| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 6 hours ago |
| > 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.) |
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| ▲ | 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. |
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| ▲ | 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. |
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| ▲ | 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. | | |
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| ▲ | 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? |
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| ▲ | 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. |
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| ▲ | 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. |
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| ▲ | 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!! |
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| ▲ | 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. |
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