[PheonixPharts]

It's certainly a strange time to be alive. I was explaining to my child my work in AI, showing him images of himself as a character from his DnD campaign and at the same time am gently introducing him to the increasingly dire state of our climate. For parents of my generation "the talk" is not about sex, it's about the reality that we might not have a future to offer our children.

It feels like I am very literally living the life depicted in sci-fi novels of my youth. Equal parts wonderful and terrifying.

[hutzlibu]

"it's about the reality that we might not have a future to offer our children."

But wasn't that always the case?

War was always around the corner and nuclear missile threat amplified it.

Btw. it seems the war made russia change its stance and some official "scientific" commitee has decided, that climate warming comes simply from radiation inside earth that follows a natural pattern. So no need to not burn coal then. So the hope is, that china who does believe in human made climate change will push them to still reduce CO2 somewhat. Indeed strange times.

[pgeorgi]

> War was always around the corner and nuclear missile threat amplified it.

All sides showed remarkable restraint in actually following up on the threats. While the possibility of nuclear war was part of the backdrop, at least the impression was made that everybody tries to be as reasonable as possible to prevent it from happening.

Compare to climate change where people actively try to sabotage stuff like renewables build out (e.g. "In 2019, the state tried to further penalize solar users by implementing a law that levied fines against solar users." [0] which was struck down eventually - but still, people considered that a good enough idea to propose, successfully vote and implement that?!?) to stick it to The Man (or something).

[0] I don't care too much about the specifics, so not naming and shaming anybody, but the source is: https://todayshomeowner.com/solar/guides/states-that-outlaw-...

[hutzlibu]

"All sides showed remarkable restraint in actually following up on the threats. While the possibility of nuclear war was part of the backdrop, at least the impression was made that everybody tries to be as reasonable as possible to prevent it from happening."

Yes, but still all it takes is one crazy guy at the wrong position and time.

I am not ok with that and rather would have all the nukes directed towards the sky against asteroids.

And I am also not ok with producing tanks and artillery instead of solar panels, wind turbines and batteries. But it is, what it is. Too many short sighted people in position of power.

[katbyte]

The need to not burn coal goes beyond CO2, the particulates and radiation coal plants put out is terrible for health.

Coal has, and continues, to cause more deaths then nuclear ever has and produces radioactive ash while at it.

[hutzlibu]

I did not debate that, but russia has also a history of not really caring about pollution.

[landemva]

In general, socialist regimes have not cared about the environment. The Stasi records museum in Berlin has a mention of this in the courtyard. Lack of private property leads to government pollution.

[koheripbal]

We were lucky nuclear war didn't happen, and it still might.

I think the risk of nuclear war is higher now, with more nations having more weapons, fewer treaties preventing profession, and an increasingly multipolar power dynamic in international affairs.

[spacephysics]

I highly recommend this video:

https://youtu.be/jG8LJ0QkBo4

I too thought we were closer to nuclear war now. But really with US second strike capability, and the fact that many of the nuclear warhead numbers don’t take into account usable missiles, among other factors, makes me sleep a bit easier at night.

[mikrotikker]

Yea there currently exists a plausible risk of the Taliban taking control of an ailing Pakistan and its 11 nukes.

Thank you Mr Kissenger

[willcipriano]

> But wasn't that always the case?

Nope and it isn't the case now. End of the world cults are a common feature of human societies, pretty much all of them have/had them. My personal guess is that egos are so big that people can't imagine a world after them so it's easier to say the world is going to end.

[flangola7]

Yes but climate disaster isn't a cult. There's the crazy guy who thinks Zeus is going to strike us all down and then there's the oceanographer out there with actual thermometers and log books saying hey this water is getting really damn warm.

Will be the end of life on earth? Not at all. Will it be the total extinction of humans? Probably not. Will it be far more war, starvation, death, and human suffering than we have collectively ever witnessed? Yes.

[hattmall]

There is absolute nothing to suggest catastrophic or even rapid climate change. Yes we can detect human activity that is changing the planet and will have impacts on the climate. Preaching that it will result in any more suffering than the current or a previous state of the world is completely faith based without evidence.

[acdha]

Every credible scientist who studies this says the opposite, that climate change will increase the frequency and magnitude of events impacting millions of people. Yes, things like natural disasters, famines, or wars caused by resource competition aren’t new but we’ve been seeing them intensified for at least a decade and there’s no reason to believe that trend will reverse.

[willcipriano]

Saying humanity will be extinct in X years is completely unsupported by even the most dramatic predictions. If you believe it, you are on equal footing with the people waiting for the four horseman to show up. Teaching that to children will probably be seen as child abuse by the children who are being taught it today.

[flangola7]

Did you even read my comment?

[WarOnPrivacy]

> End of the world cults are a common feature of human societies,

The different tech that can make good on the apocalypse are a relatively recent addition to the equation.

We've had the ability to lay waste to the planet for just a handful of generations.

[willcipriano]

Another feature of human end of the world predictions is its always different this time.

[WarOnPrivacy]

Okay. So make the equation equate. How could humanity make most of the planet uninhabitable 1000 years ago?

