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We just passed 1.5C, we will almost certainly pass 2C by about 2035 and its going to be catastrophic. Far from decreasing CO2 emissions we are not only continui
by PaulKeeble 1y ago
We just passed 1.5C, we will almost certainly pass 2C by about 2035 and its going to be catastrophic. Far from decreasing CO2 emissions we are not only continuing to increase but doing so at an increasing rate. We will be extinct a large number of species on the planet at this rate, likely 50% or more and we run the real risk of collapsing civilisation if we don't change urgently.
But we sure did make a great profit on those datacentres so worth it to destroy the planets habitats.
- helpisavailable 1y ago[dead]
- levocardia 1y agoI would bet a very large amount of money that we will not have climate change induced civilizational collapse by 2050. Or 2100, if I'm around to see it.
- Analemma_ 1y agoThere are a bunch of confident predictions like yours that I feel ignore higher-order effects. Climate change won't make the earth uninhabitable, but it will cause more frequent droughts and other disasters, driving up food prices and causing a lot more climate migration from poor countries, which is already causing fatal societal autoimmune reactions in much of the first world. Additionally, for a while I thought the stories about people deciding not to have children because of climate change were an exaggeration, but it's now widespread enough that it's clearly a real trend which will probably accelerate as climate change drives CoL up further, which in turn is a huge headwind on civilization. I think I would take the opposite side of your bet, maybe not at even odds but not at terrible ones either.
- eldaisfish 1y agowho is and where are "we"? This is an incredibly short sighted and ignorant view. If you live close to the equator, the climate is visibly changing and is becoming borderline deadly.
- esafak 1y agoHow nice it is to be from a country with multiple climates you can flee to if one part becomes intolerable.
- D13Fd 1y agoThe parent comment said nothing about civilization collapse. It was about extinction of species site to climate change.
- tom_alexander 1y agoQuoting that comment: > we run the real risk of collapsing civilisation if we don't change urgently
- helpisavailable 1y ago> We will be extinct a large number of species on the planet at this rate, likely 50% or more and we run the real risk of collapsing civilisation if we don't change urgently. It's not a long comment.
- coliveira 1y agoReading skills are going down faster than our hopes of saving the planet.
- justin66 1y agoOffering to make a bet and put some skin in the game is sometimes a very sincere and persuasive expression of confidence in one’s position. In this case, what you’re offering will be valueless if you lose the bet.
- zer0zzz 1y agoI really thought that was the crux of what was meant to be a very dark joke. But if it wasn’t… oof
- yoyohello13 1y agoSeems like most of silicon valley agrees with you.
- bryanrasmussen 1y agoI too will bet a large amount of anything that will only be valuable if civilization does not collapse that civilization will not collapse, even though my pessimistic nature inclines me to expect civilization's collapse.
- riffic 1y agoarrogance
- gilbetron 1y agoI will bet a large amount of money that the world will not detonate in 2026, any takers?
- dzhiurgis 1y agoPolymarket is full of meme bets like this.
- jfengel 1y agoYou are making that bet.
- malfist 1y agoFor themselves and everyone else
- yongjik 1y agoI think you're probably right, but there's an enormous gap between "things start to go really bad for everyone around us" and civilization collapse. Remember, WW2 didn't bring civilizational collapse. In fact one could argue it even accelerated industrial development. Doesn't mean much to those who perished.
- worik 1y ago> Remember, WW2 didn't bring civilizational collapse It depends where you lived. It sure did in China, Japan, Germany, large chunks of the USSR. Civilisation was rebuilt, but it sure collapsed. Perhaps the author of that comment comes from the USA?
- yongjik 1y agoWell, if we lower the bar to "Would something like WW2 happen again?" then I'm not comfortable betting against it. After all, humanity has already managed to do that on its own without any help from the climate!
- M95D 1y agoYou can safely bet agains any large scale war like WW2. We no longer have the money or resources for that. We can't build hundreds of thousands of airplanes, tanks, ships, guns, etc. This doesn't include nukes. We have lots of those. But any nuke war will be very very short, over in a day, not like WW2.
