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Global Catastrophe, Even Human Extinction, Isn't All That Unlikely (theatlantic.com)
HughPickens.com writes: Robinson Meyer writes in The Atlantic that in its annual report on "global catastrophic risk," the Global Challenges Foundation estimates the risk of human extinction due to climate change -- or an accidental nuclear war at 0.1 percent every year. That may sound low, but when extrapolated to century-scale it comes to a 9.5 percent chance of human extinction within the next hundred years. The report holds catastrophic climate change and nuclear war far above other potential causes, and for good reason citing multiple occasions when the world stood on the brink of atomic annihilation. While most of these occurred during the Cold War, another took place during the 1990s, the most peaceful decade in recent memory. The closest may have been on September 26, 1983, when a bug in the U.S.S.R. early-warning system reported that five NATO nuclear missiles had been launched and were bound for Russian targets. The officer watching the system, Stanislav Petrov, had also designed the system, and he decided that any real NATO first-strike would involve hundreds of I.C.B.M.s. Therefore, he resolved the computers must be malfunctioning. He did not fire a response.
Climate change also poses its own risks. [PDF] According to Meyer, serious veterans of climate science now suggest that global warming will spawn continent-sized superstorms by the end of the century. Sebastian Farquhar says that even more conservative estimates can be alarming: UN-approved climate models estimate that the risk of six to ten degrees Celsius of warming exceeds 3 percent, even if the world tamps down carbon emissions at a fast pace... Any year, there's always some chance of a super-volcano erupting or an asteroid careening into the planet. Both would of course devastate the areas around ground zero -- but they would also kick up dust into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight and sending global temperatures plunging.
Natural pandemics may pose the most serious risks of all. In fact, in the past two millennia, the only two events that experts can certify as global catastrophes of this scale were plagues. The Black Death of the 1340s felled more than 10 percent of the world population. Another epidemic of the Yersinia pestis bacterium -- the "Great Plague of Justinian" in 541 and 542 -- killed between 25 and 33 million people, or between 13 and 17 percent of the global population at that time. The report briefly explores other possible risks: a genetically engineered pandemic, geo-engineering gone awry, an all-seeing artificial intelligence. "We do not expect these risks to materialize tomorrow, or even this year, but we should not ignore them," says Farquhar. "Although many risks are addressed by specific groups, we need to build a community around global catastrophic risk. Cooperation is the only way for global leaders to manage the risks that threaten humanity."
Climate change also poses its own risks. [PDF] According to Meyer, serious veterans of climate science now suggest that global warming will spawn continent-sized superstorms by the end of the century. Sebastian Farquhar says that even more conservative estimates can be alarming: UN-approved climate models estimate that the risk of six to ten degrees Celsius of warming exceeds 3 percent, even if the world tamps down carbon emissions at a fast pace... Any year, there's always some chance of a super-volcano erupting or an asteroid careening into the planet. Both would of course devastate the areas around ground zero -- but they would also kick up dust into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight and sending global temperatures plunging.
Natural pandemics may pose the most serious risks of all. In fact, in the past two millennia, the only two events that experts can certify as global catastrophes of this scale were plagues. The Black Death of the 1340s felled more than 10 percent of the world population. Another epidemic of the Yersinia pestis bacterium -- the "Great Plague of Justinian" in 541 and 542 -- killed between 25 and 33 million people, or between 13 and 17 percent of the global population at that time. The report briefly explores other possible risks: a genetically engineered pandemic, geo-engineering gone awry, an all-seeing artificial intelligence. "We do not expect these risks to materialize tomorrow, or even this year, but we should not ignore them," says Farquhar. "Although many risks are addressed by specific groups, we need to build a community around global catastrophic risk. Cooperation is the only way for global leaders to manage the risks that threaten humanity."
There were many close calls during the cold war, roughly 10 to 20 serious ones, depending on how you score them.
I suspect we are still here out of a kind of anthropic principle luck: if those close calls triggered WW3, the vast majority of us wouldn't be here pondering our good luck. Dead people don't ponder.
Table-ized A.I.
I have heard either indirectly or from the horse's mouth about all kinds of close calls. Birds appearing like a hailstorm of missiles, errors, flights off course, etc.
Then there are the scarier stories about Stalin in his last days 100% sure that the US was going to order a first strike, and thus he should beat them to the punch. I would also not be surprised if some US military advisors over the years thought that a US first strike would somehow have been a good idea. Assuming this to be true, how few people did they have to convince to make it so?
Then we have the classics like the Cuban missile crisis.
Importantly many military analysts have pointed out that if the NATO and the Soviets had ever started to go toe to toe in some actual conflict, such as NATO stepping in for Hungary that it would have resulted in one side or the other beginning to lose, this might have escalated to local tactical battlefield nukes, which might have escalated to strategic nukes.
With Kent Brockman
Because of modern sanitation, and the understanding of how to deal with quarantine, the chances of a catastrophic pandemic are really low. For comparison, think how we've eliminated malaria from most places, without actually curing it.
In fact, most of these scenarios are more of the type, "imagine the worst thing that could happen" instead of rationally estimating the probabilities.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
All Intelligent life is doomed, not just humans.
Given the size and age of the galaxy, there should be intelligent life on many planets and it should have been there for a very long time. Long enough that we should have detected evidence of it. But that hasn't happened. Unless estimates of the age, size, or number of planets in the Milky Way are vastly overstated, and no new knowledge suggests anything of the kind, then there really is one other likely cause: Advanced intelligent civilizations don't last for millions of years.
If it was possible, then it would have happened, and it hasn't.
