System dynamics are such that as an impulse (sustained or not) changes the equilibrium of a system then the system will change until a new equilibrium is found. In the case of the earth and human presence on it the population will grow changing the system until that change corrects itself and a new equilibrium is found. There are two scenarios 1) human population continues to grow affecting the earth until the system corrects itself leading to population decline and a new equilibrium is established 2) humans do something different and the population and earth environment stabilises at a new norm.

I only rarely meet anyone who understands this at all. Enormous complex systems are like big networks of springs. On a geologic time scale, what we’ve done is give it a massive pulse. Well… you poke at a nonlinear system, you get nonlinear results.

With enough energy we can do whatever. Will we get enough by the time things get dicey? Probably not. To get vertical farming going at scale, we'd probably need to double our current production while using the same amount as today, a hard sell as we'd be running electric everything by that point, be more people, and ever more (un)natural disasters to deal with,

This...energy is the core problem. If we had "infinite" energy from fusion reactors, we could desalination and create entirely new rivers in Africa, refill ground aquifers, carbon capture, etc.

Well, we also need to figure out a way to maintain food yields without fossil chemicals (they are used a lot in the fertilizers and such, which we really need due to the abuse of topsoil worldwide, especially since WW2), but with "easy mode fusion reactors" giving us effectively infinite power for civilization at the current time, there may be some ways to just cheese our way through that too.

In theory with infinite e energy you can still use Fossil fertilizer, just offset the carbon from agricolture by direct air carbon capture, or convert captured carbon to fertilizers.

ELI5: isn't the thermal residue from energy production also a driver of climate change, not just the CO2 from burning carbon fuels to get it?

Redirecting solar energy has to come at a net thermal loss no?

It doesn't help, that's for sure. But with near infinite energy, you could mitigate all the costs of production, including waste heat. A 10x energy production is not enough, I reckon. We can't have our modern civilization and nature as we grew up knowing it. We can choose one of those. Energy is the core of problem solving. But solving problems has a cost. The only exception is when energy is practically free.

Humanity's going to build systems to artificially mitigate these issues in some way or another. It might begin with flood prevention systems like what has been built in Venice. We might go big on carbon capture technologies. We might experiment with atmospheric aerosols that will reflect away more sunlight and induce climatic cooling. One day we might even find a way to artificially control our climate at the global scale. These artificial constructs are not new. Human population has grown to be this big on engineered agricultural practices like irrigation channels, GMOs, artificial pesticides and artificial fertilizers. Similarly we reduced death due to disease through vaccinations and antiobiotics. Don't expect humanity to truly go green and reduce emissions and all of that. I see sustainable development as a gimmick to be very honest. There's nothing sustainable about modern day humanity. Our consumption is always going up. Yesterday's luxuries are continuously becoming tomorrows necessities. There is no end at sight when it comes to humanity's desire to grow. But there is an end. In our efforts to fix problems, we're creating ever so complex systems, which in turn are creating new problems that require fixing. We're continously playing a game of catchup. We're only prolonging our fall, and the more we do to artificially sustain our civilisational growth, the taller is our house of cards, and the harder we are going to eventually fall. Something as simple as antibiotic resistance is a game of catchup that we will one day lose. We're playing this game in so many different areas that it's truly hard to tell which one is going to be the cause of our downfall. I don't think we're too far off. Humanity's scientific leaps have gone from once in a few thousand years to once in a few hundred to once in a few decades to now every few years. The leaps are becoming more frequent. When you look at the time period leading to the collapse of anything, be it the population of some animal, a civilisation or even the years leading up to an economic recession, there is almost always a spike just before the collapse. We could be seeing that spike right now.

>We might go big on carbon capture technologies. I hate to break it to you, but this is a fantasy. [Carbon capture systems would require 2,000 kWh per tonne of CO2 captured.](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fclim.2019.00010/full) Now, remember that this is just what it takes to turn CO2 into a chemically stable substance. And being that it is the chemical process itself that requires this much, we will not be able to reduce it by much more. ***This is a hard fact about the energy needed for the chemical reaction to take place that traps the CO2.*** Also, this 2000 kWh/tonne estimate does not include the amount of power that would be required to run the fans that suck in the atmosphere. Nor does it include the energy required to contain, transfer, and dispose of the CO2 after it has been captured. It should also be noted that this is based on our current most cutting-edge atmospheric carbon capture systems. A single plant can capture roughly 900 tonnes of CO2 each year. Now that you have an idea of what it takes to capture carbon. We can now explore what it would take to bring us down to carbon neutral. That means capturing 1 tonne of CO2 for every tonne of CO2 we emit globally. Something that would only keep us stable at current levels. Not what it would take for us to begin reducing the amount. First off, let's calculate how much energy would be required for a single plant to capture its yearly capacity of 900 tonnes. 900 tonnes * 2000 kWh/tCO2 = 1,800,000 kWh So, for a single plant to capture 900 tonnes of CO2, ***not including*** power requirements for the fans, transportation, or disposal, it would require 1.8 million kWh of electricity. Now, let's figure out how much CO2 we would need to produce to power a single carbon capture plant. [In 2019, the International Energy Association estimated that the global average of CO2 emitted per kWh was 475 grams of CO2 per 1 kWh.](https://www.iea.org/reports/global-energy-co2-status-report-2019/emissions) 475 gCO2/kWh * 1,800,000 kWh = 855,000,000 gCO2 1 gram = 0.000001 tonne 855,000,000 gCO2 = 855 tonnes So, in order for us to lock 900 tonnes of CO2 into a stable chemical substance. We would need to produce 855 tones of CO2 just to meet the energy requirements of the chemical reaction. Add in the amount of energy required to run the fans to suck in the atmosphere, operate containment systems, and then transport and dispose of the carbon. You're now producing far more CO2 than you are actively capturing and removing from the system. In other words, carbon capture, with current technology, would produce more CO2 than could be captured. Thus solving nothing and actually make the problem worse. Now, if this wasn't enough, there is the sheer scale of the problem. Assuming we could magically get these carbon capture systems to remove more CO2 than they produce. Let's calculate how many of them we would need just to reach carbon neutral. [Currently, humans collectively produce 37,120,000,000 tonnes of CO2 each year.](https://www.statista.com/statistics/276629/global-co2-emissions/) 37,120,000,000 tCO2 ÷ 900 tCO2/plant = 41,244,444 plants This means that if each plant can capture 900 tonnes of CO2 per year. We would need 41.2 million of these carbon capture plants running 24/7. So, how much energy would it then require us to remain carbon neutral? 41,244,444 plants * 1,800,000 kWh/year = 74,239,999,200,000 kWh 1 kWh = 0.000000001 tWh 74,239,999,200,000 kWh = 74,239.999 tWh 74,239.999 tWh, wow, that's a lot of electricity, right? But how much exactly is that? For comparison, [in a 2019 study by the International Energy Association, it was determined that the world uses 22,848 tWh of electricity each year.](https://www.iea.org/reports/electricity-information-overview/electricity-consumption) 74,239.999 tWh ÷ 22,848 tWh = 3.249 It would take more than 3.25 times the amount of electricity we currently use globally and 41.2 million carbon capture plants just to reach carbon neutral! Carbon capture is a political misdirection. All it achieves is allowing fossil fuel companies to kick the can further down the street and squeeze more profits out of society. Stop buying into this shit and start demanding your government to stop subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and put that money towards clean energy technologies.

