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Well, the problem, eddie (loved you in Leave It To Beaver, by the way ) is that many toddlers you see today are going to be alive in 2100 wrestling with this nightmarish scenario so the problem is right at our doorstep. The "climate refugees" are going to wreak havoc on Europe which is already reeling from the influx of Middle Eastern refugees pouring over their borders. It's hard to believe that Europe, a land smaller than the US
Public domain)
has roughly 200 million people more than the US. When 200 million more climate refugees pour into Europe will come undone. The only thing that will save us is a nuclear war which wipes out 90% of the world population and then the remaining 10% start over. Failing that, earth is doomed. Maybe we should keep Trump after all.
You are also wrong on that the reasons behind the uncontrolled immigration in Europe, it is 99% economic, not climate change. The US would be suffering the same fate if we opened our borders and welcomed migration from Central America like the EU has from the Middle East.
Well, the problem, eddie (loved you in Leave It To Beaver, by the way ) is that many toddlers you see today are going to be alive in 2100 wrestling with this nightmarish scenario so the problem is right at our doorstep. The "climate refugees" are going to wreak havoc on Europe which is already reeling from the influx of Middle Eastern refugees pouring over their borders. It's hard to believe that Europe, a land smaller than the US
Public domain)
has roughly 200 million people more than the US. When 200 million more climate refugees pour into Europe will come undone. The only thing that will save us is a nuclear war which wipes out 90% of the world population and then the remaining 10% start over. Failing that, earth is doomed. Maybe we should keep Trump after all.
I hope to live in a country that turns climate refugees around with a swift boot in the arse.
If many die — have the wealthy and powerful not solved part of the problem through population control?
Worse comes to worse — I may want to be in that greedy country that cares mostly about its own people.
And 2100?
My money is on the planet being about the same in just 80 years.
But then again — maybe that’s because I have a human brain and the prediction of some climate crap happening in 80 years scares me less than the spider I had to kill a few weeks ago.
What if societies desire to have and consume more is ultimately stronger than our desire to ensure the world lasts 50,000 more years instead of 2,000 more years?
Could me and my family be safer in a 7 mpg 7,000 lb SUV? Why not?
There are billions of people out here that want what Americans have...
Years ago someone had a commercial (PSA) that showed the USA with a pig face. That we were voracious consumers and grabbed it all. Nevermind that we grew more wheat than half the world, shipped ton of rice to nations starving (For free), had an govt agency dedicated to clean air and water.
The rest of the world has basically spoiled their own backyards and then have the gall to point fingers at us....Climate change? Oh please. If we're supposed to be so much in danger, then tell me why the "We'll be dead by this date" and yet, we're still here.....
Years ago someone had a commercial (PSA) that showed the USA with a pig face. That we were voracious consumers and grabbed it all. Nevermind that we grew more wheat than half the world, shipped ton of rice to nations starving (For free), had an govt agency dedicated to clean air and water.
The rest of the world has basically spoiled their own backyards and then have the gall to point fingers at us....Climate change? Oh please. If we're supposed to be so much in danger, then tell me why the "We'll be dead by this date" and yet, we're still here.....
The doomsday predictions that have something bad happening by X date really do a disservice for those really believing something bad is slowly brewing for some unknown date in the future.
You can only keep people’s attention for so long and we’ve been hearing about a this “problem” for about 25 years now. For anyone born after ~1970 — that’s about all their adult life...yet here we are living like kings. If sheet doesn’t start hitting the fan at some point can you blame people for compartmentalizing things and moving on?
I’m supposed to feel worry/pressure from some huge problem that hasn’t directly effected me in any way for how long? 20 years? 40 years? From birth until I’m 85? My attention span isn’t that long.
The doomsday predictions that have something bad happening by X date really do a disservice for those really believing something bad is slowly brewing for some unknown date in the future.
You can only keep people’s attention for so long and we’ve been hearing about a this “problem” for about 25 years now. For anyone born after ~1970 — that’s about all their adult life...yet here we are living like kings. If sheet doesn’t start hitting the fan at some point can you blame people for compartmentalizing things and moving on?
It'll be a lot of small-medium consequences that will add up. It will occasionally flare up into more frequent dramatic episodes such as fire seasons being worse, hurricanes dropping 500 year floodwaters every 10, etc... Those will not end the world but they will drain resources.
E.g.: if the climare changes where the coffee crop ceases to grow where it typically has. That will cause cascade effects in related industries and markets, and cause economic migration. We will feel that here in the U.S. from Central America, that'll make our previous tension with Honduras over migration look like peanuts.
It won't be disaster-movie style catastrophes happening all at once. Even a worse than projected sea level rise could be managed, although very inconvenient and expensive to do so.
The main catastrophe scenarios could be 1) if major glacier ice melts and releases bacteria or viruses from thousands of years ago that we have no immunity to. With modern travel connectivity, something like the bubonic plague on a 21st century scale would be very bad for the economy. Markets would collapse, etc...
2) What I think is more likely: Growing seasons shift, agriculture in certain countries becomes unviable, water availability shifts, and we get massive refugee crises. If your "swift boot" to migrants involves indiscriminately opening fire on innocent people, we can expect that to escalate into wars.
I think a more likely catastrophe will be one we inflict on ourselves, but climate change will be what turned up the heat, putting pressire and making us all more on edge.
It'll be a lot of small-medium consequences that will add up. It will occasionally flare up into more frequent dramatic episodes such as fire seasons being worse, hurricanes dropping 500 year floodwaters every 10, etc... Those will not end the world but they will drain resources.
E.g.: if the climare changes where the coffee crop ceases to grow where it typically has. That will cause cascade effects in related industries and markets, and cause economic migration. We will feel that here in the U.S. from Central America, that'll make our previous tension with Honduras over migration look like peanuts.
