3 ms·

I've followed the literature on this at a layperson's level (science feeds, etc). I haven't been seeing any work that disputes the fact that limits are being br

I've followed the literature on this at a layperson's level (science feeds, etc). I haven't been seeing any work that disputes the fact that limits are being breached right now. Ecosystems all over the planet are dying, and many planetary systems (notably the climate) are shifting into unstable patterns. As far as I've seen, there absolutely is broad agreement among scientists about the physical reality at play. But (as usual) soft-headed business and political people ignore what they can't face.

prottog 3y ago
Malthus in the 1800s and Ehrlich in the 60s (and continuing thereafter), both renowned scholars of their times, also thought that limits were being breached right then. The latter thought the crisis was so urgent that he advocated for policies like coercive population control and stopping American aid to "hopeless" countries like India, whose population was growing at a tremendous rate. As recently as a few years ago, Ehrlich stated that a collapse of civilization is a "near certainty" in the coming decades; never mind the fact that had any of the predictions in his 1968 book come true, there might be only half as many humans now as there actually are. Has humanity's scientific prowess improved so much since then that today's predictions are that much more accurate? Perhaps, but considering that we haven't put another man on the moon since then, maybe not. There's a growing problem in science of fake papers[0] due to the "publish or perish" nature of academia; it points to at least some level of incentive for there to be "a broad agreement among scientists" about the state of things, for career and funding purposes if nothing else. In the meantime, the "physical reality at play" is such that the number of deaths worldwide from climate-related disasters today is about one-third that of 50 years ago. That's not one-third of the rate; that's one-third in absolute number of deaths, despite the human population having literally doubled over that time. We can attribute this to a higher capacity for developing countries to deal with disasters due to their growing material wealth. As usual, high-minded visionaries never let a crisis go to waste. Remember that Al Gore's Nashville house uses about 200k kWh a year (about 20x the average American house); Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry routinely flies aboard his own private jet; and Martha's Vineyard, supposedly being literally eaten away today[2], is home to the Obamas' 30-acre, 11-and-three-quarter-million-dollar property. [0]: https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-scientific-papers-are-alarmingly-common https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-scientific-pape... [1]: https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/weather-related-disasters-increase-over-past-50-years-causing-more-damage-fewer https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/weather-relate... [2]: https://apnews.com/article/business-climate-environment-and-nature-climate-change-7f95efdc760622e19732b8e910907c22 https://apnews.com/article/business-climate-environment-and-...
- crispinb 3y ago
  "But Malthus!" might be persuasive to people unfamiliar with science and/or history, but (being neither), it just makes me sigh. Another pointless repeated diversionary trope. And as for Gore - your weird obsession with celebrities illuminates nothing. Not a single person (I mean that quite literally) familiar with the actual, hands-on, empirical work going on in the field by tens of thousands of real scientists in thousands of research institutions private and public alike in a couple of hundred nations covering every ecosystem on the planet is in doubt that the living world is in deep peril. Neither is anyone who has ever lived for any period outside of a well-protected urban area. My region has been swept with an unprecedented sequence of floods and fires over the last few years. Two almost total destructions by flood in 2022 alone. We will never again have permanent road & telecoms infrastructure (it is routinely destroyed). And that's just the most obvious surface. Anyone familiar with the flora, fauna, and water systems here knows that the ecosystems are in an advanced state of collapse. That's repeated over almost the entirety of the globe. Forget historical culture wars. Just survey contemporary, real-world, empirical science. I'm not going to cherry-pick a few irrelevant links from a google scurry like you have done. You need to do a bit of homework. You just look daft without it. Get over your fear and have a good, clear-sighted look at reality. You'll probably feel better.
  - panarchy 3y ago
    Yeah, but hear me out, what if we just happen to invent a more efficient Haber process maybe it will require negative energy input! Or invent some magic super cure that will re-stabilize the declining ecosystems and restore all the things we don't like to think about, like soil health. It's going to come any day now and we should just ignore the possibility that it might not, because that would be personally inconvenient! There's no chances for another dust bowl with increasing temperatures and food demands. You must be a communist that wants to destroy people's quality of life! You couldn't possibly just want the de-growth of wasteful production to a circular and more sustainable economy; you must just want to destroy the economy itself!! You hate poor countries maybe you should try living in one so I can keep burning 20 liters of gasoline to get to work every day. It can't be that you want to make the QoL more equal for everyone on the globe. Plus we can just kill the majority of life on Earth, we'll just genetically modify replacements anyway, it can't be that hard, we're HUMANS and HISTORY shows us that we'll be fine from all the other times where we were at about >40% land use for agriculture and facing melting icecaps! My friend loves to ride their motorcycle without a helmet, it hasn't hurt them yet. (what do you mean "survivorship bias?") Besides everything that has spent million of years evolving into its niche will be able to adapt in the next ~100 years so as to not break the ecosystem it exists in. /s if you couldn't tell

