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I agree that we need to plan for climate adaptation (preparing for predictable problems) and resilience (preparing for unpredictable problems), but I have a few

I agree that we need to plan for climate adaptation (preparing for predictable problems) and resilience (preparing for unpredictable problems), but I have a few kneejerk responses: - Although it's looking increasingly unlikely that we can avert climate disaster, we can never give up. For example, 8 degrees of warming would be much worse than 4 degrees of warming, and could mean the difference between human extinction and the mere collapse of our civilization. The lives of billions hang in the balance, and even if some will inevitably suffer and die, we can't just throw up our hands and let everyone die. Climate change mitigation, cutting emissions as quickly and thoroughly as we can, must remain a priority for the rest of our lives, even if we can no longer reach the best/safest scenarios. Every little bit of avoided global heating matters. - This post, as dire as its predictions are, may underestimate the difficulty of computing in 2050, given current trends. If you are/were living in Ukraine recently, programming is not most people's top priority, they have other problems. Famines, extreme weather events, and resource wars will affect programmers who live in comfortable locations today. It's not just your users/audience who might be computing from a shitty mobile phone in a refugee camp, it could be you. Don't forget that we're not only dealing with climate change, but with the reaction of other people to climate change: they might want to kill you for your water. And heatwaves are predictable in India/Pakistan, but look at the freak heatwaves in Canada recently, nowhere on Earth is safe, the climate crisis is a global problem. - Why are we programming what we're programming? Shouldn't our activities and their purposes change given the dramatic change in circumstances? Isn't there something wrong with the system that produced this result, the impending destruction of the biosphere that supports us? Fighting valiantly to preserve the functionality that is killing the world may not be a wise or ethical use of your time. (And if you're programming something for a fossil fuel company, now is a good time to reconsider.)

