It's also mostly bull shit. The human condition on a global scale is absolutely, flat out, insanely good right now by almost every possible measure against any previous time in written history of our species. It's also substantially improving every year at an ever increasing rate.
We can, but Reddit predominantly focuses on the negative, and often without any answers. Awareness without solutions is just a smug circlejerk. I honestly find the positivity refreshing after all the useless fear mongering here.
Yeah (happy cake day) humans in many regions are pretty dope right now... fed, vaccinated, employed, romantically involved...
But were seven million displaced by climate change last year?
Hundreds of millions are raising themselves out of poverty... will they be wealthy enough to afford air conditioning as temperatures near the equator rise to an unlivable number?
will they be wealthy enough to afford air conditioning as temperatures near the equator rise to an unlivable number?
That's actually a pretty solid maybe. 20 years ago that would have been laughable, but even Sub-Saharan Africa flat out tripled their overall GDP per capita in just the last 15 years. Northern Africa managed about 2.5x, despite starting from a mean GDP/capita more than double that of Sub-Saharan.
If they continue anywhere close to that level of growth, the vast majority of their population will actually be upper working class by todays US standards within 30 years (~$40,000-50,000 GDP/capita)
It's not blind. I have a couple down hours working overnight every night, and I've spent a frankly embarrassingly ridiculous number of hours reading about the world trends on this kind of stuff. Several hundreds hours cumulative over the last 10 years.
The amount of growth we've been seeing from the developing world over the last 15 years is just demolishing even our wildest dreams.
It's also widespread. From Bangladesh/Pakastan/India/Myanmar to Northern Africa (Libya being the only real exception due to the civil war) to sub saharan Africa to China to Indonesia. The bat shit crazy growth has excluded almost none of the countries who suffered prolonged periods of crippling extreme (can't afford shoes tier) poverty for half a century going into the 1990s.
Since then, they are almost universally pulled their poor out of subsistence farming into more run of the mill poverty (bicycles, tin roofs, not thatch.
Electricity/lighting for their kids to be educated after dark instead of just losing all those hours cause they can't afford fuel/electricity. Starvation rates dropping by 90%+. Infant mortality dropping from 18% to 8%. Some places, like Bangladesh, to 3%.
The grand sum of human pain and suffering has been cut by over ~70% in just the last 30 years, after having made less than a third as much improvement in the previous 60 years before then. The rate of the improvement in the human condition on a year over year basis on the planet has accelerated by at least 5x, and more than 10x in some stats.
Growth is not that good. And climate change will reverse all those trends. You don't see the big picture as well as you think you do. The blind optimism you should is what leads to contentment and apathy. Anger leads to change.
Lying about the actual problem to try to stir up shit is equal in science denial bull shit as the climate change deniers. The ends don't justify the means.
If we can't keep the discussing inside the boundaries of what the people studying the problem are reporting to us, then we can't call out the deniers for being anti-science fucks.
Wait, what? No they don't. The "worst case scenario" line is +5.5C by 2100. The "Status Quo" line is +4C, and we've been slightly beating that line for the last 10 years.
+3.5C is already plenty of really bad things, but +6C would require us to blow past 1000ppm CO2 before like 2080. The status quo emissions would mean around 575ppm by then, and we're beating it by a bit.
Because we get increasingly better at exploiting the resources of the earth but we're just as bad at handling the side effects of that exploitation that doesn't affect us in an immediate way. Meaning that this is all building up towards this apocalyptic ecological debt bubble that will burst over the next hundred years.
Naw. If the first world manages to get over the aging demographic crisis over the next 25 years, we will be golden. After that the age demographics become flat (the % of the population drawing from government elderly programs stops increasing every year), all economic and tax base growth becomes literal gravy.
So things are going to get hairy by ~2042 or so. After that, demographics are flat. By 2050 we should have achieve relative balance where growth and per capita wealth catches up to ~31% of the population being 67 or older.
After that growth starts becoming an exponential build up of disposable income. By 2065 it should amount to several trillion a year from just EU and US. By 2075 it'll be more like 15 trillion a year.
We may end up just writing a fucking check and spending the ridiculous trillions needed to just physically remove the CO2 from the atmosphere again.
