4 ms·

Again, that's a crazy thing to conclude from even the most pessimistic global warming predictions.

JohnMakin 2y ago
> Again, that's a crazy thing to conclude from even the most pessimistic global warming predictions. Not really considering the "most pessimistic" predictions have the Atlantic current completely shutting down within the next 100 years (wipes out food supply), tons of countries like bangladesh becoming actually inhospitable from heat/humidity index (billion+ people dead), sea levels rising several meters (massive percentage of humanity lives near a coast), etc. - could go on for a while. Frankly, I don't think you really understand what you are talking about and suspect you're going to turn this into a pedantic "well that won't completely annhilate all human life so you are wrong" kind of back and forth that I don't feel like engaging in so I'll just wish you a good day and move on.
- FredPret 2y ago
  You realize we get a say in all this right? Humanity is immensely capable of large-scale adaptation. 10k years ago we were getting chased around by sabre-toothed tigers. 1k years ago we were still dying of hunger and lack of hygiene. 100 years ago the first biplanes took to the sky. Now look where we are. Human progress is exponential. There's every reason to believe that we'll be capable of dealing with our problems as they come. Malthus was wrong 200 years ago, and you are wrong now. We have clean energy options in solar, nuclear, and battery storage. These are getting better, cheaper, and safer every day. We've got people working on geo-engineering solutions. We've got remote work. We're automating and localizing manufacturing. Defeatism is not the way.
  - Qem 2y ago
    Beware the Asymptotic Burnout hypothesis proposed to explain the Fermi Paradox: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2022.0029 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2022.002...
  - gapan 2y ago
    > 1k years ago we were still dying of hunger and lack of hygiene. We are still doing that. In fact, there are more people affected by hunger today than 1k years ago. And things are getting worse, not better. [1] [1] https://www.who.int/news/item/06-07-2022-un-report--global-hunger-numbers-rose-to-as-many-as-828-million-in-2021 https://www.who.int/news/item/06-07-2022-un-report--global-h...
    - FredPret 2y ago
      They're complaining about a rise in the absolute number of hungry people, not the rate of hunger. I hope you're not arguing that the rate of hunger has done anything but gone down drastically in the past 1000 years. That there are short-term oscillations change nothing about the very obvious long-term trend. Keep in mind also that most economies are still recovering from Covid. Heck, the EU is a rich area and is still recovering from 2008. Now, 1000 years ago, there were ~0.3B people. [0] The daily calorie supply is hard to get, but in 1200 it looks to have been about 2000kCal in the UK. [1] Now we're up to 3000kCal per person per day, for 27x the population. [2] And honestly, we're not even trying to maximize this number at all; farmers are optimizing for profit, not for maximum calories. Absolutely enormous tracts of land go uncultivated. Hydroponic farming is used for minuscule percentage of our food supply. We're nowhere close to maxing out the food supply. When I see complaints like yours I can only conclude one of these: 1) The people involved truly don't get the idea of rates, or long-term trends in rates, or the impact of technology on our lives 2) They aren't arguing in good faith and simply want me to be sad. Both of these devalue the source of the argument. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_world_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_world_... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-supply https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-supply?country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-...
      - gapan 2y ago
        Rates are irrelevant. I don't see a scenario where 2 children dying of hunger is better than 1. My original statement is absolutely true: there are more people affected by hunger today than 1k years ago.
- 00N8 2y ago
  Tragic as it would be, that worst case global warming scenario is still more of a "set human population levels & quality of life back 200 years" situation, rather than a literal extinction event though. I see a lot of hyperbole & doomerism around these topics online & I think pushback is fair. We should be doing more to prevent the worse global warming outcomes. The stakes are billions dying or having miserable lives, which should be motivating enough. I don't think it helps to spin a dark fantasy about it being too late & humans actually going extinct. In the long run, an 8x reduction in human population & a few centuries of bad weather isn't really even a close call, let alone a legitimate extinction risk.
lm28469 2y ago
Let's talk about it in a hundred years when we struggle to grow food and have to deal with hundred millions/billions of climate refugees. You don't need 8b deaths to see we're clearly not on a positive trajectory, ocean acidification, wild weather patterns, climate feedback loops, famines, &c. will be problems we have to tackle by the end of the century and will absolutely destroy our capabilities to develop. All it takes is a major event and we're fucked, something that sets us back even 150 years, and it's game over, we wouldn't have the means to go through another industrial revolution because we used all the easily accessible sources of energy Come on... mammals exist for a mere 300m years... if you worry about the death of our sun in a BILLION years but not about climate change you're an absolute clown, we'll face a couple of near (or full) extinction events by then

> Again, that's a crazy thing to conclude from even the most pessimistic global warming predictions. Not really considering the "most pessimistic" predictions have the Atlantic current completely shutting down within the next 100 years (wipes out food supply), tons of countries like bangladesh becoming actually inhospitable from heat/humidity index (billion+ people dead), sea levels rising several meters (massive percentage of humanity lives near a coast), etc. - could go on for a while. Frankly, I don't think you really understand what you are talking about and suspect you're going to turn this into a pedantic "well that won't completely annhilate all human life so you are wrong" kind of back and forth that I don't feel like engaging in so I'll just wish you a good day and move on.

