New Report Suggests 'High Likelihood of Human Civilization Coming To an End' Starting in 2050 (vice.com) 576
A harrowing scenario analysis of how human civilization might collapse in coming decades due to climate change has been endorsed by a former Australian defense chief and senior royal navy commander. From a report: The analysis, published by the Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restoration, a think-tank in Melbourne, Australia, describes climate change as "a near- to mid-term existential threat to human civilization" and sets out a plausible scenario of where business-as-usual could lead over the next 30 years. The paper argues that the potentially "extremely serious outcomes" of climate-related security threats are often far more probable than conventionally assumed, but almost impossible to quantify because they "fall outside the human experience of the last thousand years." On our current trajectory, the report warns, "planetary and human systems [are] reaching a 'point of no return' by mid-century, in which the prospect of a largely uninhabitable Earth leads to the breakdown of nations and the international order."
Okay (Score:5, Funny)
Probably for the best, based on any comments section on any website.
I always liked this from Busta Rhymes' E.L.E... (Score:3)
Daddy, what's it gonna be like in the year 2000?
Well sweetheart, for your sake I hope it'll all be peaches & cream.
But I'm afraid the end time is near
The cataclysmic apocalypse referred to in the scriptures of every holy book known to mankind
It will be an Era fraught with boundless greed & corruption
Where global monetary systems disintegrate, leaving brother to kill brother for a grain of overcooked rice
The nations of the civilized world will collapse under the impressive weight of parasitic political conspiracies which remove all hope & optimism from their once faithful citizens
Around the globe, generations of polluters will be punished for their sins
Un-shielded by the ozone layer they have successfully depleted
Left to bake in the searing naked rays of light
Wholesale assassinations served to destabilize every remaining government
Leaving the starving & wicked to fend for themselves
Bloodthirsty renegade cyborgs created by tax-dodging corporations wreck havoc
Pissed off androids tired of being slaves to a godless & gutless system, where the rich get richer & the poor get fucked over and out
Unleash total worldwide destruction by means of nuclear holocaust
Annihilating the terrified masses
Leaving in its torturous wake nothing but vicious, cannibalistic, mutated, radiating, and horribly disfigured hordes of satanic killers
Begged on revenge, but against whom?
There are so few left alive
Starvation reigns supreme, forcing unlucky survivors to eat anything & anyone in their path
Massive earthquakes crack the planets crust like a hollow eggshell
Causing unending volcanic eruptions
The creatures of the seven seas, unable to escape the certain death upon land, boil in their liquid prison
Disease then circles the earth, plagues & viruses with no known cause or cure
Laying waste to whatever draws breath, and human-kind having proven itself to be nothing more than a race of ruthless scavengers
Fall victim to merciless attacks at the hands of interplanetary alien tribes who seek to conquer our charred remains
This is, Extinction Level Event
The Final World Front, and there is only, one, year, left
Re: (Score:2)
Busta Rhymes's mistake was making such a short term prediction. If you want to scare the wits out of people, it needs to be at least 30 years out, just like the authors of this study did.
This was a scenario analysis, not a prediction. I didn't see any claims regarding the likeliness of this scenario other than it being likely. "Likely" is not a specific term, but I took it to mean it is likely enough that it should be taken seriously as a possibility when making decisions on how to act. No one will be proven wrong if this scenario does not occur in 30 years since no one put it at a 100% certainty.
Re: (Score:2)
You'er doing it wrong. This is the point where you take bets.
I bet this will never happen, want in on the action? If you think it will, you can bet me 1 BTC.
Like taking candy from a baby. :P
Not long after 9/11 Ted Turner publically stated.. (Score:2)
....we are going to destroy ourselves within 50 years. I don't think he was referring to climate change.
But Consider, if there really is a point of no return in a rise of global temperature where all life dies then certainly there are those who would go to war to reduce the population and cause a short nuclear winter that some may survive. And with this, the WWIII threshold would have to be before the global warming point of no return happens.
If these where the only choices you had, wouldn't you do the same
Re: (Score:2)
A solution direction.... option C: http://3seas.org/Voice_of_Glob... [3seas.org] improve it to make it happen
Or sit back and wait for the few with all their ideas to get busy and do the save, as currently they don't seem to be enabling the rest of us to really participate.
