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Comment by adrianN | Hacker News Reader

Climate change is not the end of the world. The climate has been warmer in the past and CO2 levels higher. The transition period until the climate stabilizes at a higher temperature will be uncomfortable because of problems with agriculture, sea level rise and so on, but I don't think it will wipe out modern civilization.

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"CO2 levels higher": Would you mind sharing your source on this?

Here are the last 6,000 years [1] (it cuts off at 4713 BC because that happens to be the earliest timestamp available in Postgres). The source data from the NOAA are here [2] and you can see for yourself that we are something like 30% higher than the highest level of CO2 recorded in the last 800,000 years.

If you have a source that tells a different story, let me know.

[1] https://numer.al/noaa_data/figures/antarctic-ice-cores-revis...

[2] ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/paleo/icecore/antarctica/antarctica2015co2composite.txt

During the Devonian and Carboniferous time (~400 million years ago) Earth was like 20 degrees warmer and CO2 was really high.

That's correct. If memory serves, it's been >400 ppm quite a few times since.

The earth, and rich (though temporarily diminished) life on its surface will continue.

I suspect there will be a much smaller number of humans to enjoy it.

Okay, so we can say that:

1. CO2 is currently the highest it has ever been since human civilization has existed (10k years, roughly).

2. CO2 is currently the highest it has ever been since humans have existed (200k years, roughly).

3. CO2 is currently the highest it has ever been since primates have existed (50M years, roughly).

But for the sake of argument let’s say:

4. CO2 may not be the highest it has ever been since mammals have existed (200M years, roughly).

5. CO2 is not the highest it has ever been since multicellular life has existed on land (500M years, roughly).

Fair enough. Maybe 1-3 are less concerning to you than they are to me. When you say "the climate has been warmer in the past and CO2 levels higher" and are referring to a period prior to the existence of primates, it doesn't necessarily make me feel that much better. :) That said I’m nothing close to being expert in this stuff.

It’s interestingly difficult to think about time over so many orders of magnitude.

I like this xkcd's comic cosmic perspective:

http://xkcd.com/1732/

When put in this perspective it is hard to not be concerned about 1-3.

You just need to go back in time further than the ice age: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age

"Outside these ages, the Earth seems to have been ice-free even in high latitudes."

If you want to maintain the status quo and not allow human impact on the climate, you can expect the glaciers to arrive sooner rather than later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age#/media/File:Vostok_Pet...

All of those changes will cause great pains and tribulations for the most vulnerable. Maybe we can genetically engineer more drought-resistant plants or whatnot, but the farmers in rural parts of third-world-countries will suffer, while what's left of their freshwater supplies dry. Once the coral reefs are wiped out from the increased acidification of the oceans, another hundred or so million will starve to death because they rely on food from the ocean.

Of course, as I said the transition period will be uncomfortable. A few hundred million people dying over a time of a couple of decades is very different from the end of the world though.

Generally I think "the end of the world" is the end of those observing the world (us, humans). So most of the population dying sounds like the end..

That transition period is unacceptable. It is unacceptable to accept it as an inevitability, and it is unacceptable to view a few hundred million as inconsequential, especially when the tools are present to solve the issue. In my eyes, once we get to the point where our complacency has allowed us to even think in these terms and still be able to sleep comfortably at night, we have already lost (I'm no exception, and this isn't an accusation). We've allowed power to condense to a select few, and we all feel like small fries in the big global stage.

I agree that we should stop producing GHGs as quickly as possible. I'm just arguing that climate change is not the end of the world. In the same way you can argue that another global war is probably not the end of the world yet we should avoid it by all means.

> A few hundred million people dying over a time of a couple of decades is very different from the end of the world though.

Really? Seriously? This seems incredibly dismissive.

I don't mean the figure of speech "not the end of the world", I mean the literal end of human civilization. I think you have to agree that humanity can carry on even if every tenth human dies. That is less than the death rate caused by the Black Death (~50%) and back then Europe managed to carry on.

Dude, who cares about it not being a literal statement?

Civilization as know it, literally, is going to end and so will the ecosystems that have supported societies for thousands of years.

You're playing words games that no one cares about.

You wrote "Climate change is not the end of the world." Do you usually use "not the end of the world" to mean something comparable to the Black Death?

Yes, especially when I reply on a thread that started with historic predictions of the end of the world (you know, the seas turning to blood, the four horsemen...).

I'm not a native English speaker so it took a number of outraged replies before I remembered that some people use "the end of the world" to mean things other than, well, the end of the world.

You seem to be ignoring human nature. Those few hundred million people are not going to simply accept their fate and go quietly into the night, these climate refugees are going to migrate, and do whatever is required to survive.

The social unrest caused by this will be a powder keg that could and most likely will explode into a major conflict. Humans are the exact same savage beasts we were 70000 years ago. We havent evolved, our knowledge has. Institutions keep us in check and without them... scary stuff. Stuff like the Walking Dead is pretty tame comoared to history. During the dow fall of the Aztec empire, they sacrificed(heavily disputed) between 4000 and 84000 people in just 4 days.

You talk like that that because you expect to be able to rise it out. but you're only a short step away from becoming one of the millions of nobodies whose death you shrug off.

Unfortunately, the rate of change is more rapid than anything that we can obviously see in the past, and this is very bad news for the ecosystem's ability adapt. Second, it's not completely clear to me that what this stabilisation temperature that you talk about will be. It we get into a nice vicious circle with permafrosts releasing methane deposits, things get very bad very quickly. Whether you think it will will 'wipe out' modern civilisation rather depends on what you think 'wipe out' means. Certainly civilisation is likely to be much less widely spread across the globe. Wars disease and ecological issues will compound the problems. If not completely wiped out, then greatly reduced and impoverished.

It has been warmer... But we've never been so many people on this planet who really depend so much on a stable climate. We are really pushing this planet to the edge right now even without climate change.

If the climate changes, we all have to adapt. Cities with millions near the ocean or in extremely hot areas will have to be relocated. Existing agricultural land will become unusable, and we'll have to come up with new land. We are already using up most the planet's fertile ground on agriculture, so it is not like we can just start using the desert. So you'll have migration and food crisis on your hands...

I don't know what your definitions of "wipe out" og "end of the world" are, but it will definitely not be without significant issues.

You don't think it will, but you actually don't know. Scientists don't know, because we don't know what tipping points there are. Please don't act like you have a crystal ball.

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