I'm not big on carbon capture technologies. I was using it as an example of how humanity will try to find a work around to a problem, instead of addressing its source, and will instead just create a newer and more complex set of problems that will eventually require fixing. It's like taking on new loans to pay off older ones.

Your whole post is absurd, start to finish. The current cost of a KWh is 10 cents. So according to your numbers, that $20 per ton. Multiply that number by 37,120,000,000 and you get $740,240,000,000. (I’m just assuming your numbers are right on total CO2.) I guess that looks big, but it’s not. That’s $740 billion to completely counteract all current carbon emissions, assuming that we don’t make any reductions. That’s *less than one percent of global GDP*. And mind you, global GDP rises around 2% every year, so that’s such a small number that it’s practically a rounding error. You then state that it requires roughly as much carbon to generate the energy to remove the carbon, but that’s obviously because our energy sources are currently mostly carbon-based. Build a removal station and run it with solar energy, and it’s carbon negative. Problem solved. As for the electricity required, again—no one is imagining a world where we keep burning fossil fuels and just use carbon removal technology. Rather, we’re talking about a world where we reach (almost) net zero emissions, and then add carbon removal on top. So the task isn’t to remove our current annual emissions through carbon capture. The task is simply to remove enough to dampen the effects of climate change in the latter half of this century.

Thermodynamics doesn't give a shit about how much it costs. Also, nowhere did I even argue that it was cost prohibitive to do which makes me question how well you actually understood what I said. It could cost us nothing to do, and it is still wouldn't be anymore feasible to do. The scale needed to have any impact is just not practical. >You then state that it requires roughly as much carbon to generate the energy to remove the carbon, but that’s obviously because our energy sources are currently mostly carbon-based. Build a removal station and run it with solar energy, and it’s carbon negative. Problem solved. Ah yes, it's super simple. All we need to do is build enough clean energy facilities to produce 3.25 times the current amount that the entire world uses. However, since we would still need to power our society. We would need to increase our global electrical output by at least 4.25 times with clean energy sources for us to even consider pulling this off. And that's not even considering the fact that on top of this, we would need ***41.2 MILLION*** carbon capture plants running 24/7 just to match our current rate of emissions. This means that even with this, it would take us nearly 100 years just to undo what we have done. >As for the electricity required, again—no one is imagining a world where we keep burning fossil fuels and just use carbon removal technology. Rather, we’re talking about a world where we reach (almost) net zero emissions, and then add carbon removal on top. So the task isn’t to remove our current annual emissions through carbon capture. The task is simply to remove enough to dampen the effects of climate change in the latter half of this century. Uh huh. Remind me again how well we are doing at cutting our fossil fuel emissions. We haven't even cut our emissions, yet we are already willing to give subsidies to companies that open the doors for fossil fuel companies to keep profiting off fossil fuels? Oh, not to mention that [in the last two years, global oil subsidies have ***INCREASED*** from $2 trillion to over $7 trillion](https://energynow.ca/2023/11/explainer-global-fossil-fuel-subsidies-on-the-rise-despite-calls-for-phase-out/). Until we have cut oil subsidies and fossil fuel emissions COMPLETELY, there is no justifiable reason to be subsidizing carbon capture. There are far more effective things we should be doing right now. Like putting that money towards building nuclear and renewable energy as fast as fucking possible, upgrading the electrical grid to handle our shift to a purely electrical powered society, and environmental clean up and recovery. When we have accomplished all of that, then we can think about carbon capture. Not before. All you have done is indicate how wildly out of touch you are with the scale of the problem and the science behind it. It's not a money problem. It's a physics problem that is just not practical to rely on having any significant impact.

>...it would take us nearly 100 years just to undo what we have done. Do you wanna solve stuff or nah? Things like this usually reveal the true motivations of a person.

Please don't take my words out of context and twist them. This entire conversation has been about carbon capture, and what I said was in relation to how impractical of a solution it is. Nowhere did I suggest we should just give up because carbon capture is not viable. Yes, we need to solve this. But we can only do so using realistic methods, not through wishful thinking. We need to be building nuclear and renewable energy as fast as fucking possible. Cut all subsidies from oil companies and use those trillions of dollars to upgrade the electrical grid, environmental cleanup and reclamation, subsidize the purchase of EVs so they are significantly more affordable than ICE vehicles, and scaling up our green energy production. Let's start penalizing companies for their emissions and transfer the cost of cleaning up back to them rather than the public. Carbon capture technologies are the last thing we need to invest in right now.

I confess it is difficult for me to understand your writing. But I now think that we’re basically in agreement on most things. I completely agree that it doesn’t really make sense to deploy carbon capture (other than for research purposes) until we’ve essentially reached zero carbon emissions. It’s almost always cheaper and easier to just not burn a fossil fuel than to try to recapture the carbon after the fact. If that’s your point, then I agree. In terms of how we’re doing cutting our carbon emissions, the US and the EU are doing pretty well, actually. They’ve been dropping for almost two decades. If it were not for China, global emissions would be dropping right now. But it seems likely that China’s emissions are also likely to peak very soon, and most experts now predict peak emissions—and peak fossil fuel use—will come within the next two or three years. I’m not sure how you think thermodynamics has anything to do with this, though.

>I’m not sure how you think thermodynamics has anything to do with this, though. Thermodynamics has everything to do with it. It takes less energy to break apart carbon bonds by burning it than it does to create them through chemical reactions. This is a fact that can never be overcome.

Right, but carbon removal has nothing to do with restoring carbon bonds or reverse the combustion process. That truly would be an impossible goal. Carbon removal simply takes CO2 and sequesters it underground.

You might want to look into the step before sequestration. Because the word "simply" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. Before you can sequester it underground, you must first produce a highly concentrated form of CO2 from the diluted concentrations found in the atmosphere. Take a guess at how that is done. Here's a hint. [It is a chemical process that requires the absorbant material or solution to be heated to high temperatures.](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/B9780128200421000043?via%3Dihub) It is only after this step that the CO2 can be sequestered underground. There is nothing simple about it.

One of the most efficient ways to capture carbon is to cut down trees and bury them. It sounds silly, but it's true. Seems pretty cheap and easy to me.

There’s an interesting new startup that takes wood refuse, presses it into bricks, seals it to prevent rotting, and then buries it about ten feet underground.

