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Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruptio

theguardian.com

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Re: Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruptio

#31

Post by smitty1e »

kristopolous wrote: post #19
pmx wrote: post #3

> “ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health and climate-disruption upheavals” that threaten human survival because of ignorance and inaction The pandemic has taught me that humans will roundly ignore even the most glaring evidence to avoid accepting bad things are happening. I can't see how we're ever going to be able to avert climate disaster when we can't even get everyone to take basic precautions again…

It's a culture thing. Some cultures, as it turns out, are better than others at dealing with stresses like this. Changing culture is a big project. We can try though because we don't actually have any other option.

> Changing culture is a big project

For my buy-in, change agents are encouraged to:

- begin with absolute truth

- develop an unambiguous, existentially complete solution

- let that solution sell itself through its inarguable superiority

--

Anything less than that risks coming off as so much bullying.

Re: Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruptio

#33

Post by ncmncm »

listenallyall wrote: post #29
pmx wrote: post #3

> “ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health and climate-disruption upheavals” that threaten human survival because of ignorance and inaction The pandemic has taught me that humans will roundly ignore even the most glaring evidence to avoid accepting bad things are happening. I can't see how we're ever going to be able to avert climate disaster when we can't even get everyone to take basic precautions again…

> the most glaring evidence what evidence? "in 1968, Ehrlich warned of imminent population explosion and hundreds of millions of people starving to death" Wrong, wrong, wrong. Food has never been more abundant, plentiful and inexpensive https://www.wfdd.org/story/food-growing-more-plentiful-so-wh... Pardon me for ignoring what this fear monger and crackpot has to say.

Things changed in direct response to the warning. That is exactly how it is supposed to go.

People who don't know insist too that Y2K was a big nothing, but it was nothing only because of $billions spent to ensure that it would be.

People who don't know say the same about whales, acid rain and stratospheric ozone. Same thing: global effort, crisis reduced, although further effort needed.

2038 still looms, but much has been done already.

Re: Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruptio

#34

Post by ncmncm »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #28
jhanschoo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Zero fertility would introduce an aging crisis.

Which is preferable to a resource exhaustion crisis. Can’t kick the can forever. Most of the world is at or below a total fertility rate replacement rate (2.1). The trend simply needs to continue for ~10-15 years to lock in the population decline.

We must hope civilization doesn't collapse before then.

If it does, population will decline faster, but much less comfortably.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25745549

Re: Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruptio

#35

Post by big_paps »

cryptica wrote: post #15
donkeyd wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's weird, because all the places I've traveled (in both US and EU) have had a clear rise in average temperature in the last 3 decades. The country I live in has had the average temperature steadily rise by a full degree over the last 30 years. Which is visible in changes in flora and fauna and extreme weather. Really makes me wonder where you get your data.

There were some unusual 'hottest on record' last year in the summer in some parts of Europe. But also there were a lot of 'coldest on record' in other places like the US and in Russia during the winter so it doesn't really mean much... This is bound to happen somewhere every year but you need to look at averages and try different years.

Well, okay then, i will take your precise data as a fact. All these scientists with their fake-data must surely be liars.

Re: Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruptio

#36

Post by stolenmerch »

ncmncm wrote: post #33
listenallyall wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the most glaring evidence what evidence? "in 1968, Ehrlich warned of imminent population explosion and hundreds of millions of people starving to death" Wrong, wrong, wrong. Food has never been more abundant, plentiful and inexpensive https://www.wfdd.org/story/food-growing-more-plentiful-so-wh... Pardon me for ignoring what this fear monger and crackpot has to say.

Things changed in direct response to the warning. That is exactly how it is supposed to go. People who don't know insist too that Y2K was a big nothing, but it was nothing only because of $billions spent to ensure that it would be. People who don't know say the same about whales, acid rain and stratospheric ozone. Same thing: global effort, crisis reduced, although further effort needed. 2038 still looms, but much ha…

I'm very skeptical that increases in agricultural productivity and political stability, two leading preventers of famine, were a direct result of a single book. The Population Bomb was controversial and had many detractors at the time. It seems much more likely that he was simply wrong in his predictions (which he insists were simply possible scenarios). Otherwise, you'd have much more evidence of the book being cited in public policy and industrial investment strategies.