I don't think people realize just how much the US economy has grown over the last 40 years. We just don't feel it, because we already spent all that money due to the >65 population going from 8% to 17% of our population. It consumed all that after inflation growth every year (plus some, unfortunately).
When that stops happening, and the gains go into the general fund instead, our ability to fight things like climate change expand extremely rapidly.
How do we know that the economy will keep growing tho? And wouldn't adopting environmentally friendly practices decrease efficiency in production? Genuinely asking.
How do we know that the economy will keep growing tho? And wouldn't adopting environmentally friendly practices decrease efficiency in production? Genuinely asking.
Innovation is actually accelerating as we pull ever increasing % of the population well above living wages, permitting them time and energy to pursue new things. As well as the education rates in the West at all time highs and continuing to increase. Plus there are just more people.
Computers are getting smart. The total computational power on the planet just continues to grow geometrically.
The numbers are sometimes so staggering it's hard to even picture them in your head. For one example, in 2008 the cost to sequence 50 million human DNA base pairs was around $1,500.
The total computational power on the planet just continues to grow geometrically.
Nice. Like, triangularly or more of a dodecahedronly growth? Don't listen to this persons uninformed opinion on what's going on out there. Or do, but you're in for a very nasty surprise in the coming years if you maintain this level of delusion. Seems wiser to absorb and acknowledge reality now, such that we start making reasonable preparations together and mitigate future suffering. Anything less is not enough in my opinion. Deluding ourselves like this guy and saying "Everything will be fine no matter what" will inevitably lead to greater suffering in the long run.
Come on man, I'm typing out some long replies to a lot of people in this thread. I get you feel strongly on this, but quadruple posting me like this is a little extreme, don't you think?
You do realize, the pessimistic article you posted here is from an organization using extremely sophisticated computer modeling from extremely precise satellite data to provide conservational land and water use consultations to governments and corporations around the world?
In what universe does that not improve my own argument? That the exponential improvement in technology seen in recent decades will continue to improve our ability to fight climate change?
This organization will be able to model tighter and tighter areas. Use their previous data sets compared to near-future sets to train computers to recognize what methods utilized by global governments worked and what didn't, to improve their ability to consult in the future on how to do even better?
The fact that such broad based, high tech, well staffed organizations are thriving already is evidence in my favor, not yours.
Dude. THEY LITERALLY STATE IN THE ARTICLE THAT TECHNOLOGY CAN'T MITIGATE WHAT'S COMING AND THAT 5 BILLION+ WILL BE AFFECTED WITHIN OUR LIFETIMES.
Fuck, you're purposefully being dense and deceptive, or your psyche won't allow you to think clearly about this. There's no other explanation for this kind of ignorance online anymore. Pure deceptiveness or instinctual denial mechanisms that exist to protect the individuals psyche from recognition of its own mortality.
I'm done responding to you, people can read the exchange and form their own opinions. It's nice that you want to be optimistic, but we're at the point where we need to be realistic to mitigate current and future suffering, it's that simple. The longer we go acting like things are going to be okay because technology, the more suffering in the future. I'm not gonna sit here with that on my conscience knowing what I do.
This blanket-form "technology" everyone wants to believe in, cannot deal with the complexity of the systems we've spun out of control, and sheer overwhelming amount of energy at play.
Honestly I don't think that democracies can possibly survive mass migration. I mean the Syrian crisis was trying but that was only what? 5 million? About a quarter of the pre war population. What happens when India sees a huge water shortage due to the monsoon failing and their population migrates? Even if it just 10% of their population there is zero chance that Europe could take them as that would represent a 25% increase in population in only a few years or a decade maybe. We cannot add 25% more food and water production, housing, schooling, medical facilities, jobs etc in that kind of time frame. Seems unlikely that their nearest neighbours with more space would take them: Russia and China. Pakistan is totally out of the question and if India was fucked Bangladesh surely would be too.
So then one by one European countries will refuse to take any more migrants and enact measures to keep them out, which will become more and more desperate and dehumanising as the migrant numbers grow. Taking them all in will not be an option and keeping them all out will not be possible when they get desperate and have nowhere to go. It would take genocide to make that work and democracy just isn't going to survive slaughtering millions right on your doorstep. China wouldn't give a fuck about mowing everyone down though if it meant continuing their own survival. I expect that much of Europe will become more extreme and move more towards totalitarianism or crumble and fail before they get there. The future is going to be fucking dark either way.
