"we're all going to die" is indisputably going too far and it's a meme that needs to die. it's an agency murdering nihilism
No it's not. It's not going too far to recognize a very real possibility, even if there is still hope that we might be able to avert it. And it is absolutely NOT agency-murdering nihilism to not stick one's head in the sand and pretend it can't happen. To me, the possibility (even likelihood) that our limited time is nearing its limit, encourages me to do everything I can to improve people's lives and material conditions here and now and bask in the fleeting time we do have on this globe, both as individuals and as a species.
No it's not. It's not going too far to recognize a very real possibility, even if there is still hope that we might be able to avert it.
Look either you're talking about how we're all going to die generally, in which case there's nothing we can due to avert it, or you're saying "we're all going to die of climate change", which implies a Venus level degradation of the biosphere that none of the models seem to pointing toward, or you're inappropriately assigning probabilities of death of unspecified large numbers of people to specific individuals.
All I'll say in response to this is that I know exactly what u/LegaliiizeIt means when they talk about some people here willfully misreading and misrepresenting others with pedantry and debatebro nonsense.
Look if you don't want to mount an intellectual defense for the claim "climate change is going to kill us all", that's absolutely okay you are under no obligation to, but I want everyone to know that's position being offered without any backing.
Climate change has an actual and real potential to end our species in the relatively near future. We have already kicked off a mass extinction event that has only just begun. I "offered backing" for this in other comments in this thread, discussing it with someone who demonstrated a willingness to have a conversation, not just debate-bro-reddit-style demand evidence from me for something any decent climatologist would straight up tell you.
Climate change has an actual and real potential to end our species in the relatively near future.
A gamma ray burst has an actual and real potential to end our species tomorrow. Yet it would be wildly irresponsible for me to tell people that they're going to die in a gamma ray burst.
not just debate-bro-reddit-style demand evidence
The implication that it is somehow rude to insist that you back up positions that can actively cause distress in other people is not one that I'm going to accept, so complain about "debate-bros" at your leisure but don't expect me to care.
something any decent climatologist would straight up tell you.
And yet neither you nor anyone else here can point an actual example of any of them actually saying human extinction is very likely based on their projections. My climatologist friend is getting married in August. I'm going to the wedding. They're planning to have kids.
Ok, here's the first result in a duckduckgo search:
Catastrophic climate change outcomes, including human extinction, are not being taken seriously enough by scientists, a new study says. .
Second result
Will Humans go Extinct? Death by ecological contamination or the climate emergency would be slower but still within the realm of possibility. .
Third
Climate endgame: risk of human extinction ‘dangerously underexplored’ .
Happy now? I hope you realize how reddit-tier it is to demand sources like that when you can easily do a search without forcing the person you're talking to to do it for you with the implication that they're full of shit if they don't do your homework. Not to mention the "well my best friend is [expert in field being discussed] so nyeah."
any [climate scientists] saying human extinction is very likely based on their projections
From the study cited in two of those articles.
This caution is understandable, yet it is mismatched to the risks and potential damages posed by climate change. We know that temperature rise has “fat tails”: low-probability, high-impact extreme outcomes (9). Climate damages are likely to be nonlinear and result in an even larger tail (10). Too much is at stake to refrain from examining high-impact low-likelihood scenarios. The COVID-19 pandemic has underlined the need to consider and prepare for infrequent, high-impact global risks, and the systemic dangers they can spark. Prudent risk management demands that we thoroughly assess worst-case scenarios.
hahah my god, I am back on reddit. I thought I had gotten away from that. I wonder where the goalposts are going to be moved next. Doesn't matter, I'm just going to refer you back to what I actually said several comments ago: "Climate change has an actual and real potential to end our species." As for the demand of specific scientists, they're referred to right there in the articles I already presented, which I shouldn't have gone to the trouble of finding for someone obviously unwilling to engage in actual discussion.
How is quoting back at you literally what I asked for verbatim moving the goalposts?
Climate change has an actual and real potential to end our species.
This is true, and if had been where we started, I wouldn't have objected. Where did we start actually though?