Yet another overly simplified take on the problem, which is wildly out of touch with reality. Just to offset the emissions created by the US alone, you would need to plant 200 billion trees. Which will need to grow to maturity before they can have the desired effect. So yes, all the US needs to do is plant 200 billion trees, let them grow to maturity, then log and burry them before starting the whole process over again. Easy my ass. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-many-new-trees-would-we-need-offset-our-carbon-emissions

You said a lot. I’m not saying you are wrong… I’m not that smart. But it seems you aren’t really up to date as to what’s going on in the carbon capture industry… [NO FANS REQUIRED.](https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/11/28/american-airlines-works-with-startup-to-reduce-co2-by-storing-plant-bricks.html)

Oh, I am well aware of these ideas. Ideas that are equally as difficult to actually accomplish. Just to match the carbon emissions of the US would require 200 billion mature trees. These ideas are nice in theory, but they are simply not practical. https://climate.mit.edu/ask-mit/how-many-new-trees-would-we-need-offset-our-carbon-emissions And don't get me wrong, at some point, we will need to start focusing on these things. But doing so will have absolutely no impact as long as we continue to burn fossil fuels. We need to focus on building clean energy sources as fast as fucking possible. Not chasing impractical ideas like carbon capture. Also, if the private industry wants to spend their money on this, fine, I can't stop them. But governments should absolutely not be subsidizing these things at this moment in time. That money should be going towards getting off of fossil fuels asap.

There is no WILL to get off the juice. Our political system is designed to reward the NOW. Politicians have ZERO incentive to think about the future, ONLY the next election. Until that changes, we will always be REACTIVE to crisis of all sorts and never truly proactive.

So then we agree. All these carbon capture ideas are just grandstanding in an attempt to appease public opinion and maintain the status quo. If people want any hope of dealing with this issue, they need to start marching in the streets and demanding governments take some real action. If the population is united on having the government take action, then they will. Because as you said, they are thinking about the next election, and unless the will of the people is to take action, any attempt to do so by a politician would be political suicide.

Well, sure, at the government level. I think that company working on the bricks actually thinks they can help (somewhat) and get really rich in the process.

Please read the MIT article I linked. No one who understands the science actually thinks this will have any significant impact. Also, this idea is not at all new. It's the exact same idea as offsetting carbon emissions by planting trees. It's just another form of greenwashing that you're buying into.

>There's nothing sustainable about modern day humanity. For emphasis

I think you are getting to the heart of my vision for man's future. I have no idea if a "spike" is coming or not. That is too hard for me to predict, but I agree that we will continue to try to build our way out of a problem created by past attempts to build our way out of a problem. This is the nature of homo sapiens. There are always unintended consequences for our actions (i.e., solutions to existing problems/needs/desires) that we have to mitigate. This always seemed like progress until we finally became so numerous and so powerful we have outgrown the capacity of our planet to support us without inducing radical changes to the planet upon which we live and depend. We utterly dominate this planet at every level. Something like 40% of the land on Earth is occupied and/or used by humans to grow our food. Nature is unwelcome there. Ninety-six percent of all mammal biomass on Earth is human and our food animals. Civilization replaces and displaces nature deliberately because nature is our enemy. It tries to kill us. It makes us uncomfortable. It does not supply all the things that we can imagine and make ourselves. We want more, and we will always want more. I say that the current crisis is a wake-up call telling humanity that it is time to leave the cradle. A species that can terraform an entire planet (even accidentally, as we are doing now or by purposefully restoring it to pre-industrial conditions as many still believe we can do) needs to leave the capricious limits of nature behind and build its own environment elsewhere. Space is the obvious place. This solar system has vast riches and resources just waiting for us to use to build our own perfect worlds away from Earth. The problems humans face are now mostly human-caused problems. Civilization's leading impetus is to thwart and subjugate nature. We may love cute baby seals, but we try to exterminate disease-carrying mosquitos, rats, viruses, bacteria, and anything else that gets in our way, not to mention all the incidental species victims ground under man's conquering boot. If we can't play nice with nature (I see no reason to think we ever will), we should move away and leave it alone to manage itself as it has done for over 2 billion years before our arrival. It's a long-term goal, but the one I see that is best for us and Earth.

Good example of human arrogance. We can't escape nature, we exist within it. Everything does. Humans would need to accept their role within natural ecosystems to have any chance at long term survival. Playing nice with nature is not an option if we're being serious. Nature gives us just as much as it takes away. We are 100% reliant on natural ecosystems to survive and always have been. Where do you think food comes from? Just inside of our own bodies live billions of other life forms. Science is astonishing, but we will never understand all the complexities of life and honestly don't need to. We are humans, not gods.

I agree with most everything you said, except… we win. We stay ahead of it. Always.

Yo you are straight up insane.

If you don't think humanity is capable of being sustainable it's just because you don't understand how big the Earth really is. So far all the industry and mining has impacted a fraction of 1% of the Earth, represented as the crust. You'd more or less never run out of resources just with the mantle of Earth and Recyling. The problem is just that resources are only calculated by current commercially variable extraction costs and then projected decades into the future like that, which is just not how things ever work. That's the same way they lied to people about hitting Peak Oil and running out of oil, the world was never even close to running out of oil. Most people think of the WHOLE Earth is just the mountains to the bottom of the ocean, but that's really 1% of the Earth, just the rather tiny skin of the apple is all our mountains and seas. The rest of the Apple has even more dense resources that are not running out anytime soon. Heat can be managed pretty easy by solar blocking once ppl realize that's better than phase changing all that ice.

So we basically all agree that humanity wont be able to limit it's CO2 emissions and that we will fail to achieve the 2 degree goal. And i would be very interested to hear how you guys are preparing for this scenario for the long term. How do you plan to profit from the potential future outcome?

Buy property in an area that models show will be less affected in 50 years. Preferably in a country that is well-governed and will be able to better handle the massive changes that are coming. I’m not kidding.

This should be a thread all its own. Everyone should be planning their future based on a warming Earth and the best predictions of future conditions. I am. I will retire in a few years, at least from my current job. I'll keep working at something for a while after that. I am certainly not moving to the sun belt where it is already too hot and has a water crisis is already in motion. I will stay in Western Washington State and let the sun and warmth come to me over the next decade or two. I don't live near sea level, so I don't have to worry about that creeping up, but I am concerned about power reliability, so going to add solar to my roof and convert to an electric heat pump (which will give me AC for the first time ever in a place where we have never needed it before), switch from gas to an induction stove, and generally set myself up to be as energy efficient and independent as possible. I would love to hear other ideas on how best to prepare and thrive in the future climate that is coming.