Re:Not long after 9/11 Ted Turner publically state (Score:5, Informative)
Didn't we go through all this with the dire warnings from the Club of Rome [openculture.com] in the 1970s?
Ah, and there we go. One of the lead authors [itdunlop.com] is a member of both the Breakthrough National Centre and the Club of Rome.
Mod informative (Score:2)
I wish I had mod points.
Re:Not long after 9/11 Ted Turner publically state (Score:4, Interesting)
Contrary to the widespread scoffing, the Limits to Growth model is still largely on track: Is Global Collapse Imminent? [unimelb.edu.au]
Yes and changes were made (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
But Consider, if there really is a point of no return in a rise of global temperature where all life dies
Fortunately, that's happens at the temperature where the crust melts, so it is not a danger from global warming. Venus, OTOH, is boned. The mass of carbon in the Earth's atmosphere, oceans, and all known fossil fuel reserves combined is a rounding error compared to the mass of carbon in the rock weathering cycle. The mass of carbon in Venus's atmosphere is similar to the amount in the Earth's crust, and not the result of runaway global warming.
Life will survive, civilization trickier (Score:3)
But Consider, if there really is a point of no return in a rise of global temperature where all life dies...
There clearly is but the most likely way we are going to get there is in about a billion years when the sun will have expanded somewhat to the point where the earth will have an average temperature of 47C. Climate change, on the otherhand, is extremely unlikely to get there. Over the past 500 million years the temperature has been a lot hotter [wikipedia.org] than today with temperatures peaking around +12-14C above today's levels. Life clearly thrived in these conditions or we would not be here to discuss it.
However,
Seems about right. (Score:5, Funny)
That's when we'll finally run out of IPv4 addresses and all *have* to switch to IPv6, then we'll run out of colons (':') ... -- then things get bad.
Bring it on (Score:2)
If it happens, maybe the survivalists, once they've rebuilt civilization, will pay extra attention to not fucking with the planet we depend their lives on.
I don't have much hope for the current Earth inhabitants.
Re: (Score:2)
real threat...nuclear power now! (Score:4, Insightful)
If climate change is actually a real threat, which I believe it is, then people need to get on board with 400% increase in nuclear power production in the next 15 - 20 years and stop fretting about the very manageable nuclear waste that in the US has been safely stored on-site for decades.
Nuclear power production is the only carbon free alternative energy that can provably scale at affordable costs. Hydro is tapped out for the most part and solar and wind have scalability and other environmental sustainability issues that come along with a massive industrial scale infrastructure and widespread distribution of power production.
Re:real threat...nuclear power now! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:real threat...nuclear power now! (Score:5, Informative)
Do them all: nuclear, wind, solar.
New nukes cost $0.15 / kwhr.
Large PV solar farms cost $0.05 / kwhr.
The latest wind turbines cost $0.03 / kwhr.
Nuclear is for people that are bad at math.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:real threat...nuclear power now! (Score:4, Insightful)
Diversification in all things.
Diversity can mean building many windfarms in many different locations. The wind is always blowing somewhere.
We can build 5 windfarms for the price of one nuke.
The goal is to diversify the schedule and methods of power generation.
The goal is reliable and affordable power. Diversity is a mechanism, not a goal in itself.
Re: (Score:2)
Wind only really works in places that are always windy. Solar only really works in places that are really sunny. And hydro needs a major river. Nuclear works pretty much everywhere, but I would avoid putting it on the coast or near fault lines. Fortunately those two places tend to be a good match for either wind, solar or both.
Re: (Score:3)
Well, when Solar and Wind start providing power 24-7, then nuclear will be a bad thing.
Alas, the sun doesn't shine much at night, so solar isn't going to be 24-7 till we start putting up solar power satellites beaming power groundside.
Wind isn't keyed to the Sun being in the sky, but it's still not 100%. Even ignoring the no-wind periods, there are also Really High Wind periods when you have to shut down your windturbines.
Which leaves us with nuclear as the only zero-carbon energy source that runs day a
Re:real threat...nuclear power now! (Score:5, Insightful)
Large PV solar farms cost 0.192-0.22/kWh
The latest wind turbines cost 0.125-0.255/kWh or more
New nukes cost 0.085-0.095/kWh - existing nukes including fuel replenishment cycle and maintenance after 20 years is right around the same. The only game that beats new nukes, is hydroelectric like Niagara Falls which is around 0.023 kWh.
