear war, it's plausible. Even just India vs Pakistan will lead to about a billion starvation deaths due to crop failures around the world as an externality. We were close to nuclear war in the 20th century despite no exogenous disturbances. What do you think will happen when there's mass migration and other stresses on the global order?
- TedDoesntTalk 5y ago> mass migration In case you’re wondering why he claims global warming will lead to mass migration, it is because the millions of miles of coastlines will change.
- dillondoyle 5y agoAnd even more land that becomes too hot, too dry, or not sustainable local sustenance
- GhettoComputers 5y agoFlorida has already so unsustainable that only the US government will insure the structures and buildings. The Netherlands and Venice are also another artificial human livable area. Frozen regions of the world will become habitable so livable landmass will actually increase in northern tundras.
- voldacar 5y agoI will not eat the bugs.
- adamnemecek 5y agoThere are plenty of alternatives.
- donw 5y agoWhat’s your stance on the pod?
- voldacar 5y agonot a fan
- kybernetyk 5y agoYou will eat the bugs and you will love it.
- adrianN 5y agoI prefer legumes as sources of protein myself as well.
- mrjangles 5y agoClimate change already caused civilization to collapse 20 years ago according to this article published in 1990: https://apnews.com/article/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 https://apnews.com/article/bd45c372caf118ec99964ea547880cd0 >" UNITED NATIONS (AP) _ A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ″eco- refugees,′ ′ threatening political chaos, said Noel Brown, director of the New York office of the U.N. Environment Program, or UNEP. He said governments have a 10-year window of opportunity to solve the greenhouse effect before it goes beyond human control...Coastal regions will be inundated; one-sixth of Bangladesh could be flooded, displacing a fourth of its 90 million people. A fifth of Egypt’s arable land in the Nile Delta would be flooded...UNEP is working toward forming a scientific plan of action by the end of 1990, and the adoption of a global climate treaty by 1992...
- voldacar 5y agoI sometimes wonder where we would be without the UN. Such luminaries.
- adrianN 5y agoYou misread the article. Climate change will cause those problems, but not by the year 2000. Carbon emissions have very long term effects that are hard to reverse. Twenty years ago we had already emitted enough CO2 to cause dramatic changes over the next couple of generations. That's why all IPCC scenarios with tolerable warming nowadays include magical atmospheric carbon scrubbing technology.
- jlmorton 5y agoIt really shouldn't be necessary to link to this on Hacker News, but Snopes [1] does a good job putting this article into context. 1. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nations-vanish-global-warming/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/nations-vanish-global-warm...
- abraae 5y agoThat quote doesn't support your hot take at all. > if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000 The trend was not reversed, so now we wait to see if the prediction comes true. Given the low lying geography of some nations (esp pacific islands) I would bet money that this does indeed come true in the future. Nowhere in the quote does it say, as you claim, that civilization would collapse in 2000.
- kybernetyk 5y agoSorry, can’t hear you over the sounds of the ice age they prophesied in the 1970s.
- adrianN 5y agoGlobal cooling was never a majority opinion among climate scientists. It existed almost exclusively in popsci magazines.
- wumpus 5y agoGlobal cooling was a specific reference to cooling caused by particles emitted in areas with no air pollution laws. Oddly enough, it faded away when standards were raised.
- hncurious 5y agoRevealed preferences don't match that rhetoric. - People are not migrating North in droves. They are not preparing in any way. - Nuclear energy, the only realistic solution to climate change, is not being supported. It's actually being retired early in many cases and replaced with coal of all things. - Property prices on the coastline are going up. President Obama, who has access to the best information and experts, bought a huge property on the Martha's Vineyard coast in 2019. - There is little to no push to improve the water supply in preparation for droughts, not even in California.
- adrianN 5y agoPeople don't act rationally, that should come as a surprise to no one. Look at the number of people who are overweight, sedentary and/or smoke even though they don't want to die of cancer or heart disease.
- wumpus 5y agoAlternately, you could consider all of the people who don't think nuclear is the solution to climate change. Are they irrational?
- adrianN 5y agoProbably they are. Although I'm not convinced that nuclear is the cheapest solution to climate change.
- wumpus 5y agoCool. I wonder how you think calling people names advances a civil discussion? Good that you're open-minded on the topic.
- adrianN 5y agoI think that people don't act rationally outside of theories taught in Economics 101 classrooms is commonly known. I don't mean it in a derogatory way, being irrational is just part of human nature.
- legulere 5y agoI heard the argument, that one reason of the Syrian war is how agriculture becomes less and less possible there. So we already see direct effects on society from climate change.
- GhettoComputers 5y agoMany other countries don't produce their own food and don't have that issue, it is a small reason that I have never heard of as a factor, do you have information on its impact on the current situation?