"we're all going to die" is indisputably going too far and it's a meme that needs to die.
No it's not. It's not going too far to recognize a very real possibility
very real possibility implies a probability threshold that you absolutely cannot substantiate. Telling people they're all going to die of climate change is a far cry from the much more reasonable claim "climate change driven extinction of the human race a possibility in the coming centuries".
Literally all I said: "It's not going too far to recognize a very real possibility." I've done nothing but back that up. Over and over. And over and over you're telling me I haven't.
"we're all going to die" is indisputably going too far
No it's not.
The claim that climate change is going to kill nearly everyone currently living is absolutely unmoored from current science, modelling, or anything else. The defensibility of that claim is what we were originally talking about when you jumped in.
very real possibility implies a probability threshold that you absolutely cannot substantiate.
I substantiated it by giving you articles that said it's a very real possibility. You quote one of those articles that is saying "yes, it's a very real possibility" but because they also use the words "low probability" of that very real possibility, you think... you've refuted something I said. One specifically talking about a low-probability event that was a very real possibility... because IT HAPPENED. This is... I can't even...
So when you say "very real possibility", you don't mean to imply anything about the probability of that event. You just mean "possible possibility"?
The article doesn't even say 'very real possibility' for the record so I don't know why you're treating that as a verbatim quote to show correspondence with your position.
The pedantry is just too much. If you want to reply to this to have some sort of last word, have it, knock yourself out. I'm not going to read it. Having to explain extremely basic and obvious concepts to someone who almost certainly knows them already but doesn't want to be wrong or something, someone constantly trying to find some gotcha and misrepresenting everything said... well it's just tiring.
to be wrong or something, someone constantly trying to find some gotcha and misrepresenting everything said... well it's just tiring.
I'm not trying to have gotcha's or misrepresent anything you've said, my singular goal is to make it clear to any reader that when they read the statement "climate change is going to kill you", that such a universalized claim is not supported by current science, and that you cannot take that as a literal claim.
lol. So you quote one of the articles as a gotcha? The one that talks about another "low-risk" event that DID HAPPEN and that literally just killed off tens of millions of people? Yeah, that's a great refutation of my statement about climate change induced extinction being a very real possibility... by pointing out a low possibility but very real threat that literally just happened. And is still happening... despite mass denialism. Wow. Please, by all means, prove my point further by trying to own me some more.
A roulette wheel came up red 32 times in a row in 1943, so you should go buy a lottery ticket right? It is a very real possibility that you could win, and anyone that claims such "I am going to win the lottery tomorrow" is not supported by probability is being needlessly pendantic right?
To use the example you were using from the article to apparently try to own me... Covid was the red 32 times in this analogy. It happened. Funny how in retrospect, they are both actually something of an inevitability if the warnings of people who did predict them aren't heeded. Just like rolling red 32 times is if you have millions of wheels continuing to spin without stopping, guess what... odds go up. No, I'm not going out to bet my life savings on 32 red in a row tomorrow. The same way I'm not nor did I *ever imply we're all literally going to drop literally dead literally tomorrow. But 32 red actually happening somewhere in the world at some point in the very past? Yeah... hmm.. it happened, go figure. Thanks for reminding us all that even seemingly low probability events actually really do happen.
Sorry for the late reply, I actually didn't log in for the last couple days after this.
Hey thank you for digging into this as well. The pedantry is tiring.
Thanks for doing the lions share of trying to push back and reason with the deluge of pedantry, in this thread but also in others I've seen too. I'm convinced that when people start using that as a tactic in their argumentation, they're no longer arguing with me anymore so much as their own cognitive dissonance. They know on some level they're just plain wrong. But that's too hard to own up to, so instead they try to find something to nitpick at in your wording. If they can shift the argument into focusing on some insignificant hole in your phrasing or onto an analogy you used that isn't a complete and perfect 1-to-1 example, they can feel emotionally safe in writing off your position. Then they can likewise feel emotionally safe in not having to examine their own position and can continue feeling Right and Correct that they know the Truth.
