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Humanity will likely survive climate change, but the vast majority of humans won't.

⁨277⁩ ⁨likes⁩

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Nay@feddit.nl⁩ to ⁨showerthoughts@lemmy.world⁩

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Comments

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  • baggachipz@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    “The planet will be fine. We’re fucked.

    • St. Carlin
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    • Nay@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      St. Carlin

      100% . I love to see it!

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  • rumschlumpel@feddit.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Bit heavy for the shower.

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    • NaibofTabr@infosec.pub ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Image

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    • baconmonsta@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Let the shower wash away your tears...

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      • Kyrgizion@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I want a refund on this “no tears” baby shampoo. Didn’t do a damn thing for my depression.

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    • Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      It where I go to cry when it’s not raining. :(

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    • Nay@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      It just hit me in a sobering sorta way.

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    • Coolbeanschilly@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I don’t see how, thoughts have no weight whatsoever. Unless you weigh the mass of the chemicals and the electrical impulses involved.

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  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    My bet for climate change is a massive migrational crisis and wars over resources.

    Humankind won’t disappear, not even civilization. But life would probably be shit, and many many people will die.

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    • Venus_Ziegenfalle@feddit.org ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      I think a lot will depend on whether nuclear wars break out but yeah, even in the worst case scenarios I don’t see civilization dissappearing entirely. And honestly it all kinda makes sense to me. Nature has to regulate itself somehow. If one species becomes too dominant things get tipped out of balance. If you have an infection because an organism that is usually present in small numbers on your body has turned predatory and is growing beyond sustainable levels you develop a fever until things are back to normal. It’s the alternative to dying. (Matrix Elrond had it right)

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  • jsomae@lemmy.ml ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Misleading headline. I would wager that 100% of humans alive today will not survive, if we don’t act quickly to resolve senescence.

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  • cypherpunks@lemmy.ml ⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Plus, we will hold on to some percentage of technical knowledge that will help us adapt faster.

    FYI, collapseos.org is planning for this eventuality.

    Sent from my TI-84+

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  • PeriodicallyPedantic@lemmy.ca ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    The majority of humans won’t survive the next 100 years, because almost nobody lives to be 100.

    Do you mean that the majority of people currently alive will die due to climate change.
    Do you mean that humanity’s population will drop by over 50% and will not recover?
    Do you mean that in the future, the majority of deaths will be due to climate change, even in 200 years from now when the new (much hotter) equilibrium will be all anyone has ever known?

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  • fdnomad@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    When we experience and maybe survive the next mass extinction, its going to be vastly more difficult to reindustrialize / redigitalize even if knowledge persists because we’ve already extracted the most easily accessible materials from the earth and extracting resources is becoming increasingly difficult.

    If you know how to build a battery but you cant build to machines to get the lithium, you just cant build a battery. But I suppose over time we’d find better ways to recycle.

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  • crapwittyname@feddit.uk ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis that all things are made of atoms — little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.

    Richard Feynman

    So, if, during the apocalypse, you have access to a means of passing on a message to the poor bastards who have to live in the New World, it should be this:

    “Everything is made of atoms”

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  • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    No species lasts forever—and the faster their environment changes, the sooner their expiration date.

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    • higgsboson@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      When faced with a changing environment, aa species has 3 choices: Adapt, Migrate, or Die.

      Humans have apparently decided to vault past the first two and just yank that third one.

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      • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I mean, why do you say that? I don’t know if any other species that lives in a greater variety of environments. There are humans living on every continent, including Antarctica. There are humans living with support in space and under the sea.

        We have migrated, to everywhere. And we can adapt, to almost anything.

        And to clarify, I don’t think we’ll all survive, but I highly doubt we’d all die.

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    • synae@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Those other species weren’t the authors of the global ecosystem’s demise, even with an understanding of the situation and opportunity to change the course of events

      Not really a fair comparison, is what I’m saying.

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    • Tuuktuuk@sopuli.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Depends on what you define as “lasts forever”. We are direct descendants of some kind of a rodent. Yeah, our species has changed “kind of much” since those days, but I wouldn’t worry about that kind of “expiration”. We are some rodents’ grand-grand-grand-…-grandchildren, and I think the rodent would be very much okay with us not looking very squirrellike, if they somehow was to find out they are our ancestor. They’d love us all the same :)

      But of course, in our case, it won’t be that evolution changes us into something else. It’s rather, we will just vault 92’ify ourselves.