mcculley 4y ago
> human extinction and the mere collapse of our civilization How do you imagine human extinction being an outcome? It seems to me that the worst case scenario is large loss of population which would decrease greenhouse gas output. There would still be some increase in temperature even once we stop emitting, but wouldn't people in colder climates still survive?
- Filligree 4y ago
  True human extinction doesn't seem plausible, but in a worst-case scenario we can imagine a > 99% drop in population, roughly to what is sustainable without technology, in a dramatically harsher world. ("Without"? Well, nobody today knows how to build a cast-iron plough.) I don't believe this scenario is likely. For one thing we're not headed for 8C of heating; for another, technological change seems to be coming just in time to head off the very worst outcomes, assuming we struggle hard enough.
  - vkou 4y ago
    > assuming we struggle hard enough. We aren't struggling at all, though. We just eased off the accelerator a little. (Assuming that our accounting is correct, and that methane leakage isn't worse than we think. [1]) [1] It's worse than we think.
    - Filligree 4y ago
      True, but... I need to retain some optimism, or I get too depressed to keep on. In this case, my optimism is that solar/wind and batteries will drop enough in price that fossil fuels become economically unfeasible. It seems possible! I just hope it isn't too little, too late.
  - skyfaller 4y ago
    We probably aren't headed for 8 degrees of heating, based on what we know today. There are a lot of "out there" scenarios that don't make it into sober, conservative scientific reports from the IPCC, because they recognize how important it is that people take their warnings seriously, and they don't want to mention anything they don't have very clear evidence for already. One of my "favorites" is the "world without clouds" scenario, which for the record, I consider unlikely, but is horrifying to imagine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/cloud-loss-could-add-8-degrees-to-global-warming-20190225/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/cloud-loss-could-add-8-degree... What we're dealing with are "unknown unknowns": what tipping points might exist that we don't know about, that might result in more warming faster than expected based on today's science? We shouldn't take those kind of existential risks.
skybrian 4y ago
I expect that people will still write software because it needed and pays well. However, the jobs that people get paid to do could become rather different. Consider what happens in a war. The people working on drones aren't just hobbyists, they're part of the war effort. Wars are not good for the environment, either. So my guess is that, if it gets really bad, these jobs will focus more on short-term needs. Are people who are really focused on preparing for heat waves and drought and flooding going to give a hoot about being carbon neutral? An overloaded hospital is going to focus on the patients, not global environmental issues.
- coldtea 4y ago
  >I expect that people will still write software because it needed and pays well. Both "it's needed" and "pays well" are the case now - not necessarily the case at that point. So they can't be used as arguments that people "will still write software" (it would be taking for granted what must be proven).
openknot 4y ago
>"- This post, as dire as its predictions are, may underestimate the difficulty of computing in 2050, given current trends. If you are/were living in Ukraine recently, programming is not most people's top priority, they have other problems. Famines, extreme weather events, and resource wars will affect programmers who live in comfortable locations today." It's true that programming was not a top priority outside of survival, though to many programmers in Ukraine, it was still a major one. This report (source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/04/ukrainians-are-built-different-the-coders-still-working-under-russian-bombing.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/04/ukrainians-are-built-differe...) from CNBC in March documents this: "Those developers, along with other Ukrainian civilians in the country, are now being forced to defend their homes and cities while sheltering from Russian bombs. But many are still continuing to remotely work for their employers, supporting the local defense effort by day while sending in their deliverables by night. “Yes our teams are sending deliverables from a f—ing parking garage in Kharkiv under heavy shelling and gunfire in the area. Amazing humans,” Logan Bender, chief financial officer at a San Francisco-based software licensing company, said in a story posted to Instagram on Tuesday by venture capital meme account PrayingforExits. " I would personally prioritize survival over work at that point, and avoid praising sending deliverables in a warzone as a moral good (over ensuring the safety of your family), but it's evidence that even in extreme conditions, people still want to program as part of their work. As for why there would be a want to program in extreme conditions, some discussions on Reddit and Slashdot in response to the article suggested that programming was a way for these workers to get their minds off their current situation.
- edgedetector 4y ago
  I recall being stuck in a closet for hours during tornado warnings multiple times throughout my life. It gets boring. Programming is a good way to pass the time.
  - agapon 4y ago
    I don't know, maybe a war is a bit different. For the first two weeks of it I could not really focus on anything work-related. Worrying whether your city gets captured by the enemy or heavily shelled, being constantly interrupted by air raid sirens, worrying how to replenish supplies, worrying about safety of your family, etc. Even after I evacuated my family further from the action, we still had missile strikes and air raid warnings. Being away from home, learning about horrible things happening in your country, those things do not help with being productive.
lelanthran 4y ago
> For example, 8 degrees of warming would be much worse than 4 degrees of warming, and could mean the difference between human extinction and the mere collapse of our civilization. I'm assuming celsius, not farenheit. I'm curious why a mere 8 degrees increase leads to human extinction. Is that "8 degrees evenly over the globe"? If so, that most certainly would leave the majority of land arable and comfortably livable. Is that "8 degrees average with such a high deviation that no land is left with a year-round range of 0 degrees to 30 degrees"? If that is the case, where can I read/view/see the model that produces such an extreme outcome?
- wiredearp 4y ago
  This guy Mark Lynas studied the models and wrote a book about it, but then he wrote it again based on newer models, so make sure to find the latest one called "Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency" for a grizzly drilldown into the centigrades towards extinction. Few models deal with warming beyond three degress, in itself a point of some consideration, but the references are all there and here's the synopsis for the book. > At one degree - the world we are already living in - vast wildfires scorch California and Australia, while monster hurricanes devastate coastal cities. At two degrees the Arctic ice cap melts away and coral reefs disappear from the tropics. At three, the world begins to run out of food, threatening millions with starvation. At four, large areas of the globe are too hot for human habitation, erasing entire nations and turning billions into climate refugees. At five, the planet is warmer than for 55 million years, while at six degrees a mass extinction of unparalleled proportions sweeps the planet, even raising the threat of the end of all life on Earth.
  - lelanthran 4y ago
    Actually I was kinda hoping for just a model or some peer reviewed conclusions. I'm just not in the mood to devote a lot of time to what sounds (to me) like hyperbole: If the earth stabilised at +8 degrees celcius I find it hard to understand why the entire earth becomes literally uninhabitable.
    - 4y ago
FargaColora 4y ago
"the difference between human extinction and the mere collapse of our civilization" Literally nobody is predicting any of those things, except propagandists and doomers. I would urge you to broaden your media intake to more mainstream sources, because it is not mentally healthy to be living a life under such falsehoods.
- krastanov 4y ago
  You misread their statement. They said "8 degrees". With 8 C increase in temperature, what they described could very much happen. We expect 4 C worst case, which is why we do not need to worry about extinction. I think they are saying that we do not need to worry about more than 4 C increase exactly because people in the past fought for the cause, and if they stopped fighting the same way today some people feel resignation and want to stop fighting, even 4 C would have been too optimistic. The fact that people in the past did not resign themselves to the status quo is why we do not need to worry about an 8 C increase.
- ivm 4y ago
  This is not true, for example, "Humans Are Doomed to Go Extinct" was published in Scientific American last year: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-doomed-to-go-extinct/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-doomed...
  - FargaColora 4y ago
    That's... one man's opinion and at the absolute extreme end of accepted science. You will find a person willing to have a view on anything if you look hard enough. If you read mainstream publications, then you will gradually form an opinion, which is that there is a climate emergency, but not that humanity will be destroyed. Climate doomerism has been a catasrophe, because it means many people have "given up", when things can actually be done. The doomer propaganda jumped off the deep end, and the mainstream media should have called them our on their absurd nonsense years ago. I notice the BBC is starting to fight back: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-61495035 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-61495035
polishdude20 4y ago
Then again, demand for fossil fuels is also part of the equation. You get a remote programming job, demand to travel by car potentially goes down. So there's potentially a net reduction in emissions.
felipeerias 4y ago
> For example, 8 degrees of warming would be much worse than 4 degrees of warming You should review where you got those figures and whether they are representative enough of current scientific consensus regarding the most likely scenarios. As fas as I know and assuming that current pledges are fulfilled, most plausible estimations tend to be around 2 or at most 3 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels (we are already well over 1°C). While it is clear that this increase in temperatures will have severe consequences, I fail to see how it would lead anywhere near the civilization collapse that you seem so confident in predicting. See for example: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04553-z.epdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04553-z.epdf ("Realization of Paris Agreement pledges may limit warming just below 2 °C", Nature)
- skyfaller 4y ago
  That's a pretty big assumption, to assume that current pledges will be fulfilled. Last I heard, it was just, like, Gambia that was on track to meet Paris Agreement pledges. https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/15/world/climate-pledges-insufficient-cat-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/15/world/climate-pledges-insuffi... None of the G20 countries are on track. The point of the Paris Agreement pledges is to prevent catastrophic global heating, so it would be great, although in my opinion inadequate, if the world community met them. Sadly, we're not heading in that direction right now.