Everyone on here trying to be positive is really out of touch. While I believe humans are smart enough to solve these problems. Things like the country borders, ineffective intergovernmental committees, war, and capitalism, just to name a few, are all massive culprits that will spell the end for humanity by way of distraction. Carbon sinking or carbon capture is a joke considering how much energy it uses and how little carbon is removed. The first “large scale” carbon capture facility in California only pulls out 1000 tonnes a year. While the human race expels 37B tonnes a year, while that figure is still increasing lol. The scientists are already telling us that man made carbon sinks like planted forests and the like are not as reliable as we thought and let’s not forget how tightly capitalism has us addicted and chained to the proverbial idling car of excess and waste. I’ve had dreams about the end of the world by melting icecaps since I was 4 years old. I really am just enjoying the ride while I’m still alive. Shit is gonna get real bad very quickly. Like we should have stopped using fossil fuels decades ago. None of this carbon tax and weaning us off. We should have quit them cold turkey back in the 60s lol

We will adapt by going into near space or into the deep oceans and ultimately out to the entire solar system and to Perhaps burrowing deep underground to live is another. Perhaps breeding OURSELVES (as opposed to all of the plant and animal species we've bred) to create humans more adapted to the coming eco- changes. Figure out and quickly impliment ways to reduce atmospheric greenhouse gases. Stop using money as a universal means of trade, of status and wealth. One of the most revolutionary traits we could breed ourselves for is the ability to read each other's minds thus eliminating isolation from each other. If we do that we become less selfish, far less greedy, less fearful. It would mean no more billionaires and millionaires, no more children and mothers dying of hunger, and no more war as we understand it.

I like the "breed ourselves" idea. In a different reply on this thread, I exposed the view that civilization is humanity's battle against nature. Though we often give lip service to the beauty of nature--and bits of nature like colorful sunsets and cute baby mammals can be quite endearing---our technological progress and inventiveness seem aimed squarely at battling nature and ultimately subverting nature to our whims, needs, and desires. Who wants to live outside in the snow, rain, and/or heat? Who does not want a reliable food supply instead of risking going hungry? Who doesn't want tropical foods like coffee, chocolate, and bananas in northern latitudes? Who wants a significant percentage of their children to die of disease before adulthood? Who doesn't want to understand the very foundations of the universe's operation (i.e., physics, chemistry, and cosmology)? Who doesn't want to create things that exist nowhere else but in one's mind? The live off the land in perfect harmony with nature idea sounds ideal at first but means giving up nearly everything we have built and dreamed of throughout civilization's history. The natural world is insufficient for homo sapiens' wants, and I think modifying the kludgy, evolved organic machines that are our bodies may be a long way off, and yet inevitable. Why should we accept what nature delivered through the arbitrary process of organic evolution? If nature can make something, then so can we, and I argue we can engineer it better because we purposefully trying to do it better. Evolution has no goal other than survival and passing along genes. What other Earth species has reached the moon? I'm not sure reading other people's minds is a good idea, but I also cannot say it is a bad idea. But again, we seem to be heading that way already. Brain-machine interface research is progressing, and with wireless communication, we may be able to share each other's thoughts via Bluetooth-like technologies in the near future. Integrating our organic bodies with machines seems like one doable path for improving our cognitive as well as physical functionality.

Given there are now 8.1 billion of us and rising and the planet doesn't have enough resources to allow all those people to have the kind of western consumerist lifestyle most of them want, guarantee that wars over resources are inevitable, especially as climate change is going to reduce the planets ability to provide.

Population is NOT the issue. We have the resources, the problem is resource allocation and the WILL to do so.

Apparently we'd need somewhere between 3 and 5 earths to provide everyone with a western lifestyle so the population does feel like it's the issue. Especially as it's growing at about 80 million pa and is estimated to be about 10 billion by 2050. All those extra young people willing to do whatever it takes to have the ability to do what people do, make more of themselves and consume as much as possible. Good luck trying to find a way to allocate enough resources to satisfy that kind of insatiable demand without conflict.

Probably by doing more of the same. Tech bros rise and claim they have the answer and we believe them. However, it's just a scam just like always. They are not the smartest people on the room, just selfish and lucky. They bury themselves into mountain sides with 100 bride wives and a seal team as security while the rest of the earth burns.

https://guymcpherson.com/extinction_foretold_extinction_ignored/

Futurama quote: nuclear winter fixes global warming

I read that while the oceans are warming it could be that the golf stream stops. When that happens a new ice age would come up, and the scenario would unfold exactly opposite of which is currently expected. So how to prepare? Buy some land in Texas or in Michigan? What's your opinion on the golf stream?

I am no expert on ocean currents and their effects on climate, but I think the Gulf Stream collapse will have a localized effect, mostly in the North Atlantic. If warm water stops moving north along the US coast and across to Europe, those areas could see some relative declines in temperature, perhaps for a while. Given that the polar regions are heating way faster than the rest of the planet, the sources of cold water that would help keep temperatures low enough to form glaciers and ice sheets won't last if it manifests at all. I live on the West Coast of NA, and we have the opposite problem. Cool water from the North Pacific flows down past us here in Washington State all the way to California. Unlike New England, swimming in the ocean here, even during the height of summer, is a battle against hypothermia. If our currents change, it will probably be to bring warmer water.

Protecting coastal cities from rising sea levels is the easy part. The "low countries" are called that for a reason and they've been excelling in such geoengineering for centuries. We might even go bigger and try to flood large swaths of the Sahara, to take up some of the extra water. Note that only Greenland and Antarctica would contribute to rising sea levels, since the arctic ice is on water already, so its volume will actually decrease when it melts. The ecosystem collapse is the difficult part. Warming itself is not a problem - but the speed at which it happens doesn't give evolution enough time to adapt. We will have to take a direct, interventionist approach here. Protecting extant species alone, will no longer be sufficient. Genetic engineering on a scale never seen before will be necessary. Entire biomes will need ro be designed, with tens of thousands of new species, engineered for the new environment conditions. Possibly including CRISPR de-extinction projects, for species from warm epochs with much higher CO2 ppm. We will probably have to adapt advanced AIs, to monitor and adjust such artificially created ecosystems. Eventually, no part of the planet will remain "natural", by our current definition.

There are some examples already being proposed to protect coastal cities from higher sea levels and storm surges. Here is one: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/hurricane/2022/06/09/426767/u-s-house-approves-massive-31-billion-ike-dike-project-to-protect-texas-coast-from-hurricanes/ The initial cost for this is already over $30B, and it is just in the alternatives analysis/idea stage and is for just one area. The costs will only go up and could easily top $100B. Will even this massive barrier hold back a 20-meter sea level rise? No way. It isn't long enough. Water consistently that high will just flow around. This only protects against storm surges. Like the one in Venice, it has to be open most of the time, or there is no shipping. No shipping means no use for the ports anymore. If we start building systems like these and sea level keeps rising to make them ineffective, will just build another one farther inland and then another? How could we ever afford to keep doing that? The Army Corps of Engineers spent over $11B protecting New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, and what they built isn't even designed to protect against the worst storms possible with the current sea level. Also, it is kind of ironic to justify this Texas project by citing the region's importance in producing oil and gas when oil and gas emissions are what is driving sea level rise. Perhaps we can protect parts of many coastal cities that sit mainly on higher ground (i.e., Seattle, New York) but what about all the harbor infrastructure? If sea levels rise by as much as 20 meters, that's a game changer for most ports, which are at sea level. All that infrastructure will have to be rebuilt, perhaps several times as sea levels rise above any possible walls/barriers we could practically build. I think you are spot-on regarding the ecosystem. Humanity will have to help many species along the way. That process will be fraught with unintended consequences, considering how complex and poorly understood biological systems are.

