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We already are officially inevitably fucked. If you corner a climate scientist in private and point out the real implications of their work, they might even ad

We already are officially inevitably fucked. If you corner a climate scientist in private and point out the real implications of their work, they might even admit it. The problem is you can't admit that we're officially inevitably fucked in public. If you did that, funding for climate science and climate mitigation would dry up, because there's nothing we can realistically do about it. Trust in governments would evaporate - the purpose of a government is to keep us all safe, but if we're all fucked anyway, it'll quickly become every man for themselves. Currency would lose its value, because it assumes that there will be a future better than the present where you might want to buy things. So everybody has an incentive to parrot the "Things are looking bad, we have a serious problem, but if we all band together and lower our emissions we can solve it!" line.

earthscienceman 4y ago
I am a climate scientist that studies Greenland, can confirm: we're (not-even-inevitably but currently) fucked.
- travisporter 4y ago
  But it can get worse right? I mean before we become Venus
- patrickdavey 4y ago
  So, what's your plan?
  - earthscienceman 4y ago
    This is an interesting and open question. But I need you to be slightly more specific. In my research? For my personal life? For the global economy?
    - CadmiumYellow 4y ago
      I'm most curious about your personal life!
    - patrickdavey 4y ago
      For your personal life mainly. I guess I'm most curious about whether you're planning on where you're living etc in the context of various forms of climate breakdown. I'm also curious how many personal changes you've made (flying less, vegetarian) when it seems like we need massive government intervention to move the needle. Thanks for replying!
- wing-_-nuts 4y ago
  What are you doing in your personal life? I've strongly considered moving to the great lakes region, but most likely caring for my parents will keep me in the south east.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Timon3 4y ago
It's not quite this binary. Yes, we're fucked. But the less we do, the worse we're fucked. It's better to have a glimmer of hope and use that to unfuck what you can.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- nostrademons 4y ago
  That's true but also risks misallocating resources to efforts that won't make a big difference now when we should be focusing on mitigation rather than avoidance. If we had taken Al Gore's warnings in the 80s and began an aggressive push to move off of fossil fuels then, we could perhaps have avoided the whole climate change problem. We didn't, and we can't now. Instead, the rational approach is to accept that the climate will change, there will be consequences of this, and then do our best to avoid the worst effects of the consequences. That includes: We should be building seawalls and flood barriers around major low-lying areas. Every major city should have an evacuation plan for how to get everyone out in a natural disaster. If the road capacity for this doesn't exist, we should build it. We need systems in place to deal with mass migration. We need housing tech, ways to quickly build housing in new locations because the population is soon going to be forced to move to new locations. We should be researching ways to add back the seed diversity that we've extinguished over the past 60 years, because major agricultural staples are soon going to be out of their climate windows. We need local renewable energy - the biggest benefit of renewables isn't going to be reducing carbon emissions (it's too late for that), it's divorcing ourselves from global energy supply chains that are going to get increasingly unreliable. My wife works in climate investing, which was a sleepy backwater when she started 12 years ago but now is the hot field to be. There's billions of dollars in capital chasing hare-brained carbon capture schemes that have basically 0% chance of working. That capital should instead go into mitigation efforts, programs that accept that we're fucked but try to avoid the worst effects of that. But if anything, government policy is going the opposite way - we're making it harder to migrate, refusing to build housing or transportation infrastructure, telling people they're on their own when a hurricane hits, and centralizing seed ownership under Monsanto.
