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We live in absolute best time in human history to expect your kids to have a good life. Climate change is tiny compared to the technical and medical revolutions

by cm2012 3y ago

We live in absolute best time in human history to expect your kids to have a good life. Climate change is tiny compared to the technical and medical revolutions humanity has experienced.

notahacker 3y ago
A lot of the technical and medical revolutions have meant you can focus on the one kid having a good life rather than needing another five to be confident enough of them will be around to providing for you in later life...
- slackfan 3y ago
  Single points of failure lead to inherently unstable systems.
  - notahacker 3y ago
    sure, but our system doesn't involve parents depending solely on their offspring in later life any more.
    - caeril 3y ago
      It still does, but it's indirect and not as visible. 1. Social Security and Medicare benefits are being paid for by currently working (read: younger) people. 2. Retirement funds invested in equities and bonds require continued productivity by younger generations to retain value. Maybe parents don't rely on their specific offspring, but they definitely rely on society's offspring as a whole.
    - slackfan 3y ago
      So, uh, who pays for social security and medicare/medicaid?
- cm2012 3y ago
  Standards are way higher now for new kids than even in the 90s.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    I'm okay with modern standards being higher than "if you don't spank them they'll be bad"
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
donohoe 3y ago
I think the overall point is that a large set of people, myself included, wholly disagree
- 0zemp3c 3y ago
  [dead]
- cm2012 3y ago
  In the end - there's basically no serious scientist saying the world is going to be destroyed from global warming. There's going to be more extreme weather. Life in hot areas in third world countries is going to suck more. But add up all the deaths and inconveniences from this, assume it gets worse, and the world is still incredibly better off than it was in the 1980s.
  - cmh89 3y ago
    No one thinks the world is going to get 'destroyed'. You're really donwplaying the 'more extreme weather' and life in hot areas is 'going to suck more'. More extreme weather doesn't mean you can't go outside and play. It means mega-droughts. It means crop failures. It means extreme flooding. It means paying more for everything as more people fight over fewer resources. Wealthy countries will be able to somewhat deal with drought in parts of their territory, but poorer countries will experience more famine and hunger. More people will die from heat-related illness. >But add up all the deaths and inconveniences from this, assume it gets worse, and the world is still incredibly better off than it was in the 1980s. In the 1980s, an American with a high school education could expect to make a good living and maybe have a stay at home parent. Most modern Americans wont be able to buy a house much more raise a family on a single income. Everything is getting rapidly expensive while wages stagnate or decline through inflation.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      In the 1980s we had double digit inflation and a high unemployment rate. Things were not better then, especially if you weren't a white male. The rent to income ratio is at about the same level (30%) as it was in the 80s.
subsubzero 3y ago
agree, looking at human history and climate history(30k thousand years back) we are in a blissful time with human lifespan being close to an all time high, war and famine are at all time lows. Medical advances are letting people who would have died or had a horrible existence lead normal lives. I read a ton of history and science books and I feel like people just have no idea how bad things used to be. And we go back even further there were things like the ice age, imagine how miserable your life would have been living through thousand year long winters with no warm weather at all.
- haswell 3y ago
  Humans will always adapt to the current status quo. It is why we have been such a dominant species. The conditions of 30K years ago are interesting to consider, but also largely irrelevant to a current population adapted to the current status quo. It will be of little comfort to reflect on the extreme environments of the past when current standards of living decline relative to what they are today. We’ll adapt to whatever new local lows are to come, but for many people this conversation will always be about change relative to now and current expectations about what it means to live a “normal” life.
  - cm2012 3y ago
    Normal life is going to better 20 years from now, just like it's much better now than 20 years ago.
    - mrguyorama 3y ago
      Define better. Do it with empirical attributes.
      - cm2012 3y ago
        Higher GDP per capita. Lower murder rate. A lot more tech. Better health outcomes. Higher life expectancy.
digdugdirk 3y ago
The problem is that everything is relative to where you are. Humanity has experienced rapid and nigh-unending improvements in quality of life, from ancient history riiiight up to the present. People are now looking into the future and the only apparent path forward involves a decline in that quality of life. It might be a quirk of human psychology to not be able to really "feel" the difference between relative and absolute, but it doesn't matter. Its just how people see the world.