Which really isn't all that surprising. The last few thousand years have been an exponential orgy of consumption. Not just fossil fuels, but phosphate deposits for fertilizers, reachable metal ores, ocean fish stocks, forest products, etc. It's all going to run out, and then what? And what happens if any disaster, including the inevitable and unavoidable ones like a meteor impact or super-volcanism, sets our technology back even a few hundred years? How do you frack for oil with 1700s technology? How do you build a nuclear reactor with no copper? How do you made food production efficient enough that everyone isn't dedicated to it without phosphates?
Human technological advancement was a one time deal. Once it's stops, that's it for this planet, never again.
a mere 15 million years ago CO2 levels were 4 times higher, average temperature was several degrees warmer, and seas were 200 feet higher.
200 foot sea level rise (your words, not mine) would probably count as a global catastrophe.
I'm not sure the extinction of the human race would be a catastrophe for the rest of the earth ecosystem.
The summary is misleading. No article mentions extinctions due to climate change. A huge temperature change would cause migration towards the poles, and may cut food supply and kill some people, but not all.
The article that mentions the 10% figure (The Atlantic article) says that a pandemic is the most likely to cause extinction, eg. the 521AD plague killed 13 to 17% of the world's population. But that didn't make it into the sensational summary.
And this is the problem with climate change. How can we take this very serious issue to heart when you get garbage like this predicting global extinction and the end of the human race.
Humans are the most resilient species in the world. We live in Siberia. We live in the Sahara. The notion that we'll go extinct due to climate change is laughable. Unless "extinct" in this context means a few hundred million displaced simply because they want to keep the lifestyle they are accustomed to (i.e. move because of weather, move because their water front property is now an under water property etc).
I rate the chance of human extinction this century at zero percent. 9% chance of humans being greatly impacted due to their own activity is believable, but that doesn't make for a very exciting headline.
Welcome to the apocalypse Mr. Squidward. I hope you like leather.
I think the estimate is MUCH too low for two reasons:
One, artificial pandemics are ignored. Just because we haven't had one yet is NOT evidence. At this point, a well funded research lab could probably create a doomsday virus or fungi, and as genetic technologies continue to advance, the threat will soon be within the economic capabilities of individual madmen. Unfortunately, we've never had a sufficient shortage of madmen.
Two, the Fermi Paradox. Any intelligent and long-lived (on the order of 100,000 years) species could (with our own pitiful level of technology) create a radio beacon that would have spanned the entire Milky Way Galaxy by now. Either they want to want to be quiet (and presumably have good reason) or no technological society lasts that long.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Do the math.
It rose over 300 feet at the end of the last ice age, humanity thrived. Sucks if you own beachfront property but not a problem for most of humanity, let alone an extinction level event. Ignorance of natural history is required to believe this scaremongering.
Guess, you live on a hilltop, but many people live in cities on the shore. 300 feet over the current levels will make those people lose their property at least.
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
Somehow this post misses the point. Yes, the species Homo sapiens sapiens L. can survive in an environment with 4 times the CO2 levels. No problem with that. What won't survive is the civilisation we built ourselves that eases the survival, and that allows us to be 7 billions and counting. No other animal of more than 10 pound body weight has 7 billion specimens out there with the possible exception of animals we grow for ourselves. What global warming means are large migratory movements of people fleeing higher sea levels and deserts that change their size and location. What global warming means is new distribution fights for ressources. Even small, local climate changes by moving trade wind patterns caused civilisations to collapse, accompagnied by war, pandemics and devastation of large regions. With today's technology and the fast moving climate change globally, we face a global war, and we still have overkill capacity -- even if we don't use the nuclear arsenal.
Two, the Fermi Paradox. Any intelligent and long-lived (on the order of 100,000 years) species could (with our own pitiful level of technology) create a radio beacon that would have spanned the entire Milky Way Galaxy by now. Either they want to want to be quiet (and presumably have good reason) or no technological society lasts that long.
The birth rate of practically every industrialized nation is below the replacement rate. At the current rate practically all of the world will become industrialized in a few hundred years at which point the earth's population will stabilize or even start declining. The idea that advanced civilizations are destined to spread through a galaxy like locust if they just survive long enough, seems rather silly to me.
Yes, a nice example is to look at a hi-resolution photo of Earth from space. Much of humanity lives along coastlines and rivers, especially where a river meets the sea, as you get ocean access and river access to both global and inland trade, along with fresh water and a convenient way to get rid of waste.
/CDSServlet?status=ND0xODc3JjY9ZW4mMzM9KiYzNz1rb3M~
Civilization settled where trade was convenient, with few exceptions. Before flight, water was the best, fastest way to trade. Once we mastered the sea, and were no longer confined to rivers and coastlines, civilization flourished with increasing speed. A few centuries back
According to Harvard University,* in this era: " More than 2 billion people, an estimated 37 percent of the world's population, live within 60 miles of the coast and would be affected, directly or indirectly, by incursions of the sea."
If we increase that to about 93 miles,** then the number jumps to approximately 44 percent.
The Harvard article is talking about a 3 to 5 foot increase in sea levels wiping out much of the coastal infrastructure worldwide, as much of it is built on flood plains frequently no more than 3 feet or so above sea level.
I would think it a safe bet that a 300 foot rise in sea level would affect a great many more, likely much more than 50 percent.
*Harvard:
http://environment.harvard.edu/node/3272
http://www.oceansatlas.org/servlet
**UN atlas of the oceans:
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
when extrapolated to century-scale it comes to a 9.5 percent chance of human extinction within the next hundred years.
