Originally posted by madamswer:
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"I am unable to think of a scenario where we can get on top of the alarmist fears of a climate catastrophe in a peaceful and painless manner..." Well, kudos to you for being able to reconcile your clearly-strong concerns with some of the very significant practical realities that exist, which make it virtually impossible to curb continued increases in emissions for many years to come. It makes for a refreshing change from the overwhelming majority of people who are similarly concerned about climate change, and who protest and make demands that governments in the developed world do something to address it. Such protests and demands might advertise the virtuous and honourable nature of those undertaking them, and it might assuage their western-centric consciences, but they are futile due to the sheer nature of the beast."As a result I predict in a couple of centuries the planet will have a human population of no more than 1 billion —thinned down by starvation, conflict, disease and lower reproductive capacity given sperm quality drops as the nuggets get hotter!" Ah, now you're getting some Existential Nihilism into ya...that's good. It's the opposite attitude of what I call the Superior Species Syndrome, which is where we humans, as a species, think we are somehow special and unique when - in fact - we are just one of several billions of species that will spend a bit of time on this planet. For in the Greater Gaea-n scheme of things we are but little specks in the aeons of time. As a species in our current form, we have only been around for a few hundred thousand years, and we've only been organised into functional groupings for a few thousand years... by contrast, the planet is over 3.5 billion years old. If the earth's existence was represented by a 24-hour clock, our arrival would have take place at about ten seconds before midnight. And just like any species that becomes overly influential and dominant is unable to sustain that prominence, we humans are not exempt from Mother Earth's self-moderating mechanisms. To somehow think that, as a species, we are able to prosper and flourish to perpetuity - when no other has - is sheer hubris. This natural order of things - which has been in train for billions of years - is far, far bigger than all of us, and to believe that we can someone alter it, is laughable. If the climate doesn't get us, something else will. Humans consume and humans generate waste. The more humans, the more consumption and the more the waste. Eventually there will be insufficient resources to consume and insufficient place to store the pollution. (Looks like we might be arriving at the point....after all, it is a time-honoured and unavoidable inevitability.) To that end, in the overall scheme of things, climate change "alarmists" look to me not very different to climate change "deniers" in terms of the respective roles they play in this species evolution process; the difference is that one group believes - honourably, but wrongly - that it can do something to fix it and the other thinks - dishonourably, but correctly - that nothing can or should be done, or it simply doesn't know or care. ..
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The fate of humanity isn’t settled although the psyche of humanity will take a heavy, humbling blow as IMO, a 1m sea level rise this century is our best case scenario.
Societies will change greatly in ways as yet unimagined and our tendency to arrogantly believe we are special will take a big hit. Also western religions that helped the idea of human’s being the chosen ones will change radically.
There is also the X factor in that we don’t know what the world’s superpowers are doing in terms of fundamental research and technological applications regarding ways to mitigate CO2 emissions along with carbon capture.
Then there is also the innate potential of humans, and gifted children if nurtured correctly, will make big difference. Here’s an example of a child genius’s
Jacob Barnett: Jacob is an American mathematician. When he was two years old, he was diagnosed with moderate to severe autism.
He enrolled at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis at age 10 and is currently working on his PhD in Quantum Physics.