- emodendroket 3y ago
  I wouldn't say it's exactly been going only one way since ancient history, but certainly for living memory.
- hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
  > People are now looking into the future and the only apparent path forward involves a decline in that quality of life. I'm not sure I could agree with that statement. Regarding global warming, sure, although we can't be certain to what degree. But many other aspects, such as treatment options, simply weren't available before - and for sure many other will appear (as will new diseases, but still...).
- TigeriusKirk 3y ago
  >the only apparent path forward involves a decline in that quality of life. The paths they focus on, maybe. Certainly not the only paths, or even the likely paths.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Because having a neat smartphone or a fast GPU completely counteracts the rising cost of food, housing, the rising blatant inequality and utter lack of political will to address it, the lashing out of an entire section of the population against any "others" that were born different and a rising animosity towards education, reality, and intellectuals of all stripes. To the chagrin of hyper capitalists and tech boosters, being able to run a million computations a second in your pocket is NOT a replacement for affordable food, housing, and a society that believes in helping other people. Candy crush doesn't fill your stomach. Cheap entertainment doesn't stop you from getting arrested for sleeping on the sidewalk because you were thrown out of your tent on the side of the road. Different products and market segments do not replace each other in the majority of cases. Previous generations could live a full life on a single, boring, average salary, including paying for occasional entertainment and splurges. Microchips don't magically unfuck the rest of the economy, and arguably have only worsened income inequality, the imbalance of power due to individual wealth, and the hatred of the destitute and "have nots"
rocmcd 3y ago
I mostly agree, but I think your response misses the point that tons of people _believe_ that climate change is an existential threat - regardless of what the truth is. I think a lot of people (myself included) would feel more at ease if we as a society were doing _anything_ to combat the projected worst case scenarios or at least give the illusion that we have things under control. It feels like every week there is a new story about some concerning weather event (fires, heat waves, droughts) giving more evidence to the doomer perspective.
- revelio 3y ago
  News stories aren't evidence. They are written to make you click and then subscribe. The doomer perspective is simply wrong. There is no increase in extreme weather, just reporting of it. This document goes through all the data for the UK and shows this to be true using the government's own numbers and charts: https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2023/06/UK-weather-2022.pdf https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2023/06/UK-weather-2... e.g. "Since the naming of storms began in 2015, they have gained more attention in the media and amongst the public, with the consequent misapprehension that they are becoming more common. In reality, wind storms have been declining in both frequency and intensity since the 1990s" This page presents charts for number of heatwaves, forest burn area, hurricane frequency and energy and tornados in the USA over time. They all show no problems and in some cases declines in extreme weather. https://realclimatescience.com/extreme-weather/ https://realclimatescience.com/extreme-weather/ But reporting this sort of thing is left to non-profit bloggers because the news industry wants you to be scared, all the time, because scared people read the news a lot. This can result in insane outcomes, like the Washington Post telling you that a lack of hurricanes is "terrifying" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/08/04/the-u-s-coast-is-in-an-unprecedented-hurricane-drought-why-this-is-terrifying/?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/... Weather events: terrifying when they're there, terrifying when they aren't. There's a theme here.
  - wizofaus 3y ago
    Note that realclimatescience.com is nothing to do with realclimate.org (run by actual climatologists), but run by Tony Heller, an electrical engineer who calls himself Steven Goddard (see https://www.desmog.com/steven-goddard/ https://www.desmog.com/steven-goddard/)
refurb 3y ago
Yup, compared to even the last century of wars, depressions, etc, right now is far better than may period in the 1900's.
mo_42 3y ago
I think data supports your statement. But it doesn’t mean that it will be true after some generations. I like to compare our world with a bottle garden that kids in high school use for experiments. Some species might really flourish in this garden. But only time tells if it’s composed in a way to be stable.
skciva 3y ago
I couldn't breathe outside the other day but yeah lets just forget about the climate.