This assumes that every year will be the same as the year before, with some random chance of the disasters happening. But the world and progress doesn't work like that.
Things change
So the factors that give rise to a 0.1% chance today will be subtley different next year, and the next and in 50 years time will have altered drastically. Just like the risk factors today are much different from those of 1966, when climate disasters weren't even a consideration. We are all probably worrying about the wrong things.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Donald will sell you the 3rd digit of the launch codes for $1B. But he built a wall around the 4th digit, so you can't get it.
Learn to love Alaska
The maths says that a 0.1% risk of annihilation is a 99.9% "risk" of survival. So to get to 1,000 years in the future needs 1000 consecutive years of non-annihilation, i.e. 0.999 raised to the 1000th power. That comes to about 36% chance. While not a certainty, it's a lot better than zero.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
Beachfront property, right.
Holland would be wiped off the map. The highest point anywhere in Denmark is around 400 feet above sea level, so that country would be effectively washed away as well. Do you have any idea how much land would be covered by water (SALT water at that) if the oceans rose 200-300 feet?
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
Given our level of tech, an extinction event isn't. The meteor that took out the dinosaurs wouldn't kill us. It would make life hard for a while, but we'd live. It'd take something like an asteroid the size of Mars hitting the moon to cause an event that could lead to the extinction of man, and even then, a few weeks warning is all it'd take for millions to survive.
Learn to love Alaska
I agree with you. A 200 foot sea level rise would destroy a tremendous amount of valuable real estate, but it would realistically happen slowly enough that societies with the physical wealth and competent financial and government institutions would have plenty of time to move their cities inland.
Societies that don't have their shit together would take lots of casualties from flooding and near collapse from missing arable land and lost productive assets. But yeah, it's not the doom of man.
The reason to try to control CO2 levels is actually simply because all those coastal cities represent centuries of accumulated wealth. Far more money would be lost from that than we save by using fossil fuels instead of nuclear or solar or wind. (especially since fossil fuels also cause localized pollution and require expensive efforts to obtain and are finite, while nuclear/solar/wind is not finite on anything but the longest imaginable timescales)
That wouldn't kill everyone, though. You _could_ build new cities farther inland. If you were a real go-getter society, you could manufacture the new buildings using modular methods in a factory instead of making each one a custom job, with the help of robots. You could build the new city designed from the start to be efficient, like constructing every building as a 50 story mixed use "arcology", linked together by sky bridges for more layers of connectivity than just streets. You could negate the arable land loss by growing your primary food via genetically engineered algae in compact, hyper productive algae grow rooms instead of needing countless square miles of farmland.
Some societies won't have their shit together, and they will drown. The universe doesn't owe us anything.
There were also no humans on earth...
"200 foot sea level rise (your words, not mine) would probably count as a global catastrophe."
You should learn the difference between "global" and "coastal."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
200 foot sea level rise (your words, not mine) would probably count as a global catastrophe.
But would everyone die?
when extrapolated to century-scale it comes to a 9.5 percent chance of human extinction within the next hundred years.
The author doesn't understand statistics enough to extrapolate fud coming out of the Global Challenges Foundation.
If "extinction" is the level of catastrophe we're looking at, then most of these events won't meet that high a bar.
I mean, even after a major asteroid impact or even all out nuclear war there are going to be some survivors; maybe in unlikely places (nuclear submarines*, the ISS, Iceland, Antarctica). Likewise, almost every "natural" pathogen will leave resistant survivors even if there is no vaccine or cure. As long as enough are left to breed they could restart humankind (but perhaps at a very reduced level of technology/civilization). Whether or not they would ever be able to recover to our current state due to exhaustion of most easily exploited resources is another question but forever is a long time. If there are a sufficient number of survivors and IF there is a repository of knowledge that has survived (archived wikipedia perhaps?) it is probable that decades or centuries of technological development can be skipped (like going directly from wood burning furnaces to photovoltaics or wind power).
However, if there is an Intelligent enemy that is pursuing us, then our chances are much lower. A sentient A.I. that wanted to wipe out humanity could track down and eliminate those in shelter or get them when they come back out of hiding. I guess the long-living product of an intelligent enemy (like mindless "grey-goo" nanobots) could do the same thing by continuously and systematically breaking down the biosphere (and anything that re-enters it from space, the deep ocean or the polar regions). Then, unless we've recreated another biosphere somewhere else (is that why you're going to Mars, Elon Musk?) we're all dead. Of course, WE are our own intelligent enemy and a deliberate attempt to wipe ourselves out (super weapons, resilient viruses) or even big "oops!" ("gene-drive", mini-black holes, large asteroid mining near earth gone wrong), might readily succeed.
We have met the enemy and it is us.
*Okay I know that the crews of nuclear submarine are (nearly?) all men. But if there are any women left at least they'll have a good gene pool to dip from!
It's puzzling that people think that aspect would be a catastrophe. We're not trees. We can, you know, move. I've mentioned this before and they go on to tell me that it is expensive. Yeah? It's not like we have a choice in the matter and it's going to happen no matter how much shit we stuff in the air. No, really, it's going to happen and there's nothing we can do to stop it. All we can do is slow it down.
No, don't misinterpret that as me saying things I did not say. No, I don't think we should spew crap into the atmosphere at the rates we do and I've taken many steps to reduce my own emissions. It's just not a huge catastrophe if we accept that it's going to happen and start making preparations to move people as the water levels rise.