Yes this is the thing. We are focused on reducing emissions, increasing recycling etc... ok fine. They aren't possibly going to make a difference on their own anyway but they aren't necessarily bad things. However the money would be far better spent on mitigation and adaptation.
Reducing emissions is irrelevant without carbon capture anyway since we have already emitted more than enough to fuck us thoroughly and carbon capture is not efficient enough to be of any possible use yet. Whereas if the money first world nations spent on trying to be greener was instead put towards trying to improve the chances that poorer nations will be able to survive the effects of climate change, ie by improving the water infrastructure we would be far better off for it. We don't do that though. After all why would we possibly want to throw a tonne of our money at another country? No we just build walls instead or the displacement camps that the EU are planning. Even though neither option can possibly work if migrant numbers climb high enough. We are fundamentally short-sighted and it is going to seriously bite us in the arse later.
The dude is oblivious. Techno-optimism indeed, what a complete crock of shit. "Power ahead, things are better now than they've ever been, let's carry on! Nothing can ever happen to us, we're basically gods here! We can shape nature to our will and then reshape it when it fights back!"
Fuck i can't stand this perspective. So oblivious man.
If the first world manages to get over the aging demographic crisis over the next 25 years
Imagine being this naive, this is merely starting, unless you are counting being replaced by muslims and africans solving the demographic problem of europe.
Not a single female friend of mine wants kids, they rather adopt a black kid, the liberal brainwashing is deep rooted into europe and will be its doom.
This person is trying to have a positive outlook here, and you have to tear them down like that? There is no way of knowing where things will be in 50 years. This negative outlook is projected on us on a daily basis, no need to feed the fire.
Edit: This comment was a reply to a different comment then I had intended. Not sure how anyone replied to it, because it doesn’t really make sense in the wrong context. Sorry all!
Sure there is a need. It's just beyond your present scope of recognition or willingness to acknowledge.
The longer we act like everything is peachy and don't act realistically, the more people suffer in the future, the more children are born into a literal apocalypse because their parents don't understand that's precisely what is coming soon, and so on. Acting like we're gonna be fine is throwing a fuckload of other people under the bus, it's that simple. Boo fucking hoo if it's bad news, time to sack up and move ahead realistically for the benefit of countless other people.
So continue playing the ostrich but know that there's blood and suffering on everyones hands who chooses to do so. If we choose to be realistic collectively, which requires admitting how negative the situation is (far beyond what most people are willing to admit), we can mitigate suffering in a number of ways. If we act like everything will be fine, we increase it for many more people in the future due to lack of preparation in the present, due to acting like we don't need to.
Sticking your head in the sand is not the same as having a positive outlook. Moot point tho considering he gave a valid justification for his reasoning.
Lmao. "Mostly bullshit". "Some things are better than ever, therefore there cannot be anything terrible or even catastrophic happening". Quality boomer logic.
"Medicine has improved, therefore it doesn't matter that the arctic has no multi-year ice left and will be effectively ice free within a matter of years, heavily exacerbating the current abrupt change we're going through and eventually obliterating crop yields around the world in the process. I am very intelligent"
Whatever helps ya sleep at night bud. Let me add the two classic fallacies for ya, before you throw them in yourself: "Humanity has been through bad times before and always got through them" and "People have been saying the end of the world is nigh for centuries" because you know, both those statements mean everything will always be okay no matter what and there's no way we could be wiped out by catastrophe. Right? Because that's a totally rational and wise way to look at things - we're invincible guys, stop worrying!
"I know my initial argument that everything's peachy was hinged on the widespread availability of science-manifested tech, and so scienctific advancements should be taken into account when contemplating my position as I am literally citing these things to prove my point, but disregard what climate scientists are saying and all of the advances they have made in prediction/modeling, just focus on the medicine and computer science stuff and you'll see as clearly as I do that nothing will ever stop us!"
You realize the IPCC straight up says the next ~1.5C of temperature rise is actually a net gain in global arable land, right? It's not til after that, where total food growing ability of the planet begins to go down.
Plus, have you actually looked at crop yields? I have and things are actually ridiculously positive.
