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smyk1777 8 hours ago

I'm glad they took this seriously and considered it important. Maybe the world will finally notice how we're destroying the planet and ourselves, and whether anyone thinks about their children and grandchildren who may live in a world destroyed by generations.

avereveard 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Convincing the world seem the hard part. 43% of the forcing greenhouse grasses are currently coming from non amicable regimes. 53% if you include USA, but there's a chance administration is going to change. Beyond declaring what are the small countries options?

slashdev 6 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The same as everyone else’s options.

Adapt.

There’s no stopping this train.

troyvit 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Even though we, collectively, are driving said train. As a believer in the great filter theory[1] it's a shame given how far we've apparently come, only to be brought low by our desires, our inability to believe we could screw ourselves this royally, and our collective lack of give-a-shit to fix it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter

dathinab 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

climate change isn't an one/off effect but gradual

every bit of improvement is a higher chance to avoid some of the most catastrophic outcomes (where the unlikely but possible worst outcome being a mass extinction chain reaction which humanity will find very very hard to survive in a functioning manner/without losing their future)

so still worth fighting for any improvement even if we can't avoid a catastrophe anymore, as there is a huge margin between what we still can archive, and what we might end up with if we stop fighting and are quite unlucky

slashdev 41 minutes ago | parent [-]

I agree, it's worth doing everything we can.

But it's also clear, it won't be enough. Emissions are not only still increasing, they likely won't stop increasing in my lifetime (in the next 50 years.)

We must adapt. The earth is going to get a lot warmer, and wetter in some parts, and drier in others, and sea levels will likely keep slowly rising for many centuries to come, if not millennia.

dathinab 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

it's both true and misleading in what conclusions people might take from it

e.g. if you want the true climate damage done by a country you would have to look at all the damage done by producing all the goods consumed there. This isn't very practical doable. But if you e.g. mass import Chinese goods you can't only blame China for the climate damage done in context of producing those goods (but neither can you take away all the fault from them, they still decide how to produce the goods in the end and we (west) motivate them to do so badly).

This also applies to Oil producing countries etc.

And some non amicable countries are so because they see no way to handle their economical situation if they tried to change it. But if countries where to work better together they might find a way forward. And sometimes innovation can fix that by itself. E.g. solar cells have gotten absurdly good to a point where sometimes they just out compete non-renewables on purely economical benefits. That is, if your government doesn't do regulations to actively prevent this (weather it's by hindering solar or by hugely subventionieren oil/coal/gas).

So the situation is both better and worse then the statistics above make it look. Better as you could move production away from non amicable countries and boycott their products and "convince" some of them by giving them a economical feasible means to improve. Worse because we know this won't happen and it means its not just "their fault" but quite often indirectly partially our fault, too.

Also lets be realistic thanks to corruption, short term thinking(e.g. next election) and sometimes plain stupidity many countries which try to get away from oil/coal/gas have done such horrible bad decisions that they not only completely fucked avoiding climate change but also have put their economy in a thought spot. When then is taken out of context and used by people like Trump as an example why fighting climate change is supposedly a scam.

pembrook 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> a world destroyed by generations

This hyperbole isn’t helpful. The world won’t be destroyed. (If you promise annihilation and are visited simply by devastation, it reduces credibility in an unnecessary way.)

jfengel 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Is the credibility in question among anyone who would notice the difference in phrasing?

We should always try to speak with precision, but not for the sake of people who will dismiss it no matter what you say.

bee_rider 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This seems more like informal and basically reasonable talk, rather than hyperbole.

The purpose of Earth, from the point of view of most humans, is to act as a comfortable host of humans. We are destroying the Earth by making it no longer fit for that purpose. I don’t think anybody reads “destroy Earth” and interprets it as something more like, “get rid of the iron ball as well.”

Unless you are one of those deep-sea vent dwelling creatures, we’re risking changes to the planet that will affect your life eventually.

JumpCrisscross 5 hours ago | parent [-]

> we’re risking changes to the planet that will affect your life

Most people should already be seeing changes to their life in a statistically significant way.

But the AMOC collapsing doesn’t mean plenty of the Earth isn’t comfortable for humans. Global temperatures peaking in their pessimistic state still leaves, for better or for worse, most of the industrialized world viable. Poorer. Less comfortable. But viable nonetheless.

This is important because committing to long-term projects requires avoiding nihilism and complacency. Pitching everything as disaster tips into the former.

roenxi 2 minutes ago | parent [-]

[delayed]

Teever 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm curious why this conversation tat is more or less a George Carlin bit from decades ago plays out over and over on social media. I bet that you knew exactly what they meant when they talked about the world being destroyed.

It wasn't a scenario where the Earth is literally annihilated by a black hole, or a super nova, or a meteor or a GMB, it was a scenario where the world is functionally ruined for human life as we know it in a time-scale far shorter than we can muster up the resources to stop or even mitigate it.

So like, what's going on here? Is your response a subconscious coping strategy to change the topic to something more comfortable than one of impending doom for the human species and civilization as we know it?

JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago | parent [-]

> it was a scenario where the world is functionally ruined for human life as we know it

Sure. The AMOC collapsing doesn’t do that. It makes life shit for a lot of people. But it doesn’t make the Earth uninhabitable for humans or technological civilization.