mcculley 4y ago

> human extinction and the mere collapse of our civilization How do you imagine human extinction being an outcome? It seems to me that the worst case scenario is large loss of population which would decrease greenhouse gas output. There would still be some increase in temperature even once we stop emitting, but wouldn't people in colder climates still survive?

Filligree 4y ago
True human extinction doesn't seem plausible, but in a worst-case scenario we can imagine a > 99% drop in population, roughly to what is sustainable without technology, in a dramatically harsher world. ("Without"? Well, nobody today knows how to build a cast-iron plough.) I don't believe this scenario is likely. For one thing we're not headed for 8C of heating; for another, technological change seems to be coming just in time to head off the very worst outcomes, assuming we struggle hard enough.
- vkou 4y ago
  > assuming we struggle hard enough. We aren't struggling at all, though. We just eased off the accelerator a little. (Assuming that our accounting is correct, and that methane leakage isn't worse than we think. [1]) [1] It's worse than we think.
  - Filligree 4y ago
    True, but... I need to retain some optimism, or I get too depressed to keep on. In this case, my optimism is that solar/wind and batteries will drop enough in price that fossil fuels become economically unfeasible. It seems possible! I just hope it isn't too little, too late.
- skyfaller 4y ago
  We probably aren't headed for 8 degrees of heating, based on what we know today. There are a lot of "out there" scenarios that don't make it into sober, conservative scientific reports from the IPCC, because they recognize how important it is that people take their warnings seriously, and they don't want to mention anything they don't have very clear evidence for already. One of my "favorites" is the "world without clouds" scenario, which for the record, I consider unlikely, but is horrifying to imagine: https://www.quantamagazine.org/cloud-loss-could-add-8-degrees-to-global-warming-20190225/ https://www.quantamagazine.org/cloud-loss-could-add-8-degree... What we're dealing with are "unknown unknowns": what tipping points might exist that we don't know about, that might result in more warming faster than expected based on today's science? We shouldn't take those kind of existential risks.