[willcipriano]

Lots of reasons, by having sex or praying the wrong way were common. The wrong way being the way some other out group does it. Now we can end the world by doing things like driving the wrong kind of car (but not by flying around the world to "broaden the mind" as in group members like to do that). You can even buy indulgences.

[Buttons840]

War has indeed always threatened to take away our children's futures. Yet the possibility of peace is ever present.

The difference with climate change is the "peaceful" analog is vanishing. Humanity has always been able to choose peace. But we may soon not be able to choose to live on a healthy planet.

[vondur]

China doesn't care one bit about climate change. China is building six times more new coal plants than other countries, report finds: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/02/1160441919/china-is-building-...

[adrianN]

China's CO2/kWh is going down reasonably quickly for a growing economy. They could do a lot better of course (couldn't we all?), but they're not just building coal plants; they're also building renewables and nuclear. "China does X Y-times more than other countries" is a headline that can be recycled for almost every topic. There are 1.4 billion people in China.

[hutzlibu]

I think they do care (they are also number 1 in rollout of most renewables), but they care more for social stability, that they can only sustain with high economic growth.

[helij]

How to reconcile the above article with this[0]?

[0]https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...

[spacephysics]

I think that’s a bit dramatic and airing on fear mongering. Other comment responses of OP have better sources, but I do not agree the “future is at risk” because of this.

I’m more inclined to closely watch geopolitical events unfold, as US hegemony becomes slowly unstable and potentially untenable.

If climate change were really really as dire as some say it is, we wouldn’t be half-assing our way via renewable energies which don’t have a power grid or power store nearly capable enough to handle a “fully electric future”

We’d be spending more money than the likes of other world powers on proven nuclear energy (unlike Germany who has decommissioned theirs in favor of coal)

I think I read the nuclear waste of nuclear power stations we have today could fit in a big Walmart? That’s an insane amount of energy density. That doesn’t include the potential for nuclear diamond batteries to reuse the spent fuel rods, or other upcoming technologies to reuse the waste.

Don’t get me wrong, we should look into truly renewable energy. But needing vast amounts of rare-earth minerals for solar panels and batteries from China, or nickel and cobalt from child-labor mines in the Congo doesn’t seem to line up with the ethos of “going green”

We should “go nuclear”

[eximius]

> If climate change were really really as dire as some say it is, we wouldn’t be half-assing our way

Yes, this is why people are worried. It is dire and we are half-assing our responses.

[redprince]

> I’m more inclined to closely watch geopolitical events unfold, as US hegemony becomes slowly unstable and potentially untenable.

Wait until you see what millions of people displaced by rising sea levels are going to do to political and economical stability worldwide. That's not going to happen in a far distant future, that's within 30 years. Bangladesh for example is expected to lose 17% of its land by 2050, displacing millions. Miami-Dade county will be 60% under water by 2060 when current projections come to pass.

> If climate change were really really as dire as some say it is, we wouldn’t be half-assing our way via renewable energies which don’t have a power grid or power store nearly capable enough to handle a “fully electric future”

The realities of climate change and its dire consequences aren't some doomsayers internet theories. We're completely half-assing our response to it despite the scientific consensus on the brutal consequences of our doing.

> We should “go nuclear”

That ship has sailed at least 20 years ago. Starting now with average construction times of 10 years plus they would come too late to make a difference.

Renewables are cheaper to build and faster to construct so that's were the world is heading.

https://www.iea.org/news/renewable-power-on-course-to-shatte...

[civilized]

I do wish we could overcome our squeamishness about nuclear. Because our climate circumstances are indeed dangerous. And in my opinion, they're quite a bit more dangerous than nuclear power would be, if we committed to scaling it up with a reasonable balance of safety and cost-effectiveness. It is only expensive because we hold it to a much higher standard of safety than any other power source. And understandably so, to some extent, because the tail risk from operating nuclear is greater, but we are facing tail risk from fossil fuels warming the planet as well, and I think that tail risk is much greater and much harder to control than that from nuclear.

I think we need less moralism and fear of complex systems, and more hard-headed, engineering-led cost-benefit analysis.

[magicalist]

If we're not moralizing, shouldn't this be if the cost-benefit analysis comes out sufficiently positive then we should commit to scaling it up?

[civilized]

Yes. I am not certain. I have the opinions I've given in my post, and a perception that a legitimate cost-benefit debate has been cut short by moralizing.

[nuancebydefault]

The thing is, today it is not dire enough for people to care enough. When corona was only in china, we were not very worried. When it came super near, it got us worried enough to take drastic measures. I'm afraid the same will happen with the reaction to climate change. When we feel we could die, we will take drastic measures. No way we will get extinct, but it will cause a lot of suffering and death.

[ed25519FUUU]

My children aren’t going to care because I don’t care and there’s no reason to fill them with unnecessary doom and fear.

Yes it is outside of our sphere of influence. It’s bad parenting to make kids worry about things outside of their control.