I know I'm not saying anything new, but it helps to remind myself of that when having to put up with the kind of bullshit you were getting swamped with in this thread (that I also waded into). It's especially frustrating to have to put up with it here. And from a mod apparently too.
the "we're all going to die" was something someone else said if you're so caught up on that kind of ridiculous cringey pedantry, but what they were referring to was human extinction as a result of climate change. If you are truly incapable of understanding context or anything but the most literal and absolute interpretation of any combination of words ever used, your qualm is with them. No one, not even the person I was disagreeing with who said that, believes anyone was ever saying "every person reading this is going to die tomorrow and it is 110% absolutely unavoidable."
What is being discussed here is climate change ending the species. Which remains a very real possibility, which is what I said, which is what everyone here who reads this, even you, knows is what is being discussed. It is not only NOT irresponsible to point out this very real possibility, it is irresponsible and foolish denialism to imply otherwise.
Now kindly sod off, you bad-faith-arguing, asinine pedant. I won't be reading anything else you say to me.
"we're all going to die" was something someone else said
Which you jumped in go defend as a reasonable position.
What is being discussed here is climate change ending the species
That's where we are now, but that is absolutely not where we were when I began this conversation several hours before you jumped in with a position that was not unambiguous enough to differentiate from the original doomer position.
I'm sorry I'm being such a ball buster about this and I'm glad we agree about the probabilities of immediate extinction and the possibility of eventual extinction in the end, but I absolutely think it's important to be very precise about this and not unnecessarily blackpill people.
anything is possible - we can't know the future - but I've read no studies that suggest that literally everyone is going to die. I encourage you to read the whole of the IPCC reports. the summaries leave a lot out and the actual data paints a bleaker picture than what's in the top-level summaries - but I saw nothing that supports the idea that an extinction level event is likely. the clatharate gun would have to go off for that to happen and all indications at present are that the thawing of the permafrost is not resulting in a spike in methane levels because plants are growing in the former permafrost and repurposing the methane.
the actual data paints a bleaker picture than what's in the top-level summaries
There's a reason for that. I've read of meta studies that show climate scientists deliberately downplay how bleak the situation really is, mostly because of political pressure but also because they are afraid of mistakenly spreading paranoia.
What any good climate scientist will tell you is that we fundamentally don't know all the feedback loops we have already tripped and know even less about ones that will inevitably be tripped. For example, it's looking likely that Venus was once a lot more Earth-like in terms of what we consider habitable but now for reasons (volcanism?) that aren't entirely clear, it's surface is utterly inhospitable even for extremophiles. We could have already tripped a runaway greenhouse effect without yet recognizing the exact mechanism, but we do know we are changing the climate in ways faster than at any other time outside of mass extinction events. (And we are in the midst of a mass extinction event already, just at the very beginning of it - hence the term anthropocene). Earth has been cold enough in the past, likely several times, that it was completely frozen over, with maybe the exception of a narrow band around the equator. Earth has also been hot enough that animal life has only been able to survive at the poles. Humanity would not survive this. Humanity, despite our spread and obvious adaptability, is also an extremely fragile species for reasons similar to why technology that requires complex supply chains is fragile to sudden shifts.
Human extinction in the next few centuries is not by any means far fetched. That's not to say it's guaranteed, of course, but pretending like it's not in the cards is naive.
There's a reason for that. I've read of meta studies that show climate scientists deliberately downplay how bleak the situation really is, mostly because of political pressure but also because they are afraid of mistakenly spreading paranoia.
yeah, that's my read as well.
We could have already tripped a runaway greenhouse effect without yet recognizing the exact mechanism, but we do know we are changing the climate in ways faster than at any other time outside of mass extinction events.
the present models do their best to accommodate for these unknowns. they're likely wrong and things might be even worse than predicted - we can only account so well for the things we don't know - but the worst case models for runaway CO2 warming don't lead to the earth becoming Venus. they lead to the Earth becoming something like what it was during the Jurassic. it's methane warming that will actually annihilate humanity and the current data on that front is cautiously optimistic (see my earlier point about plants absorbing the methane trapped in the permafrost).