Re: Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruptio

#37

Post by michaelbrave »

pmx wrote: post #3

> “ghastly future of mass extinction, declining health and climate-disruption upheavals” that threaten human survival because of ignorance and inaction The pandemic has taught me that humans will roundly ignore even the most glaring evidence to avoid accepting bad things are happening. I can't see how we're ever going to be able to avert climate disaster when we can't even get everyone to take basic precautions again…

Some places are handling the pandemic ok, I've felt like the larger problems have been: politicizing the problem, those living in denial and propaganda that minimized the threat. Regrettably climate change faces those same issues.

Re: Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruptio

#38

Post by alexgmcm »

stolenmerch wrote: post #36
ncmncm wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things changed in direct response to the warning. That is exactly how it is supposed to go. People who don't know insist too that Y2K was a big nothing, but it was nothing only because of $billions spent to ensure that it would be. People who don't know say the same about whales, acid rain and stratospheric ozone. Same thing: global effort, crisis reduced, although further effort needed. 2038 still looms, but much ha…

I'm very skeptical that increases in agricultural productivity and political stability, two leading preventers of famine, were a direct result of a single book. The Population Bomb was controversial and had many detractors at the time. It seems much more likely that he was simply wrong in his predictions (which he insists were simply possible scenarios). Otherwise, you'd have much more evidence of the book being cite…

It doesn't need to be just because of that book - e.g. companies can see impending food scarcity and invest in agricultural research etc. to avoid it and profit by meeting the growing demand.

The thing is although we now we can often figure out solutions when the problems become more apparent, we can't guarantee it - so it makes sense to start working on solutions as soon as possible.

Re: Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruptio

#39

Post by anewaccount2021 »

I never see HN readers taking personal responsibility in any thread regarding climate change. Every comment just damns other people. If you are a techie in North America, you are in the top 1% of all-time polluters, if not the top 0.1%. Me too. I admit it. Stop wagging your fingers at other people.

Re: Top scientists warn of 'ghastly future of mass extinction' and climate disruptio

#40

Post by cryptica »

jpfr wrote: post #22
cryptica wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Examples (I just picked two random places and dates for temperature records for the month of December at least 20 years apart): Miami Florida December 2000 (peak day-average is 77.08): https://www.wunderground.com/history/monthly/us/fl/miami/KMI... Miami Florida December 2020 (peak day-average is 76.69): https://www.wunderground.com/history/monthly/us/fl/miami/KMI... --- Honolulu, Hawaii December 1995 (peak day-avera…

Looking at a small number of weather stations is "evidence by anecdote" and completely unsound. You introduce bias by your selection of measurements. Plus a large portion of the earth is scantly inhabited with no weather stations in place. Like the poles or international waters. Instead you should look at satellite measurements of the temperature across the entire planet. These are widely available. The scientific di…

That's why I said to look at any place. It you want to make the argument that the temperature differences are so small that we shouldn't expect to notice any difference from looking at many different before and after charts then perhaps those differences should be considered statistically insignificant... More likely to be something wrong with the measuring instruments (maybe changes in the manufacturing process of these instruments), or people are becoming more deceptive when entering their measurements or being more selective in how they combine different measurements.

Why should I trust a heavily processed, combined result like the Wikipedia page you posted more than random sampling of raw data directly from local meteorologists? It's pretty obvious that the more 'processing' of the data is carried out, the more inaccurate it's going to be. By the time we get to the global mashup of the data, it's been so heavily tempered by people along the hierarchy that it's basically useless. The global statistics are not to be trusted, they're the result of many meteorologists and statisticians playing 'Chinese whispers' at a global scale.

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