536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018) • Hacker News Board

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#311

Post by iso1631 » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 1:07 PM UTC

komali2 wrote: post #40

deanCommie wrote: post #10

These kinds of cataclysmic volcanic eruptions could happen today right? What's.......our intended process for dealing with this? Are there any technical solutions for dispersing ash from the atmosphere? I know this is a stupidly naive question to some degree - how do you prevent acts of god, but I am curious if someone has thought about it.

> What's.......our intended process for dealing with this? The extent of the USA's preparedness, from the federal agency in charge handling Emergencies, is a website with a bullet point list of what you should have in a first aid kit in your house: https://www.ready.gov/kit I'm being only partially facetious. There are of course multiple agencies at the federal, state, county, and local level with their own plans and…

Katrina has a death toll measured around 1000-2000.

The population of New Orleans alone is 1.5 million, so 1‰ of the population died.

That's a pretty small number, and tells me that society coped just fine.

Crop failures caused by volcanic eruptions, which kill 50% of the world population, is a far bigger issue. It is also something mankind will recover from in a couple of generations.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#312

Post by koheripbal » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

walleeee wrote: post #298

koheripbal wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems more likely that populations will just move to new stable areas.

I think this will happen, yes, but mass migrations and refugee crises aren't usually a stabilizing force on international relations

I meant environmentally stable - not politically stable.

ie - Inland.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#313

Post by dboreham » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 1:15 PM UTC

lgl wrote: post #62

The 2010 eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajökull [0] was a small sample of the perturbations that a volcanic event can have on day to day lives. And it was a relatively small eruption. Anything much larger than that will most likely have devastating effects on modern society on pretty much all levels and it's not really a matter of "if" but "when". Besides eruptions, many other scarier events can cause huge shifts on…

Supposedly there's an associated "black mat" visible in the soil at ~12ky depth. Since I live in the middle of North America and I own an excavator, I'm tempted to see if I can find it..

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#314

Post by contrapunter » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 1:48 PM UTC

Don't disagree with the facts but the suffering of humans depends as much on the content of their thoughts as it does on material conditions. A civilisation at the apparent height of its power and security can eat itself from the inside and decline rapidly. A wealthy individual living a privileged life can be beset by anxiety, and so on. Both of these things are strongly affected by the ideas that predominate in a given era. These include subtle ideas which can't readily be identified and which nevertheless spread and cause harm. So those ideas are a relevant part of the environment when considering which was the worst year so far.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#315

Post by jkingsbery » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 2:39 PM UTC

ummonk wrote: post #142

> What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says. Hastening its collapse several centuries later?

I had the same reaction. Constantinople fell in 1453. That's 917 years later. Justinian maybe represented the high water mark, but the empire continued to contract and expand in the centuries to follow.

So few human institutions have lasted 917 years, it's hard to compare this claim to anything. It's a little bit like arguing that the sack of Rome in 390 BC was a mere precursor to the one that took place in 410 later, or like arguing Charlemagne and the Carolingian Renaissance helped hasten along the Italian Renaissance.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#316

Post by opwieurposiu » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 2:55 PM UTC

contrapunter wrote: post #314

Don't disagree with the facts but the suffering of humans depends as much on the content of their thoughts as it does on material conditions. A civilisation at the apparent height of its power and security can eat itself from the inside and decline rapidly. A wealthy individual living a privileged life can be beset by anxiety, and so on. Both of these things are strongly affected by the ideas that predominate in a gi…

Ahh yes, the Buddha teaches us that the root of suffering is desire.

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#317

Post by mellavora » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 3:17 PM UTC

godzillabrennus wrote: post #127

aksss wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's no way for anyone to make money by being responsible Not just that, but there's no way to sustain the level of human development (and population) we currently have without continuing to feed the energy beast. Our daily burn rate on oil/gas/coal is so profoundly high, and growing, that a) nothing can fill the gap; and b) it can't be shut down without condemning further development (esp. in Africa, India and…

We can use nuclear ️ to lower carbon emissions.

totally mis-read this as "we can use nuclear weapons to lower carbon emissions"... teach me to scan instead of read!

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#318

Post by atoav » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 3:26 PM UTC

mark-r wrote: post #235

Nasrudith wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not too certain of the logic of the arguement - namely because fossil fuels are actually pretty damn advanced in terms of "actual technology and societal infastructure to access and exploit them". We already went through this long ago with surface deposits of copper ore as well essentially millenia ago. Effectively the time when it is useful is "when we don't have cheaper alternatives yet". We still should striv…

Good luck with those "renewable" solar farms when the next eruption happens.

Which literally nobody serious promotes.

“It can't work if you do it that way" is a pretty bad argument if nobody actually does it that way. Maybe you are accidentally misrepresenting reality in order to support your world view here, but if not please go somewhere else, where facts don't matter.

As others mentioned: every nation that does renewables is looking into robust energy mixes and this (at least in industrial nations) includes catastrophic scenarios as well).

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#319

Post by caogecym » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 3:45 PM UTC

harryh wrote: post #60

izzydata wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine there will come a time when the earth is just on the cusp of no longer being able to sustain the massive population that it has grown to or human life at all. Since the earths human population will be so high even a 5th of people dying off will be drastically more deaths than any worldwide catastrophe of the past. Maybe within another 1000 years.

Current projections of Earth's population have a peak population of about 11B (only 40% higher than today) towards the end of the century and then declining. It's always hard to know what's going to happen in the future, but currently it's pretty unlikely that we'll ever see a worldwide population all that much higher than what we already have.

Curious - did the projection say what’s the cause of the decline after the peak?

Re: 536 was ‘the worst year to be alive’ (2018)

#320

Post by someguyorother » Fri, Jun 19, 2020, 3:46 PM UTC

perl4ever wrote: post #244

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a xomolete misinterpretation of today's economic and resource situation. The real tragedy is that all this is a conpletely unneccesary wanton destruction. Thrre is no coke, it serves no purpose. Pick amy product on a supermarket shelf or on Amazon, and you wil find that raw materials account for maybe 20% of its final price tops. They are called commodities for a reason, and its production of those raw materi…

It's often said that most of the (developed world) economy depends on consumers. Rich people tend to have a greater proportion of financial assets compared to consumption. When people criticize the rich, it's pretty standard to say they're stingy, they hoard wealth etc. Conversely when the rich consume, they're at least "creating jobs". So that seems to imply to me that ordinary people (in the rich countries ) should…

Sure, economic equality will lead to more direct consumption than inequality, all else equal. That said, I'd rather have equality plus appropriate Pigouvian taxation than have to rely on inequality to do the environmental rationing for us.

A more equal society would probably have a greater chance of enacting Pigouvian taxes anyway because political power and economic power would be less intertwined.