FredPret 2y ago
You realize we get a say in all this right? Humanity is immensely capable of large-scale adaptation. 10k years ago we were getting chased around by sabre-toothed tigers. 1k years ago we were still dying of hunger and lack of hygiene. 100 years ago the first biplanes took to the sky. Now look where we are. Human progress is exponential. There's every reason to believe that we'll be capable of dealing with our problems as they come. Malthus was wrong 200 years ago, and you are wrong now. We have clean energy options in solar, nuclear, and battery storage. These are getting better, cheaper, and safer every day. We've got people working on geo-engineering solutions. We've got remote work. We're automating and localizing manufacturing. Defeatism is not the way.
- Qem 2y ago
  Beware the Asymptotic Burnout hypothesis proposed to explain the Fermi Paradox: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2022.0029 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2022.002...
- gapan 2y ago
  > 1k years ago we were still dying of hunger and lack of hygiene. We are still doing that. In fact, there are more people affected by hunger today than 1k years ago. And things are getting worse, not better. [1] [1] https://www.who.int/news/item/06-07-2022-un-report--global-hunger-numbers-rose-to-as-many-as-828-million-in-2021 https://www.who.int/news/item/06-07-2022-un-report--global-h...
  - FredPret 2y ago
    They're complaining about a rise in the absolute number of hungry people, not the rate of hunger. I hope you're not arguing that the rate of hunger has done anything but gone down drastically in the past 1000 years. That there are short-term oscillations change nothing about the very obvious long-term trend. Keep in mind also that most economies are still recovering from Covid. Heck, the EU is a rich area and is still recovering from 2008. Now, 1000 years ago, there were ~0.3B people. [0] The daily calorie supply is hard to get, but in 1200 it looks to have been about 2000kCal in the UK. [1] Now we're up to 3000kCal per person per day, for 27x the population. [2] And honestly, we're not even trying to maximize this number at all; farmers are optimizing for profit, not for maximum calories. Absolutely enormous tracts of land go uncultivated. Hydroponic farming is used for minuscule percentage of our food supply. We're nowhere close to maxing out the food supply. When I see complaints like yours I can only conclude one of these: 1) The people involved truly don't get the idea of rates, or long-term trends in rates, or the impact of technology on our lives 2) They aren't arguing in good faith and simply want me to be sad. Both of these devalue the source of the argument. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_world_population https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_world_... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-supply https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-... [2] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-supply?country=~OWID_WRL https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/daily-per-capita-caloric-...
    - gapan 2y ago
      Rates are irrelevant. I don't see a scenario where 2 children dying of hunger is better than 1. My original statement is absolutely true: there are more people affected by hunger today than 1k years ago.
00N8 2y ago
Tragic as it would be, that worst case global warming scenario is still more of a "set human population levels & quality of life back 200 years" situation, rather than a literal extinction event though. I see a lot of hyperbole & doomerism around these topics online & I think pushback is fair. We should be doing more to prevent the worse global warming outcomes. The stakes are billions dying or having miserable lives, which should be motivating enough. I don't think it helps to spin a dark fantasy about it being too late & humans actually going extinct. In the long run, an 8x reduction in human population & a few centuries of bad weather isn't really even a close call, let alone a legitimate extinction risk.

lm28469 2y ago

Let's talk about it in a hundred years when we struggle to grow food and have to deal with hundred millions/billions of climate refugees. You don't need 8b deaths to see we're clearly not on a positive trajectory, ocean acidification, wild weather patterns, climate feedback loops, famines, &c. will be problems we have to tackle by the end of the century and will absolutely destroy our capabilities to develop. All it takes is a major event and we're fucked, something that sets us back even 150 years, and it's game over, we wouldn't have the means to go through another industrial revolution because we used all the easily accessible sources of energy Come on... mammals exist for a mere 300m years... if you worry about the death of our sun in a BILLION years but not about climate change you're an absolute clown, we'll face a couple of near (or full) extinction events by then