All these people running around like they're doing something meaningful would actually be doing something meaningful if they'd sponsor the moves for a few people at a time off some of the Pacific Ocean islands that only rise to a few feet above current levels. Yeah, it's great that they spent an extra twenty cents buying green power this month but they could just keep their old beater car and help some of them move.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Aren't the launch codes 00000000 anyway?
Oh wait, they have probably been changed to 12345678 since then.
This. The sea level isn't going to up 300 feet overnight. Even if the most ridiculous of climate models it will take 100s of years for the sea level to rise 10s of feet. Most of the major cities along the coast line literally did not exist 500 years ago, and until the last 100 years didn't even have tall buildings. The flatiron building was the crown jewel of the Manhattan skyline 100 years ago. All of the rest was built in less than a century, and with much less technology than we have today. There will be plenty of time to move. The human species is remarkably adaptable. The idea that any climate change can wipe out a large portion of the human population is ignorant of the history of life and humanity on the planet.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Yes, but the sea level isn't just going to rise 200-300 feet. It's also going to get warmer... The landmass that gets covered by water will be offset by huge tracts of Russia, Canada, Alaska, Greenland, and maybe even Antarctica that will become warm enough to be populated.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Yes, but no one is proposing restricting the collection of wealth on the coasts. Rather the opposite is generally true. For some reason the intent is to carbon tax people living at high elevation in Alaska who would benefit from climate change so that rich people can keep building beach houses in Miami. I agree we have already invested a lot in the coasts, but how long do we keep throwing money into a city that is losing to the sea. New Orleans is a good example of a city that probably should be considered for abandoning the next time it floods.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
...which of 3 possibilities this article represents:
1) an attempt to spread fud to advance some agenda
2) an attempt to "strawman" fud by conflating actual real things with uncontrollables (like an asteroid strike) to advance some agenda
Or
3) just some bloviating "experts" repeating what we mostly already knew to garner attention
The odds that it's simply a well intentioned genuine warning are too small to realistically consider.
-Styopa
a mere 15 million years ago CO2 levels were 4 times higher, average temperature was several degrees warmer, and seas were 200 feet higher.
The earth was an unihabitable wasteland!
no, wait, it was lusher and more fecund than now.
It's a reasonable hypothesis that returning the CO2 levels to their prehistoric norms could raise temperatures back to the previous levels. That it would cause extinction level events for humanity is ridiculous chicken little bullshit.
People should look on the bright side.
In only a very short time in geological climate terms humans may well have gained the ability to accurately compute and predict the global climate related effects of human civilization on a planet-sized massively-chaotic system.
True, for now we humans only posses a tiny fraction of the knowledge of all the variables necessary to measure and account for as well as only a tiny fraction of the computing power that's necessary to create a model that even tracks past, known patterns accurately never mind multiple decades or centuries ahead, but there's hope for the future
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
One way or another we WILL go extinct. The universe is not eternal and be it heat death or something else at some point it will be unviable for biological being. Heck The sun will rise in luminosity and in a few hundred million year earth will be not viable anymore. Then meteor strike utterly killed dinosaurus. You think that could not happen to us if a manatan sized bollide collide with earth ? And illness evolve with time, and some of our way to fight them get obsolete. So yeah, we WILL all die sooner or later and humanity will go extinct. Now whether climate could do it is a question of assessement. if we go on like that not caring about CO2 , at some point in a few hundreds year it could be that climate become so chaotic due to the added heat, that our infrastrructure become unmaintanable. So that's back for us to low maintenance stuff. And then that is the point where high tech can be simply too costly to maintain, and that disaster CAN strike. If we can't maintain biological research and basteria/virus evolve, and they will continue unless you disbelieve evolution in addition to climate4 change, THEN disaster can strike.
If you think our tech advance can go and solve everything and we cannot fallback to lower tech , then that is fiction. Climate change could very well bring us to the brink of stress to tech and infrastructure, and somehting else make us go ovber the brink.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Don't forget the biggest threat to civilisation; Islam. They live in the dark ages and want to force everyone else to do the same.
That, and democracies and other "run by the citizens" societies last until the "citizens" realize they can vote themselves stuff from the government coffers.
A point at which almost every successful civilization / nation state on the planet has already reached.
Look, we are going outside of the borders of recorded climate. That means nobody knows what is actually going to happen. That alone should scare the living fuck out of everyone, because of the very regularity of the cycle we are perturbing. Since CO2 levels haven't been this high since the last mass extinction, we have little to no idea what to expect. Nobody knows if the methane clathrate gun is a real possibility or not. We have simply literally never seen the climate in this condition while there have been humans on this mudball, and that means we don't know what is going to happen. Maybe the system will self-regulate and fix itself. Or maybe we've unbalanced it sufficiently that we're going to have unprecedented weather that really will more or less end us.
In addition, the probability of a comet or other large impactor striking the planet is non-zero, but we don't know what the risk actually is.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
poor planning on their part does not a catastrophe for me make. Those cities have probably contributed a great deal more even on a per capita bases to the global CO2 levels than the folks on the hill tops have.
Nature is amoral, its a complex system of rules and feedback. Sometimes you win sometimes you lose.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
We know for a fact that over 99.99% of species that have evolved on the Earth have become extinct, regardless of mechanism.
Thinking that our species is exempt is pure hubris.
a mere 15 million years ago CO2 levels were 4 times higher, average temperature was several degrees warmer, and seas were 200 feet higher.
200 foot sea level rise (your words, not mine) would probably count as a global catastrophe.
It absolutely would count as a global catastrophe if it happened quickly.
But that has *nothing* to do with human life being wiped out. It just means the coastlines get redrawn and a bunch of people's really nice beachfront property ceases to exist.