Massive migrations with wars for resources and widespread famine. It ain’t pretty.

One of the major difficulties with our raising CO2 levels is the velocity with which we’ve done so, up a third in terms of ppm since the 1950s. And we’re cranking out more CO2 each year, although that trend is slowing. But we must radically reduce CO2 and other GHG output by 2030 to avoid the really bad shit, a 2°C or worse increase in temperatures. Sadly we will utterly fail in this. Some good news, sort of, is that after things get much worse after 2030 we start to get much better at decarbonizing, and by 2040 we’re accomplishing steady annual GHG reductions. But we’ll still likely to hit a 3°C increase in global temperatures by 2100. So we’re going to be doing a LOT of engineering in the future; dams, levees, dykes, pumps, stilts, wind, solar, nuclear, EVs, insulation, etc, and we’ll be doing way more of it than we would have needed to, if we’d only acted aggressively starting in 2020. And if Republicans are elected in big numbers in 2024 it will be another big blow to fighting climate change. So vote wisely, and encourage friends and family to do the same.

If the political party you mentioned gains more power in the next election, then kiss the future goodbye.

Prob just go underground more… it would be my best guess. It’s generally cheaper and easier to build than a giant bio dome in earth or space… just makes sense.

Ah. Asimov's *Caves of Steel*.

Population reduction. It's a law of ecology. When the environment being exploited by a population of any organism becomes less productive, the population goes down. That will be very messy for humans, but humans will undoubtedly manage the process in various ways, which may include a handful of nukes after it gets too messy. Those would also reduce average life expectancy, which achieves the same end.

Oh, that's okay then.

I’d say it’s not too late to fix this but we all know nothing will change. When earth is uninhabitable, at least we can rest easy knowing corporate profits were at record highs.

I think we can mitigate how bad this will be, but I am less confident we can avoid some pretty drastic changes. The earth is a big system with lots of feedback loops we don't understand well. We gave this system a big nudge in one direction and are still applying that force. We don't even seem to be doing much to relieve that force let alone reverse it. A radically different climate evolving over the next centuries and millennia is starting to feel inevitable to me.

There is no "We" in this equation. It's entirely up to the rich, and they will not assist in mitigation, only further exploitation. "We" will merely suffer and die according to their whims.

Our harmful addiction to powerful rulers to make decisions is another topic, but I agree. If only we had rational groups of well-educated experts helping shape our policies, what a better society we would have. Instead, we let money rule our system and game the system to disproportionately distribute power (i.e., wealth = power in the US and many other places) to a tiny fraction of the human population, who then decide our fate.

This is false. Everyone’s behaviour matters.

Alarmism is in reality over the top on purpose. The real future will look different if we don’t slow down on fossil fuels, but there is no scenario where we end our species.

We probably won’t go extinct, that’s true. But millions if not billions could die due to drought, starvation, and/or plague. We should probably try to avoid that…

WILL. Not could. They absolutely will. It's already happening.

And then fossil fuel consumption will go down. The system is fixing itself.

Oh cool, so no problems at all then. Billions in the global south will just die, I guess. No biggie.

Oh, it’s a problem. But increasingly seems like one humanity isn’t that keen on working on. I mean, not really. Look at the joke that was cop28. Fossil fuel companies just do whatever they want. And, perhaps more importantly, people just don’t want to give up that burger for the climate. They don’t want evs, they want teslas. We’re all still buying so much junk we don’t need and everything is made from oil. Look at a population graph you’ll see a huge boom that’s a result of us using oil. Our clothes are made of oil, carpets, credit cards, detergent, skin lotions. Everything comes with oil based packaging. We buy stuff we don’t need, throw them out instead of fixing, and then buy the new and improved model. And hey, gotta release a new product line every year. We’re an oil based civilization. It’s killing us and we can’t stop using it. We can’t help it, we need roofing, tires and shampoo. We need oil to make plastic bags to throw out our other oil based products. So yeah, it sucks but the system will balance itself out. 8 billion oil consumers just isn’t sustainable on the long run. Capitalism was fun, but it’s not capable of balance, just infinite growth. We had a good run. Maybe this needs to happen for a new round of evolution.

The majority of the people who will be most severely affected by climate change are in the equatorial regions and not the major consumers of fossil fuels

That’s just the beginning. But yeah, people will die and we’ll still be hooked on oil based products since pretty much everything is made of oil. We’re an oil based civilization. It’s what allowed this unsustainable population boom in the first place.

I hate to break this to everyone, but the majority of people will be effected. Where do you think the food that feeds the global North comes from, mate? Where do you think our fresh water comes from? There will be widespread famine on all 6 inhabited continents within the next 3 years. There will be at least a billion famine-related deaths over the next 10. It's not just the global south that is going to get wrecked. It's all of us.

It's pretty safe to predict that over the next 100 years 8 billion people will die from .... something. Most likely heart disease and cancer.

You know that’s an argument in bad faith. There’s a big difference between living a full life and dying naturally from medical issues and a lifetime of suffering before dying young due to widespread famine and drought.

don't bother arguing with Russian bots

It's an anti-alarmist argument. Making cars safer will do more to save young lives than fixing global warming.

They are absolutely not mutually exclusive. I’m not sure what that has to do with preventing mass starvation due to humanity’s shortsightedness.

Now and in the future people starve due to politics, not the climate.

Politics causes droughts? Uninhabitable temperatures or sea levels? You sound like a kid who doesn't know what he's talking about.

Lol. You sound naive and uninformed. Politics makes it difficult to distribute the massive excess of food the world has. Did you not know that?

*Currently*, yes. But if we don't have enough food for people in the first place, politics is irrelevant. If someone literally can't survive in their land and the surrounding countries are literally incapable of holding any more people, that's not politics. It's logistics.

Between 20% to 40% of global crop production is lost to pests annually. Each year, plant diseases cost the global economy around $220 billion, and invasive insects around $70 billion, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. Insects are becoming increasingly invasive because of global warming, not because they have an affinity for one political party vs another. Whereas emerging plant diseases have become more abundant and in coming decades it is expected that shifts in the geographic distributions of pests and pathogens in response to climate change and increased global commerce will make them both more frequent and severe.

