Are we going to make it? - Polidicks

(i'm not really sure if this belongs in Polidicks sorry if it doesn't and it's better suited in General) With a-lot of talk around here being about climate change, and just general questions about whether or not we as a species can continue to keep on progressing and eventually reach for the stars and begin colonizing the galaxy. How many of you here believe that we can and will eventually reach a point where we have people living on multiple planets, and maybe even different solar systems? How many of you guys think that humanity is pretty much doomed, and the only thing we can do now is just sit and wait for the inevitable end to come? Or maybe you have a different opinion on how things are going to turn out. I found this huge imgur album on the internet detailing the inevitable end of civilization and was really looking to share it with some of you here but didn't know where to post it. https://imgur.com/a/pYxKa I think it's pretty good stuff with a-lot of articles, I haven't read the entire thing just skimmed through it. (I found it on 4chan so take it with a grain of salt.) But it's something that got me thinking, and I'm not quite sure how long we'll be able to continue living like the way we do, and it makes me sad to think about it, so I'm hoping you guys will prove me wrong.

humanity isn't doomed, we'll scrape by like cockroaches and rodents. we're going through a rough patch right now, and it is still up in the air what we'll look like on the other side, but we will make it through.

We can grow food in space in completely man-made environments right now, so unless an asteroid strikes the earth and kills all of us at once, we'll be fine That being said we shouldn't downplay the importance of trying to prevent climate change, while it wouldn't mean the end of the human race the flooding and weather changes could still kill millions of us

Our current way of life might be doomed and a lot of people will die due to environmental factors and the unavoidable social upheaval, but relatively speaking humans have been through worse.

It might not look the same as now, but humanity will always get by. It's a troubled time, villains are in power, greed rules the most powerful counties, our tyrants seem unopposed and our world is burning. But even through the darkest night, morning will come. People will eventually stand up and shout that enough is enough, we always have.

There have been five mass extinctions events in Earth's history wiping out between 75 and 96% of life on the planet. Fermi's Paradox suggests that intelligent life is rare and it is the nature of said life to destroy itself, through incompetence leading to environmental disaster, war and resource depletion (which itself would be a trigger for wars). We're certainly on a negative path currently as well established climate science keeps being pushed aside in favour of capitalism (although this is unsustainable). However, resource depletion seems almost inevitable as population sizes continue to increase well beyond the pace of technology to counter it, which would be needed for terraforming other planets, assuming we even have the ability to reach them before resources run out. In the immediate term we're likely to be fine (unless a particularly large unforeseen impact event happens), but the long term survival of humans is a far more dubious unless we pull our collective heads out of the sand and do something to counter existential threats.

I think humanity as a species is bad at averting catastrophe, but we are pretty damn good at bludgeoning our way through it. What we consider to be global civilization? Probably not so much. But civilizations have collapsed before. When the whole of humanity has been reduced to a few thousand scavengers eking out a stone-age type existence, that's when extinction is a genuine concern. But we have a hell of a long way to go before we reach that particular brink, and I don't believe that currently unfolding events alone will bring us that far. I could be wrong though. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Easily There are a few hurdles on a biological level, but thanks to our Chinese friends, those will be purged too

This is like, the one thing, that humans have over almost every other creature on Earth and why we've persisted for so long. We're incredibly adaptable due to our intelligence and will find solutions to anything that doesn't outright kill us straight away. Climate change or nukes, we'll persist somehow. Even if it's just on a personal level rather than societal. We'll reform societies after the worst happens should society collapse, it might take a while but it's what humanity has done throughout history.

Maybe I'm just overly pessimistic, but I honestly believe it's an all-or-nothing deal. Either we become an interplanetary species, or we end up paying for lunch with bottlecaps. Part of why I'm so indifferent to climate change, truth be told, the CO2 we release isn't gonna be much of an issue when we nuke ourselves back to the stone age.

Humanity will go on, but millions or billions will die when our current way of life collapses under the stresses of climate change.

As the others have stated, perhaps the worst will happen (where even billions may perish), but I too believe humanity will survive and grow once more. If there is a human, there is a capacity to learn, grow, and reach for the heavens. I am extremely unsure of whether megacorps or AI rulers are in our future though, if I were to address every possible alternative, no matter how slim it is. Hopefully humanity can pull it off, I personally believe that we will edge by but barely from worst case scenarios as they are believed to exist today. If we take too long, lose fossil fuels, and never find an alternative fuel source, we would make replacements over time to be able to fly to the heavens again if space flights stop for a bit. Be optimistic in our chances, but keep a healthy dose of criticism on whether or not everything along the way is the best scenario (like if we need to overthrow mega rulers in the future or something). Don't let the future overwhelm your senses in the now. Im not saying dont worry, cause it's very worldly of you to have concern for us all, but don't get depressed about it.

overall i think we can pull out of this shitfuck of a nightmare that we sorta created. And the more frustrating thing is that not much effort is really needed to actually reverse some of the problems that are happening. The problem is that we're stuck with a bunch of crusty old fucks who don't believe whats happening is grave danger to the rest of humanity. Which is why i think we have a chance. But that depends on how much we try to get ourselves fixed in the next 5-10 years. If we can't get that shit figured out in that time period. Then boy oh boy, its going to get crazy...