Unless you live in a country where nuclear power is bad, in which case it costs more. Sit back, enjoy those fit prices. [www.ieso.ca] It's even more expensive in various european countries. I seem to remember that various places in Germany are still paying around 0.76kWh.
Nuclear is for people that are bad at math.
Looks like you live in a country where nuclear power is bad.
Re:real threat...nuclear power now! (Score:4, Interesting)
New nukes cost 0.085-0.095/kWh
You forgot to account for the decade of delays (with interest accumulating) and the final construction cost ballooning to three times the initial forecast.
Vogtle only went 80% over budget, and the managers certainly deserve generous bonuses for that achievement, but even multiplying by 1.8 puts your prices over 15 cents (which is what I said).
Anti-nuke, bumper sticker level logic (Score:2)
Do them all: nuclear, wind, solar.
New nukes cost $0.15 / kwhr.
Large PV solar farms cost $0.05 / kwhr. The latest wind turbines cost $0.03 / kwhr. Nuclear is for people that are bad at math.
Not really. You failed to factor in the savings from cleaning up some existing stockpiles of waste that can be consumed as fuel in more modern designs. But there is a larger logical fallacy, an inconsistency, that the pro renewables often make. They often argue that the costs of eliminating carbon are justified by the imminent threat. Yet for nuclear they are all of a sudden cost conscious, what happened to that imminent threat of climate change? Of the desperate need to remove all fossil fuel based power g
Re: real threat...nuclear power now! (Score:3)
I think you are counting installed capacity rather than actual reliable power at scale. Nuclear can work alone with just transmission lines. Solar and Wind require much larger and complex distribution and energy storage systems and have higher real estate costs.
I am all for solar and wind, but not if we are really just talking about solar and wind that is a front for natural gas power plants 70% of the time.
In that case it would just be more environmentally sound to skip the solar and wind and just do nat
Re: real threat...nuclear power now! (Score:3)
Solar and Wind takes decades to install the equivalent of one nuke power plant
Re: (Score:3)
Solar and Wind takes decades to install the equivalent of one nuke power plant
Nuclear plants take decades just to do the paperwork! Unless we cut that and somehow overcome NIMBYism it's just not going to happen.
Re: (Score:3)
The last nuke completed in America generates 2.5 GW.
2.5 GW of solar is installed every 20 days.
When I decided to put solar on my roof, it was completed and generating power 4 months later.
Re: real threat...nuclear power now! (Score:5, Informative)
Enough PV battery chargers and enough batteries to power the whole planet can be installed in days? Seriously? Where did you get your engineering degree? Unfortunately it is people like you who are bad at engineering but don't realize it who really will cause the world to end. Because Dunning-Kruger. Actually try doing something real in the world sometime and you will see that it is much harder than you thought. Scaling up renewables to power the whole planet is from an engineering pov the equivalent of new technology. It may not be doable at all, but if it is it is going to be much much more difficult than you realize. Nuclear on the other hand is something we know how to do already and it would scale quite nicely as France has shown.
Re: (Score:3)
Nuclear on the other hand is something we know how to do already and it would scale quite nicely as France has shown.
Rofl. In France nuclear power never was above ~70% peak load.
And they are phasing out nuclear power for renewables, just like everyone else does.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
How are you going to pay for it? The people who build nuclear plants don't work for free.
Sure, but they will take money in exchange for labor and government can always print more money for free. They already do it to fund wars, might as well put some of it to less wasteful use.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure people would be interested in buying bonds to finance the plants.
Only if the government guarantees the bonds with taxpayer money.
Otherwise, the risk is too high of the bonds going to zero when the inevitable cost overruns and delays cause the project to be cancelled.
A typical nuclear project takes twice as long as forecast, and costs three times the original budget.
But things may be improving. The new Vogtle Nuke [wikipedia.org] in Georgia only went over budget by 80%. That is a commendable achievement.
Re:real threat...nuclear power now! (Score:5, Interesting)
Spent fuel has to be put somewhere safe for at least 10,000 years.