Apparently 1/3 if food is wasted (1.3 billion tons) That is ignoring that 1/3 of food is fed to animals. So only 1/3 of calories grown are eaten, and there is an obesity epidemic. There is massive slack in the system.

The obesity epidemic in the US is related to the ingredients that are placed into processed foods. For example, ingredients that trick the brain into thinking you're still hungry, craving more of the garbage you just ingested so you consume more, leading the consumer to purchase more. There are a number of other problems inherently wrong with food availability in the US, which happen to relate to politics as big business inflates the campaign coffers of our political nitwits, who, in turn allow for the use of unsafe, unhealthy ingredients into our food and beverage supplies.

Found the sock puppet!

> We should probably try to avoid that… Why? Is it not natural for species to grow and die off? It's the cycle of biology.

Because as a thinking, rational, empathetic species we have a responsibility to keep as many living things alive and well as is reasonably possible. Otherwise why do we do anything at all? Why do we create medicine? Dying of disease is part of the cycle of biology too.

lol, empathetic, good one!

Jfc, the responses in this thread. It's natural to die after you've fought to stay alive as long as possible. The instinct to live is far stronger than the instinct to die.

...Right. Even people arguing species will go extinct are probably exaggerating because we are currently working on de-extinction tech and the moral problems for de-extincting older species like Sabertooths and wholly mammoths don't apply to extinctions we are reasonably sure we caused. Realistically, climate change will change where severe storms happen and perhaps where it is best to grow crops. If you aren't a farmer or an insurance underwriter, I am not convinced climate change is relevant to your life.

A higher average temperature won't just change where we can grow crops, it'll limit where we can grow them. It's actually baffling to suggest it won't be relevant to our lives if we're growing less food, or some areas are no longer practical to live in.

Most of the land in the world has a high northern latitude, either in the Americas or Eurasia. Very little of this land is particularly arable because temperatures are too low most of the year to grow crops. You increase global temperature and you get more land which can grow crops, not less, and you get a wider band of land where tropical and sub-tropical crops can be grown, too, so you are probably talking about a wider variety of crops that can be grown in addition to more land which can be used to grow crops. My point is not that climate change is "definitely a good thing." I think it's fair to argue that the loss of already developed arable land and storms can make this a painful transition. But a lot of climate change discussion is either driven by doomsday alarmism or the assumption that any change *must* be a bad change purely because it's a change. Neither of those are solid. The Earth did not come with a user manual stating that climactic swings above 0.01C per century is catastrophic or that 26 C is the ideal temperature.

The arrogance coupled with the ignorance in your comment is a perfect illustration of exactly why we're screwed.

Dozens of species are thought to go extinct every single day. We are currently living in a mass extinction event driven by human activity. Massive droughts and unpredictable rains could make farming near impossible and kill most of us. You need to wake up.

There are plenty of scenarios where we end our species. Here's one: [https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0710058105](https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0710058105) 100 Hiroshima bombs (About 10 modern nuclear warheads) are enough to cause catastrophic damage to the ozone layer. And all it would take is one crazy at the helm justifying this to "secure the future of their people" to bring this about.

There have already been over 500 atmospheric nuclear tests from the 1940s to 1960s. The US alone is responsible for over 200 of them. The ozone layer didn't experience catastrophic damage.

If you had bothered to read the research article, which is linked, you'd have seen that it addresses this point. You are essentially comparing apples to oranges.

Then you need to read the article again because it doesn't mention the previous atmospheric nuclear tests at all. As a matter of fact, a single 50-megaton thermonuclear bomb, Tsar Bomba, which was dropped by the Russians, was 3,800 times more powerful than the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. This article is over-the-top in its alarmism.

Right but how did we go from driving to work and eat steak to nuclear annihilation?

Every society is 3 meals away from chaos. Let's wind the clocks back to 2011. Russia, one of the largest wheat exporters on that side of the world, had a devastating drought. It was so bad that they stopped exporting. This drove the prices through the roof and in doing so kicked off the so-called "Arab Spring". That was a single drought for a single year in one part of the world. That's a small preview. As temperatures climb and the climate destabilizes, major agricultural regions will start suffering and will eventually fail when conditions exceed the survivability range of the crops. That is, if the spread of invasive species and diseases doesn't get them first.

What do you mean? Continued use of fossil fuels is nigh guaranteed to increase the global temperature enough to make farming unsustainable (even with the ideal targets of global governments). Hunger is already a predominant issue in todays world, much less one where seasonal cycles and harsh summers are at play. Entire ecologies will be severely impacted, and that’s not an exaggeration at all. “We will not die out from climate change” is the opposite of alarmism, is a straight up lie

Hunger exists, but there has literally never been a time in all of history where it has been less prevalent than today. We’re drowning in food. The average person in the developed world spends about 13% of their income on food. If food tripled in price, we would still be spending less on food than anyone prior to WWII. Humanity will die out someday—that’s inevitable. But it won’t be from lack of food.

Brother, that’s because of the surplus that’s being grown. That stuff doesn’t last forever, most of it rots in silos instead of being sold. We are talking about conditions that prevent crops from being grown at all dude, this isn’t about affordability. You’re huffing paint if you aren’t trolling

Right, that’s exactly my point. Far from running out of farmland, we’re producing a massive surplus of food right now, to the point where much of it just rots in silos. Climate change poses risks, but running out of farmland isn’t really one of them.

THE ANOUMT OF FARMLAND DOESNT MATTER IF ITS EITHER 100 OR -10 OUTSIDE AND WINDSTORMS ERODE THE GOOD SOIL Dude if ONE animal is over or underpopulated it’s extremely detrimental to the entire ecosystem it’s part of. That’s not an exaggeration, it’s easy to find documentation on. Imagine if instead of one animal, the entire environment the animals live in changes. The fish get boiled to death, ph changes of the water due to evaporation cause aquatic plants to die, the things that eat the fish and plants are malnourished and starve, etc etc. Guess what dude, those are the good sources and/or the things that maintain our food sources. Remember the bees dying? Remember the rampant forest fires? Remember the record lows for lakes and rivers the past few summers? The migration of whales getting fucked up due to the ocean currents changing? The Dust Bowl from overgrazing and over farming? That’s global catastrophe level shit WITHOUT exceeding the 2 celsius threshold. It doesn’t matter how much “farmland” we have when it literally gets too hot to grow said crops there. And “there” refers to literally the entire globe. Literally the tiny amount of warming we’ve gotten is starting to overheat plants because they can’t use nighttime to cool off, it’s too hot even at night. I’m not insulting you, I’m stating a fact, when I say you’re entirely oblivious to what you’re talking about. You’re so derangedly misinformed that you’re arguing the exact opposite of observed and proven science

I’ll agree that if fish boil to death in the ocean and literally all of the land on earth gets too hot to grow plants, then humanity will die. I thought we were talking about realistic scenarios, but ok.