Warming alarmists need to get a grip: it's not going to wipe out life on earth.
Do you have ESP?
It's puzzling that people think that aspect would be a catastrophe. We're not trees. We can, you know, move.
Do you know where your food comes from? Better think hard about how easy it is to "move".
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When has human extinction ever seemed unlikely? It wouldn't take much more than what causes other species to go extinct. Climate change, over consumption of resources, or a major disruption in our source of food. We can even add something no animal is capable of doing to itself: nuclear holocaust. We're not as wonderful as we think we are sometimes.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Not that long ago all of Slashdot thought we were just a simulation.
So the real God is some dateless geek, jacked up on Mountain Dew, sitting in a dark room..in the previous simulation.
It's dateless Geeks...all the way down.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Has anyone come up with a reasonable idea of what the optimum temperature should be?
used to have vineyards in england, settlements on greenlands coast.
Food? generally from nowhere near a coastal plain.
Better think hard about how easy it is to "move".
Oh, it would be hard and expensive, still not a major catastrophe...
Or are you seriously suggesting that given the choice of drowning or spending money in moving we as a civilization will choose to drown?
Humans have colonized every habitat on the planet that supports any kind of population of animals, and to a large degree we did this before we had science and engineering. If anything survives, it'll be us and the cockroaches. Therefore I set the chance that humans as an entire species will disappear at zero.
Having known and met many prominent environmentalist thinkers, by in large the threat of the extinction of the entire human species doesn't occupy a lot of their thought. To the degree that they're concerned with human extinction, it's of localized populations.
These are the kinds of things they worry about:
(a) Loss of things that can only be replaced on an evolutionary timescale, like the passenger pigeon.
(b) Degradation of productive biological systems, like the Aral Sea.
(c) Exposure of vulnerable human populations to environmental costs that have been externalized by business, e.g. Bangladeshis to sea level rise or Appalachians to coal tailing dam failures.
(d) Political destabilization due to the creation of environmental refugees (e.g., Syria/ISIS).
As one well-known environmentalist put it to me, "We need to stop living off our ecological capital and start living within our ecological means." In other words rather than liquidating the last two cod in the sea, you need to live in equilibrium with the ocean's ability to generate cod, and manage the resource so that you don't damage that (e.g. limiting the damage to the base of the food chain caused by dragging nets across the sea floor).
If cod disappears, if topsoil disappears, if we develop pesticide-resistant crop pests, if breadbasket regions fail to produce, we won't see the extinction of the entire human race. We'll see localized extinctions. Fishing towns disappear; farm communities age as youth abandon them and move to cities looking for work. In all of these scenarios, some people end up doing well. But even in a global disaster that manages to disrupt our entire civilization (unlikely, but much more likely than total human extinction), there will be places where a few of us will be able to prosper.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
A bunch of peoples really nice coastal cities would also probably cease to exist. But we're not looking at 200 foot sea level rise. Even still, New York was 60 billion in the hole after Sandy. Even a few feet of sea level rise would make the average storm surge rather expensive.
We tend to over-estimate how much damage so called extinction level events do - and underestimate how effective intelligence is in countering it.
My favorite example of this irrational fear is the grey goo of "nanite level von neumann machines taking over the world". Besides the fact that we already have a green goo (organic life) that did that and is far more advanced than the grey goo - the main limitation is POWER. The Green Goo did it mainly on solar power, transmitted to the more powerful green goo monsters via 'eating plants'. Nanites would be very unlikely to be able to compete with the green goo.
Basically, we are the most fearsome monster on this planet and nothing we have ever dreamed of comes close to being anywhere near as terrifying as ourselves.
Real total extinction requires astronomical level of death so it most likely means an astronomical cause. Asteroid/comet impact, gamma ray burster, etc. Those are all far less than 0.1% - more like 0.00000000001% per year.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Yes, a nice example is to look at a hi-resolution photo of Earth from space. Much of humanity lives along coastlines and rivers, especially where a river meets the sea, as you get ocean access and river access to both global and inland trade, along with fresh water and a convenient way to get rid of waste.
Civilization settled where trade was convenient, with few exceptions. Before flight, water was the best, fastest way to trade. Once we mastered the sea, and were no longer confined to rivers and coastlines, civilization flourished with increasing speed. A few centuries back
According to Harvard University,* in this era: " More than 2 billion people, an estimated 37 percent of the world's population, live within 60 miles of the coast and would be affected, directly or indirectly, by incursions of the sea."
If we increase that to about 93 miles,** then the number jumps to approximately 44 percent.
The Harvard article is talking about a 3 to 5 foot increase in sea levels wiping out much of the coastal infrastructure worldwide, as much of it is built on flood plains frequently no more than 3 feet or so above sea level.
I would think it a safe bet that a 300 foot rise in sea level would affect a great many more, likely much more than 50 percent.
*Harvard:
http://environment.harvard.edu...
http://www.oceansatlas.org/ser...
**UN atlas of the oceans: /CDSServlet?status=ND0xODc3JjY9ZW4mMzM9KiYzNz1rb3M~
I thought the discussion was about Global Catastrophe like Human Extinction? How does a Economical Catastrophe like sea rising fall into one of those? It's not like sea will rise 50 meter overnight.
Elok
It rose over 300 feet at the end of the last ice age, ... Sucks if you own beachfront property but not a problem for most of humanity,
New York city is beach front property. Miami is beach front property. How much of humanity lives near the coast? - https://coastalchallenges.com/...
