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Are you so sure you're not yourself trapped in an irrational thinking loop? Global warming is not a civilization-ending threat. Even nuclear war is not a civil
by throwaway9278 5y ago
Are you so sure you're not yourself trapped in an irrational thinking loop?
Global warming is not a civilization-ending threat. Even nuclear war is not a civilization-ending threat, outside a few places in the Northern hemisphere. I could be wrong about both of these claims. But you could be as well, and you're taking an extremely pessimistic view based on what you know, which is not the whole picture.
- sabas123 5y agoHow are these things not a civilization ending threat? Nukes can literally kill everything and global warming, if unchecked, will probably do the same long term.
- ed_balls 5y agoEven if all nukes would go off (spread evenly) they would not kill everybody. The worst case scenario of global worming would not kill everybody. People living north of 40o will survive.
- mdoms 5y agoIn what realistic scenario would all nukes go off "spread evenly"?
- ed_balls 5y agoThere isn't one. Maximal theoretical damage (not practical) would not end civilisation.
- Zoadian 5y agoit's not the nukes itself that would kill. it's the nuklear winter. with highly reduced sunlight this planet will become a freezing hell. no plants -> no food
- hollerith 5y agoThe nuclear winter calculations by Sagan et al noticed that some fuels create more problematic smoke than other fuels. A lot of trees and wood structures would be ignited in a nuclear war, but the smoke from those fires falls out of the atmosphere relatively quickly compared to smoke from burning oil tanks, which Sagan et al said would contribute most of the cooling effect. Then Saddam lit thousands of oil wells on fire as a big fuck-you to the miltary coalition arrayed against him, more oil than would be set on fire by any nuclear war. The cooling effect was detectable, but hardly serious.
- jnxx 5y agoWe have quite some understanding that a mayor nuclear war will cause nuclear winter, by generating huge amounts of smoke at high altitudes which will block the sunlight. We also know that it causes an extinction event, since it was one of the effects of the K-t extinction event 60 million years ago. It is the one that killed the dinosaurs, and many more: A huge number of species, including almost any large land animals, dies. It is unlikely that homo sapiens would survive this time.