- linmob 1y agoClimate crisis and WW2 do not compare. Many people died in WW2, but entire animal and plant species were not wiped out. We're killing what we eat (and what we eat is nurtured by) at a rapid speed, at scale. This will first show in bearable price increases (as it already does with coffee and cocoa) and only get worse from there, think famine (in regions where this has not happened in a lifetime). Good luck with keeping a civilization 'stable' when people are hangry at scale. And the worst part is: While war can be ended, un-extincting is not a solved problem at all.
- jmclnx 1y agoPersonally I think we could end up like the old SF series Incorporated. 95% of the worlds population living in hellish conditions, 5% living a great life. Back to serfdom that is. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incorporated_(TV_series)
- LargoLasskhyfv 1y agoYeah. That was really presicent :-) I especially liked the scene where the main protagonist commuted to work from his nice gated community far out there into downtown, and from the inside it looked all nice and park-like along the highway. Then it zoomed out, like in a video game. Turns out it was all vr-like projection. Slums! Nothing but slums :-) OTOH why referring to something almost nobody knows, when it's basically the same shit in 'The Expanse" for most of the people on earth? They even have worthless UBI and free meals, and it's an absolute shithole in spite of that.
- GeoAtreides 1y agoOlive oil is already more expensive because of climate change[1] Sure, we won't collapse to Mad Max levels, not in the West at least, but our quality of life will decline steeply. [1]https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20231218-why-olive-oil-prices-are-soaring-and-what-to-do-about-it https://www.bbc.co.uk/travel/article/20231218-why-olive-oil-...
- mariusor 1y agoCivilization collapse for the temperate zones of the Globe, probably not, but civilization collapse for parts of Africa and Central Asia, most likely. Temperatures are getting out of hand right now, with 50+ Celsius happening more and more. The world is not ready to handle hundreds of millions of climate refugees, if these people need to leave their countries in order to be able to survive. I think at some point everyone must face the fact that they're not on this planet by themselves.
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoDepends on how you classify the collapse of civilisation. It seems highly plausible that there will be a large exodus of humans from previously habitable zones as the temperatures increase and access to food and water become highly variable. Some areas will likely still have access to decent agricultural conditions (e.g. greenhouses can help to control the local climate in order to grow food), but there will undoubtedly be increased conflict over dwindling resources.
- dzhiurgis 1y agoHydroponics is probably an answer. Controls for water loss and more importantly - contamination. If people going to jump onto longevity bandwagon like Bryan Johnson we’ll want to minimise heavy metal contamination. And if population stops growing we’ll need to live (and work) far longer to sustain our quality of life.
- roenxi 1y ago> We will be extinct a large number of species on the planet at this rate, likely 50% or more 99.9% of species are already extinct, the fossil record is huge. I get that people don't like change, but species going extinct doesn't really move the needle much. That is what they do. Every species eventually goes extinct, species going extinct isn't much of a motivator to go around making humans suffer. We can't stop species going extinct but we can make people comfortable. And the experience has been that civilisational collapse is much more likely for the people who don't use fossil fuels. If we've got cheap energy then pretty much any problem is solveable and most of the cheap energy production is coming out of the country with the most fossil fuel plants.
- reassess_blind 1y agoIsn’t the issue species going extinct that are critical parts of larger food chains?
- ndsipa_pomu 1y agoAnd don't forget the pollinators - without them, agriculture changes drastically.
- Krssst 1y ago> And the experience has been that civilisational collapse is much more likely for the people who don't use fossil fuels. There's a limited amount of fossil fuels on Earth. We definitely are going to stop using them as a major energy source at some point because of that, the question is if we get to get a choice as to how we reduce and stop using them or let the production curve peak and the economy collapse once that happens if nothing was anticipated. With additional climate change to deal with by that point.