As I said, not an extinction event, but global catastrophe? Could be.
A bunch of peoples really nice coastal cities would also probably cease to exist. But we're not looking at 200 foot sea level rise. Even still, New York was 60 billion in the hole after Sandy. Even a few feet of sea level rise would make the average storm surge rather expensive.
I agree. But "average storm surge rather expensive" and "human life wiped out" aren't the same thing.
Do you have ESP?
I've mentioned this before and they go on to tell me that it is expensive. Yeah? It's not like we have a choice in the matter and it's going to happen no matter how much shit we stuff in the air. No, really, it's going to happen and there's nothing we can do to stop it. All we can do is slow it down.
Sea level was dropping a few hundred years back. It seems to have abruptly reversed course shortly after the start of the industrial revolution: http://www.realclimate.org/ima...
Why do you think we are powerless?
...give this Stanislav Petrov a medal!
"Trump!!", the new Godwin.
Or are you seriously suggesting that given the choice of drowning or spending money in moving we as a civilization will choose to drown?
Who is this 'we'?
I think the elite will choose for you and I to drown, if they can arrange it. If the land area is reduced, the carrying capacity will be reduced.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Multiplying probabilities together works for events that you may reasonably assume to be mostly statistically independent, like asteroid impacts. It doesn't work for events like climate change or even "accidental" nuclear war. Of course, the probability estimates they are using are themselves bogus. The probability of human extinction due to climate change is zero. Climate change may destroy the property values of wealthy owners of beachfront bungalows and NYC sky scrapers, but that's not exactly a threat to humanity. The probability of human extinction from disease are also essentially zero. The probability of human extinction from nuclear war, accidental or otherwise, is likely to be zero as well. Such events may destroy advanced technological civilization, but they won't lead to the extinction of h. sapiens. So, indeed, if you pull bad probability estimates out of your ass and then combine them in a statistically incorrect way, you get scary sounding numbers.
The known events that could cause human extinctions are large impacts, supervolcanoes, and gamma ray bursts. Fortunately, they are rare, otherwise we wouldn't be around. And the only way humanity could survive them would be to accelerate technological development so that we can, in fact, survive on a hostile planet (either our own after a catastrophe or elsewhere in the solar system).
If there was a 90% reduction in human life on the planet it would make HUGE changes for the better.
I have always laughed at people that say, "we are killing the planet!" no the planet is doing great! the only way we could kill the planet is to drill very deep wells and drop and detonate every nuclear weapon we have at the same time very close to the magma so we set up pressure waves that shatter the planet, but even then it would just coalesce into a molten ball and start over again.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If that were true that life would be better in an ice age. If that was true then population levels would have risen when temperatures dropped and population levels would have fallen when temperatures raised. Right? .... Ooops. That's not the way things worked out.
Periods of plague and starvation coincide with falling temperatures and boom times with rising temperatures.
If you're scared of your govt then you need to further restrict its powers
Vote 3rd Party in 2016 and beyond
The end of all these type of articles always is a recommendation for more power and control by a centralized global state or NGO. No mention of the solution which actually would work,which is decentralization and resilience.
Global Population Reduction: Confronting the Inevitable
Not a mention of the most recent one, the 1918 flu pandemic.?
not even 100 years ago.
"The 1918 flu pandemic (January 1918 â" December 1920) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus.[1] It infected 500 million people across the world,[2] including remote Pacific islands and the Arctic, and resulted in the deaths of 50 to 100 million (three to five percent of the world's population[3]), making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history"
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
There won't be much in the way of soil in those newly populated areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
TFA certainly doesn't say. Which suggests it's not even a SWAG (Scientific Wild Ass Guess), but an old-fashioned WAG (Wild Ass Guess).
So, some group wants some publicity, and they make a Pronouncement! Which is dutifully published by some idiot with pagecount to fill.
And now we're wasting time nattering about it....
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
It's simple. Anyone, anywhere - including those people in Alaska - who decides to burn fossil fuels is causing damage to OTHER PEOPLE's property. Not a whole lot of damage per barrel of fuel, but cumulative it's trillions. They call this a negative externality.
So the government has to make this right (can't be done any other way), and the most straightforward way to do so is to put a tax on burning fossil fuels so that the price per unit of fuel includes the economic value of the damage done to other people. This is fair and just. A worldwide agreement of course has to be reached between governments.
If this makes fuel in Alaska too expensive, then those people need to move somewhere warmer, if they are not able to earn enough money to pay for more expensive fuel. (or conserve fuel by rebuilding their dwellings to be super-insulated and use ground source heat pumps for heating)
More expensive fuel means people have an incentive to to pay for cleaner power or to conserve less fuel by investing in more efficient equipment and better insulation.
Any competent Geologist could show you that we're STILL in an Ice Age, and merely between Continental Glacial Advances.
precisely 0 extinction events
Neanderthal were a species of human.
If there was a large rise in sea level over night it would probably devastate a lot more than that but we are talking over thousands of years...
There is indeed the unknown factor of whether there is something to human nature in the decision-making process that causes the final decision-maker in the chain to be hesitant.
One could argue there is something to human nature that makes most hesitant under such circumstances.
However, my observation of humanity is that each person varies widely, and that different people will react differently. While I agree it's not unreasonable that the majority could be hesitant, it would take a hesitancy rate of about 90% or higher to keep those 15 or so close calls from not likely causing ww3.
There is no definitive study on the issue such that it's opinion either way, but I truly doubt the hesitancy rate is close to 90%. There's just too many aggressive type-A alpha-male types out there in the military command chains.