And before you criticize me, know that I’m a cloth diapering, organic food growing back-to-land hippy. I’m happy to compare our carbon footprints.

[edgefield]

Well said. I have two small kiddos and difficult to know how to engage with them on topics like AI and climate change.

As a related experience, I picked up my son from a birthday party and the birthday consisted of a rented massive trailer with big screen TVs and 7-8 different video game consoles for couch coop gaming. All powered by a generator. Very cool and very frightening all at the same time.

[pizzafeelsright]

I would love to discuss these topics in detail in person with someone like you. I am completely unconcerned about climate change or AI yet very concerned about how my child will interact with your child when their concerns are vastly different.

[manmal]

Why not frame it as „Major challenges ahead“ instead of „no future“? That sounds like a recipe for learned helplessness and defeatism.

[Freestyler_3]

Kids are the key to shaping the future, but kids is also the reason we are here. Generations upon generations of children being produced, who with each generation "produce" more CO2.

Our planet needs strong leadership that dictates what can and cannot be done. Instead we have leaders making up solutions that are not solutions, but are presented as such.

[acdha]

The problem is less the children than the fact that lifestyle changes made things enormously more CO2 intensive. India has far more people and far lower CO2 emissions because they didn’t change their lifestyle to involve huge increases in beef consumption, daily individual travel in massive gas powered vehicles, and heavy use of climate control systems. A significant chunk of those changes and the CO2 emitted happened after we knew that global warming was happening, too, so it really comes back to the ability of rich people to buy their way into being allowed to ignore externalities.

[aeonik]

I'm confused, what do you mean there's not going to be a future for them? No doubt there's going to be some challenges, but I thought all that carbon was in the atmosphere and oceans before it was sequestered by plants and alagae.

I thought the major issue was the speed of change, but we really don't know what life is thing to do in response.

According to this article, during the Cambrian, the earth was 10C hotter than it is today.

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2022/09/20/you-asked-dinos...

We're going to need to adapt, and things will be harder, but I believe it's totally doable.

[adrianN]

When all that carbon was in the atmosphere, dinosaurs weren't even around yet.

[peteradio]

That's not true is it? There was much more CO2 during dinosaur times than today.

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2022/09/20/you-asked-dinos...

[adrianN]

A lot of the coal we burn today dates back from the carboniferous period, which predates dinosaurs by a lot.

[plagiarist]

I wouldn't characterize ocean ecosystems dying from the bottom up as "totally doable" but, sure, the resource wars probably won't kill off the entire human species.

[aeonik]

When I say totally doable, I mean humanity surviving is totally doable.

I guess I was thinking after the current ecosystems are wiped out, it will open up the niche for something else to take hold and evolve in their place. Isn't that what the geological record shows during mass extinctions?

[_Microft]

OK, so this is fine? (No, I do not believe that)

[aeonik]

I didn't say that fyi, your statement here does not reflect my feelings.

The headline doesn't either, because Earth has been very hot in the past.

[skrebbel]

Pretty much yes

[WarOnPrivacy]

Vanuatu might disagree.

In Vanuatu, sea level rise is a very real concept with a number of communities already being inundated during high tides

(2016) ref: https://www.spatialsource.com.au/sea-level-rise-mapping-reac...

[skrebbel]

Yeah but we went from “oh no we’re all going to die and we have to prepare our kids for that eventuality” to “oh no Vanuatu is sinking” in just a few HN comments.

In that light I’d like to underline that in the “this is fine” meme, things are actually on fire. It’s an apt comparison.

[WarOnPrivacy]

> Vanuatu is sinking

This implies that Vanuatu's absolute elevation is decreasing. I can find no reference for this. If this decrease is true, please supply your sources.

[EGreg]

What I find strange is that people are actively building a zoo for themselves.

The population could have been very happy and rich with around 1 billion people — less garbage, less pollution, less extinction of species, less monocultures and farms, more biodiversity, sustainable resources, and not as much pressure on ecosystems.

But we live on an exological credit card.

[moojacob]

If this world with a billion people existed, most likely (7/8th chance) you wouldn't exist. How does never existing make you feel? Unless in this fantasy you'd survive and enjoy the extra resources which comes off as extremely selfish to me.

[EGreg]

People can have children below the replacement rate

They already do, in tons of countries

It might take care of itself, if not for AI and nukes humanity could be fine. But they just can’t resist, humanity seems to be acting like a rapacious child because of competition across countries.

As for your question… look ul the Doomsday Argument. 7% of all people who ever existed are alive today. If the population constantly increases then given the fact that you are alive means you’re more than likely living in the last days before a major population crash. The only question is what will be behind it — birth control or some ecosystem collapse?

[layer8]

I guess we should also ramp up industrial livestock production because otherwise those extra billions of animals would never exist.

[DontchaKnowit]

The worst case scenarios of climate chanve are grim but still leace room for humanities future. It will be tumultuous, but not catacalysmic. Alarmism does nothing for us. We should try to stay level headed

[mistrial9]

small children do not have the grounding to deal with existential threats -- IMHO it does no good to have a "logical,serious" talk about such things in the first 10+ years