“Destroy the earth” is hyperbole. Cause mass starvation, associated wars and refugee crises, and mass extinctions with renewed vigor are not.

withinboredom 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It’s like being invited to a party in someone’s house. One person starts smoking in the house. Sure, one person is no big deal. Then another person lights up because someone else did, and hey, they don’t have to live there tomorrow. Before you know it, 5–10% of people are smoking and making it stink for everyone, but it’s fine. They’ll stop eventually, and it’s not like you have to live there.

Unless someone stands up and says "no smoking in the house" ... people are going to keep smoking.

JumpCrisscross an hour ago | parent [-]

> Unless someone stands up and says "no smoking in the house" ... people are going to keep smoking

Sure. But if if someone says the house will burn down when the first person lights up, and they’re ignored, and it doesn’t, that doesn’t help. Most importantly because it isn’t true.

Teever 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

We live in the atomic age. The idea that calamity could befall one part of the world and the others will be fine just isn't possible.

Here's a plausible scenario -- European countries decide that they will just power through the cold Frostpunk style by burning massive amounts of hydrocarbons and some other societies in regions suffering from the heat due to climate change decide that this course of action is unacceptable and war breaks out.

The theme of climate change is feedback loops and one way checkpoints. The increasing rates of change from these feedback loops and how societies respond may doom the plant and life as we know it.

This isn't hyperbole.

JumpCrisscross an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Here's a plausible scenario

As you said, we’ve had plausible scenarios for actually destroying industrial civilisation since the middle of the Cold War. We dealt with it by having the population ignore it while a few nuclear states manage the risks. That doesn’t work for climate change.

kortilla 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

War breaks out involving nuclear capable countries and nuclear bombs haven’t been used so far.

If Russia hasn’t used one on Ukraine, it doesn’t seem likely that a country mad about its climate would just destroy the world.

bryanrasmussen 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

right everyone will be hah we were not all killed, only lots of people, but some survived! You lose! Glad we didn't listen to you, most of my family were killed except for me and my niece, but you said me and my niece would be killed too! You know absolutely nothing!!

kakacik 3 hours ago | parent [-]

This doesn't help the discussion, won't change anybody's mind (which you should desperately want in this topic) and just paint you as an outcast too annoying to listen to or debate with.

I am pretty sure you can do better than that.

Aperocky 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> took this seriously

That assumes Iceland consider "National Security Risk" as politically charged as it is in other major countries.

dathinab 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> finally notice how we're destroying the planet and ourselves,

this might sound very pessimistic

but the world has noticed _very long ago_

the first calculations about the greenhouse effect where in 1896!

in the 50th/60th it increasingly more clear that there might be a huge problem

in the 70th it became clear that there might not just be a huge problem but most likely is one, even if there wasn't yet scientific consensus on it

in the 80th scientific consensus was formed that there is human accelerated climate change and that it's a huge problem

since then outside of a very small fraction (depending on year, but in general <10% of scientist) the question wasn't if it is happening or if it is quite bad, but how "exactly" it will play out and how bad exactly it will get with options ranging from quite bad, over parts of earth becomes inhabitable for human where currently up to ~1000000000 people lives, to risk of human extinction in the long run (indirectly by causing a mass extinction event from a combination of climate change being to fast in combination with other environmental damages done by humans). Sure there have been other effect overlying climate change and people have tried to use them to explain climate change away, but consistently fail, sadly only from a scientific POV and not from a convincing people they don't have to worry POV.

And now in 2025 we have on of the most powerful nations of the world deciding that climate change is a scam, not based on data or analysis but based on it benefiting companies owned by some of their most influential citizens. And started systematically removing access to all public data they had previously gathered about climate change basically trying to rewrite history. And that at a time where large part of the US are currently being severely affected by long term environmental abuse. And yes abusing the environment isn't the same as climate change, but we could take a hint that if something has pretty bad effect on a local scale that then something similar done globally will probably have pretty bad effect globally.

It's also not like we don't know that currently _already_ whole nations (e.g. Philippines) are in the process of sinking. Or the amount and level of extrema weather conditions has constantly increased. Or that heat related death are constantly increasing. Or that there are gigantic dead areas in the oceans (through likely not caused by climate change, but this other kind of environmental catastrophes overlap with it putting even more strain on nature).

And still overall the trend of the last few years is to do less about it, not more. Because it is seen as luxury counties can't afford in a very strained world economy.

And people very commonly speak about it's anyway to late why bother, when we are speaking about a gradual effect not a binary yes/no switch.

I honestly don't have optimism about it anymore, there is no indication for me to believe thinks will get better until it's way way to late to prevent a catastrophe.

And don't get me wrong, humanity will (probably) survive, we are quite good at that. And there most likely will be a future where children can have a nice happy live. But before that for reasons not limited to climate change things probably will go to shit for a few decades, maybe even a century. But don't worry as long as people still try to make things better, things will get better again, it just might take some time.

But if I where living close by the coast or close to the equator, or in a area which already has common extrema weather, I would make sure my children grow up somewhere else.

bah that was such a downer to write, but it is my take on the topic anyway