Only if all the plutonium is just thrown away with the waste rather than being reprocessed into new fuel rods.
The fission products contain less total radioactivity than the ore the uranium came from in something on the order of 500 years. (Guess what group is most vehemently opposed to reprocessing. I consider this the "Erik and Lyle Menendez demands the court's mercy because they are orphans" argument.)
The best solution for the transuranics, some of which are very long-lived (which is precisely equivalent to saying they are weakly radioactive) is to put them into new fuel rods, too. They'll absorb neutrons, and transmute into something else, and decay, repeat until they eventually hit some fissionable isotope which will fission, and they'll become part of the fission products problem set.
As for disposal location, go to Google Earth and search for "Sedan Crater". Scan south. *That* is what's already in the general area of Yucca Mountain, almost a thousand nuclear bomb craters, with all the nasty stuff completely uncontained other than being (mostly) underground.
Re: (Score:3)
If reprocessing was cost effective, that's what nuclear power companies and governments around the world would have been doing for decades. They aren't. And that's the real Achilles heel of nuclear power: cost. It's why governments and companies that happily see millions of people die in the pursuit of profit and power aren't investing in nuclear power: because it's too expensive. Even for the p
Re: real threat...nuclear power now! (Score:3)
Has that actually happened though? I mean I am all for whatever works, but it seems we have been building out all the "easy" solar and wind and have not made progress in carbon emissions.
Human love an Apocolypse Story (Score:5, Insightful)
If you ever try to to submit a story to a Sci-Fi magazine, they will tell you do not bother with a whole bunch of junk, including things such as "If this goes on..." stories. It's one of the most obvious and poorly thought out ideas ever. Why? Because things NEVER go on. It did not happen when people wrote about horse manure clogging our cities because we stopped using using horses. That was an actual "If this Goes On" story printed in the 18th century.
But more importantly, we especially love the idea of everyone dying. Mainly because we like to think of ourselves as the only ones smart enough to save ourselves. It's why people thought the earth was coming to an end in the year 1000, the year 2000, the year 2012, and hundreds of other times. I love the history of the 7th Day adventist church.
It started when they thought Jesus would come in 1843/1844 to begin a great Cleansing. Even though they clearly were wrong (called it "The Great Disappointment") they still managed to hold onto their followers and created a huge, powerful church.
I have no doubt that the issues discussed here are true. I also have no doubt that humans will at least ameliorate those problems till they are liveable, and eventually new technology will solve them completely (creating new problems...)
Re: (Score:2)
Things never going on is, technically, something always going on. (just sayin')
Re: (Score:2)
If modern human civilization goes on...
If technological solutions (in general) go on...
You're seemingly happy to apply "Because things NEVER go on..." only to
TEOTWAWKI thought ladder (Score:2)
During the lead-up to Y2K, there was this thought-ladder prevalent:
1) If un-remediated, Y2K could cause a huge problem - scale unknown, but potentially, at the top end, TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it).
2) It probably can't be remediated (fully) on time.
3) Because of #1 and #2, and the general anxiety of not knowing for sure where the problem lurked, IT *WILL* BE TEOTWAWKI!
#3 was an almost hysterical leap from #1 and #2, but a lot of people made it - including people who worked in the comput
As Old as the Bible (Score:2)
Is there really any difference between this doomsday scenario and the doomsday scenarios exposed by religious fanatics?
Re: (Score:2)
Is there really any difference between this doomsday scenario and the doomsday scenarios exposed by religious fanatics?
Yes. The two scenarios are different. One is an implausible fantasy. The other is supported by scripture.
Carbon cycle (Score:2, Interesting)
Preface: Yes, global warming is happening. Yes, it is caused by man's emissions of greenhouse chemicals.
That being stated, these apocalyptic scenarios seem extremely unlikely. 100% of the stuff we are burning came from *organisms that were once alive*. And where did they get their carbon from? From CO2 in the atmosphere. And the vast majority of those dead organisms become types of rock that we do not use for fossil fuels. Source: https://earthobservatory.nasa.... [nasa.gov]
Thus, it seems to me that even if we burned
Re:Carbon cycle (Score:5, Informative)
Yes, but millions of years ago when the CO2 levels were high, the sun was weaker than it is now The same level of CO2 would produce unlivably hot temperatures with the sun's current strength. [wikipedia.org]
Re:Carbon cycle (Score:5, Interesting)
Life can thrive with much higher levels of CO2. In fact, that's happened for long periods during prehistoric times. The problem isn't necessarily the CO2 level, but the rate of change. It's much harder for life to adapt to abrupt climatic changes than to gradual changes. Evidence suggests that these abrupt changes are particularly hard on apex predators, which is precisely what humans are.