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    • abbadon420@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Some species are contesting that statement very strongly. Take the horseshoecrab, or the tardigrate or even the cockroach. Humans are known for their fast adaptability, so I’d bet my money on us joining that list.

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      • AbouBenAdhem@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Take the horseshoecrab, or the tardigrate or even the cockroach.

        None of those are species—they’re a family, a phylum, and a (partial) order, respectively. While those clades have been relatively stable morphologically, species within each clade still come and go.

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    • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      No other species are quite like humans though

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      • P00ptart@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Meh, we wouldn’t be the first species to be so successful that we kill ourselves off.

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  • CarbonIceDragon@pawb.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Climate change is an ongoing process that takes decades to centuries. That’s very fast as far as evolution and natural climactic shifts are concerned, but on a human scale long term. Given that it’s not stopping within the lifespan of one person, and contributes to virtually every health problem in subtle ways, it’d seem a bit difficult to say if a given person has “survived it” or not, even if they live to an old age.

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    • Cricket@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I’m not sure exactly what you mean regarding health and lifespan, but I think looking forward from 2025, things are quickly going to go off the rails. We’ve already been seeing severe problems resulting from climate change for years now, and I think that it’s going to rapidly get worse within the next 5-10 years. I’m not talking about sea level rise (except in very vulnerable places that are already partially underwater, like Florida), but about intensifying weather disasters, droughts, and shocks to the global food supply. As a result of this, I think we will see more and more unrest as well as authoritarianism used to deal with that unrest. How quickly all this is going to decimate the population is anyone’s guess.

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      • baggachipz@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I’m so glad I don’t have any kids. That failure was a blessing in disguise

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      • higgsboson@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        looking forward from 2025, things are quickly going to go off the rails.

        Going to? Going to? Have you not... gestures vaguely

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      • null_dot@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I disagree.

        I dont think its particularly likely there will be famines in the next 5 years or so on a scale that can’t be countered by aid.

        Sure, economies might start to feel some very serious consequences, shit might start to get very real, I just dont think we’re quite at the point where people start dying.

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  • Thedogdrinkscoffee@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Humanity will likely survive climate change.

    I like your optimism, but I don’t share it. We honestly don’t know, one way or the other. What we do know is that human extinction in on the table and growing in probability. When I look at human actions as our cumulative knowlegde of these risks grew, well, I’m not exactly confident our species will make it.

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  • LifeOfChance@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Plus, we will hold on to some percentage of technical knowledge that will help us adapt faster.

    You’re running off the assumption that the survivors know useful information and that theyre also able to utilize that useful information plus be able to source needed materials since they wont have travel

    Example: I know I need an antibiotic for my infection but I dont know how to create that antibiotic or how to guide someone on how to make it. If I did know id also have to get lucky that the region I live in has all the materials needed to make it. We source all around the world for our stuff.

    Likely humanity will survive but probably wont advance as fast as you think.

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    • spizzat2@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      The available worlds looked pretty grim. They had little to offer him because he had little to offer them. He had been extremely chastened to realize that although he originally came from a world which had cars and computers and ballet and Armagnac, he didn’t, by himself, know how any of it worked. He couldn’t do it. Left to his own devices he couldn’t build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.

      -Douglas Adam’s, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

      Arthur Dent realizes that he, as an individual, is pretty useless for improving a society, but he can make a damn fine sammie.

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      • AnarchistArtificer@lemmy.world ⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        That was a delightful video; thanks for sharing

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      • brucethemoose@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Thanks for the TED talk (really)

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    • Cocodapuf@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      You’re running off the assumption that the survivors know useful information and that theyre also able to utilize that useful information plus be able to source needed materials since they wont have travel

      I think we’re assuming books will continue to exist.

      I think one of the real marvels of civilization is the redundancy of information. For every college course you’ve taken there’s a text book, and there may have been dozens of physical copies of that book used in your class, but also for many other classes at other schools that taught that same subject. There may have been 10,000 copies of that book in circulation across the globe, in many different countries.

