InfernalCorg t1_ixaw13d wrote on November 22, 2022 at 1:49 AM

Reply to comment by FjorgVanDerPlorg in TIL that in 2003, scientists "resurrected" an extinct species of Ibex, bringing back one living specimen, only for it go extinct again seven minutes later when the specimen died of a lung defect by mausoliam95

> I dont think its a coincidence that the rise in plastic pollution coincides with a global decline in fertility rates.

You don't? Why does fertility rate correspond more closely to economic development than plastic use, then?

>Because the problem is that we are trying to extinct ourselves in pretty much every imaginable way.

There are quite a few more people trying to not go extinct. There's no plausible scenario (barring a gamma ray burst, asteroid, supernova, etc) where the human race goes extinct. The climate's going to suck for a century, but things will still be livable. War isn't fun, but even a thermonuclear war results in most humans living - the global south finally lucks out for once.

It's possible we go out via some sort of confluence of negative events, but it doesn't seem likely enough to dwell on it. Doomerism isn't productive.

FjorgVanDerPlorg t1_ixaxyc9 wrote on November 22, 2022 at 2:04 AM

The problem is that currently both you and science are looking at these risks individually, not studying the cumulative effects of multiple crises going critical in the same time period.

While we are fucking this planet in every way we can dream up, while consistently ignoring all warnings from the experts, with all our "efforts" to counter these problems coming up way short of the mark - through all that I think it's pretty naive to think that we will get lucky and these crises will won't converge into some apocalyptic cluterfuck.

There's also the fact that as things get much more dire, we will try stupider and more dangerous "solutions", which may very well make things considerably worse.

InfernalCorg t1_ixayd0k wrote on November 22, 2022 at 2:07 AM

> both you and science are looking at these risks individually, not studying the cumulative effects of multiple crises going critical in the same time period.

How? What are we failing to account for? A nuclear war mid-climate change would still be catastrophic, but unless I'm missing something it wouldn't have that many synergistic effects.

> with all our "efforts" to counter these problems coming up way short of the mark

You understand that this is mostly because we don't have the political willpower to fix things, not because we don't know how, right? When things get dire, even billionaires will pick survival over money.

FjorgVanDerPlorg t1_ixb0tll wrote on November 22, 2022 at 2:25 AM

Lol you're putting your faith in the same science that has consistently said "we got it wrong, it's actually much worse/happening much faster than expected", for the last decade - that has been the climate change song.

Systems are complex and their interactions often have wide reaching consequences.

Try maybe: a series of lethal Pandemic outbreaks caused by thawing permafrost, including a novel virus with a long incubation rate and also a very high mortality rate, at the same time as that same permafrost releasing gigatons of methane to poison the air (clathrate gun hypothesis), oceans dying along with the amazon, resultant shortages triggering a nuclear war/use of weaponized nanotech, viral/eugenic warfare, country's facing extinction deciding to fuck everyone else at the same time (US for example could carpet nuke most of the planet), on and on.