Report Suggests 'High Likelihood of Human Civilization Coming to an End' in 2050 - Sensationalist Headlines

That's a strong statement and I don't believe you. No need to feel embarrassed about the social status. It doesn't equal greed. It's the #1 mover of our minds and bodies after hunger. Without it, there's no life. Higher status = better reproductive success = life continues. And can be a source of truly immaterial, spiritual pleasure. Like being with your kid when he's learning to drive a bicycle acting as a supportive authority figure. Hence building an orphanage is of a higher status than jerking off, I mean, obviously. And a society where a larger number of people feel better of their social status is a better one, obviously. It will also be growing in numbers, unfortunately for their descendants and, maybe, their neighbors. So I have a theory that people might be even more terrified that the game of status itself will fail and end, even if they're fine with their own mortality and not having kids, which is something that I observe. Also, did you consider my handle can be just a joke? I don't believe in nothing, I mean, I think it's a bit of a tautology, "believing in nothing". And if nothing mattered I wouldn't be writing on this forum? I would... I don't even know what a person would do if he truly lived as if nothing mattered. Lie still on the bed until dead?

I must respectfully disagree with you. If I saw a bunch of homeless children in the streets of my city and had the means, I would build them an orphanage. I would not want anything in return. I would feel good about myself that I did something right and objectively good, while also feel happy that I could give the kids a place to stay. If people came to me and began praising as some sort of Jesus-incarnate, then that's their own thing. I did it because I felt like it was the right thing to do. Does social status matter in society? Yes. Does higher social status open more doors to you? Yes. Should I see social status behind everything sort of action I do? I don't think so. You can be a gardener and be happy about your plants growing no matter what your social status is. I mean, if you, as a gardener, consider yourself their "creator" or "caretaker", then I do think that's just you applying a some sort of superior status onto yourself. I might be misunderstanding your point, but I certainly don't see the world this way. And yes, I did consider it, but apart from poking fun at it in my first reply to you, I wasn't talking specifically about you when mentioning nihilism. However, I do believe that we've slightly strayed from the original topic just now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we’ve heard this one before. No, we’re not all going to die. Civilization as we know it will shift and billions will die, but the mass amount will be in already devastated countries and risk areas like South America, Africa and Asia. Believe me, I’m just as concerned about the climate as anyone else, I’m out here living the most natural friendly life I can in service of that, but this kinda rhetoric is only going to cause indifference. Why would anybody mother trying to fix the environment if we’re already doomed anyway? You need optimism and hope.

Becayse we still find ourselves forced to act, in the face of a seemingly uncertain future and the absurd nature of our observable uuniverse, life and death. And so we must keep acting, in the hopes that perhaps one day, we will find out what is truly worth doing in life. (But probably not.)

I get what you mean but stop being hyperbolic. You're doing a disservice to every scientist, entrepreneur and solar panel installer. Just because you haven't seen progress doesn't mean it isn't there. This issue isn't just changing whatever launches deodorant at your armpit. This issue is uprooting the primary sources of wealth of every society ever. It's game theoretically disadvantageous and conceptually challenging for humans to grasp. America could and should do more, but speak for yourself.

You disagree yet you write in plain english "I would feel good about myself". Plus, if you had the means, by definition you would feel good about your social status, everyone who experienced being short on money for some time knows what a lasting jolt of relief it is to finally get a reliable flow of cash. The interesting question is: what did you do to earn the means? Probably not gardening but some kind of social climbing. See, you view status as having necessarily to do with being superior or inferior, but people could feel good socially feeling inferior together to some powerful entity like a country or God. It's more about having a "good" status rather than having a "high" status, is what people really want. Social status biologically doesn't mean how much of a celebrity or a power player you are, it simply means you feel good about your relationships with people. I proposed that people who don't feel that choose to end their lives rather than continuing them and you agreed. You can be a happy gardener with a bunch of friends, a wife, kids and parents living a moderate lifestyle or you can be a rich famous wreck like so many american icons, Elvis Presleys and Marilyn Monroes. But I bet you can't be a happy gardener if it pays nothing? Even if a beautiful garden is objectively good, you'd prioritize your own essential wellbeing over it. Yes, I veered way off topic, so, I just wanted to clarify my answer to "why work, have relationships etc", because it's what makes life tolerable as indicated by a feeling of social status. But your life will end. The sun will end, and, life on Earth will end way sooner before that. And the universe will end to top all that. So there's that. Why people can't easily accept that?