While humans do have a remarkable ability to adapt, we are judging that based on the limited time of human civilization. Several thousand years is a tiny compared to geologic time scales, and we've experienced very little of what the climate system and universe are capable of throwing at us. Could humanity survive an asteroid impact like the chicxulub asteroid? It's far beyond anything that humanity has ever experienced.
Life has thrived with far higher CO2 levels than in the present day. An example is the Permian period, where CO2 levels were around 900 ppm and global temperatures were about 2 degrees Celsius warmer than the present day. The climate was relatively steady during the Permian and life thrived during this period. At the end of the Permian, however, there was an abrupt change, with CO2 and methane levels rapidly increasing, oceans absorbing large amounts of CO2 and acidifying, and global temperatures rapidly increased. This occurred over a period of 10,000-20,000 years and nearly wiped out life in Earth. Once the climate stabilized during the Triassic, life was able to recover and thrive once again. But that transition was particularly difficult.
So, yes, life can exist just fine with far higher CO2 levels than in the present day. The problem is that the transition to higher CO2 levels might wipe out a lot of life if it occurs too abruptly.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
There is no precedent in natural processes for large-scale unearthing and releasing huge amounts of previously sequestered carbon in 150 years. There's no direct natural counterpart to fossil fuel mining and extraction. The closest thing to that was the ignition of coal seams in Siberia around 252 million years ago, through asteroid impact or volcanic activity or both. The result? The Permian-Triassic extinction event, the worst ever, in which 96% of all marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate
Re: (Score:2)
Feel free to correct me if I've made a mistake.
You are assuming that all the geological CO2 was originally all in the atmosphere . This is not true. There has always been trillions of tons of carbonate rocks. Carbonates are formed by both biological and non-biological processes. They are subducted into the earth where they melt into magma, and the CO2 is vented in volcanic eruptions.
Re: (Score:2)
Most carbonate rock are made by living organisms, the origin of the carbon is atmospheric.
One million Syrian refugees.. (Score:3, Interesting)
.. fleeing a war zone made Europe flip out. Imagine a billion people moving due to climate change. Goodbye borders. Goodbye everything you think you know.
Re: (Score:2)
Goodbye borders
I doubt that very very very much. As you say just Syria and Libya's refugees are making Europe flip out. I think the looking at the rise of populist politics already the response will be "goodbye porous borders" hello "militarized borders" and "eat lead" if you caught crossing at somewhere other than a designated port of entry where you not getting thru without all the correct papers - no "but muh I need asylum from uhhh....." .
Really people need to recognize the current world order is now basically 70 yea
Re: (Score:2)
not seeing any "flipping out", meme-boy. You imagine things from social media. You're like a person flipping channels looking for a soap opera to cry over. Meanwhile, more level headed people don't think any such thing is going to happen.
Re: (Score:2)
.. fleeing a war zone made Europe flip out. Imagine a billion people moving due to climate change. Goodbye borders. Goodbye everything you think you know.
More like hello borders for all the states that border Mexico since we've largely been ignoring them for decades. The social cost has already been huge to the US. At some point we'll start taking it more seriously by finding people who are willing to do something about it.
A reflection on cities of the future (Score:5, Interesting)
by James Howard Kunstler.
If it worked 200 years ago, before the automobile, it can work again in a post-oil world. Welcome to the future, same as the past!
What the hell. (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, I don't even know for certain what all of the supposed whys are behind this insane thought:
We will be lucky if we can make the transition from our current circumstances to a future [resilience.org] of re-sized, re-scaled cities and a reactivated productive rural landscape outside them, with a hierarchy of hamlets, villages, and towns in between, and some ability to conduct commerce and manufacturing.
If it worked 200 years ago, before the automobile, it can work again in a post-oil world. Welcome to the future, same as the past!