Humans will almost always find some way to survive for a time, although a sufficiently large meteor strike or cataclysmic nuclear war would probably wipe out humans along with most other life. What's at stake is technological civilization, without which, humanity is 100% dead in the long-term. Every single future that sees Humanity stay solely on Earth is a future in which humanity is doomed. As time goes on, the likelihood of an extinction-level catastrophe approaches 1, and the simple evolution of the solar system will inevitably see Earth no longer able to support human life, or life at all. What makes it worse is that, our current civilization is likely the only shot we have. If we were to collapse to pre-industrial levels and lose the knowledge and capabilities to build and operate much of our technology, we could never climb back up to our current position again. The Industrial Revolution can't happen again post-collapse, because all the coal, oil, iron, and other raw materials that were accessible with lower technology, have been scooped up and used by our current civilization. We now have to use highly energy intensive and technological solutions to extract these materials, and without those solutions, that themselves require the industrial infrastructure made possible by our access to the previous resources, we could extract nothing. There's some leeway in a kind of partial collapse where we preserve enough knowledge and infrastructure to say, rebuild civilization based on solar panels and wind turbines, but that is a very precarious position to be in. The only possible way for humanity to survive in the long-term is to expand into space. We are at a critical moment in history where we can either take the necessary leap from our cradle and set on the path to immortality, or turn inward and kill ourselves in our own failings. Right now, we are turning inward, our cultures and societies are festering. We are dividing ourselves up, fighting eachother, and sliding into ignorance and oppression. The more time we waste in these distractions, the worse our problems become. Right now I have little hope for civilization, barring some massive catastrophe or revolution that upends the current international order, and without civilization, humanity loses its purpose and its future, and that to me is tantamount to extinction anyway.

If we survived two world wars and an abundance of nuclear weapons, it's unlikely that we will be killed off from climate change. The world's just going to fucking suck for a long time before we hopefully figure out how to fix it.

Believing wholeheartedly in and accepting the futility of existence is tantamount to death. We will persevere because there is no other option.

Yellowstones gonna go off and what little survives of the human race will be forced underground where the next 6 centuries of incest will make us into orks.

I've thought about the same. Because it is a kind of an all-or-nothing type deal, especially in the wild. The top killer will stay on top and for a foreseeable future too if they just keep doing what they're doing, until something radical enough happens to change that, like changes in food availability or changes in their environment. Then adaption and evolution and even more time happens, and a new top killer is born. Of course for humans it's a different story, we practically own the planet. It's an interesting thread, however @OP I'm seriously starting to get the feeling that no, we're not going to make it. That is, if you mean reducing our emissions/impact by a large enough margin to make any difference. Even if we went 100% green in almost perfect symbiosis with our planet tomorrow, the emissions we've already produced in the last 100 years are still lingering out there, in the process of being absorbed by the planet. Shit takes time, it's a very big and complex system and it's hard to sell the idea of adapting to changes that are only going to happen in about 40-80 years. We're most likely not going to do about it enough, but it's not the end of the world, and certainly not enough to end us. It's impossible to speculate and predict the future beyond like 100 years, where things we can't imagine now could happen even in 20 years, nukes could go off and we all die, but I believe the climate changes will roll on very steadily, and we're going to feel it, and we'll probably put resources into developing ways to shield ourselves from the effects where they can be felt. No reason for panicking.

Climate change is a threat but humans have survived much worse, like the Ice Age which plummeted global temps down about 20C, and the sea level dropped about 120m. Not to mention the dust in the atmosphere was 20x what it is today, along with hardly any rain. Humans also domesticated dogs before the Ice Age from a now-extinct species of wolf that we have yet to discover.

We survived it but we also didn't really have anything remotely resembling modern society. While humanity as a whole is likely to survive, society is another question altogether. We're currently on a path that is likely to result in mass famine for billions of people and the resulting deaths and wars over resources is what's most likely to do us in. At the very least, societal collapse doesn't seem unlikely.

we're all gonna die lmao

I really really think we are the cockroaches of the universe. We will never die out, as much as it tried or we even try ourselves.

you could make this argument after we'd become a multi-solar system civilization. until then all kinds of cosmic accidents could take us out in an instant

You seem to have an apocalypse/nihilism fetish, I was kind of waiting for when you'd show up in this thread. What is it about trying to crush hope at every opportunity that gets you off so much? Do you think that helps?

That was uhh.. that was probably the most uplifting thing I've read in a very, very long time. Thank you. Like, genuinely, thank you.

I am really curious what the mindset of the person who cultivated that manifesto is. Because if I was personally sifting through tens of thousands of articles and charts, ignoring every single one with even a glimmer of hope, solely for the purpose of putting together the absolute worst case scenario... well, I think I'd be quite done after an hour or two. I think most people would. Because that's essentially force feeding yourself doon and gloom. And yet the person who put this together clearly spent some serious time on this, so I can only conclude that he must have taken some sort of personal satisfaction in putting together this orgy of misery, because there's no other way he would be able to bear it long enough to finish the damn thing.

I feel like that's kind of a weird way to interpret it. I see him just as more of a messenger and an organizer to what's already out there anyways. It's just basically all articles anyways, are the people who write such the doomy and gloomy articles just as bad? But it's from 4chan so I'm willing to take your theory into account lol.

I hope not When logic and proportion Have fallen sloppy dead And the white knight is talking backwards And the Red Queen's "off with her head!" Remember what the dormouse said Feed your head Feed your head

I'm studying global environmental history, so I usually back up my posts with journal articles or raw data but this was a much more general thread. In all honesty, I think that hope in this situation paradoxically precludes the possibility of positive action. Only by confronting the true hopelessness of our situation can we get into a mindset that will allow us to confront the spectacular nature of the action required to have any hope of survival in something recognizable as a society. It's not nihilism that drives my posting, but a surprisingly positive pragmatism.

Things might get bad but yeah we good. Fear mongering is the dumbest shit in the world and you'll learn as you get older that people will continue doomsaying no matter what. While there are large problems in the world that need to be addressed we're not "on the brink" or whatever goofy nonsense is getting peddled around. I swear I've heard "WE'RE DOOMED NEXT YEAR" for the last 10 years of my life.