Look what George W. did to Iraq on flimsy evidence. There's not shortage stupid gamblers in charge, including those in Congress who authorized it.
What if W were in the place of JFK during the Cuban crisis when the generals were urging him to "use it or lose it, you won't get a second chance if they launch first" (paraphrased)?
Table-ized A.I.
Really, so there is a 1 in a thousand chance of humanity exterminating itself next year? Like same chance I might roll a 00 to hit and then roll 10 damage? We face real problems, but I think the assumptions behind these numbers should be examined.
That would decimate the economy in almost every major country as major cities are flooded and disheveled. That would be a bit more than a minor inconvenience to rich beach property owners. A 200 or 300 ft rise is also not gonna happen anytime soon, fortunately.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
"...the Global Challenges Foundation estimates the risk of human extinction... at 0.1 percent every year. That may sound low, but when extrapolated to century-scale it comes to a 9.5 percent chance of human extinction within the next hundred years."
So if we extrapolate out to 1000 years then? what 95% chance? or if we go to 2000 years then 190% chance of extinction? Man we're done for. This is big news!!
!sigh!
I wish statistics were not so blatantly abused.
Nature is a complex feedback system, yet you think a large change in its operational parameters won't affect you. Nature is amoral, yet you think a disaster unleashed by other people's poor planning will only strike city folk who "deserve" it (that is, not you).
You're a sociopath and an idiot. Congratulations.
Oh, and you're also wrong: cities are more efficient - use less resources per capita - at taking care of their residents than countryside is. It's efficiencies of scale at work.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
It would indeed be a strange irony if global warming saved us from a nuclear winter by counter-acting it.
However, I'd hate to be around the right-wingers afterwards: "I told you not to worry about global warming; God knows what he's doing."
I think I'd rather perish than listen to that gloating. Their dumb luck would make them even crazier.
Table-ized A.I.
The UN recently raised the maximum population to 12 billion and gave an 80% chance that human population had no maximum.
In 1972, the limits to growth was published and it listed various limits humans might hit to their growth. It's computer models made some interesting predictions... like CO2 being above 380ppm by now which have proven to be correct.
For example, we might outgrow the food supply, we might pollute ourselves to death, we might run out of industrial metals, etc.
We've done okay with the food supply and pollution but the result is a much higher than projected population. And that is driving us faster towards the limits of industrial metals, ferilizers, and pesticides.
We used more of many industrial metals in 2014 than we did from 1900 to 2000 combined.
For one example, when chromium becomes insufficient for demand, then you have no stainless steel.
The big takeaway is that
a) It's too late to do anything to fix things now (that should have been done back in 1990).
b) An overshoot is the most likely scenario.
c) After the overshoot, the carrying capacity of the earth will be billions lower and have much less industrial potential.
d) Thru recycling we can only get a little bit further because recycling is never 100%.
It's really a "kiss your ass goodbye" situation. It's likely to hit when current children hit middle age (but maybe sooner).
It's an exponential growth problem. If it takes 29 days for algae to cover half a pond, how long before algae covers the entire pond? It's not 58 days... it's 30 days. So by the time you see the problem, it's going to be way too late.
And it won't be a 'fast' disaster either. It'll grind out over a decade with rising prices. By the time things fall over, you won't be able to easily move from where you are geographically.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
That's what we used to call little Wiggy. Ludwig Wittgenstein.
I think it takes a lot more than just intelligence to do "big things" (for good or ill).
As is usual (also for good or ill) in these kinds of discussions, let's look at our own meager little sample (Earth).
We may or may not be the only intelligent life in this planet's history. Look at other life today and you at least have to accept there are degrees of intelligence. But maybe you're still not all that impressed with dolphins and ravens. Ok. But imagine we had a magic spell (or a genetic alteration) that made their brains bigger. Say you had dolphins or ravens ten times (a hundred times?) as smart as what we have today. Surely they'd be intelligent life, no?
But it still wouldn't be enough. I don't care how smart a dolphin is: it's not going to build a radio or a coal-burning plant or (especially) a spaceship. Or really anything interesting. For all the things we look for in SETI, super-genius-dolphins would remain invisible. Nor will it build a uranium centrifuge, so it's off the hook for self-inflicted doomsday too. It can't do the job.
Even the smartest engineer needs someone with better-than-flippers to build their stuff, storing food surpluses is easier with dry storage (and if you can't buffer food, you'll never have any serious industry), and so on. It's also "too hard" to accomplish certain things if you're physically too small/weak; can you imagine any way a super-genius raven would forge iron? (Ok, fair enough: maybe I'm not smart enough! ;-)
A lot of what-it-takes to build stuff seems to be derived from basic properties of universal reality, where you can't simply think your way out: your body and adapted environment matter a lot. Whatever galaxy you're in, you've got problems and even if you're smart, you might not be able to solve them.
It gets worse (if you're talking about SETI; or better if you're talking about avoiding self-inflicted doomsday). Our ancestors a million years ago weren't that much dumber than us. They should have had what it takes, but nevertheless didn't accomplish much. In fact, when it comes down to getting shit done, we didn't do it even ten thousand years ago, and those people were just like us. Here on our super-convenient Earth where conditions to either kill ourselves or take-over-the-universe seem damn-near ideal, we simply didn't do much until ridiculously recently. That's within an approx two billion year history of life (a significant fraction of the universe's age), and within about 5 million years of hominids, and about a million years of people-about-as-smart-as-us.
So much time.
So much not-building-nukes (or spaceships or Internet or vaccines or ...).
