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That is absolutely true. However, we also risk an extinction event if we don't get carbon emissions under control, so turning a known 100 year risk into a seve
by Yoric 5y ago
That is absolutely true.
However, we also risk an extinction event if we don't get carbon emissions under control, so turning a known 100 year risk into a several thousand years possible risk feels like a good bet.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoI don't know of anyone suggesting that climate change is going to be an extinction event. Changing patterns of human settlement, and the state of human civilization? Certainly. Extinction? Doesn't seem likely right now, from everything I've read.
- isoprophlex 5y agoSo you'd rather see -- worst case -- the CO2 concentration explode and biomes altered radically, than having some local hotspots of radiation?
- lacerrr 5y agoIt's certainly going to be, and is already, an extinction event for many other species. While it's true that humans probably won't go extinct as easily, billions of lives may be lost to collapsing ecosystems. We can't feed ourselves at large scale without an ecosystem to support us. At this point, that risk is looking much, much worse than the risk carried by nuclear waste in the long term.
- ohgodplsno 5y ago>Changing patterns of human settlement. That's an awfully cynical way of saying that billions of people will be displaced and die because of lack of food, floods, that migratory crises might lead to actual live weapons getting used for first countries to "defend themselves". But sure, it's not an extinction event. Just billions of deaths over the next century and an upheaval of our society. No biggie.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoI'm not trying to downplay the scale and scope of climate change. I just prefer to use accurate terminology. If it was going to or was likely going to lead to the extinction of humanity, I'd want people to say that. Instead, it seems likely to lead to billions of people dying and billions more being displaced and a total reorganization of most nation states/cultures worldwide, along with (as noted above) significant extinction for many other species. I lived through the fear (and shared it) in the 1970s about a variety of world- and civilization-changing transformations, and while I believe that the talk of them then was largely well-intentioned, the sloppy language that was used then turned into linguistic weaponry to be used against those arguing for the much-more-likely-to-be-true climate change that we are now facing.
- Yoric 5y agoFair enough. I should probably have phrased it differently.