      It’s not impossible to lose information forever, but we’ve put in some really strong defenses against that really happening.

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    • humanspiral@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Likely progression is simply that food gets expensive, and is grown indoors. Technology doesn’t need to fall, though when slaves are not needed, soylent green is a “utilitarian” use for them under rules based world order. Food capacity and population that can afford to buy it will match. Fewer people does mean fewer iphones, and more expensive at lower scale.

      Global warming, even at 5C, is more about increased misery and oppression, rather than mass deaths over a decade. Wikipedia will survive. The AI tech giants chatbots will explain why you need to die or be miserable until you die.

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    • Nay@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Just for clarification, I don’t think it’ll be fast. It will just be faster than without it.

      Also, I think we’ll hang on to a lot because the survivor base will likely be made up of people from all walks of life. STEM Professionals, teachers, carpenters, you name it. And as long as we learned our lesson about religion, we’ll pass that knowledge on.

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      • P00ptart@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        And stem professionals are also violence professionals (i.e. military and cops)? STEM tends to be very specific in their knowledge base these days. Yeah, they know how to make solar panels, but do they know where to get those materials, how to mine them? Even 80 years ago, it took several teams of hundreds of scientists to figure out nuclear energy. Lose half that team of specified individuals working together and you just have an idea. And those smart individuals gained their knowledge from smart individuals before them, and same for those individuals.

        Look at Greek fire or the pyramids for examples of lost technology that 2000 years later, we still can’t figure out. Losing a scientist here or there is generally not that big of a deal, but when you can’t control how many or who goes, you lose control of the knowledge.

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  • YknsNMo000@thelemmy.club ⁨23⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    I don’t care if I don’t survive but I’m taking a couple of polluters with me lmao

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  • scott@lemmy.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Climate change is just the tip of the big white iceberg

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    • OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Yep. It doesn’t count any of the other huge problems we’re creating.

      • Our farming techniques deplete the land and turn it to desert
      • Over-fishing/hunting have led multiple animal populations on the brink of collapse. Even a small change could end it.
      • We’re very close to depleting aquifers all over the globe. Once those are gone we don’t have anything to drink or to water our crops.
      • We’re poisoning the skies and waterways with toxic chemicals, plastics, and forever chemicals.
      • We’re breeding antibiotic resistant germs and modern travel allows viruses to spread worldwide in hours/days

      We’re rushing towards our destruction in multiple ways. Any of those alone would result in massive deaths. And as resources get tighter, disputes and wars will break out over what’s left.

      All of these together will nearly certainly lead to our destruction. And this is going to start hitting hard within 5-10 years.

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      • scott@lemmy.org ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        I said the same thing 5 years ago and guess what? It’s already hitting hard. Look at America right now, just black bagging people off the street.

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      • baggachipz@sh.itjust.works ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

        The saddest part is that we have the technology and means to fix any and all of these, just not the desire.

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      • Onyxonblack@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        This all sounds amazing to me! Being a Misanthropic Anti-Natalist, I literally crave the idea of Humanity going extinct… I want us all dead yesterday! Please hurry the fuck up Climate Change! Fucking Pathetic Humans.

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    • Nay@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Just the tip?

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  • melsaskca@lemmy.ca ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Some humans will survive but, with the state of the world today, I think we’re already pretty close to losing our humanity.

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  • TranquilTurbulence@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    It depends on which kind of climate disaster we’re facing. If it’s reversible over the next million years, humanity as a species should be fine. The population would be cut down to just a tiny fraction, and the survivors might have to start from pre-industrial tech level.

    If it’s irreversible, and the Earth becomes a Venus like hellscape, the whole planet should be pretty much sterilized. Good luck surviving that.

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  • MehBlah@lemmy.world ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Eventually, no one alive will survive.

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  • Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Lol, OK.

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    • Nay@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      What do you disagree with, though?

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      • crandlecan@mander.xyz ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Humans will perish, as will 90% of life on Earth.

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  • NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I don’t like this shower thought. It puts bad vibes out into the world and I’m not about that right now. Im having a good day for once, lol.