- kriops 1y agoThis particular argument is a complete non-issue if we just do “nothing” and let the price mechanism work in the energy markets. There might be a long-term and permanent contraction that reflects the physical reality of energy becoming less available, but there will not be a proper collapse unless some well-meaning central planner tries to avoid it.
- zahlman 1y ago> Far from decreasing CO2 emissions we are not only continuing to increase but doing so at an increasing rate. Objectively untrue. Globally, though the rise over the last couple of decades is disturbing, emissions are most likely leveling off again; they may have broken past the mid 2010s levels and appear to be rapidly rising in the last few years, but this is just a slight "over-recovery" from the impressive ~5.7% drop in 2020 (mainly from COVID restrictions of course). US emissions peaked in 2005 and were ~18.6% lower in 2023 (the last year of Our World in Data figures). And, you know, China is pivoting. https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions > and its going to be catastrophic.... But we sure did... This attitude tends to inspire unproductive doomerism rather than urgent change.
- nosianu 1y ago> Objectively untrue. No, that is true already. Look at the "rate" tab of the Mauna Kea data, it shows growth on average. Of the rate of CO 2 growth. https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gr.html https://gml.noaa.gov/ccgg/trends/gr.html
- rsanek 1y agoYou're looking at total atmospheric CO2, which is increasing at an increasing rate. The OP's claim was about CO2 emissions, however, which are increasing at a decreasing rate.
- zahlman 1y agoThat data lags because it's noisy and because it's measuring the air, which lags production of the CO2. The rate of increase has been increasing as India and especially China have been undergoing economic revolution, but China is also now known to be pivoting on their energy policy. That's already underway, not just planned (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45545644 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45545644).
- vdupras 1y agoAbsence of necessary urgent change tend to inspire doomerism.
- Dig1t 1y agoReminder that we have enough nuclear fuel to power all of humanity with zero emissions for hundreds of years. Anyone who’s talking about this issue and not pushing nuclear is likely trying to use it as a political tool instead of actually trying to solve the problem.
- dwood_dev 1y agoEh. Not really anymore. Except at extreme latitudes, solar + battery now beats Nuclear on year round cost and especially on time to installation. It's only going to get more stark as time passes.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoMost people pushing nuclear are trying to sell fossil fuels for another 50 or so years and delay implementation of cheaper solutions. If we committed to building out nuclear today, we'd get our first one online in about 20 years. We need about 1000 of them in the US, which would take a lot longer than 20 years.
- zahlman 1y ago> Most people pushing nuclear are trying to sell fossil fuels for another 50 or so years and delay implementation of cheaper solutions. This claim explains a lot about our previous interactions. It's also the polar opposite of my experience. I have never heard a single advocate of nuclear advocating for fossil fuels, and I certainly don't do it myself. I've also never heard them speak against solar (and again I also don't do this). It's purely about defending nuclear from fear-mongering and trying to make it possible faster, rather than being crushed under ridiculous and unjustified regulations.
- bryanlarsen 1y agoNuclear in 2025 is not cost competitive for two major reasons unrelated to regulations. 1. It relies on a ridiculously expensive massive steam turbine 2. It's a major infrastructure project, which the USA seems incapable of building without massive cost over run. Yes, there are other reasons why nuclear is slow and expensive, but those two can't be fixed with a magic wand getting rid of nuclear regulations Also, there's an easy way to minimize regalatory bother: just build an already approved design, like thr AP1000.
- gnerd00 1y agono, 2023 and 2024 both passed above 1.5c .. details: https://berkeleyearth.org/august-2025-temperature-update/ https://berkeleyearth.org/august-2025-temperature-update/
- zahlman 1y agoYou say "no", but then you agree...
- bofadeez 1y ago[flagged]
- lowken10 1y ago[dead]
- justatdotin 1y agothis week's latest extinction: https://theconversation.com/and-then-there-were-none-australias-only-shrew-declared-extinct-265988 https://theconversation.com/and-then-there-were-none-austral... the scale of impact goes beyond extinction, to encompass wiping out entire system types.