phpisthebest 4y ago
>> Trust in governments would evaporate I am unclear why anyone ever trusted government or believed government would be the avenue for resolution of this problem You either understand history, or you trust government, you can not both understand history and trust government.. The second people put their trust in government was the second humanity was fucked. In the best of time Government is like fire, is a troublesome servant and a terrible master. >the purpose of a government is to keep us all safe When has that ever been the case... The purpose for government is to provide a framework for non-violent dispute resolution, and to safe guard natural rights and property), and maybe form a national defense force. Not to provide individual safety and security. >>Currency would lose its value, because it assumes that there will be a future better than the present where you might want to buy things. No fiat currency actually needs the future to look worse than today to encourage spending today and discourage saving for tomorrow. This is why fiat currency required inflation, and why deflation is feared above all else with fiat currency. You have to have spending today, you have to have people spending in multiples of what they really have in currency (i.e debt spending) and you have to have that in perpetuity. In short, Fiat Currency is a legal pozi scheme that is destined to fail at some point anyway....
- brewdad 4y ago
  > The purpose for government is to provide a framework for non-violent dispute resolution, and to safe guard natural rights and property), and maybe form a national defense force. Not to provide individual safety and security. Providing for national defense, non-violent dispute resolution, and protecting natural rights and property sounds an awful lot like "keeping us all safe". I'm not sure what else you think that could mean.
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    Well in the context of this conversation it seems to be extended to solving climate change, and in other context it extends to personal defense (i.e the belief the police are a individual protection force) or to provide services like School, healthcare, etc etc etc...
nickpp 4y ago
> there's nothing we can realistically do about it There is something we can do about it: we can keep improving, evolving, getting better. The solution will only be found in the future, with tools maybe outside of our grasp today. Nothing is inevitable, until it happened. Till then, you and every other pessimist cand still be proven wrong. My money is on the creativity and ingenuity of the race that started in the trees, went to the moon and is currently birthing an even greater intelligence.
akira2501 4y ago
> We already are officially inevitably fucked. Well.. the second law of the thermodynamics guarantees that. > The problem is you can't admit that we're officially inevitably fucked in public. I see several people attempting to start a career off of just that, some of them are quite successful, even. It helps if you add a lot of theocratic and pseudo-religious ideology into your message. People need _something_ to latch on to after all. > because there's nothing we can realistically do about it. We are a dynamic species. My proposition is we are currently living through a sort of "modern dark ages." Government imposition and corporate monopolization are at all time highs, to the extent that most new wealth is captured and not used to create new technologies and to progress the species. This is an artificial situation and it is not sustainable. If you let this cloud your judgement of what is possible you may arrive at this position and feel it is logical. I suggest to you that it is actually a form of insanity or odd religious fervor to actually believe this. Perhaps, in afterthought, more generously it's a desire to not lose any current level of comfort that you enjoy while "realistically" being able to solve the problem. A solution to this problem will obviously require drastic and hopefully generally positive change, something we've been known to do sporadically many times before.