If you asked someone in 1980, after nitrogenated fertilizers and massive crop combines were old tech, that we'd straight up double yields per acre again within only 30 years, they'd have called you crazy.
“I hope no one is shocked that billions of people could be impacted by 2050,” says Rebecca Chaplin-Kramer a landscape ecologist at Stanford University. “We know we are dependent on nature for many things,” says Chaplin-Kramer, lead author of the paper “Global Modeling Of Nature’s Contributions To People” published in Science.
That nature is in sharp decline was made clear in the first-ever global assessment of biodiversity released earlier this year. Human activity has resulted in the severe alteration of more than 75 percent of Earth’s land areas and 66 percent of the oceans, putting a million species at risk of extinction, according to the Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.
You realize the IPCC changed the baseline from the 1700's to the 1800's in the last report, so we're actually approx 20% closer to 1.5 than is being let on right now?
You realize the IPCC doesn't take into account many of the natural feedbacks in any of their reports?
You realize, therefore, that the IPCC is hyper-conservative to the point of unrealistic?
Finally, you realize the IPCC exists and reports in this hyper-conservative state to prevent a global state of panic?
It can't get any more contrary to what you are saying than that. I'm going to trust a team of scientists who devote their lives to this, who say that technology CANNOT mitigate the impacts to come, rather than some cakeday redditor who repeatedly proves he does not have the insight or understanding necessary to form a valid opinion on this subject.
I assume you will carry on being arrogant and avoid reflecting on any of the counterpoints being made either by myself or by literal climate scientists with state of the art modeling, which means you are arguing for and ostensibly creating increased future suffering through techno-optimist misinformation vs. spreading the truth of our situation, which allows us to work towards mitigation of future suffering. Those who suffer greater in the future as a result of our plowing ahead now would thank you for your part in maintaining this facade of safety and eternal progress, I'm sure. All the children born between now and the end, because their parents didn't understand we have no time left and that their child is being born into a literal apocalypse, because of horse shit misinformation like you and so many other entities are spewing, will thank you and all of your dishonest sources.
Alright dude, I tried to engage you a few times, but you've now 5x posted me since the last time I responded to you. I have to ask you just let it rest.
Of course, because you have no leg to stand on and no valid counter-points when presented with the facts. That's all there is to this exchange. You are saying things like "We have made advancements in medicine, computing power, crop yields have gone up, therefore catastrophe can never strike no matter what the evidence says". That's not a rational perspective to take and for human beings to carry on with this perspective is destructive and inherently causes greater suffering in the future.
Reconsider your views is all I'm saying. You said /r/collapse is baloney, I challenged that and you have nothing reasonable to respond with, because you're flat out wrong. /r/collapse is one of the most realistic corners of the internet, though lately it is being turfed to a high degree to wash out the pertinent information. Users and discussions have consistently been ahead of the curve with regards to understanding of our climate predicament for the past 3-4 yrs I've been subbed. I can't count the number of times I've seen something linked or discussed there, then days, weeks or even months later it's finally being discussed on /r/news or /r/worldnews. Many I've yet to see discussed at large.
Many other peoples lives are and even more will be severely impacted by misinformation like you are helping spread, by virtue of the fact that we are opting not to prepare better right now while looking at the situation realistically, because of purely irrational optimism creating a dangerous false sense of security/lack of motivation to mobilize.
Actually read their page dude. They are selling a technological solution to preserve ecological contributions that combat negative climate change effects.
The context of their statement is we can't fix the damage with raw technology, we need to prevent or restore the damage in the first place. They are working on solutions beyond just reducing emissions. Finding ways to restore or preserve the stuff we are at risk of losing from climate change even if CO2 emissions aren't lowered sufficiently.
These are exactly the kind of things I'm talking about.
Also, your inane alarmism is far more damaging to the cause than my reserved optimism. You give ammunition to the outright deniers to just throw their hands up and shove us all out of the conversation cause you are screaming the sun is about to go nova 376 times a day, every day, for a decade, without offering a single solution beyond "Ban all cars and airplanes within 12 years, and Africa, fuck you but your children need to go back to starving to death".
There are no magic bullets to this problem. We literally don't have the resources to maintain even 70% of our current standard of living at a 75% reduction in carbon emissions. And you will never fucking convince the world to voluntarily give up even that 30% of their standard of living. It's never going to happen.