I guess the pseudo-logic here is that if you cut the distance between where we live and where we grow food, that reduces our reliance on oil? I guess?
Let's just accept that for the sake of argument. Well, um, we already know that electric is viable (and there's still a lot more room for tech improvement and economies of scale), and there are multiple viable ways to get electricity without burning hydrocarbons. Why the fuck would we let our entire centralized supply chain fall apart, allow our nations to be balkanized and bastardized at the cost of trillions of dollars in lost productivity and (almost certainly) soaring crime and corruption rates, instead of simply moving over to electric vehicles to move food around?
There are several thousand other objections as well. (Hydrogen is clean as well, or at least it can be if you make it using high temp electrolysis from geothermal or nuclear power.)
I can't help but using this term again: neo-Luddite. There is this batshit insane desire to suggest a return to the (horribly inefficient) past, and/or an aversion to any sort of progress forward.
This fails to be either normative or positive. In other words: It's not just bad policy, it's bad forecasting. Human beings will not behave this way. It's a non-solution, if not a complete non-sequitur. The advantages simply are not there. Life in the past sucked. Local grown foods blah blah organic hipster marketing slogan crap is not sufficient to base a hypothetical future society around. Locally produced foods is not, in fact, an important piece of this puzzle at all.
Same old, same old (Score:2)
People were saying the same thing in the '80s and it hasn't happened. We were supposed to be living in a polluted desert hellscape by now. Before that, people were saying industrial pollution was going to trigger an ice age.
This all assumes that both humanity and Earth biota are somehow fragile.
Opinion (Score:2)
Moving a billion people is far from the end of Human civilization.
Hyperbolic projections don't help. They make great headlines, but damage your credibility.
Breakthrough National Centre for Climate Restor. (Score:3, Insightful)
So a think tank makes alarmist nonsense and two military head paper pushers endorse it, therefore we're all doomed.
yeah, seen this before, for the past few decades
Coming To an End' Starting in 2050? Really? (Score:2)
Coming To an End' Starting in 2050
You forgot to add: "Or After."
And the point of reports like this is.... what? (Score:2)
All that news like this does is promote the futility of even *trying* to change.
It wouldn't surprise me if this is being perpetuated by big oil.
Crystal ball or crystal meth? (Score:2)
I can make one prediction that's almost certain to come true: The majority of predictions about the future timeline will be wrong.
I'm just going to leave this (Score:4, Informative)
I'm just going to leave this link here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Discuss among yourselves.
I'll see you're link (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Damn you! Damn you to Heck! Do you have any idea of the number of rabbit holes that you sent me down?
My work here, is done.
R.E.M. Anyone? (Score:3)
"It's the end of the world as we know it .. and I feel fine" ;)
Re: (Score:2)
Still likely the best prediction available. And this time there will not be a quick fix. That is the real killer: If the reaction comes to late, no amount of panic will help, and "too late" is long before it gets bad for this set of problems.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Malthus is gonna be right this time! REALLY!
Re: (Score:2)
The problem with "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" is there actually was a wolf.
Really? How come they've been crying wolf for the last 50 years, and screeching that the world is going to end every 10-20 years because of global warming. Come on now, it's not like they weren't saying that Florida or NYC wouldn't be under water or anything. They were screaming it from the rooftops.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Imagine how far we've come (Score:4, Interesting)
This is the end of human civilization then the death of the human species.
Nuclear Exchange would kill a lot of people, however for the most part for those who survived government would be working, as government have been built around the idea of surviving warfare. Heck governance would be easy being that there is a known bad guy that everyone can rally behind, and a shared goal of survival.
Climate Change is more sinister. It will not kill off people, being that it is gradual to human scale problem, it just means a statistically significant increase amount of damage weather can cause, so People just don't notice the threat. However besides death, the biggest problem is relocation. Areas that have been safe for generations are now in flood zones, or in the target for severe weather. Now governments have to make decisions and tell people they can't live in the same place any more, or can no longer rebuild there. Areas less affected by climate change, or are positively affected will start getting more people moving in. Often people with different cultures, and needs. Meaning the governments will need to make unpopular or polarizing decisions which makes running society far more difficult.
Re: (Score:2)
This is the end of human civilization then the death of the human species.