prottog 3y ago

Malthus in the 1800s and Ehrlich in the 60s (and continuing thereafter), both renowned scholars of their times, also thought that limits were being breached right then. The latter thought the crisis was so urgent that he advocated for policies like coercive population control and stopping American aid to "hopeless" countries like India, whose population was growing at a tremendous rate. As recently as a few years ago, Ehrlich stated that a collapse of civilization is a "near certainty" in the coming decades; never mind the fact that had any of the predictions in his 1968 book come true, there might be only half as many humans now as there actually are. Has humanity's scientific prowess improved so much since then that today's predictions are that much more accurate? Perhaps, but considering that we haven't put another man on the moon since then, maybe not. There's a growing problem in science of fake papers[0] due to the "publish or perish" nature of academia; it points to at least some level of incentive for there to be "a broad agreement among scientists" about the state of things, for career and funding purposes if nothing else. In the meantime, the "physical reality at play" is such that the number of deaths worldwide from climate-related disasters today is about one-third that of 50 years ago. That's not one-third of the rate; that's one-third in absolute number of deaths, despite the human population having literally doubled over that time. We can attribute this to a higher capacity for developing countries to deal with disasters due to their growing material wealth. As usual, high-minded visionaries never let a crisis go to waste. Remember that Al Gore's Nashville house uses about 200k kWh a year (about 20x the average American house); Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry routinely flies aboard his own private jet; and Martha's Vineyard, supposedly being literally eaten away today[2], is home to the Obamas' 30-acre, 11-and-three-quarter-million-dollar property. [0]: https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-scientific-papers-are-alarmingly-common https://www.science.org/content/article/fake-scientific-pape... [1]: https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/weather-related-disasters-increase-over-past-50-years-causing-more-damage-fewer https://public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/weather-relate... [2]: https://apnews.com/article/business-climate-environment-and-nature-climate-change-7f95efdc760622e19732b8e910907c22 https://apnews.com/article/business-climate-environment-and-...

crispinb 3y ago
"But Malthus!" might be persuasive to people unfamiliar with science and/or history, but (being neither), it just makes me sigh. Another pointless repeated diversionary trope. And as for Gore - your weird obsession with celebrities illuminates nothing. Not a single person (I mean that quite literally) familiar with the actual, hands-on, empirical work going on in the field by tens of thousands of real scientists in thousands of research institutions private and public alike in a couple of hundred nations covering every ecosystem on the planet is in doubt that the living world is in deep peril. Neither is anyone who has ever lived for any period outside of a well-protected urban area. My region has been swept with an unprecedented sequence of floods and fires over the last few years. Two almost total destructions by flood in 2022 alone. We will never again have permanent road & telecoms infrastructure (it is routinely destroyed). And that's just the most obvious surface. Anyone familiar with the flora, fauna, and water systems here knows that the ecosystems are in an advanced state of collapse. That's repeated over almost the entirety of the globe. Forget historical culture wars. Just survey contemporary, real-world, empirical science. I'm not going to cherry-pick a few irrelevant links from a google scurry like you have done. You need to do a bit of homework. You just look daft without it. Get over your fear and have a good, clear-sighted look at reality. You'll probably feel better.
- panarchy 3y ago
  Yeah, but hear me out, what if we just happen to invent a more efficient Haber process maybe it will require negative energy input! Or invent some magic super cure that will re-stabilize the declining ecosystems and restore all the things we don't like to think about, like soil health. It's going to come any day now and we should just ignore the possibility that it might not, because that would be personally inconvenient! There's no chances for another dust bowl with increasing temperatures and food demands. You must be a communist that wants to destroy people's quality of life! You couldn't possibly just want the de-growth of wasteful production to a circular and more sustainable economy; you must just want to destroy the economy itself!! You hate poor countries maybe you should try living in one so I can keep burning 20 liters of gasoline to get to work every day. It can't be that you want to make the QoL more equal for everyone on the globe. Plus we can just kill the majority of life on Earth, we'll just genetically modify replacements anyway, it can't be that hard, we're HUMANS and HISTORY shows us that we'll be fine from all the other times where we were at about >40% land use for agriculture and facing melting icecaps! My friend loves to ride their motorcycle without a helmet, it hasn't hurt them yet. (what do you mean "survivorship bias?") Besides everything that has spent million of years evolving into its niche will be able to adapt in the next ~100 years so as to not break the ecosystem it exists in. /s if you couldn't tell