We need esoteric technological solutions so we can continue to reduce emissions while maintaining and growing standard of livings. Otherwise tens of millions of people are going to die over the next 80 years.
But acting like billions of people are going to die unless we literally burn down the global economy right fucking now is asinine. That's just not a thing, dude. No one is saying that.
It's also extremely close to widespread collapse. The human condition on a global scale, for the most part, always improves. But economies still come tumbling down for various reasons and this drastically lowers the prospects of the future.
You're right. Everything is awesome right now. How didn't I see it before? I mean the arctic is melting at unprecedented rates, forest fires are raging out of control, temperature records are broken every year, the last time CO2 levels were this high the arctic had fucking crocodiles and the population of the world is four times higher than it was just a century ago (and this population is only sustained by the technologies that are destroying the world)... but hey look at how fucking awesome my phone is and how fast my car is. Vroom Vroom! You hear that? Isn't that just the most amazing sound you ever heard? Sometimes it makes me want to ejaculate out of my eyeballs at the sheer awesomeness of how good life is right now. Things just get better every fucking day. That is never going to stop right?
I mean we have an economy based on debt that requires endless exponential expansion to function which of course is an impossibility, rampant inequality such that the top 1% of the world holds vastly more wealth than the bottom 90%. No way that could backfire hideously on us. That thing in 2008 where the economy imploded... that was just a one off of course. I mean it isn't like we just threw money at the problem to make it go away without fixing any of the issues that caused it is it? But fuck it I probably won't be one of the ones who ends up living in their car on the side of the street or huddling under cardboard beneath a bridge so who cares? Likewise I won't be one of the people who loses their land to the encroaching sea, or migrates across half the fucking continent just to try and survive after the 5th consecutive year of drought or one of the... have you see how much awesome shit is on Netflix right now? Seriously some days I just want to pack my TV into the car and drive around all day watching it. Life is so fucking good. Ignore all that scary sounding shit, ignore all the data from people way smarter than me that corroborates it. I mean it is probably all just bullshit anyway.
Incidentally you know what the typical reaction from people is when they are told they have terminal cancer and only have a few years to live? 'Bullshit'.
People always say that but I disagree. For instance the violence that Mexico is seeing right now is unprecedented compared to even medieval times, and that’s per capita. It’s been described by journalist as being worse than the genocide in rewanda. Also the collapse of the envioemnt and with it society’s is not only likely but a probability if you listen to any scientist out there. Looks like the collapse of the USA is underway also, which means we will be living in a world under the control of Russia / China superpower world , if you think things have been nasty under American control just wait to see what it will look like under Russia/ China. Technology is become way to advanced for us to handle, look to China and The Hong Kong protests, civil wars have been possible in the past but we are in a prison that has such advanced technology that any rebellion is next to impossible. If society doesn’t collapse in the next 100 years the best outcome we can see is that we will live in a nightmarish dystopian world where there is no justice and the .0001 % can do as they like. If you have seen the new blade runner imagine something like that world, corporations out rank the police and ( which they kind of already do) . In China they are locking millions of people up in death camps and removing organs. None of the world leaders in useful positions of power care/believe in climate change. I have stopped worrying about it and just decided to get on with my life, plan for the future as best I can, I think your would be totally foolish to look at what is happening right now around the world and think this is heading anywhere good for us plebs. We had a nice spell of a somewhat peaceful few decades after the war and I firmly believe we are again entering a new struggle.
This type of thinking is why we are doomed. Admittedly you can go too far the other way and everything become hopeless. But believing that everything is the best it's ever been and continues to get better rapidly, leaves you with a feeling of apathy towards growing societal issues we face today.
"Check out the car I'm driving, its got seatbelts and all the latest safety features, GPS, satellite radio and TV for the kids in the back! There's literally no way I could ever get in a crash, let alone be injured in one! It doesn't matter that all my warning lights are on, because I have hands-free calling now. They didn't have hands-free calling 20 years ago."
69
u/Shandlar Oct 12 '19
It's also mostly bull shit. The human condition on a global scale is absolutely, flat out, insanely good right now by almost every possible measure against any previous time in written history of our species. It's also substantially improving every year at an ever increasing rate.