The article you quoted cites the very paper which calls out underestimating and downplaying climate change. Read it. It's only a dozen pages long, most of which is sources and intro. Some choice quotes: Climate scientists may err on the side of “least drama”, whose causes may include adherence to the scientific norms of restraint, objectivity and skepticism, and may underpredict or down-play future climate changes. In 2 2007, security analysts warned that, in the two previous decades, scientific predictions in the climate-change arena had consistently underestimated the severity of what actually transpired. 3 The Emeritus Director of the Potsdam Institute, Prof. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, warns that “climate change is now reaching the end-game, where very soon humanity must choose between taking unprecedented action, or accepting that it has been left too late and bear the consequences.” He says 10 that if we continue down the present path “there is a very big risk that we will just end our civilisation. The human species will survive somehow but we will destroy almost everything we have built up over the last two thousand years.” 11 Global warming projections display a “fat-tailed” distribution with a greater likelihood of warming that is well in excess of the average amount of warming predicted by climate models, and are of a higher probability than would be expected under typical statistical assumptions. More importantly, the risk lies disproportionately in the “fat-tail” outcomes, as illustrated in Figure 1 Analysis of climate-related security threats in an era of existential risk must have a clear focus on the extremely serious outcomes that fall outside the human experience of the last thousand years. These “fat-tail” outcomes have probabilities that are far higher than is generally understood. “only a drastic, economy-wide makeover within the next decade, consistent with limiting warming to 1.5°C”, would avoid the transition of the Earth System to the Pliocene-like conditions that prevailed 3-3.3 million years ago, when temperatures were ~3°C and sea levels 25 metres higher. It should be noted here that 25 the 1.5° goal is not safe for a number of Earth System elements, including Arctic sea-ice, West Antarctica and coral reefs. These are not fear mongering reports. The scientific literature has done quite literally the opposite - They've essentially self-censored to make the issue seem less drastic than it actually is. Make no mistake, we are currently heading for a situation where tens to hundreds of millions of climate migrants will be displaced, food prices will rocket, food production will fall off a cliff, and nothing less than a complete restructuring of the fucking planet can save us from a 2 degree warm. Uh, people do accept that? I'd hope that the entire educated world accepts that, feels like you're on a high horse for no reason. Ok so I want someone to stop me if I'm very wrong but uh, Stop pegging yourself as some Nietzsche 2.0. Your observations don't mean squat without proper methodology and sample sizes, and you don't have a "theory", what you have is barely a workable hypothesis. Anecdotes and a cup of coffee while staring out a window a theory do not make. I'm deliberately not taking a position in you guys' discussion on that shit but end-of-the-world sun explosion heat death of the universe aside, right now you're as close to insufferable as faux-intellectuals get.

Back in the early 80's, scientists - Carl Sagan among them - wrote a report exaggerating the potential consequences of a nuclear exchange between dominant superpowers, to scare the world leaders out of starting a war that would send the world back to a radioactive stone age, and it worked. Perhaps a similar type of benevolent misdirection is needed now?

Remember, being apathetic about this and thinking that you shouldn't have kids because of the prospects of this future just makes it more likely for this future to come true because the people that don't care are still going to fuck. It's a grim statement, but the quickest way to lose the future is to not participate in it.

Large part of why I'm pretty much indifferent to the matter. I could go full eco-mental and it would make zero difference. So fuck it. Gonna enjoy what time we get instead, let the cards fall as they may.

In that case, to lie on the bed as if nothing mattered is what matters to the person. A bit of a waste, and ultimately painful and slow and excruciating as you starve, but nevertheless also a "valid" way to live your life if you so wish.. unless someone stops you and force feeds you as you lie on the bed. Nobody is going to tell you what "matters" and how you should live your life, or how we should live our lives. The only questions regarding to that, that I find worth to even ask, is most importantly what we can afford, and second importanly regarding this "nothing seemingly matters" notion is how should we respond to it once becoming aware of it. Most people do. Most people are aware of that. More or less. Even if nothing mattered, it doesn't change anything. Life goes on as ever, day by day. What of it? And what are you doing? Day by day we are also facing a climate crisis that is only getting worse, and you don't seem interested in that at all, which is also fine though I guess? Just off-topic.

It certainly won't make any difference if everyone has the same shitty mindset as you do.

Is this entitely correct though? We're only average people getting by, but it seems too easy to just shift the blame. We still use a lot of energy, both directly and indirectly, don't we? Through our way of life and consumer choices and so on, even poorer households. I cannot really put up much of a detailed argument, as it is an impossibly complex global economy we're talking about AND my brain starts hurting when I think about the subject, but I'm not sure if the blame is entirely on certain corporations that have been meeting our demands, while also more or less under scrutiny the whole time.