Nuclear Exchange would kill a lot of people, however for the most part for those who survived government would be working, as government have been built around the idea of surviving warfare. Heck governance would be easy being that there is a known bad guy that everyone can rally behind, and a shared goal of survival.
Climate Change is more sinister. It will not kill off people, being that it is gradual to human scale problem, it just
Re: Imagine how far we've come (Score:3)
My prediction is this summer or the next will have catastrophic heat events in the US. I may be wrong, would love to be. It was wet this year, and Denver has recently been having strange âoeCalifornia daysâ where humidity feels like the coast. Prayers that a bunch of thermal energy will be absorbed through redistributing water, growing tropical zones, but it is long shot.
Worst scenarios where we are sitting around around realizing how wrong all the dystopian sci-fi was, how much better a strangelo
Re: Imagine how far we've come (Score:5, Interesting)
Climate change is a see saw slowly going up. Only people with eyes open and historical experience see it. ... the regional differences are huge. I mean the effects on different regions. And long term it is hard to judge anyway. Last year Germany had a super drought. This year it looks like we have a super early super harvest. However half of our forests got killed last year. So ... +30 years to got to fix them.
We have to hurry more to work against it
Re: (Score:2)
Well exactly. I think the greatest threat to human life resulting from global warming IS war. And when the war comes, it will be debatable how much global warming contributed to it. The proximate cause will be "they want our stuff and we're not gonna let them have it," as always.
It really is an un-tested premise how far billions o
Re:Imagine how far we've come (Score:5, Interesting)
Because, humans have never figured out how to drain a swamp?
And that half rotted vegetation takes a few weeks to be completely rotted vegetation, a substance that is often referred to as "fertilizer".
Re: (Score:2)
Because, humans have never figured out how to drain a swamp?
Certainly true in DC.
And that half rotted vegetation takes a few weeks to be completely rotted vegetation, a substance that is often referred to as "fertilizer".
It's been longer than a few weeks, so I guess we've got fertilizer -- instead of just half-rotted vegetation.
Re: (Score:2)
That's all it takes? We're saved! We're saved!
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like parts of Minnesota.
Re:Imagine how far we've come (Score:5, Insightful)
And no country on earth has to let them in. Nations are sovereign.
You need a means to enforce that sovereignty, Anonymous Coward.
...and the likelihood that the military capacity would exist to manage it is is low. Millions upon millions of Americans will have migrated north & west as internal migrants to escape the heat, so that's where the resources will be focused.
Latin America's population is 600 million. If even 1/6th of that number presented themselves at the southern American border as climate refugees the USA would be powerless to stop it, short of deploying nuclear weapons.
The problem is people like you are assuming you'd be addressing the problem in a state of otherwise normalcy - When the opposite will be very much the case. The world will thrown into crisis by climate change. In that scenario, the "rules" will be very different.
Re: (Score:2)
Latin America's population is 600 million. If even 1/6th of that number presented themselves at the southern American border as climate refugees the USA would be powerless to stop it, short of deploying nuclear weapons.
We have nuclear weapons, though. And the only reason is seems like hyperbole to use them to protect the border is: things haven't broken down. Desperate measures are for desperate times.
But while Chicken Little proclaims the inevitability of mass migration causing nuclear war, capitalism just sees need as potential profit, and delivers a solution. If 100 million people need to go from Central America to Canada, because the vast new tracks of farmland there need a huge workforce, it will happen. At a pro
Re: (Score:2)
Latin America's population is 600 million. If even 1/6th of that number presented themselves at the southern American border as climate refugees the USA would be powerless to stop it, short of deploying nuclear weapons.......and the likelihood that the military capacity would exist to manage it is is low.
In a scenario such as yours, the same military, or a police force, will be unable to keep millions of people from taking the law into their own hands too.
Result? There will be plenty of people who will be more than happy and willing to open fire on invaders, without even blinking. They just can't wait for it.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Believe me, if the military were given the orders to secure the border, they could.
Imagine it's 2050. Climate change means the Southern American states have mostly been evacuated - SoCal, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico - The daily 135F heat means they're uninhabitable. Florida is mostly flooded, as is Louisiana. Tens upon tens of millions of Americans have migrated to Washington, Oregon and Northern California - The military is desperately trying to manage that, along with food riots as American supply ch
Re:Imagine how far we've come (Score:5, Informative)
In your scenario, americans have fled north to avoid the heat/drought.
