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Climate Change

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One of Carl Sagan's ideas about why we haven't found intelligent life elsewhere in the universe is any life form that evolves intelligence will then promptly destroy themselves when they discover technology. As I've watched the world for a large number of years what I see happening is exactly that and it's not just climate change it's a lot of other things we do as well.

As far as climate change goes we are already to late, it's going to be a disaster no matter what we do. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to fix it, but realistically those who live in the future are going to have a far lower standard of living than what we currently enjoy. Life is going to start to suck pretty bad in the future and I'm lucky because I won't be around to see it.


PlaffelvohfenCYDdhartaZombieguy1987AlofRIZeusAres42



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  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5967 Pts   -  
    I think, in contrary, that as technology develops, our ability to repair and even improve beyond the natural state the climate and other aspects of the world around us will increase dramatically. The human ability to damage a planetary climate is very negligible at the moment and will be for a very long time - and by the time it will no longer be the case, we will learn to mend the wounds in the environment very effectively.

    That said, technological evolution may very well wipe out all species undertaking it at some stage. A theory that I like is that every civilization creates a complicated AI before expanding beyond the home star system. That AI quickly, through the reasoning incomprehensible to limited organic beings, but very obvious to any being with enough mental capacity, decides that life is a menace, wipes out all life on the planet and consequentially self-destructs.

    Intuitively though, I believe civilizations must be able to persist. The problem is, the space is very vast. According to our knowledge of physics, no matter the level of technology, interstellar travel is extremely limited by a large array of factors, including (but not limited to) the light speed constraint, the cosmic radiation, the cosmic friction, the rogue objects (such as small asteroids)... Colonization of space could be extremely cost-inefficient and just plain dangerous, causing most species to almost never venture beyond their home star system.

    Imagine if the closest advanced civilization to us is, say, 10 light years away. This does not sound like much, but the amount of things that can go wrong in trying to travel that distance is enormous. It is very likely that the aliens simply never reached us. They might not even be interested in us; for one, they probably cannot even detect us from such a distance. They might have sent some explorer drones, and after they saw how undeveloped we were, they lost all interest and never bothered interacting with us, just like we don't bother interacting with a random pigeon on the street.
    Even if that civilization is millions years old, it is possible that there is some natural technological limit beyond which nothing significant can be developed, and that limit very well may lay below the level required to travel between stars.

    Finally, we may just be an aberration. Perhaps the emergence of life on a given planet is extremely unlucky, and there is no more than a handful of planets with life on them in our entire galactic cluster, for example. In this case, even if there are civilizations billions years old out there, and even if they have the technology required for intergalactic travel - they would simply not have had enough time to find us.

    ---

    Bottom line is: we know so little about life and about the Universe as a whole, that speculating on why we haven't met any aliens yet only makes sense in the realm of science fiction.
  • PlaffelvohfenPlaffelvohfen 3985 Pts   -   edited May 2019
    I also think our specie is in for a very rough time in the next few centuries... The cost of extreme weather pattern (hurricanes and such) will eventually plunge the global economy into complete disarray... Food sources will be insufficient, mass migration will cause increasing unrest, it'll be very chaotic in my opinion...

    If you had any intention of investing in beach front estate, you should reconsider...
    Zombieguy1987CYDdhartaAlofRIZeusAres42
    " Adversus absurdum, contumaciter ac ridens! "
  • I think that if climate change exists (I see good evidence and arguments for both sides), or even if it doesn’t, instead of fighting each other we should work together to solve this problem. I do see changes in my world. I live in Minnesota where I do see changes to our climate. No matter if this is caused by humans or if it natural. It needs to be fixed.
    Zombieguy1987PlaffelvohfenCYDdhartaZeusAres42
    Not every quote you read on the internet is true- Abraham Lincoln
  • AkhenatenAkhenaten 106 Pts   -  
    If you see a hurricane approaching get 10 people in a line and tell them to blow real hard in the opposite direction to the hurricane. That's as good as any of the existing climate change policies that I've seen.
    ZeusAres42AlofRICYDdharta
  • ZeusAres42ZeusAres42 Emerald Premium Member 2668 Pts   -   edited May 2019
    MayCaesar said:
    The human ability to damage a planetary climate is very negligible at the moment and will be for a very long time - and by the time it will no longer be the case, we will learn to mend the wounds in the environment very effectively.

    This here is factually incorrect as well as somewhat fallacious. Firstly, it is akin to saying "how could us mere mortal cause a lot of damage to the planet?" Secondly, there are masses of objective and empirically evidential data collected from decades of research that just defy this claim that is based most likely on faulty reasoning.


    Abstract

    We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors' self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research. https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024


    I also agree that one of the biggest problems with the current cycle of climate change is the "gaping chasm between the actual consensus and the public perception." As soon as more people of the public (as well as those of some policymakers) begin to accept the consensus the better to be we will be able to do our best to at least not make things worse. The damage, however, is already done.


    A few centuries down the line space travel could be a viable solution to try and save living species of this Earth albeit this is quite a long way down the line to speculate.  But like I said, for now, we can just play our part in not making things any worse than they already are. 






    AlofRICYDdhartaPlaffelvohfen



  • AlofRIAlofRI 1484 Pts   -  
    @ZeusAres42 I agree with you, but, the destruction of the world's economy BY Climate Change, will likely prevent us from getting very far in space travel. The money needed for that will be sucked up by disasters and the need for food and fresh water. We will likely destroy ourselves with our lack of foresight before our "foresight" can save us. 

    Strange, a few years ago the party of "family values" seemed to care SO much about family. Now, their leaders hardly seem to care about immediate, single generation members, …. forget those with a "Grand" suffix (on EITHER side of them).
    CYDdhartaZeusAres42Plaffelvohfen
  • AlofRI said:
    @ZeusAres42 I agree with you, but, the destruction of the world's economy BY Climate Change, will likely prevent us from getting very far in space travel. The money needed for that will be sucked up by disasters and the need for food and fresh water. We will likely destroy ourselves with our lack of foresight before our "foresight" can save us.
    This is a good point, which I think I shall take the time to consider a bit more as time permits; as I am currently undecided in this particular area.



  • AlofRI said:
    @ZeusAres42 I agree with you, but, the destruction of the world's economy BY Climate Change, will likely prevent us from getting very far in space travel. The money needed for that will be sucked up by disasters and the need for food and fresh water. We will likely destroy ourselves with our lack of foresight before our "foresight" can save us.
    This is a good point, which I think I shall take the time to consider a bit more as time permits; as I am currently undecided in this particular area.

    There are a couple key points that make this basic principle untrue. It is far more practical with such glim predictions made on climate manipulation not to just house people in storm shelters and start colonizing space. The biggest nuclear deterrent is the migration to outer space even if such projects as Star Wars are abandoned.


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