Realistically I can't do anything, even form my own independent opinion based on the data, can't even vote in Russia, so I don't feel the need to get agitated. Whatever happens, I will share the fate with the rest of people like all the people before us. I feel that being afraid of death is selfish when contrasted against innumerable amount of my ancestors who died and their contemporaries who went extinct. I didn't mean to. I am on an autistic spectrum and I can get overly excited about pattern seeking and inconsistencies. I know it can sound insufferable in a social context, it's time for me to stop.

Ah. The good old "we're doomed" thread were people think we're just gonna die on the spot. This fatalistic attitude is disgusting to look at. Fight for your life, fight to change the world.

Did you actually read anything. And no, humans have absolutely NOT been through worse. The projections are not talking about death by weather, storm or any of the natural disasters. Long before that we and our kids will die in some form of social unrest. Posts like yours always rub me a bit the wrong way. It's so safe to say "humanity will survive". This is avoiding the problem by shifting to problem to abstraction. Yet the chances are pretty good that some of THE VERY USERS OF THIS FORUM will get their toenails plucked and shoved into their eyes in some form of war-for-water-or-fertilizer spawned torture camp, or die from failing medical equipment because of a power outage - need a respirator? good luck or just get criminal because of failing job prospects (https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.13169/statecrime.4.2.0175?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) or have their kids grow up in a propagandistic society, join the army and get shredded to pieces in war or leave the country for job opportunities and die by random xenophobia or simply get some horrible form of cancer or other disease because we had to go all nuts (Antibiotics set to flood Florida’s troubled orange orchards) or .. or ... or...

Shit like this really cements my opinion that the Deus Ex franchise is basically a guidebook to the next half-century of human existence, just replace Illuminati plots with the geopolitical/economic stresses of climate change and the machinations of the super wealthy. I mean the original takes place in what, 2052? Right before the collapse of civilization? Climate change isn't like nuclear war (though I wouldn't call that out of the question either). There won't be a single watershed moment where the whole world goes to hell and everyone knows it. Bit by bit, the foundations that maintain the systems that make up your modern day life will erode and fall away. It'll happen over years and decades, and I'd wager that as it's happening most people won't come out and recognize it as the end of global civilization. It'll be more of a hindsight thing, where you look back from your refugee camp turned fortified commune in what was once a major thriving city, where your greatest concern is fighting off the fascist militia and trading with the your neighbor camps for food and water, that you look back one day and realize, "oh yeah, that really was the end, wasn't it?" I recommend people read up on the Bronze Age Collapse. It's a really interesting and largely forgotten part of history that when you hear about it, sounds eerily similar to what's happening in the modern day, except localized to the Mediterranean instead of global.

I've had a long-term goal in my head for a few months now I want to plant a forest. I want to find an unused tract of land, or buy up an old pasture, and then find several species of trees that will thrive in whatever climate my region is expected to have by 2100 and plant a forest of them. A refuge for local fauna, and a colony of trees and plants that will repopulate the area once the weaker plants die off. I want to make this a trend. I want people to buy up unused barren land and repurpose it into something that the planet can use, something that will actually increase biodiversity rather than destroy it like urban development. It's the tiniest of band-aids, I know, but if it catches on then maybe countries will start doing it on the national level. Maybe Brazil will replant the Amazon, if we're lucky.

We almost died due to Toba saying deciding to explode and do it's best to make us perish. Somehow a bunch of bipedal monkies with pointy sticks managed to survive through the Ice Age as well. Posts like yours rub me off because you're enabling such a "fuck it" attitude. Where people end up just accepting it because "we're gonna die anyways right?" As I said, things are not gonna be good. But I seriously doubt things are gonna end up like that mad max apocalyptic fucking nonsense you decided to write. Millions will die, probably more. But people, you for example are too busy telling people it's too late and it doesn't matter just makes people give up, stick their head in the sand and just say fuck it. It'll end up with them going about their polluting and fucking over the planet more because "we're dead anyways right dude"? Whatever, you can go about your day telling people shit's fucked and it's too late. I'm gonna do my best to stop polluting, I've even switched to meat-free weeks every other week. I don't drive a car to work. I travel with trains. At least I tried, and I'll do my best to tackle the future and you can tell people they'll get their nails pulled out over water.