Humanity, despite our spread and obvious adaptability, is also an extremely fragile species for reasons similar to why technology that requires complex supply chains is fragile to sudden shifts.
this contradicts the biological record. human species have adapted to thrive in more environments than literally any other species on earth, excepting the extremophiles. that's not to say that extinction is impossible, only that it's going to take more than displacing the vast majority of people and a collapse of the food chain. if plants are growing, pockets of humanity will find a way to eke out an existence.
I agree with pretty much all of this except for the last bit, which is a lot to get into right now (other species that existed globally going extinct, the surprising youth of our species, genetic bottlenecks pointing to how insanely close we've already come to extinction when climate change wasn't an issue or was so much slower as to hardly be a comparison now, etc.) All that aside, taking everything you said into account, it's still folly not to recognize human extinction in the near future (geologically speaking) as a real possibility and worth considering. Especially given how many unknowns still exist with respect to feedback loops.
But what I was mostly refuting when I first replied to you was the claim that recognizing human extinction as a possibility is "agency-murdering nihilism." And I hope I did that. Again, for me that recognition has gone quite a ways towards making me a better leftist.
I'm not saying that it's impossible for us to go extinct. but the climate is going to have to approach Venus levels of bad for even small pockets of humanity to disappear.
But what I was mostly refuting when I first replied to you was the claim that recognizing human extinction as a possibility is "agency-murdering nihilism." And I hope I did that. Again, for me that recognition has gone quite a ways towards making me a better leftist.
recognizing the possibility is natural and good - that billions are going to die should give everyone cause for reflection. my point was more about the conviction and certainty of the claim. it's just not in line with the best science available right now. saying "our civilization is likely doomed" is a defensible claim. so is "it's possible we go extinct" is also defensible. saying "literally everyone is going to die", without qualification, is nihilism. it's a philosophical path that leads to accelerationism or other forms of reaction.
but the climate is going to have to approach Venus levels of bad for even small pockets of humanity to disappear.
No. If Earth's climate begins to approach Venus levels of bad, humanity will be done and gone long before that. Extremophile bacteria right now wouldn't be able to survive on the surface of Venus where it's hot enough to melt lead. There is no reason to think this isn't also possible for Earth (in fact it's an inevitability, just far enough out that humanity is statistically likely to have gone extinct for other reasons first). I really don't think most people comprehend how narrow the range is for continued habitation of animal life, let alone mammalian, let alone one species of mammals. The whole idea that "even with catastrophic environmental collapse, we intrepid humans will find a way! We'll eke out an existence and pull through!" strikes me as the same kind of thinking that allow Musk fans to talk about colonizing Mars as if there's even a remote chance even within the next couple generations. Imo, the failure to recognize human fragility is a kind of anthropocentrism and unintentional hubris. Yes, we have spread over much of the globe but only during a brief (geologically speaking) time when everything was nearly perfect for us. And even then we came so close to extinction where literally only a few thousand individuals existed on Earth and as a result we have very very little genetic diversity (which tangentially, unrelated to this conversation, is another fun fact to throw in the faces of racist reactionaries). Many other species have spread more effectively and over far more of the globe than we have and the vast majority of them are already exinct.
Again, Earth already has gone through climatic events that humanity, even with all our current and modern technology, could not survive. Humanity wouldn't live through a "snowball earth" which has already happened. Humanity wouldn't live through a permian-triassic equatorial pangaea which has already happened. The latter included a runaway greenhouse effect - something we may have already tripped. It's not even the first time that life is what caused it's own mass extinction. Human extinction level climate change is in the worst-case-scenario realm. But something else you probably already know about, something heard often in climate-aware circles, is how many of the projected "worst case scenarios" of the last few decades have turned out to be what actually came to pass.
saying "literally everyone is going to die", without qualification, is nihilism.
Humanity will last longer than the lifespan of anyone here, even the children of anyone here, I think it's safe to say. But it will not and can not last forever. Why is it philosophically acceptable when the fact that an end of humanity will happen is qualified with whatever sufficiently large epoch you personally want to put on it, but it is unacceptable "nihilism" to suggest it could likely happen in the next couple millenia or so?
it's a philosophical path that leads to accelerationism or other forms of reaction.