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    • Nay@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I’m sorry. I promise I’m a big picture optimist, if that helps! 😜

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  • Goldholz@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    Yup. That is my consensus. But the thing is: at what cost. At the cost of losing so much life and beauty

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  • Montagge@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    We killed millions of species to make the rich richer, but some humans survived so that’s nice

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  • hypnicjerk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    the vast majority of humans didn’t survive even before anthropogenic climate change

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  • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Maybe I’m naive but I don’t really see the dooms day

    Climate change has some nasty consequences. However, I don’t see it wiping out 5 billion people.

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    • phoenixz@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Yeah, maybe you should look a little harder?

      Wait until crops start dying en masse due to higher temperatures, too many bad insects, too few good insects, no more water.

      Wait until you get your 50 degree celcius Summers, which apparently already started in select countries this year.

      Wait until forest fires become so big that they simply can’t be controlled anymore and start burning down entire cities

      Wait until drinkable water runs out due to us emptying all aquefiers, wells, etc.

      Wait until water, food, etc scarcity due to climate change starts the bigger wars over the scraps that are left

      You won’t have to wait long, we’re working hard on making these features a reality soon.

      I’m not sure what will kill the most people, but I pity those that survive

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      • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        I’m looking for more factual peer reviewed research.

        I haven’t seen anything to suggest that billions will die. That seems very far fetched to me.

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    • SkaveRat@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Take the amount of calories that the world can produce per day. Divide by 1500. You got the upper limit the globe can support in a medium term

      Crops are already failing due to droughts and floods. More and more land is turning into land that is not able to sustain crop growth

      And that’s even completely ignoring a potential even bigger problem of clean water

      Billions will die. Not in 5 or 10 years. But earlier than you’d think

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      • possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        Yeah I just don’t see it

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    • crapwittyname@feddit.uk ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      You are under informed

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    • ChonkyOwlbear@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      A large band around the equator will become unsurvivable. Hundreds of millions of people will flee to cooler climates. Countries will already be straining to provide food and water for their people. This will lead to wars for resources. Nations with nuclear capabilities will fracture and collapse, leaving their weapons in the hands of warlords and despots. Pandemics like COVID will become increasingly more common, not just for humans but for our livestock and crops. I hope you are right, but then again 5 billion might be a conservative estimate.

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      • higgsboson@piefed.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        This will lead to wars for resources.

        Have I got some bad news for you.

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    • P00ptart@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      Bud, it’s just getting started. Wait till the Mississippi is inundated with salt water and flows north depending on the time of day.

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    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      ,maybe if it something sudden like asteroid impact, like 10km wide made of iron, or a supervolcanoe eruption.

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    • Nay@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      I love to see it, and I genuinely hope you’re right!

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  • vane@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    It depends where the hot is coming from. If it’s from inner earth we won’t survive because people can’t survive outside of this planet.

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  • SoftestSapphic@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

    We already heated the world 1.5 degrees in less than 100 years. If we break 3 then that’s probably the end of most macroscopic life on earth.

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    • Allonzee@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

      Nah.

      We think we’re that powerful, but there’s an entire domain of creatures we can barely reach that utilize geothermal energy that will just keep plugging away out of our sphere of influence.

      Surface and shallow water life is and will suffer greatly until we burn ourselves out and are no longer a threat on the scale we currently are, but humans are even egotistical in this topic. We couldn’t come close to sterilizing this world, even if it magically became as important to us as fucking one another over for paper simulacra of supposed value.

      We are a nuisance, but we aren’t the first evolutionary nuisance the earth has dealt with. We have no mastery over this world as much as many like to believe so. A nuclear detonation possesses a tiny fraction of the power of a volcanic eruption.

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  • z3rOR0ne@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    I know I’m a misanthrope because I don’t find any silver lining in this truth.

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    • Nay@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      This quote really stuck with me. It’s where I see the silver lining:

      “Blessed are those who plant trees under whose shade they will never sit.”

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  • njm1314@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    Humanity might, but human society and civilization won’t. So what’s the point even?

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    • Nay@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

      It was a shower thought?

      It just hit me in a sobering kinda way.

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      • njm1314@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

        No you misunderstand, I’m not saying the thought has no point. I’m saying what’s the point of saying we survive if civilization and Society doesn’t. As Humanity really survived at that point.

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  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago

    depends if you leaving on a seabord, which most people are. maybe tibetians in the tibetian plataeu.

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