[hn_throwaway_99]

I don't know, I feel like it's already pretty obvious that we're "cooked/doomed", with some caveats:

1. Even in the worst case I haven't seen any level-headed scientists argue that the Earth will be uninhabitable a la Venus. We'll get a hotter planner, sea levels will rise considerably inundating coastal areas, the current anthropocene extinction event will accelerate, storms will be a lot more intense, etc. Obviously a major set of problems, but I think it's important to be specific about what those problems will be as opposed to "we'll all be dead".

2. Whenever someone even remotely argues that we'll be able to stick to some reasonable emissions targets I like to show this graph, https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions#global-co2-emission.... That is, it's good news that global emissions have largely stabilized over the past decade, but we're still pumping out over 35 billion tons of carbon every year. We need to find a way, somehow, to bring that to near 0, and while tech may get us there eventually I don't see that happening in my lifetime (I'm middle aged).

[snarf21]

Agreed .. A lot of people will die as places become uninhabitable for a very very long time .. Access to clean water will become a major issue and the poor will lose (even more than they already are) .. Humans are a greedy species and this planet just can't support 8B+ (and counting of us) .. I don't know what it can support but we'll soon find out .. We are still decades away from near zero fossil fuels globally and yet we are still growing crops in the desert and watering it so people can have fun hitting a white ball .. Even if we can get to near 100% wind/solar/battery, we'll be busy polluting anything and everything with rare earth minerals as we churn through batteries like candy .. I don't see life being very fun in 50 years, even for the richest people

[oceanplexian]

> Humans are a greedy species and this planet just can't support 8B+

This seems like a pretty bold statement.

Let’s assume the only constraints on population are energy, water, and space. If you do a back of the napkin calculation on much Uranium exists on Earth, how much power we could produce by fissioning it, then how much water is in the oceans, and then assume everything else is an engineering problem?

I think the number wouldn’t be 8 Billion, but much more. That’s not even getting into mining asteroids, space-based energy, vertical hydroponics, living underground or in the oceans. I think the limits could be extraordinarily high

[lovich]

It’s a political problem first. You can’t engineer your way out of a problem when most of the people holding power or the resources needed decide to not spend the time or money because they think it’ll affect others and not them

[valval]

We’re spending an enormous amount of money on climate alarmism and various apocalyptic cults right now. Are we living a different reality?

[lovich]

Money spent != effectiveness

Its still a political problem at the end of the day if you cannot convince a large section of the people with decision making power that its worth their time to deal with, regardless of how much money youve thrown at the issue yourself

[ericd]

On your last point, lithium ion battery packs are supposedly extremely recyclable, and it’s cheaper to recycle them than to make a new one, so it seems likely that they will be recycled.

[JohnFen]

They'll have to be, because there isn't enough lithium on the planet (that we know of) to meet the expected demand.

[throwaway09223]

"A lot of people will die as places become uninhabitable for a very very long time"

Places will become uninhabitable, but what's the argument for "a lot of people will die?" These are gradual changes we're talking about. People will move.

[CatWChainsaw]

People will move to places that already have people - people that want to protect their resources, and will react with hostility to climate refugees. It's already happening. Pretzel logic doesn't change that.

[throwaway09223]

Well, this is certainly not a strong position to argue from.

[CatWChainsaw]

Ah of course, my mistake; throwing migrants, regardless of their legal status, back into rivers to let them drown, or sinking their boats, or depriving them water in historic heatwaves where people get second-degree burns from pavement surely isn't indicative of how things will play out once things get even worse.

[throwaway09223]

No, it isn't indicative at all.

The vast majority of immigration occurs without incident and there is no compelling evidence that this will change in the future.

[t0bia_s]

- "Humans are a greedy species and this planet..."

Propaganda of collective guilt is indeed strong last decade. Just not let them divide society. We have enough experience with that from history.

[jlarocco]

It seems pretty optimistic to say it's "stabilized over the past decade".

If I'm reading correctly, between 2011 and 2021 (the last year in the graph) there was an increase of 5 billion tons, and that was certainly helped by the big drop during the pandemic...

[hedgehog]

Depending what all the other effects you describe do to food production and communicable disease spread "we'll all be dead" may be only a moderate exaggeration of the effect over say a century or two.

[hn_throwaway_99]

That's my point, without more information that doesn't make sense:

1. I don't doubt disruption in global food production will likely cause some famines, but again, plenty of places will still be able to grow food, and in fact many places will open up to food production.

2. I don't see how any increase in communicable disease spread leads to anything close to "we'll all be dead".

Yes, lots of people will die due to the impacts of global warming, but nothing I've seen says there is any reason to think it will be a species ending effect.

[hedgehog]

As we are under more pressure due to all the factors you pointed out the odds that we are able to avoid spread of a highly contagious virus with a higher fatality rate than COVID (closer to say MERS) or a series of big famines (say 1% of global population) start to look uncomfortably lower than 100%.

[mullingitover]

The vast majority of human history has been the Stone Age. It’s the stable state. What’s doomed is this temporary blip that has resulted from the explosion of free energy.

The human species will survive and will simply go back to the Stone Age and stay there another million years, this time without the risk of stumbling onto vast amounts of easy, free, dangerous carbon-based energy.

[jmclnx]

In a way, I can agree with this. But I doubt it will be a "stone age". I tend to think it will be very similar to a cancelled SYFY Show called "Incorporated".

It is too bad it was not allowed to continue, but how the main star was written I think it doomed it. To me, if born outside the privileged caste, you would have no hope.

[mullingitover]

The post apocalyptic-type civilization can only last so long, though. I base my hypothesis on the Bronze Age collapse, where a bunch of fairly complex civilizations all went back to approximately the Stone Age in the span of 50 years or so. Advanced civilizations live on supply chains and are (as was demonstrated by the pandemic) actually pretty brittle. So I think the path back home to the Stone Age will go, as Hemingway said, “gradually, then suddenly.”

[selimthegrim]

The Mayan collapse might also be instructive.

[valval]

HN, where you’ll find the greatest fortune tellers.