It won't be disaster-movie style catastrophes happening all at once. Even a worse than projected sea level rise could be managed, although very inconvenient and expensive to do so.
The main catastrophe scenarios could be 1) if major glacier ice melts and releases bacteria or viruses from thousands of years ago that we have no immunity to. With modern travel connectivity, something like the bubonic plague on a 21st century scale would be very bad for the economy. Markets would collapse, etc...
2) What I think is more likely: Growing seasons shift, agriculture in certain countries collapses, water availability shifts, and we get massive refugee crises. If your "swift boot" to migrants involves indiscriminately opening fire on innocent people, we can expect that to escalate into wars.
I just don’t think this reasoning is going to fire up people to dramatically change anything about their lifestyle. I’d say it sure as hell won’t stop the billions of people wanting to create more pollution on their journey closer to where we are.
Wouldn’t your catastrophic scenarios simply be a convenient way for Mother Nature to help rid herself of the problem?
Earth probably doesn’t care one way or the other about how warm it is, how many people die in the warming process or how many wars we start because of it.
On a thousands of years scale, I would bet on balance being restored at some point. That could be with even more humans or it could an Earth with no humans. No humans would likely mean millions of years before another intellectually savvy creature could have the tech to harm earth.
I just don’t think this reasoning is going to fire up people to dramatically change anything about their lifestyle. I’d say it sure as hell won’t stop the billions of people wanting to create more pollution on their journey closer to where we are.
Wouldn’t your catastrophic scenarios simply be a convenient way for Mother Nature to help rid herself of the problem?
Earth probably doesn’t care one way or the other about how warm it is, how many people die in the warming process or how many wars we start because of it.
On a thousands of years scale, I would bet on balance being restored at some point. That could be with even more humans or it could an Earth with no humans. No humans would likely mean millions of years before another intellectually savvy creature could have the tech to harm earth.
Yes, the Earth has been plenty warmer before, and plenty colder. In both scenarios there was animal life on it. The dinosaurs existed when there was no ice on the poles and the oceans were about twice as warm as now for 100 million years. But humans are evolutionarily designed to exist on a cooler planet than that. More importantly, our economy is based on climate behaving within certain very specific parameters. The way our whole economy and geo-political stability work are based on the Earth behaving in ways we expect, which is to say, how it has behaved in our experience.
The viability of Earth as a life-sustaining planet is not really at issue. It's more about human societal stability. If average temps get too much higher than 20th century norms, our economy will go haywire. Agriculture is the base of the economic triangle. Advances in agriculture are why we can feed 8 billion people. It's all based on temperatures and climate doing what we've been used to it doing. If that goes wrong we're going to have major problems.
The Earth doesn't really care if the water table is 9 meters higher and the ice shelves are 50% smaller. But the vast majority of human economic activity takes place in coastal areas and most humans live within 50 miles of the current coast.
You've got a point. If 4-5 billion people die and 2-4 billion are left, the problem will pretty much resolve on its own, and in not that much time 100-300 years? However, it's unclear if an Earth with 2-3 Billion people can generate the economic activity that results in modern Western lifestyles that so many covet & that are causing the climate problem. So if that happens, the party is still over.
No humans who have to live through that that process of decline will find it very fun.
Last edited by redguard57; 01-18-2020 at 06:32 PM..
Yes, the Earth has been plenty warmer before, and plenty colder. In both scenarios there was animal life on it. The dinosaurs existed when there was no ice on the poles and the oceans were about twice as warm as now for 100 million years. But humans are evolutionarily designed to exist on a cooler planet than that. More importantly, our economy is based on climate behaving within certain very specific parameters. The way our whole economy and geo-political stability work are based on the Earth behaving in ways we expect, which is to say, how it has behaved in our experience.
The viability of Earth as a life-sustaining planet is not really at issue. It's more about human societal stability. If average temps get too much higher than 20th century norms, our economy will go haywire. Agriculture is the base of the economic triangle. Advances in agriculture are why we can feed 8 billion people. It's all based on temperatures and climate doing what we've been used to it doing. If that goes wrong we're going to have major problems.
The Earth doesn't really care if the water table is 9 meters higher and the ice shelves are 50% smaller. But the vast majority of human economic activity takes place in coastal areas and most humans live within 50 miles of the current coast.
You've got a point. If 4-5 billion people die and 2-4 billion are left, the problem will pretty much resolve on its own, and in not that much time 100-300 years? However, it's unclear if an Earth with 2-3 Billion people can generate the economic activity that results in modern Western lifestyles that so many covet & that are causing the climate problem. So if that happens, the party is still over.
No humans who have to live through that that process of decline will find it very fun.
At some point some set of humans in a future time may just have to live through the end of the world if they can’t ya know...come up with a solution.
Or perhaps our future isn’t even to live on this world? What if in the future we are able to somehow live in a digital world?
People need to stop worrying about climate change and push towards space exploration. We could all be dead right now if a deadly earthquake or asteroid big enough strikes earth. I like how many click-bait internet site says "climate change caused by meteor.." There are many things that have wiped away majority of life on this planet before and climate change was one of them. So before cars and planes existed there were deadly climate change. Who do we blame?
It's this never ending blame game narrative instead of forward thinking ideas. How about we spend the money building an outpost in another planet or in space as an insurance policy. All this constant blame game pushing climate change as the one and only cause of all our problems.
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) is that many toddlers you see today are going to be alive in 2100 wrestling with this nightmarish scenario so the problem is right at our doorstep. The "climate refugees" are going to wreak havoc on Europe which is already reeling from the influx of Middle Eastern refugees pouring over their borders. It's hard to believe that Europe, a land smaller than the US