by cm2012 3y ago

We live in absolute best time in human history to expect your kids to have a good life. Climate change is tiny compared to the technical and medical revolutions humanity has experienced.

notahacker 3y ago

A lot of the technical and medical revolutions have meant you can focus on the one kid having a good life rather than needing another five to be confident enough of them will be around to providing for you in later life...

slackfan 3y ago
Single points of failure lead to inherently unstable systems.
- notahacker 3y ago
  sure, but our system doesn't involve parents depending solely on their offspring in later life any more.
  - caeril 3y ago
    It still does, but it's indirect and not as visible. 1. Social Security and Medicare benefits are being paid for by currently working (read: younger) people. 2. Retirement funds invested in equities and bonds require continued productivity by younger generations to retain value. Maybe parents don't rely on their specific offspring, but they definitely rely on society's offspring as a whole.
  - slackfan 3y ago
    So, uh, who pays for social security and medicare/medicaid?
cm2012 3y ago
Standards are way higher now for new kids than even in the 90s.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  I'm okay with modern standards being higher than "if you don't spank them they'll be bad"
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

donohoe 3y ago

I think the overall point is that a large set of people, myself included, wholly disagree

0zemp3c 3y ago
[dead]
cm2012 3y ago
In the end - there's basically no serious scientist saying the world is going to be destroyed from global warming. There's going to be more extreme weather. Life in hot areas in third world countries is going to suck more. But add up all the deaths and inconveniences from this, assume it gets worse, and the world is still incredibly better off than it was in the 1980s.
- cmh89 3y ago
  No one thinks the world is going to get 'destroyed'. You're really donwplaying the 'more extreme weather' and life in hot areas is 'going to suck more'. More extreme weather doesn't mean you can't go outside and play. It means mega-droughts. It means crop failures. It means extreme flooding. It means paying more for everything as more people fight over fewer resources. Wealthy countries will be able to somewhat deal with drought in parts of their territory, but poorer countries will experience more famine and hunger. More people will die from heat-related illness. >But add up all the deaths and inconveniences from this, assume it gets worse, and the world is still incredibly better off than it was in the 1980s. In the 1980s, an American with a high school education could expect to make a good living and maybe have a stay at home parent. Most modern Americans wont be able to buy a house much more raise a family on a single income. Everything is getting rapidly expensive while wages stagnate or decline through inflation.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    In the 1980s we had double digit inflation and a high unemployment rate. Things were not better then, especially if you weren't a white male. The rent to income ratio is at about the same level (30%) as it was in the 80s.

subsubzero 3y ago

agree, looking at human history and climate history(30k thousand years back) we are in a blissful time with human lifespan being close to an all time high, war and famine are at all time lows. Medical advances are letting people who would have died or had a horrible existence lead normal lives. I read a ton of history and science books and I feel like people just have no idea how bad things used to be. And we go back even further there were things like the ice age, imagine how miserable your life would have been living through thousand year long winters with no warm weather at all.

haswell 3y ago
Humans will always adapt to the current status quo. It is why we have been such a dominant species. The conditions of 30K years ago are interesting to consider, but also largely irrelevant to a current population adapted to the current status quo. It will be of little comfort to reflect on the extreme environments of the past when current standards of living decline relative to what they are today. We’ll adapt to whatever new local lows are to come, but for many people this conversation will always be about change relative to now and current expectations about what it means to live a “normal” life.
- cm2012 3y ago
  Normal life is going to better 20 years from now, just like it's much better now than 20 years ago.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    Define better. Do it with empirical attributes.
    - cm2012 3y ago
      Higher GDP per capita. Lower murder rate. A lot more tech. Better health outcomes. Higher life expectancy.

digdugdirk 3y ago

The problem is that everything is relative to where you are. Humanity has experienced rapid and nigh-unending improvements in quality of life, from ancient history riiiight up to the present. People are now looking into the future and the only apparent path forward involves a decline in that quality of life. It might be a quirk of human psychology to not be able to really "feel" the difference between relative and absolute, but it doesn't matter. Its just how people see the world.

