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Environmental Mega-disaster within 100 years

Eddie Dane

Philosopher
Eddie Dane
Joined
Aug 18, 2007
Messages
6,681
Very disturbing article here that argues that measures against climate change are too little too late and the repercussions of climate change have been severely understated.

It's a long article that goes into
-Die-off
-Food security
-War
-Air quality
-Water security
Etc

If this is only half right, our "decision" to build a fossil fuelled high-tech society may be the end of an inhabitable earth and the end of -well- us.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html

It's too long to quote and do it justice. But I hope it sparks discussion.

Personally, I find it quite believable and see no real path to solutions as I don't see 7 billion people revert to a low-tech society.

Usually, I end apocalyptic subjects with a joking 'Invest in ammo and canned goods', but after reading this I'm quite bullish on heroin, hookers and VR-glasses to mentally escape the impending doom.

If the discussion moves to the scientific merits of the article, mods might want to move this to the Science sub-forum.
 
Problem is that this is a very long article and has very few references for the statistics or other information within it.

But researchers like Marshall Burke and Solomon Hsiang have managed to quantify some of the non-obvious relationships between temperature and violence: For every half-degree of warming, they say, societies will see between a 10 and 20 percent increase in the likelihood of armed conflict. In climate science, nothing is simple, but the arithmetic is harrowing: A planet five degrees warmer would have at least half again as many wars as we do today. Overall, social conflict could more than double this century.
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Seems like a gigantic assumption.

It is not just the hajj, and it is not just Mecca; heat is already killing us. In the sugarcane region of El Salvador, as much as one-fifth of the population has chronic kidney disease, including over a quarter of the men, the presumed result of dehydration from working the fields they were able to comfortably harvest as recently as two decades ago.
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There are a lot of possible sources for the kidney disease in El Salvador. Pesticides is one. It's like an opinion piece with a whole lot of information. It makes a lot of assumptions.

One article on El Salvador kidney disease:
http://www.npr.org/sections/goatsan...-kidney-disease-afflicting-sugar-cane-workers

Another:
http://sustainablepulse.com/2013/09...ndup-over-deadly-kidney-disease/#.WWPSr1G1tOQ
Scientists have yet to definitively uncover the cause of the malady, although emerging evidence points to toxic heavy metals contained in pesticides as a potential culprit.

El Salvador presented findings from an ongoing official study, conducted jointly with the Pan American Health Organization, suggesting that pesticides and fertilizers containing heavy metals may be to blame.

Environmental tests of soil and water samples in a village heavily affected by CKD, Ciudad Romero, found the presence of high levels of cadmium and arsenic, heavy metals toxic to the kidneys. Among a sample of 42 residents of Ciudad Romero who suffer from CKD, all reported applying pesticides without any protective equipment.
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I guess it's something to discuss but it is hard to focus on one aspect of the article. There is already a mega thread (or sub forum?) for climate change in the Science section.

If this is only half right, our "decision" to build a fossil fuelled high-tech society may be the end of an inhabitable earth and the end of -well- us.
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Big "if" :)
 
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I remember in high school debate, every proposal was going to cause nuclear war. If you did whatever it was that the affirmative team suggested, the end result would be nuclear war. We always had index cards with expert opinions that backed up the assertions. Professor so and so of someplace was always trying to warn us of the dire consequences of the actions, which would always lead to nuclear war.

Somehow, lots of things that were proposed in those debates actually were implemented, and yet no nuclear war happened.

I can't take seriously any article that talks about how human behavior will be affected by climate change.

I'm all for trying to do something about climate change, but I just can't take all this hype seriously. If that guy is only half right, then it means that his models are all wrong, so why should we worry about the possibility that he is half right?
 
In forty years I'll light a cigar and read this article for lawlz. My beauty queen third wife will wonder what's so funny, and I'll tell her that her generation was supposed to be "doomed." By the way, this will take place on a yacht in pristine blue water. Sorry haterz.
 
Cain said:
In forty years I'll light a cigar and read this article for lawlz. My beauty queen third wife will wonder what's so funny, and I'll tell her that her generation was supposed to be "doomed." By the way, this will take place on a yacht in pristine blue water. Sorry haterz.
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Is that deep blue water (“The Keys”), or coastal shallows (“Miami-sous-mer”)?
 
