Re: Montana: "Let's make stupidity mandatory!"

Am 17.01.2025 um 23:26 schrieb AMuzi:

On 1/17/2025 3:57 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:

On 1/17/2025 1:57 PM, AMuzi wrote:

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" The Earth can only support a finite number of humans...."
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Logically, yes.
That limit is a much larger number than pessimists have predicted.
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Imminent doom has been wrong repeatedly. Everything was supposed to collapse at 4 billion, at 5 billion, at 6 billion, etc. Still waiting.
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The Malthusians ignore human innovation.

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I suppose we could read the specific scientific articles of the day to see exactly what they said, as opposed to something like the blaring headlines on the front pages of popular magazines. And I'm aware that some ingenious breakthroughs (e.g. in food production) have acted as Deus Ex Machina to at least temporarily save the day.
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But I suspect those who feel "Everything Will Always Be Fine" were interpreting warnings about (say) 6 billion as "... and then the world will suddenly end!" More realistic people would be expecting a prolonged and very messy gradual failure, probably with a slow initial buildup. Which seems to be what we're seeing today.
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We've recently set yet another record for "hottest year since record keeping began." Those seem to keep coming. "Everything is fine!" skeptics say, "Because I can still make a snowball!!"
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But climate problems are certainly increasing. California wildfires, Appalachian hurricanes, African droughts etc. are driven at least in part by novel climate changes. That's evidence of a slow initial buildup.
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I expect we'll gradually see more people demanding immigration permission, or sneaking in without permission, as conditions worsen in certain countries. We may see migration out of certain areas of the U.S. as water becomes more and more scarce and expensive, except in certain coastal areas, where it will become inconveniently abundant due to rising sea levels. Like other changes, that won't be a sudden wall of water inundating a city. Instead, it will be "Damn! The business district is flooded _again_???" I suspect there will be economic consequences, but they will be gradual enough to give "plausible deniability" to the skeptics.
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The bigger factors that _may_ give "I told you so" proof are, in my mind, the Atlantic Ocean thermal circulation and the unlocking of long-trapped arctic methane. Those seem likely to be "tipping point" scenarios that will be relatively sudden, self enhancing and impossible to reverse.
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But I guess we'll see, if we live long enough.

 Climate change and California wildfires? Pfffft.
 The first Spanish captain who sailed past and didn't anchor there called it 'valley of smoke'.  In the 1570s, not last week.

Sure.  Climate change is rarely large enough to create completely new hazards but scaling major wildfires (random numbers) from once every 50 years to 3 times in 10 years is bad enough.