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Sounds like the classic trolley problem where your choice is to pull a lever and immediately kill half the world's population because 100 million kilometres awa

Sounds like the classic trolley problem where your choice is to pull a lever and immediately kill half the world's population because 100 million kilometres away, the entirety of life on earth is comfortably resting on the train tracks. You're saying, let's pull that lever. I'm saying, let's organize a project to move the trolley tracks since we have ample time to do so. Sure some people will get hit by the trolley as it races by while the track is still being moved, but it sure beats killing 4 billion people in one fell swoop.

IKantRead 3y ago
> You're saying, let's pull that lever. First off, I'm not saying "starting tomorrow now fossil fuels!", I'm saying you must keep fossil fuels in the ground to avoid worst case. And the start of that means you have to identify some fossil fuels that will never be extracted. > since we have ample time to do so. I seriously have no idea where you got that impression, but with climate change once you start feeling the effects you're already in the danger zone. We've already signed up for famine and potentially billions dead even if we had zero emissions today. I do suggest you read up a bit more on the topic. No serious research around climate change would claim we have "ample time". The bigger question is: how close are we to climate "tipping points". We do know that geologically it seems there are points where positive feedbacks start accelerating climate change rapidly. We just don't know where the line is for those tipping points. If we seriously want to avoid extinction of the species we should already be starting to strategize a schedule of what fossil fuels reserves we promise to keep in the ground, and what we're going to do about future discoveries. To be honest, I don't really think we will do this, but if we wanted to survive at all we should start talking about it very seriously.

IKantRead 3y ago

> You're saying, let's pull that lever. First off, I'm not saying "starting tomorrow now fossil fuels!", I'm saying you must keep fossil fuels in the ground to avoid worst case. And the start of that means you have to identify some fossil fuels that will never be extracted. > since we have ample time to do so. I seriously have no idea where you got that impression, but with climate change once you start feeling the effects you're already in the danger zone. We've already signed up for famine and potentially billions dead even if we had zero emissions today. I do suggest you read up a bit more on the topic. No serious research around climate change would claim we have "ample time". The bigger question is: how close are we to climate "tipping points". We do know that geologically it seems there are points where positive feedbacks start accelerating climate change rapidly. We just don't know where the line is for those tipping points. If we seriously want to avoid extinction of the species we should already be starting to strategize a schedule of what fossil fuels reserves we promise to keep in the ground, and what we're going to do about future discoveries. To be honest, I don't really think we will do this, but if we wanted to survive at all we should start talking about it very seriously.