RIGHT NOW invaders from the south die of thirst and heat exhaustion coming up through MX. In this nightmare scenario of yours it's even hotter, AND they'd have an extra ~1200 miles of uninhabited wasteland to cross -- I don't see them making it without extensive help from the US military.
Methinks the army wouldn't need to stop them; They wouldn't even get past Bakersfield or Phoenix.
Re: (Score:3)
Meanwhile, along America's *2000* mile border to the south, 100,000,000 desperate Latin Americans are making their way north as well.
With likely access to weapons from a failed state.
BTW, your arguing with a fool, but some of it might sink in someday....
Re: (Score:3)
You mean the ones that look a lot bigger than they actually are because of the cylindrical projection most maps use?
Re: (Score:3)
You're presuming that the living would be climbing over the bodies of the dead to keep trying to advance.
In WWII the Japanese and Russians both proved capable of that. But a mass of bedraggled civilians is not going to overcome their natural instincts and do that; they'll turn and run away, or even simply run in circles, but they're not going to be climbing over the dead bodies in a disciplined manner.
You only have to kill 2 or 3 million to turn back 100 million.
Don't underestimate the number of bullets the
Re: Imagine how far we've come (Score:3)
Chemical weapons would not be used because they are not militarily effective weapons.
You have absolutely no clue what you're talking about. Chemical weapons are insanely effective, not just at killing but also at massively decreasing the combat capability of the enemy force.
Re: Imagine how far we've come (Score:2)
You're lying, or your cousin is lying. I live in the UK and what you say is 100% false.
Re:When will they shut up with this shit? (Score:4, Insightful)
Me, I have no agenda.
You likely have an agenda, which would be something along the lines of not wanting to make changes to your standard of living to reduce the chance of climate related disasters. Most people who deny climate change are not stupid, they just have their own agenda (consciously or not) and/or cultural beliefs which inhibit rational analysis of the situation.
Re: (Score:3)
Here's how I look at it. If you're on a sinking ship with your kids aboard does it make sense to put your family to work bailing water if it's going to require a majority of the people on the ship to start bailing water and it doesn't look like a significant number of them are going to start anytime soon? Or should I focus my efforts on getting my kids to the upper decks?
I vote Green Party. When the government regulated pesticides I willingly stopped using them even though a few people in my neighbourhoo
Re:When will they shut up with this shit? (Score:4, Informative)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Me, I have no agenda.
You likely have an agenda, which would be something along the lines of not wanting to make changes to your standard of living to reduce the chance of climate related disasters. Most people who deny climate change are not stupid, they just have their own agenda (consciously or not) and/or cultural beliefs which inhibit rational analysis of the situation.
Meh. Few climatistas are actually willing to change their standard of living. Most just virtue signal. (E.g. Driving a Tesla is not changing your standard of living.)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. If he knows you, he also thinks that you'll be dead.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Brexit == committing suicide?
Britain, wtf happened to you? You conquered and colonized half the world from a tiny island. You survived and rebuilt after two world wars.
And somehow regaining some of your independence from Brussels is committing suicide?
Hyperbole much? the UK will be just fine.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, and the truth is in between. Coastal areas are in for a disaster, but beyond that, I expect the impacts will be slower and easier to adjust to. When cities flood, and the government says it doesn't have the resources to help, some would consider that civilization breaking down, but we've already seen that in America to some extent with New Orleans and Puerto Rico. The big difference will be when cities flood and the water doesn't recede, so the land is lost with no rebuilding.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup, and the truth is in between. Coastal areas are in for a disaster, but beyond that, I expect the impacts will be slower and easier to adjust to.
Based on how smug the coastal types are many would consider this Karma.
Re: (Score:2)
Cue the believers who will point to all the obvious signs of climate change, and the non-believers to call this a bunch of fear mongering.
Then there are those of us who believe that climate change is a serious issue with economic consequences, but also see shrill alarmism as counterproductive.
Re:Wiat, I Know This Guy! (Score:5, Funny)
The end is neigh.
Was that from the horse of the horsemen of the apocalypse?