Optimism is good. It doesn't mean we all have to subscribe to it. I don't feel like going into detail about the almost hundreds of things that are going to happen in conjunction with catastrophic climate change, all issues we'll have to tackle whilst being in the most severe fight for our life our species has ever had, whilst undergoing one of the most peculiar demographic changes in our history whilst undergoing severe propaganda from numerous governments. There's hundreds of more things to pile on to it that I haven't mentioned yet, they are real issues we'll need to tackle, while also tackling everything else. I don't have much faith in humanity to fix these issues. I live in one of the most "fair" societies on our planet, and yet it's not a fair society at all. And I'm supposed to believe the world will be willing to change? I don't, and I'm sorry. I've been doing my part. I continue to do my part. I've grown up my entire life with "Climate change" as one of the lynch pin elements of my life. Do I think we're going to survive as a species? Maybe, but I don't think so. Honestly, one of the "concepts" that's been tossed about as to why human society won't just "recover" like it did from Toba or from the other extinction events we've had is complicated but it has to do with time and resources. Humans had eons of time on the surface of this planet, and it took us thousnads of years to get to the iron age. It took the good fortune of their being iron available on the ground. There is a serious, serious chance that society in 100 years will have regressed quite heavily, lost an enormous amount of knowledge, and won't have the resources(like Iron) just laying on the surface of the world to use to learn the basics of forging, and other technologies that are the foundations of our technological revolution. There are very real chances things, and people, don't recover. Do I think we should roll over and die because of that? No. but I'm not hopeful either, and I'm not going to be just because you insist I should be. I think you're missing things, you think I'm missing things. Work to better the world, but don't be surprised when it doesn't amount to much because not enough people did it with you. because that's the real issue.

The average price per acre in the US is $3,000. You can get about ~200 trees on an acre plot. Good luck!

I enjoyed reading your post and I agree with you on most of the points. I may not have conveyed my point as concise as I'd like: "Work to better the world, but don't be surprised when it doesn't amount to much because not enough people did it with you. because that's the real issue." What I want is people not to give in to that depressive, anxiety ridden mindset spreading stuff like this causes. I'm a huge believer in doing what you can, when you can. If you want to be pessimistic that's fine and I'm not going to try to argue and convince you to not be pessimistic. But I hate when people with that mindset tries convice other people to share the same view as them and adopting that "Fuck it we're doomed". What I guess I'm trying to do is just tell people afraid regarding the future there are people like me, other people that still believe we have a chance and not give up. If you want to follow that mindset sure, but I'm here to provide a counter to these pessimistic discussions regarding this. Call me an Idiot if you want but I truly believe there is a chance.

I couldn't hope to push more CO2 into the atmosphere over my entire life driving the dirtist burning gas guzzlers I can find than what any one multinational manufacturing giant puts out in one day. My impact is negligible no matter what I do. I couldn't make a bigger dent in the climate than just one day's operation of a multinational if I deliberaly dedicated my entire life to the task. And that leaves me with two choices. 1: Change literally every aspect of my life that makes me happy for things that don't, put myself into irrecoverable bankruptcy/debt, and still see the world go in the direction it's currently going despite all that effort, or 2: Enjoy the 40 or 50 odd years we'll get before everything goes to shit. Why the fuck would I not try to make the best of a shitty situation? You want me to consider changing my ways? Convince the real problems to change theirs first. 'Cause if the multinational giants that are doing the bulk of the pollution carry on as they are it's utterly pointless for me to give up everything I enjoy. Effort wasted for a good cause is still effort wasted.

Petition for countries to donate SAM systems to New Zealand so if it comes to it, they can start shooting down planes of the ultra-rich fleeing their own consequences.

I doubt human civilization is going to end. Dramatically upheaved, reduced, and set back? Very likely. But I think you'd have to pretty much scour the biosphere to completely get rid of humans.

I'm sure some of us will be displeased with their actions and just find where they're hiding out.

Benevolent misdirection isn't necessary when the truth is genuinely just as alarming. The problem is that conservatives are accusing scientists of "cherry picking the worst bits out of content" - when, in reality, those "cherry picked scenarios" are from least-worst case scenarios, and the actual data is genuinely much more alarming than what conservatives are eye-rolling as "cherry picked hysteria."

This is what happens when a small group of rich fuckers make decisions that are completely self-centered and fuck over the majority of people. I mean most of us feel cheated, imagine how the poorer countries who are going to be devastated by us.

I think things may take a huge swing in a rough direction I absolutely don't think this will happen, I personally think we may be dealing with a Milankovitch cycle so to speak. I feel like people seem to forget that our planet does indeed go through periodical cycles such as the ones that have taken out civilizations before. This isn't to say our footprint hasn't caused issues but maybe just maybe that this isn't soley caused by us moreso than the earth doing it's natural thing.

This is not an argument for anything. This is like saying "Deforestation? 2 hectars of rainforest lost per hour? All right yeah, shitty situation, but there will always be forests"