Why? Does someone given a terminal cancer diagnosis necessarily want to just go out and (CW) intentionally end their lives all the quicker (accelerationism)? Or decide they may as well become self-serving assholes and do their damndest to take everyone else out too (reaction)? I'm sure it's happened but it's obviously not the norm. It's difficult, it's painful, it's terrifying to contemplate when the end is nigh (on a personal level, a civilizational level, or at the level of a species), but it's not nihilistic to accept it. On the other hand, it would be philosophically naive though understandable if a person couldn't accept it.
The only thing that my so-called doomerism has changed as far as my behavior is inspire me all the more to try to do what I can to increase human well-being and the well-being of all sentient life while I still can. And I know I'm not the only one, I'm reminded of Breht O'Shea from Rev Left Radio who has frequently talked about the difficulty he's had in reconciling with the reality of climate change but how much better of a leftist and person it's made him.
Climate "doomerism" is not and does not necessitate nihilism, and it definitely isn't in conflict with being a good leftist.
No it's not. It's not going too far to recognize a very real possibility, even if there is still hope that we might be able to avert it. And it is absolutely NOT agency-murdering nihilism to not stick one's head in the sand and pretend it can't happen. To me, the possibility (even likelihood) that our limited time is nearing its limit, encourages me to do everything I can to improve people's lives and material conditions here and now and bask in the fleeting time we do have on this globe, both as individuals and as a species.
Look either you're talking about how we're all going to die generally, in which case there's nothing we can due to avert it, or you're saying "we're all going to die of climate change", which implies a Venus level degradation of the biosphere that none of the models seem to pointing toward, or you're inappropriately assigning probabilities of death of unspecified large numbers of people to specific individuals.
All I'll say in response to this is that I know exactly what u/LegaliiizeIt means when they talk about some people here willfully misreading and misrepresenting others with pedantry and debatebro nonsense.
Look if you don't want to mount an intellectual defense for the claim "climate change is going to kill us all", that's absolutely okay you are under no obligation to, but I want everyone to know that's position being offered without any backing.
Climate change has an actual and real potential to end our species in the relatively near future. We have already kicked off a mass extinction event that has only just begun. I "offered backing" for this in other comments in this thread, discussing it with someone who demonstrated a willingness to have a conversation, not just debate-bro-reddit-style demand evidence from me for something any decent climatologist would straight up tell you.
A gamma ray burst has an actual and real potential to end our species tomorrow. Yet it would be wildly irresponsible for me to tell people that they're going to die in a gamma ray burst.
The implication that it is somehow rude to insist that you back up positions that can actively cause distress in other people is not one that I'm going to accept, so complain about "debate-bros" at your leisure but don't expect me to care.
And yet neither you nor anyone else here can point an actual example of any of them actually saying human extinction is very likely based on their projections. My climatologist friend is getting married in August. I'm going to the wedding. They're planning to have kids.
Ok, here's the first result in a duckduckgo search:
Second result
Third
Happy now? I hope you realize how reddit-tier it is to demand sources like that when you can easily do a search without forcing the person you're talking to to do it for you with the implication that they're full of shit if they don't do your homework. Not to mention the "well my best friend is [expert in field being discussed] so nyeah."
No, try again.
From the study cited in two of those articles.
hahah my god, I am back on reddit. I thought I had gotten away from that. I wonder where the goalposts are going to be moved next. Doesn't matter, I'm just going to refer you back to what I actually said several comments ago: "Climate change has an actual and real potential to end our species." As for the demand of specific scientists, they're referred to right there in the articles I already presented, which I shouldn't have gone to the trouble of finding for someone obviously unwilling to engage in actual discussion.
How is quoting back at you literally what I asked for verbatim moving the goalposts?
This is true, and if had been where we started, I wouldn't have objected. Where did we start actually though?
very real possibility implies a probability threshold that you absolutely cannot substantiate. Telling people they're all going to die of climate change is a far cry from the much more reasonable claim "climate change driven extinction of the human race a possibility in the coming centuries".