skybrian 4y ago

I expect that people will still write software because it needed and pays well. However, the jobs that people get paid to do could become rather different. Consider what happens in a war. The people working on drones aren't just hobbyists, they're part of the war effort. Wars are not good for the environment, either. So my guess is that, if it gets really bad, these jobs will focus more on short-term needs. Are people who are really focused on preparing for heat waves and drought and flooding going to give a hoot about being carbon neutral? An overloaded hospital is going to focus on the patients, not global environmental issues.

coldtea 4y ago
>I expect that people will still write software because it needed and pays well. Both "it's needed" and "pays well" are the case now - not necessarily the case at that point. So they can't be used as arguments that people "will still write software" (it would be taking for granted what must be proven).

openknot 4y ago

>"- This post, as dire as its predictions are, may underestimate the difficulty of computing in 2050, given current trends. If you are/were living in Ukraine recently, programming is not most people's top priority, they have other problems. Famines, extreme weather events, and resource wars will affect programmers who live in comfortable locations today." It's true that programming was not a top priority outside of survival, though to many programmers in Ukraine, it was still a major one. This report (source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/04/ukrainians-are-built-different-the-coders-still-working-under-russian-bombing.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/04/ukrainians-are-built-differe...) from CNBC in March documents this: "Those developers, along with other Ukrainian civilians in the country, are now being forced to defend their homes and cities while sheltering from Russian bombs. But many are still continuing to remotely work for their employers, supporting the local defense effort by day while sending in their deliverables by night. “Yes our teams are sending deliverables from a f—ing parking garage in Kharkiv under heavy shelling and gunfire in the area. Amazing humans,” Logan Bender, chief financial officer at a San Francisco-based software licensing company, said in a story posted to Instagram on Tuesday by venture capital meme account PrayingforExits. " I would personally prioritize survival over work at that point, and avoid praising sending deliverables in a warzone as a moral good (over ensuring the safety of your family), but it's evidence that even in extreme conditions, people still want to program as part of their work. As for why there would be a want to program in extreme conditions, some discussions on Reddit and Slashdot in response to the article suggested that programming was a way for these workers to get their minds off their current situation.

edgedetector 4y ago
I recall being stuck in a closet for hours during tornado warnings multiple times throughout my life. It gets boring. Programming is a good way to pass the time.
- agapon 4y ago
  I don't know, maybe a war is a bit different. For the first two weeks of it I could not really focus on anything work-related. Worrying whether your city gets captured by the enemy or heavily shelled, being constantly interrupted by air raid sirens, worrying how to replenish supplies, worrying about safety of your family, etc. Even after I evacuated my family further from the action, we still had missile strikes and air raid warnings. Being away from home, learning about horrible things happening in your country, those things do not help with being productive.

lelanthran 4y ago

> For example, 8 degrees of warming would be much worse than 4 degrees of warming, and could mean the difference between human extinction and the mere collapse of our civilization. I'm assuming celsius, not farenheit. I'm curious why a mere 8 degrees increase leads to human extinction. Is that "8 degrees evenly over the globe"? If so, that most certainly would leave the majority of land arable and comfortably livable. Is that "8 degrees average with such a high deviation that no land is left with a year-round range of 0 degrees to 30 degrees"? If that is the case, where can I read/view/see the model that produces such an extreme outcome?