earthscienceman 4y ago

I am a climate scientist that studies Greenland, can confirm: we're (not-even-inevitably but currently) fucked.

travisporter 4y ago
But it can get worse right? I mean before we become Venus
patrickdavey 4y ago
So, what's your plan?
- earthscienceman 4y ago
  This is an interesting and open question. But I need you to be slightly more specific. In my research? For my personal life? For the global economy?
  - CadmiumYellow 4y ago
    I'm most curious about your personal life!
  - patrickdavey 4y ago
    For your personal life mainly. I guess I'm most curious about whether you're planning on where you're living etc in the context of various forms of climate breakdown. I'm also curious how many personal changes you've made (flying less, vegetarian) when it seems like we need massive government intervention to move the needle. Thanks for replying!
wing-_-nuts 4y ago
What are you doing in your personal life? I've strongly considered moving to the great lakes region, but most likely caring for my parents will keep me in the south east.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Timon3 4y ago

It's not quite this binary. Yes, we're fucked. But the less we do, the worse we're fucked. It's better to have a glimmer of hope and use that to unfuck what you can.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
nostrademons 4y ago
That's true but also risks misallocating resources to efforts that won't make a big difference now when we should be focusing on mitigation rather than avoidance. If we had taken Al Gore's warnings in the 80s and began an aggressive push to move off of fossil fuels then, we could perhaps have avoided the whole climate change problem. We didn't, and we can't now. Instead, the rational approach is to accept that the climate will change, there will be consequences of this, and then do our best to avoid the worst effects of the consequences. That includes: We should be building seawalls and flood barriers around major low-lying areas. Every major city should have an evacuation plan for how to get everyone out in a natural disaster. If the road capacity for this doesn't exist, we should build it. We need systems in place to deal with mass migration. We need housing tech, ways to quickly build housing in new locations because the population is soon going to be forced to move to new locations. We should be researching ways to add back the seed diversity that we've extinguished over the past 60 years, because major agricultural staples are soon going to be out of their climate windows. We need local renewable energy - the biggest benefit of renewables isn't going to be reducing carbon emissions (it's too late for that), it's divorcing ourselves from global energy supply chains that are going to get increasingly unreliable. My wife works in climate investing, which was a sleepy backwater when she started 12 years ago but now is the hot field to be. There's billions of dollars in capital chasing hare-brained carbon capture schemes that have basically 0% chance of working. That capital should instead go into mitigation efforts, programs that accept that we're fucked but try to avoid the worst effects of that. But if anything, government policy is going the opposite way - we're making it harder to migrate, refusing to build housing or transportation infrastructure, telling people they're on their own when a hurricane hits, and centralizing seed ownership under Monsanto.

phpisthebest 4y ago

>> Trust in governments would evaporate I am unclear why anyone ever trusted government or believed government would be the avenue for resolution of this problem You either understand history, or you trust government, you can not both understand history and trust government.. The second people put their trust in government was the second humanity was fucked. In the best of time Government is like fire, is a troublesome servant and a terrible master. >the purpose of a government is to keep us all safe When has that ever been the case... The purpose for government is to provide a framework for non-violent dispute resolution, and to safe guard natural rights and property), and maybe form a national defense force. Not to provide individual safety and security. >>Currency would lose its value, because it assumes that there will be a future better than the present where you might want to buy things. No fiat currency actually needs the future to look worse than today to encourage spending today and discourage saving for tomorrow. This is why fiat currency required inflation, and why deflation is feared above all else with fiat currency. You have to have spending today, you have to have people spending in multiples of what they really have in currency (i.e debt spending) and you have to have that in perpetuity. In short, Fiat Currency is a legal pozi scheme that is destined to fail at some point anyway....

brewdad 4y ago
> The purpose for government is to provide a framework for non-violent dispute resolution, and to safe guard natural rights and property), and maybe form a national defense force. Not to provide individual safety and security. Providing for national defense, non-violent dispute resolution, and protecting natural rights and property sounds an awful lot like "keeping us all safe". I'm not sure what else you think that could mean.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  Well in the context of this conversation it seems to be extended to solving climate change, and in other context it extends to personal defense (i.e the belief the police are a individual protection force) or to provide services like School, healthcare, etc etc etc...

nickpp 4y ago

> there's nothing we can realistically do about it There is something we can do about it: we can keep improving, evolving, getting better. The solution will only be found in the future, with tools maybe outside of our grasp today. Nothing is inevitable, until it happened. Till then, you and every other pessimist cand still be proven wrong. My money is on the creativity and ingenuity of the race that started in the trees, went to the moon and is currently birthing an even greater intelligence.

akira2501 4y ago

> We already are officially inevitably fucked. Well.. the second law of the thermodynamics guarantees that. > The problem is you can't admit that we're officially inevitably fucked in public. I see several people attempting to start a career off of just that, some of them are quite successful, even. It helps if you add a lot of theocratic and pseudo-religious ideology into your message. People need _something_ to latch on to after all. > because there's nothing we can realistically do about it. We are a dynamic species. My proposition is we are currently living through a sort of "modern dark ages." Government imposition and corporate monopolization are at all time highs, to the extent that most new wealth is captured and not used to create new technologies and to progress the species. This is an artificial situation and it is not sustainable. If you let this cloud your judgement of what is possible you may arrive at this position and feel it is logical. I suggest to you that it is actually a form of insanity or odd religious fervor to actually believe this. Perhaps, in afterthought, more generously it's a desire to not lose any current level of comfort that you enjoy while "realistically" being able to solve the problem. A solution to this problem will obviously require drastic and hopefully generally positive change, something we've been known to do sporadically many times before.