Literally all I said: "It's not going too far to recognize a very real possibility." I've done nothing but back that up. Over and over. And over and over you're telling me I haven't.
The claim that climate change is going to kill nearly everyone currently living is absolutely unmoored from current science, modelling, or anything else. The defensibility of that claim is what we were originally talking about when you jumped in.
I substantiated it by giving you articles that said it's a very real possibility. You quote one of those articles that is saying "yes, it's a very real possibility" but because they also use the words "low probability" of that very real possibility, you think... you've refuted something I said. One specifically talking about a low-probability event that was a very real possibility... because IT HAPPENED. This is... I can't even...
So when you say "very real possibility", you don't mean to imply anything about the probability of that event. You just mean "possible possibility"?
The article doesn't even say 'very real possibility' for the record so I don't know why you're treating that as a verbatim quote to show correspondence with your position.
The pedantry is just too much. If you want to reply to this to have some sort of last word, have it, knock yourself out. I'm not going to read it. Having to explain extremely basic and obvious concepts to someone who almost certainly knows them already but doesn't want to be wrong or something, someone constantly trying to find some gotcha and misrepresenting everything said... well it's just tiring.
I'm not trying to have gotcha's or misrepresent anything you've said, my singular goal is to make it clear to any reader that when they read the statement "climate change is going to kill you", that such a universalized claim is not supported by current science, and that you cannot take that as a literal claim.
lol. So you quote one of the articles as a gotcha? The one that talks about another "low-risk" event that DID HAPPEN and that literally just killed off tens of millions of people? Yeah, that's a great refutation of my statement about climate change induced extinction being a very real possibility... by pointing out a low possibility but very real threat that literally just happened. And is still happening... despite mass denialism. Wow. Please, by all means, prove my point further by trying to own me some more.
A roulette wheel came up red 32 times in a row in 1943, so you should go buy a lottery ticket right? It is a very real possibility that you could win, and anyone that claims such "I am going to win the lottery tomorrow" is not supported by probability is being needlessly pendantic right?
To use the example you were using from the article to apparently try to own me... Covid was the red 32 times in this analogy. It happened. Funny how in retrospect, they are both actually something of an inevitability if the warnings of people who did predict them aren't heeded. Just like rolling red 32 times is if you have millions of wheels continuing to spin without stopping, guess what... odds go up. No, I'm not going out to bet my life savings on 32 red in a row tomorrow. The same way I'm not nor did I *ever imply we're all literally going to drop literally dead literally tomorrow. But 32 red actually happening somewhere in the world at some point in the very past? Yeah... hmm.. it happened, go figure. Thanks for reminding us all that even seemingly low probability events actually really do happen.
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Sorry for the late reply, I actually didn't log in for the last couple days after this.
Thanks for doing the lions share of trying to push back and reason with the deluge of pedantry, in this thread but also in others I've seen too. I'm convinced that when people start using that as a tactic in their argumentation, they're no longer arguing with me anymore so much as their own cognitive dissonance. They know on some level they're just plain wrong. But that's too hard to own up to, so instead they try to find something to nitpick at in your wording. If they can shift the argument into focusing on some insignificant hole in your phrasing or onto an analogy you used that isn't a complete and perfect 1-to-1 example, they can feel emotionally safe in writing off your position. Then they can likewise feel emotionally safe in not having to examine their own position and can continue feeling Right and Correct that they know the Truth.
I know I'm not saying anything new, but it helps to remind myself of that when having to put up with the kind of bullshit you were getting swamped with in this thread (that I also waded into). It's especially frustrating to have to put up with it here. And from a mod apparently too.
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And so we come upon the limits of the frequentist interpretation of probability and it's inability to work on single trials.
So we do. And So you continue to dig your own hole while pretending you're doing something other than prove my point.