emodendroket 3y ago
I wouldn't say it's exactly been going only one way since ancient history, but certainly for living memory.
hdjjhhvvhga 3y ago
> People are now looking into the future and the only apparent path forward involves a decline in that quality of life. I'm not sure I could agree with that statement. Regarding global warming, sure, although we can't be certain to what degree. But many other aspects, such as treatment options, simply weren't available before - and for sure many other will appear (as will new diseases, but still...).
TigeriusKirk 3y ago
>the only apparent path forward involves a decline in that quality of life. The paths they focus on, maybe. Certainly not the only paths, or even the likely paths.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  Because having a neat smartphone or a fast GPU completely counteracts the rising cost of food, housing, the rising blatant inequality and utter lack of political will to address it, the lashing out of an entire section of the population against any "others" that were born different and a rising animosity towards education, reality, and intellectuals of all stripes. To the chagrin of hyper capitalists and tech boosters, being able to run a million computations a second in your pocket is NOT a replacement for affordable food, housing, and a society that believes in helping other people. Candy crush doesn't fill your stomach. Cheap entertainment doesn't stop you from getting arrested for sleeping on the sidewalk because you were thrown out of your tent on the side of the road. Different products and market segments do not replace each other in the majority of cases. Previous generations could live a full life on a single, boring, average salary, including paying for occasional entertainment and splurges. Microchips don't magically unfuck the rest of the economy, and arguably have only worsened income inequality, the imbalance of power due to individual wealth, and the hatred of the destitute and "have nots"

rocmcd 3y ago

I mostly agree, but I think your response misses the point that tons of people _believe_ that climate change is an existential threat - regardless of what the truth is. I think a lot of people (myself included) would feel more at ease if we as a society were doing _anything_ to combat the projected worst case scenarios or at least give the illusion that we have things under control. It feels like every week there is a new story about some concerning weather event (fires, heat waves, droughts) giving more evidence to the doomer perspective.

revelio 3y ago
News stories aren't evidence. They are written to make you click and then subscribe. The doomer perspective is simply wrong. There is no increase in extreme weather, just reporting of it. This document goes through all the data for the UK and shows this to be true using the government's own numbers and charts: https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2023/06/UK-weather-2022.pdf https://www.thegwpf.org/content/uploads/2023/06/UK-weather-2... e.g. "Since the naming of storms began in 2015, they have gained more attention in the media and amongst the public, with the consequent misapprehension that they are becoming more common. In reality, wind storms have been declining in both frequency and intensity since the 1990s" This page presents charts for number of heatwaves, forest burn area, hurricane frequency and energy and tornados in the USA over time. They all show no problems and in some cases declines in extreme weather. https://realclimatescience.com/extreme-weather/ https://realclimatescience.com/extreme-weather/ But reporting this sort of thing is left to non-profit bloggers because the news industry wants you to be scared, all the time, because scared people read the news a lot. This can result in insane outcomes, like the Washington Post telling you that a lack of hurricanes is "terrifying" https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/08/04/the-u-s-coast-is-in-an-unprecedented-hurricane-drought-why-this-is-terrifying/?noredirect=on https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/... Weather events: terrifying when they're there, terrifying when they aren't. There's a theme here.
- wizofaus 3y ago
  Note that realclimatescience.com is nothing to do with realclimate.org (run by actual climatologists), but run by Tony Heller, an electrical engineer who calls himself Steven Goddard (see https://www.desmog.com/steven-goddard/ https://www.desmog.com/steven-goddard/)

refurb 3y ago

Yup, compared to even the last century of wars, depressions, etc, right now is far better than may period in the 1900's.

mo_42 3y ago

I think data supports your statement. But it doesn’t mean that it will be true after some generations. I like to compare our world with a bottle garden that kids in high school use for experiments. Some species might really flourish in this garden. But only time tells if it’s composed in a way to be stable.

skciva 3y ago

I couldn't breathe outside the other day but yeah lets just forget about the climate.