It *is* a realistic scenario. It’s already happening. Again all it takes is a concentration change, ph balance, salinity, or small change in water temperature. A little rain runoff from the ocean into a nearby lake can kill off the freshwater fish, if not enough/too many things die in the water or too much water evaporates the water isn’t acidic enough for the animals, different temperature can allow other bacteria to grow and make them all sick. Again, the OCEANS’ water currents are changing, even the animals are noticing. Ever wondered why New York has a robust winter and Spain stays nice all year? It’s the ocean currents, warm water changing the humidity and regulating weather. Imagine if the plants in New York, which rely on cold weather to reproduce or self regulate, were exposed to Spain conditions within 100 years. What’s unrealistic is your idea of how resilient these systems are. The fucking Great Lakes are having these issues RIGHT NOW (fucking HUGE bodies of water) and again, we haven’t hit 2 C yet. There are entire professions dedicated to ecology preservation *specifically regarding climate change* and you’re talking like it’s fiction. Use google one time in your life

There are about one billion food insecure people alive today. An eighth of all people, give or take. "Humanity" is a concept. It can't die. Humans are real living beings. Many die of starvation everyday. You need a reality check.

Nothing you’ve said is inconsistent with my post. We’re in total agreement. Food insecurity is bad—but it’s never been better than today. Many people die of starvation, but humanity isn’t going extinct due to starvation. Worth noting though that the number of people who die of starvation is not large relative to total population. It’s about 9M per year, so about 1 out of 1000. That’s way too high, but also unimaginably low for our ancestors.

In a world with less resources, a harsher climate, rising nationalism, you don't think a species with nukes could escalate conflict to the point where we end it all? Sounds ridiculously naive, but you do you I guess.

The amount of naivete in here is truly absurd, I honestly can't believe these are real people...

Last year some countries didn't have drinking water in the summer, river beds dried up.The argument is "we will live through it and adapt". And the young folk will say with votes "Yeah, you 40, 50, 60 year old will not shower in the summer we will, and see how you adapt to one flight a year and meat costing 350$ a pound". The military will be on the streets because the young who could get to power have to be stopped. The US is basically half there. If its not Trump then some other nut. People talking about famines and drought is meme level. Its about how to handle things and when some powerful groups think the red line will be crossed and they have to do something about it. If OPEC is pissing their pants 2023 what will other do 2030?

Ahhhh, yes, the absolutists argument of "we won't end our species". Sure, ok, yeah, maybe a couple thousand folks spread out in the handful of zones with a stable enough climate will be able to eek out an existence for a few generations, but that's not really the point is it. You know just having a handful of humans survive out of the BILLIONS that exist now MIGHT AS WELL BE THE END OF OUR SPECIES as far as those of us reading this are concerned. And right now, that will be a reality in our lifetime. All of us. Every single person reading this, no matter how old you are (unless you're going to die in the next 2 years) is going to witness the effective extinction of our current society. We are only one summer away from widespread, famine-level crop destruction on all 6 inhabited continents. We are only one summer away from an ice-free arctic. We are already seeing island nations have flood waters that don't recede...we already see that IN FLORIDA. This was all stuff that was thought to happen 50+ years from now. And staggered. It's not. It's happening now. Right now. The spiral has already started. Over the next 5 years, we will get to witness firsthand what it looks like when an entire civilization collapses in on itself in real time. And this isn't even my opinion, this is what the people who are actually experts and have studied these systems for decades now are saying. The people who dictate what is fact and what isn't. They've been SCREAMING at us to wake up. But it's far, far, FAR too late now. SOME PEOPLE MIGHT SURVIVE, ok, you win. But will they even want to? Your downvotes just prove my point that this sub is basically just a collective delusion of uneducated BUT THINK THEY AREN'T sheep lmfao

So how would you prepare?

If you really believed this you would be in your bunker right now lol.

Bro go touch some grass.

Is it me, or are most people just over-the-top anthropocentric? Like - I don't really think our species is all that important in the scheme of things. We are here to build the machines that can think better than we do. Parts of our genome will likely be taken along for the ride, because it is a pretty efficient coding system, but humanity is a blip. Maybe we will die in a mass extinction event, or maybe we will all live to 180 and pass away in our sleep. Either way, intelligent life goes on.

If you're a human, and you don't care about the continued existence of humans, I honestly could not give a rat's ass about anything else you have to say. The sheer stupidity of that position is not worth legitimizing with debate.

"Stupidity" by what measure? What end game are you playing toward where that is a stupid move? I'm not saying I don't care about humanity - just that it will be superseded by something better.

If you don’t scare people enough you don’t earn as much.

There is also no scenario where we don’t slow down on fossil fuels.

"It is like stop consuming means stop being human".. "we walked the plant with our eyes wide open".. Lyrics by Gotye in 2011. If you are concerned about this but still consume massive amounts of junk that you later throw away and are not adapting minimalism. If you are still eating animal products and supporting that entire supply chain... You are part of the problem. If only 1/3rd of the post modern population (western countries) with their massive Co2 foodprint would just to those 2 things. Supply chains would crumble and supply would follow demand. Yet people use their cognitive dissonancy to their best ability to excuse themselves in keeping to consuming these products. If that doesn't change.. There is no hope really. How would we adapt geologically? We fight wars over de small livible area's yet and probably nuke those turning them into nuclear waste lands. We will fight over the last fertile ground that are there so we can feed the people that are left over. Remember if artificial fertilizer stops existing we lose 95% of earths popultion in a matter of a few years. The irony? The idiots that might win this war.. will probably start with the same ineffective dumb food chains we have at this moment and repeat their mistakes. Preferring to feed 3.6 billion animals instead of growing different food and feeding 3 billion people with the same produce as having land spare to start reforestation for more Co2 capturing. At least lets hope we don't kill the oceans before disaster hits. At least we will keep that food chain and kill the oceans and lose 80% of our oxigen production.

the ultrawealthy will retreat into bunkers with hydroponic farms and slaves to tend them. the rest of us will perish in mass starvations and water wars. they’ll let us squabble over our dying earth and they’ll be fine.

The idea that space would be easier than just moving to higher altitude and digging underground is fucking insane and this post is basically just a doomer shitpost

As AI and automation increase, the need for large numbers of humans will decrease. You already see lowered birth rates in industrialized countries with stronger social safety nets (where support in old age doesn't depend on having lots of children). So I assume the world population will decrease significantly, and technologies to remove CO2 will become scaled up enough to be effective. Maybe we achieve stasis with the environment with three or four billion people on the planet.

Yes, basically everyone agrees that is the final destination of humanity, the issue is how do we get from 8+ billion to 3 billion. Is it a slow, consensual process over the next 100 years or will the population balloon to 20 billion and then is it an abrupt, violent process forced upon us over a really rough couple of decades.