Cain said:
In forty years I'll light a cigar and read this article for lawlz. My beauty queen third wife will wonder what's so funny, and I'll tell her that her generation was supposed to be "doomed." By the way, this will take place on a yacht in pristine blue water. Sorry haterz.
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You're on to something there. The obvious solution is to make sure that you are rich enough to be able to afford one of the limited spots on the lifeboat.
 
I think it won't be very hard or too expensive to adapt to local Climate Change, provided you have the data, technology and capital to do so.
Plenty of places in the world will get hit hard due to poverty and/or ignorance. The war in Syria started due to irrigation mismanagement, after all.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
I think it won't be very hard or too expensive to adapt to local Climate Change, provided you have the data, technology and capital to do so.
Plenty of places in the world will get hit hard due to poverty and/or ignorance. The war in Syria started due to irrigation mismanagement, after all.
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Would you expect those in affected areas to stay put and die? Or might they attempt to migrate en mass to climes friendlier to humans?

Would adapting to (or fending off) massive influxes of desperate people fall under the category of "adapting to local climate change"? Or do you see them as separate issues?
 
Meadmaker said:
I can't take seriously any article that talks about how human behavior will be affected by climate change.
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I have a theory that the whole snowflake triggering cultural appropriation unsafedness is caused by climate change.
 
Could this be "The Great Filter", the reason why we don't find evidence of technological civilizations in our stellar neighborhood. Its not so much a case of tech civilizations blowing themselves up in nuclear wars as much as utterly mismanaging their planet's environment and resources and so turning it into an uninhabitable wasteland.
 
Isn't there any think tank that takes into consideration the plus side of global warming?

Warmer air plus warmer oceans = more rain, not less. The Siberian climate will only change for the better. Likewise that Great American Desert, the Great Plains. How much will wheat crops expand, clear up into Canada, and over the Tundra? Sure, the Equatorial deserts will get bigger, but how much more rain will fall on Sub Sahara Africa? Australia- ash pit or Garden of Eden? The west end is getting seasonal flooding theses days, I wonder what the fossil record shows archeo-climatically? Bye-Bye Polar Bear, but welcome tuna to the Arctic Ocean. Bye-Byre Galveston and NOLA, but California will add a couple hundred miles of ocean front property, and thousands of square miles of shrimp grounds. Arizona and the Sonoran desert- they get monsoons now, might go either way. Antarctica, a giant fresh water lake ringed by an atoll- ocean front property to one side, lake front in their back yards.

Anthropogenic Global Climate Change, Terra-Forming at it's finest. Maybe.
 
100 years ? Too optimistic .. also .. don't forget AI will be sentient in like 50 years, genetic engineering will be available for terrorist in 20 years and Trump is president of USA today.
We have solid chance to witness the end during our lifetimes.
 
Eddie Dane said:
Personally, I find it quite believable and see no real path to solutions as I don't see 7 billion people revert to a low-tech society.
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There is no solution, because humans always want more, not less. The only way the solution will present itself is if we can sequester carbon from the atmosphere somehow (like planting 50 billion trees or something), or if the population of earth is dramatically reduced. I vote for the second.

The ecosystem will survive, albeit with some extinctions, I think.
 
lomiller said:
This outlines a lot of the potential problems and the problems faced at each degree of warming. I would caution that it omits timelines, so while many of the consequences could be locked in by 2050, they may not happen for thousands of years.
http://globalwarming.berrens.nl/globalwarming.htm
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You only mention the possible problems. All doomsaying? Do they mention any of the benefits? Arctic Cod.... mmmmm...Siberian pastachios.. mmm....
 
smartcooky said:
Could this be "The Great Filter", the reason why we don't find evidence of technological civilizations in our stellar neighborhood. Its not so much a case of tech civilizations blowing themselves up in nuclear wars as much as utterly mismanaging their planet's environment and resources and so turning it into an uninhabitable wasteland.
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That's close to my thought on the issue. I think intelligent life is very rare because of the timescales involved, but that most civilisations that reach our level either die off for one reason or another, reach a population bottleneck due to climate change, war, etc. or just become apathetic due to technology and comfort.
 
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