wiredearp 4y ago
This guy Mark Lynas studied the models and wrote a book about it, but then he wrote it again based on newer models, so make sure to find the latest one called "Our Final Warning: Six Degrees of Climate Emergency" for a grizzly drilldown into the centigrades towards extinction. Few models deal with warming beyond three degress, in itself a point of some consideration, but the references are all there and here's the synopsis for the book. > At one degree - the world we are already living in - vast wildfires scorch California and Australia, while monster hurricanes devastate coastal cities. At two degrees the Arctic ice cap melts away and coral reefs disappear from the tropics. At three, the world begins to run out of food, threatening millions with starvation. At four, large areas of the globe are too hot for human habitation, erasing entire nations and turning billions into climate refugees. At five, the planet is warmer than for 55 million years, while at six degrees a mass extinction of unparalleled proportions sweeps the planet, even raising the threat of the end of all life on Earth.
- lelanthran 4y ago
  Actually I was kinda hoping for just a model or some peer reviewed conclusions. I'm just not in the mood to devote a lot of time to what sounds (to me) like hyperbole: If the earth stabilised at +8 degrees celcius I find it hard to understand why the entire earth becomes literally uninhabitable.
  - 4y ago

FargaColora 4y ago

"the difference between human extinction and the mere collapse of our civilization" Literally nobody is predicting any of those things, except propagandists and doomers. I would urge you to broaden your media intake to more mainstream sources, because it is not mentally healthy to be living a life under such falsehoods.

krastanov 4y ago
You misread their statement. They said "8 degrees". With 8 C increase in temperature, what they described could very much happen. We expect 4 C worst case, which is why we do not need to worry about extinction. I think they are saying that we do not need to worry about more than 4 C increase exactly because people in the past fought for the cause, and if they stopped fighting the same way today some people feel resignation and want to stop fighting, even 4 C would have been too optimistic. The fact that people in the past did not resign themselves to the status quo is why we do not need to worry about an 8 C increase.
ivm 4y ago
This is not true, for example, "Humans Are Doomed to Go Extinct" was published in Scientific American last year: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-doomed-to-go-extinct/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humans-are-doomed...
- FargaColora 4y ago
  That's... one man's opinion and at the absolute extreme end of accepted science. You will find a person willing to have a view on anything if you look hard enough. If you read mainstream publications, then you will gradually form an opinion, which is that there is a climate emergency, but not that humanity will be destroyed. Climate doomerism has been a catasrophe, because it means many people have "given up", when things can actually be done. The doomer propaganda jumped off the deep end, and the mainstream media should have called them our on their absurd nonsense years ago. I notice the BBC is starting to fight back: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-61495035 https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-61495035

polishdude20 4y ago

Then again, demand for fossil fuels is also part of the equation. You get a remote programming job, demand to travel by car potentially goes down. So there's potentially a net reduction in emissions.

felipeerias 4y ago

> For example, 8 degrees of warming would be much worse than 4 degrees of warming You should review where you got those figures and whether they are representative enough of current scientific consensus regarding the most likely scenarios. As fas as I know and assuming that current pledges are fulfilled, most plausible estimations tend to be around 2 or at most 3 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels (we are already well over 1°C). While it is clear that this increase in temperatures will have severe consequences, I fail to see how it would lead anywhere near the civilization collapse that you seem so confident in predicting. See for example: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04553-z.epdf https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-04553-z.epdf ("Realization of Paris Agreement pledges may limit warming just below 2 °C", Nature)

skyfaller 4y ago
That's a pretty big assumption, to assume that current pledges will be fulfilled. Last I heard, it was just, like, Gambia that was on track to meet Paris Agreement pledges. https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/15/world/climate-pledges-insufficient-cat-intl/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/09/15/world/climate-pledges-insuffi... None of the G20 countries are on track. The point of the Paris Agreement pledges is to prevent catastrophic global heating, so it would be great, although in my opinion inadequate, if the world community met them. Sadly, we're not heading in that direction right now.