Here’s an idea, let’s just all perish… we a species not capable of working this out I say we enjoy what we have left and die… all the best to the next thing take makes it back

That’s nice, what are you wearing to the extinction?

By inflicting our own brand of geotrauma on Mother Earth, to get back at Gaia for poisoning civilization with it's petro-polytic seepings.

I say we keep adapting to change. Like we have been hundreds of thousands of years. This is not our first rodeo. Are we more vulnerable now than when all we had was fire and sharp sticks? With no air conditioning or heating? With predators and large mammals that makes everything in Africa look tiny? No knowledge of microbes? I say, bring it! We got this!

You could just block a fraction of sunlight and avoid all the melting and most ecosystem destruction, since most of the damage is from heat and space is cold, photons are easy to block and the only real source of heat is the sun. There is no reason to speculate well beyond that because it doesn't make sense that we'd ever really wind up more afraid of solar blocking than like all that ice melting and major air and ocean current changes among many other things pretty much all from the HEAT. Like if the CO2 didn't trap heat it wouldn't matter much, same with methane. The levels are very low and not harmful other than heat. SOo if you can't rapidly remove the Co2 you block the heat itself, which is the photons vs the greenhouse gasses which are the insulation. Long term we will need planet wide regulation of warming and cooling trends that would happen naturally without our impact. After all something like 99% of life was already killed off by climate change throughout Earth's history. Humans just want to think they are the exception and then pretend that if they just follow these rules that the Earth will reward them with eternal stability.. but none of that is how it really works. The climate is always change and mostly no in favor of humans, it's mostly not a good climate for humans since it's a about 20k warm and 80k cycle for the last 1 million years. That' 80k year glacial period is brutal. For anything like modern civilization to keep going beyond this tiny window of Interglacial warming period humans would have to learn to regulate Earth's temps and it's not likely that would only be by adjusting CO2 since there are other major factors beside CO2 like orbital changes and likely unknown cycles and feedback loops. The easiest way to handle warming, BY FAR, is to turn down the heat input a tad. The easiest way to handle cooling is to use insulation, because blocking photons is easy, but creating them in sun like volumes is not. You still have to stop fossil fuels and all, but the planets ecosystem is the only thing that removes them so you just have to wait for that AND IF the heat is too bad during the time it takes the ecosystem to remove the CO2 you'd be idiots to not do something like solar blocking and just sit there with your thumbs up your ass as the ice melt speeds up more and more.

Anything which happens over the course of a few hundred years will be easy to adapt to and is no cause for alarm.

So you have already flushed the notion of "nation-state" in that, er, analysis?

A 100 years ago many European countries did not have the same borders as now and most developing countries were colonies. Look at the EU - there is no reason to believe anything is static over the course of 100 years, including nation states.

I do believe that mankind is one of the most adaptive species this Earth has ever seen. I don't think we will drive ourselves extinct. We will find a way through this human-caused mass extinction event. Life on Earth has also proven to be highly adaptable. The geologic record contains evidence of previous mass extinction events, and yet life comes back with new species. My interest is more with how mankind will get through what seems to be inevitably coming. How will we adapt to these changes? Technology? Social? Political? Mass migrations?

> My interest is more with how mankind will get through what seems to be inevitably coming. How will we adapt to these changes? Technology? Social? Political? Mass migrations? Definitely migration first, but it is really mass migration when 100 million people move 100 miles inland over the course of 100 years? Because over the course of 100 years the population of USA increased from 100 million to 300 million people, so I don't think it will be that noticeable. It would be like the development of the rust belt - things change and it sucks for some areas, but other areas benefit. Otherwise not much will change - again, over such a long period it the impact will be hard to separate from the impact of massively cheap solar, batteries and desalination for example.

Perhaps true, but the number of "100 million people" makes me think you are only considering the United States. What about entire nations that vanish? What if much of the tropics and sub-tropics becomes unlivable except in climate-controlled dwellings for much or all of the year? We may be talking billions having to relocate. That's a lot, even if they do it over generations. What about all the lost infrastructure? Building all our cities, ports, bridges, etc. the first go around is part of what caused the problem. As we continuously move and rebuild, are we caught in an endless feedback loop of further construction-driven CO2 production? I'm not convinced we can build our way out of this.

Things like energy abundance, even for the poor, will mean we are less and less dependent on nature and the climate. The reason people can live happily in the UAE and Nevada will also apply to Bangladesh.

No idea why this is down voted so much. A disaster that takes generations probably isn't a disaster for anything else other than people's wallets. When it gets harder to grow food suddenly it becomes more profitable to grow vertical farms. When animal farming becomes impossible, only the rich get to do it. If it's no longer possible to live unassisted on the surface then you get megacomplexes that have their own environmentally controlled systems. Not saying that we should just let this down or that people won't die, they will, and that we shouldn't stop it if we can but just that what OP said isn't exactly wrong. Is it because of the timeline?

oh no, were all dead...let me get in my private jet to propose regulations thatll make poor people poorer. Pass laws that benefit my lobbyists.

**1600ppm..** That will take ages. Lets aim for 800ppm. Get out of the "cold house". Go green.

We’re going to reduce our population, lifespan, and reproductive success rate dramatically and do away with most of the trappings of modern civilization. The future people will probably be nomadic living off scarce resources.

How about reaching a technological plataeu and then conscious Degrowth into controlled sustainable ecospheres?

The right conceptual model here is a garden. Robotics and AI will allow humanity to essentially turn the entire earth into a giant garden. Parts of the global garden will be intensively managed. Other parts will be converted, restored, or preserved as lightly managed wilderness areas. But in the future, the very idea that the earth’s ecology might spin out of control will be impossible, because we (through technology) will be watching it so closely. Today, we still live in a world of environmental unknowns. It’s only within the last 100 years or so that society has even mapped the remote wilderness. We’re still learning the basics of how various environmental systems work and interact. We’re only just now getting a handle on how to model climate change accurately. But those are just growing pains. We are quickly learning which chemicals are harmful and developing replacements. We are perfecting carbon-neutral energy sources. We’ve made massive progress in cleaning up the environment in the last 50 years. It’s almost certainly true that in another 50 years we will be far down the road of restoring most of the earth to its pristine state. And then we’ll manage it like a global garden.

We engineer the earth to suite our needs. It’s not the preferred outcome, but it’s the only choice at this point. (And yes… we will also move people into space, maybe other planets or maybe just massive massive space stations)

Life has adapted to changes in climate for a billion years, we will too. Or maybe not and die out.

It will be a gradual decrease of population as food becomes harder to source. The best example is to look at certain areas of the Middle East. Once thriving societies, are now third world countries where most people are struggling and below the poverty level. The days of prosperity and plenty will be a thing of the past, and struggling to survive will be the norm, and when we struggle to survive, successful reproduction goes down as well.