4 ms·
We should be investing into living with these changes.
by alenrozac 2y ago
We should be investing into living with these changes.
- portaouflop 2y agoWe should begin to acknowledge that there is a non-zero chance for complete societal collapse in the next few decades.
- pcthrowaway 2y agoWe should begin to acknowledge that there may be a near-zero chance of avoiding complete societal collapse in the next few decades.
- master-lincoln 2y agoIn that case, why play along with society or do any research or investments beyond that time frame?
- teamonkey 2y agoBecause society collapsing doesn't mean that everyone will die; research and investments now might be critical for our children and possibly the long-term survival of the human race.
- rad_gruchalski 2y agoWhich part of the society, the Trump part, or the Musk part. Oh, they seem to be the same now. It’s so confusing.
- portaouflop 2y agocurrent society collapsing still gives room for survival - look at indigenous peoples in for example Australia - they survived an apocalypse and still are around.
- The_Colonel 2y ago> there may be a near-zero chance You have two probability qualifiers next to each other. What is "may be" in this case? How should a reader read it?
- pcthrowaway 2y agoConsider a disease like rabies. Right now there's a near-zero chance of survival to those who contract it. Let's say we discover a new mosquito variant which can spread rabies, whose population is multiplying exponentially. Typically we might expect a disease which becomes pandemic to be survivable for some significant percentage of the population. Whereas here we might say that, regardless of how many resources we throw at rabies treatments, there may continue to be a near-zero chance of survival (because rabies had been remarkably untreatable so far). It's a suggestion that perhaps we should temper optimism.
- The_Colonel 2y agoOk, so now I understand what you meant. Technically, you're right. May be there's no chance to fix it. But may be false vacuum will decay tomorrow. "may be" is not very useful here. Is it probable that we're beyond the point of no return? I don't believe anyone can answer that with any certainty.
- pcthrowaway 2y agoNote that even in the above example, a proper response might be to address the mosquito population or to begin initiatives to vaccinate as many people as possible against rabies. Likely a combination of both. Of course it might be good to continue researching possible treatments for rabies as well, but there are other things which can be done to mitigate the impact. I don't think climate change will be the only reason for societal collapse, if it happens. I think late-stage capitalism (which is also implicated in driving this climate change) is at least another significant factor. I also don't pretend do know what societal collapse might look like, and what might come after. Societies don't seem to be immortal[1], and collapse has historically been inevitable. An immortal society is as unprecedented as human immortality, which isn't to say that either are strictly impossible, but that we should analyze both against historical data on statistics and symptoms which might indicate proximity to end of life. Personally I believe the societal stressors which appear over the next few decades are significant enough that they represent a much larger chance of societal collapse than people seem to recognize. I guess we'll see. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse#Societal_longevity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse#Societal_lon...
- miroljub 2y agoIn that case we'd better invest in weapons and find a way how to kill "the others" before they "kill us", since this will affect "our" chance of surviving much more than if we are able to "fight the climate change".
- tempworkac 2y agothere's always been a non-zero chance for collapse: black death, ww2, cold war, covid, etc.
- alganet 2y agoHumanity will survive, don't fret about it. We don't need to buil an ark. The issue is, although humanity will survive, billions will die. That's not good enough for me.
- mongol 2y agoWill billions die? How?
- jansan 2y agoAge. Roughly 170.000 die every day, and it will become more (because most of earth's population is still quite young).
- Deukhoofd 2y agoFamines due to changing weather patterns causing widespread harvest failures, wars due to reduces resources and changing liveability of regions, far bigger refugee crises than we've seen so far, etc. We're in general really dependent on our climate for global stability.
- alganet 2y agoCrop failures (our food is sensitive to temperature changes). War (as resources are limited, we'll fight for what's left). Disease (poorer areas will incubate and spread diseases we already cured or controlled). Typical dark ages stuff. The ancients who faced similar issues wrote the stories on stones and songs so we won't forget.
- engineer_22 2y ago> our food is sensitive to temperature changes. It's not. It's lack of water that causes failure.
- polotics 2y agooh wow, how much agronomy did you study? photosynthesis is optimal below 35°C and is at 0% already at 50°C
- nkg 2y agoMassive migrations.
- moffkalast 2y agoMigrations Morpheus, like the swallow.
- AtlasBarfed 2y ago2 degrees Celsius: We should be investing into living with these changes. 2.5 degrees Celsius: We should be investing into living with these changes. 3 degrees Celsius: We should be investing into living with these changes. 4 degrees Celsius: We should be investing into living with these changes. 5 degrees Celsius: We should be investing into living with these changes. At some point methane hydrates release, photosynthesis in sea microorganisms ceases, or other general ecosystem collapse occurs. At some point you have to invest in stopping the rise, because Venus shows there isn't an upper boundary. At this point you basically hope demographic collapse from urbanization combined with massive wars and starvation from population displacement combined with alternative energy allows for a sustainable tech future. That's the gentle landing. The money for change is held by the rich, and they don't care if the world ends as long as their back accounts have 1000000x more unicorn horns than other people.
- engineer_22 2y agoGenocidal climate activism...
- Toutouxc 2y agoHow exactly do we invest into, for example, people not being able to survive because of the wet-bulb temperature getting too high?
- wesselbindt 2y agoWe could invest in cheaper and faster coffin production. Or invest in trying to get mass graves to become culturally acceptable. Or we could try and actually do something about the conditions that create the hellscape to come, but with our current mode of production and incentives around industry, I don't see it happening.
- sokoloff 2y agoI think that providing public climate shelters will have to be part of the solution in some countries. There is a wide spread between “humans can’t work multiple hours outside” and “humans can’t be outside at all” for the likely temps in the next 100 years. (To be clear, this is a stopgap to cope with the change as it happens, not a full solution.)