That telling people that they're all going to die of climate change is irresponsible and not backed by current models or projections?
the "we're all going to die" was something someone else said if you're so caught up on that kind of ridiculous cringey pedantry, but what they were referring to was human extinction as a result of climate change. If you are truly incapable of understanding context or anything but the most literal and absolute interpretation of any combination of words ever used, your qualm is with them. No one, not even the person I was disagreeing with who said that, believes anyone was ever saying "every person reading this is going to die tomorrow and it is 110% absolutely unavoidable."
What is being discussed here is climate change ending the species. Which remains a very real possibility, which is what I said, which is what everyone here who reads this, even you, knows is what is being discussed. It is not only NOT irresponsible to point out this very real possibility, it is irresponsible and foolish denialism to imply otherwise.
Now kindly sod off, you bad-faith-arguing, asinine pedant. I won't be reading anything else you say to me.
Which you jumped in go defend as a reasonable position.
That's where we are now, but that is absolutely not where we were when I began this conversation several hours before you jumped in with a position that was not unambiguous enough to differentiate from the original doomer position.
I'm sorry I'm being such a ball buster about this and I'm glad we agree about the probabilities of immediate extinction and the possibility of eventual extinction in the end, but I absolutely think it's important to be very precise about this and not unnecessarily blackpill people.
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I'm not referring to you here, I'm saying in general.
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No, just that the fact that certain low probability event occurred does not imply all low probability events must occur.
anything is possible - we can't know the future - but I've read no studies that suggest that literally everyone is going to die. I encourage you to read the whole of the IPCC reports. the summaries leave a lot out and the actual data paints a bleaker picture than what's in the top-level summaries - but I saw nothing that supports the idea that an extinction level event is likely. the clatharate gun would have to go off for that to happen and all indications at present are that the thawing of the permafrost is not resulting in a spike in methane levels because plants are growing in the former permafrost and repurposing the methane.
There's a reason for that. I've read of meta studies that show climate scientists deliberately downplay how bleak the situation really is, mostly because of political pressure but also because they are afraid of mistakenly spreading paranoia.
What any good climate scientist will tell you is that we fundamentally don't know all the feedback loops we have already tripped and know even less about ones that will inevitably be tripped. For example, it's looking likely that Venus was once a lot more Earth-like in terms of what we consider habitable but now for reasons (volcanism?) that aren't entirely clear, it's surface is utterly inhospitable even for extremophiles. We could have already tripped a runaway greenhouse effect without yet recognizing the exact mechanism, but we do know we are changing the climate in ways faster than at any other time outside of mass extinction events. (And we are in the midst of a mass extinction event already, just at the very beginning of it - hence the term anthropocene). Earth has been cold enough in the past, likely several times, that it was completely frozen over, with maybe the exception of a narrow band around the equator. Earth has also been hot enough that animal life has only been able to survive at the poles. Humanity would not survive this. Humanity, despite our spread and obvious adaptability, is also an extremely fragile species for reasons similar to why technology that requires complex supply chains is fragile to sudden shifts.
Human extinction in the next few centuries is not by any means far fetched. That's not to say it's guaranteed, of course, but pretending like it's not in the cards is naive.
yeah, that's my read as well.
the present models do their best to accommodate for these unknowns. they're likely wrong and things might be even worse than predicted - we can only account so well for the things we don't know - but the worst case models for runaway CO2 warming don't lead to the earth becoming Venus. they lead to the Earth becoming something like what it was during the Jurassic. it's methane warming that will actually annihilate humanity and the current data on that front is cautiously optimistic (see my earlier point about plants absorbing the methane trapped in the permafrost).
this contradicts the biological record. human species have adapted to thrive in more environments than literally any other species on earth, excepting the extremophiles. that's not to say that extinction is impossible, only that it's going to take more than displacing the vast majority of people and a collapse of the food chain. if plants are growing, pockets of humanity will find a way to eke out an existence.
I agree with pretty much all of this except for the last bit, which is a lot to get into right now (other species that existed globally going extinct, the surprising youth of our species, genetic bottlenecks pointing to how insanely close we've already come to extinction when climate change wasn't an issue or was so much slower as to hardly be a comparison now, etc.) All that aside, taking everything you said into account, it's still folly not to recognize human extinction in the near future (geologically speaking) as a real possibility and worth considering. Especially given how many unknowns still exist with respect to feedback loops.
But what I was mostly refuting when I first replied to you was the claim that recognizing human extinction as a possibility is "agency-murdering nihilism." And I hope I did that. Again, for me that recognition has gone quite a ways towards making me a better leftist.
I'm not saying that it's impossible for us to go extinct. but the climate is going to have to approach Venus levels of bad for even small pockets of humanity to disappear.
recognizing the possibility is natural and good - that billions are going to die should give everyone cause for reflection. my point was more about the conviction and certainty of the claim. it's just not in line with the best science available right now. saying "our civilization is likely doomed" is a defensible claim. so is "it's possible we go extinct" is also defensible. saying "literally everyone is going to die", without qualification, is nihilism. it's a philosophical path that leads to accelerationism or other forms of reaction.
No. If Earth's climate begins to approach Venus levels of bad, humanity will be done and gone long before that. Extremophile bacteria right now wouldn't be able to survive on the surface of Venus where it's hot enough to melt lead. There is no reason to think this isn't also possible for Earth (in fact it's an inevitability, just far enough out that humanity is statistically likely to have gone extinct for other reasons first). I really don't think most people comprehend how narrow the range is for continued habitation of animal life, let alone mammalian, let alone one species of mammals. The whole idea that "even with catastrophic environmental collapse, we intrepid humans will find a way! We'll eke out an existence and pull through!" strikes me as the same kind of thinking that allow Musk fans to talk about colonizing Mars as if there's even a remote chance even within the next couple generations. Imo, the failure to recognize human fragility is a kind of anthropocentrism and unintentional hubris. Yes, we have spread over much of the globe but only during a brief (geologically speaking) time when everything was nearly perfect for us. And even then we came so close to extinction where literally only a few thousand individuals existed on Earth and as a result we have very very little genetic diversity (which tangentially, unrelated to this conversation, is another fun fact to throw in the faces of racist reactionaries). Many other species have spread more effectively and over far more of the globe than we have and the vast majority of them are already exinct.
Again, Earth already has gone through climatic events that humanity, even with all our current and modern technology, could not survive. Humanity wouldn't live through a "snowball earth" which has already happened. Humanity wouldn't live through a permian-triassic equatorial pangaea which has already happened. The latter included a runaway greenhouse effect - something we may have already tripped. It's not even the first time that life is what caused it's own mass extinction. Human extinction level climate change is in the worst-case-scenario realm. But something else you probably already know about, something heard often in climate-aware circles, is how many of the projected "worst case scenarios" of the last few decades have turned out to be what actually came to pass.
Humanity will last longer than the lifespan of anyone here, even the children of anyone here, I think it's safe to say. But it will not and can not last forever. Why is it philosophically acceptable when the fact that an end of humanity will happen is qualified with whatever sufficiently large epoch you personally want to put on it, but it is unacceptable "nihilism" to suggest it could likely happen in the next couple millenia or so?
Why? Does someone given a terminal cancer diagnosis necessarily want to just go out and (CW) intentionally end their lives all the quicker (accelerationism)? Or decide they may as well become self-serving assholes and do their damndest to take everyone else out too (reaction)? I'm sure it's happened but it's obviously not the norm. It's difficult, it's painful, it's terrifying to contemplate when the end is nigh (on a personal level, a civilizational level, or at the level of a species), but it's not nihilistic to accept it. On the other hand, it would be philosophically naive though understandable if a person couldn't accept it.
The only thing that my so-called doomerism has changed as far as my behavior is inspire me all the more to try to do what I can to increase human well-being and the well-being of all sentient life while I still can. And I know I'm not the only one, I'm reminded of Breht O'Shea from Rev Left Radio who has frequently talked about the difficulty he's had in reconciling with the reality of climate change but how much better of a leftist and person it's made him.
Climate "doomerism" is not and does not necessitate nihilism, and it definitely isn't in conflict with being a good leftist.
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