Biologically, they were up to the task. They would qualify as intelligent life no matter how absurdly narrow you define "intelligent" and yet they were still "safe" from the dangers (and advantages) of most technological progress. For nearly all of our species' history, our tech advanced so slowly it was indistinguishable from a standstill. It still wasn't enough, and I'm talking about homo-fucking-sapiens!!
It took some other accident of history (the right grass seed mutation? YOUR HYPOTHESIS HERE), and not that long ago within the ridiculously vast span of history, for our intelligence to become effective engineer intelligence. And even then, most societies weren't on track to discover fission.
There's no reason that tech progress had to be that slow. Oh, there are reasons that it was that slow! In fact, those reasons dominated almost all of history. Even when science advanced, it almost did so begrudgingly. Then something something really weird and "special" happened a blink-of-the-eye ago, and it didn't even happen everywhere, to the detriment of near
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Since the time that the sun circled the earth and astrology was more relevant than astronomy, people individually and in cults have believed themselves to be the center of the universe. The miracles of reproduction, of weather, of eclipses and the stars themselves are simply a demonstration that the universe was created for our amusement. It is easy for a semi intelligent life form to make such assumptions if we assume that that life form is also selfish. A less selfish and more intelligent entity, upon noting the rampant destruction it left in its path, would self-destruct.
But wait! There's an alternative and it's simple indeed: Why don't we evolve into a better being?
We are gaining the tools for making better humans at this moment. According to at least one prognosticator we are approaching 'the singularity' and we will be able to manipulate our environment and ourselves in almost unimaginable ways. We can code for better human adaptation to warm climates. We can code for radiation protection. We can code for less selfish attitudes (like that will ever happen). We will have immense power to enhance our intelligence and awareness.
In this scenario humanity will survive most challenges and may actually become worthy of survival. The universe doesn't really care what we do.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Really, the vast forests and tundra of Russia, Alaska, and Canada don't have soil?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I'm sorry, I don't remember seeing the climate clause of my property... And who gets to determine what climate is ideal? Maybe the people pushing for CO2 taxes to reduce global warming are hurting the investments of people owning land in Alaska (mainly the government actually)?
CO2 is NOT a pollutant. It has consequences sure, but those consequences are nothing new to this planet. Until we can engineer a constant climate for the planet and can collectively decide what is the ideal climate for the planet, no one owns the right to long term climate stability as part of their property rights. The climate will change and you have no right to tax other people to reduce that change. If your property is going to decrease in value over time due to climate change, that means you should probably get out of that property sooner rather than later as pretty much any climate scientist will tell you even with massive taxes and reduction in CO2 emissions, the warming is already inevitable. Instead you want to tax and reduce the demand for living where climate change is going to be beneficial instead of harmful. How does that make sense?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Compared to the soil in the most productive agricultural areas the soil in the vast forests and tundra of Russia, Alaska and Canada is very poor and it would take centuries for it to become good soil.
New Orleans is a good example of a city that probably should be considered for abandoning the next time it floods.
New Orleans is one of the major ports in the USA at the mouth of the Mississippi River. A significant portion of the nation's commerce moves through it. It probably makes sense to keep it going as long as possible.
Except if their models which you have already called rediculous, are wrong. I fully expect to be fleeing sea level rise in my lifetime, and I didn't ten years ago.
The reason is that people think of climate change as a linear progression, when really it is probably non-linear. In which case we may see severe results in the next 10-20 years if we haven't already started to see them.
http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/r...
People like you, who are all like "not my problem! future generations will adapt" may be surprised what the next few years have in store for us all. You doubt the climate models being accurate, I do as well. Just in the other direction. More chaos, sooner.
http://www.thespec.com/opinion...
As a potential lottery winner, I totally support tax cuts for the wealthy
You know, there's like no chance of winning the lottery, but someone usually wins the lottery every week.
Not worth mentioning, most was scraped off during the last ice age. The Boreal forests consist of little spruce trees partially due to the lack of soil and the tundra likewise has very little, it takes a long time to build up soil in the temperate regions and much longer in the north.
Where I live, quite a bit more south, there is only an inch or two of decent soil over hardpan and bedrock and it takes a lot of work to grow a garden. Our government in its wisdom has also decided to flood a good chunk of the northern farmland that does exist to supply power for the natural gas industry (site C dam)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
"CO2 is not a pollutant" is essentially a well crafted lie, such as "More Doctors Smoke Camels". It is true that a certain amount of C02 is normal. This by no means makes it ok to just turn this planet into Venus. Releasing excess CO2 by digging it out of the ground where it has been sequested for millions of years and then burning it is polluting.
If I build a contraption that leaves dogshit in your front lawn all the time, every day, and it stinks to high heaven and you have to deal with flies, I could also claim it's "natural" and "not a pollutant". I have damaged the value of your property, however. So you go to authorities and try to get me to stop. Unfortunately, I'm able to prove that my contraption is essential to modern life in some way, and the authorities dismiss your case.
Do you agree that even if you can't get me to stop dumping dogshit in your lawn, you should be paid a calculated sum that takes into account the loss of value to your property as a result of my actions?
An early investment in real estate there seems warranted...
Interesting point, but I have to stop short of calling it good for several reasons. One is that the death rate also declines over time and may pass the declining birth rate at some point. Another is that naturally evolved Turing machines (such as homo sapiens) may replace themselves with artificial Turing machines (AKA AIs) without completely disrupting the society in question. (My overly optimistic interpretation of the Culture books by Iain M Banks?)
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
If the Cuba attack had been carried out, there wouldn't be eleven million Cubans living in the poverty of communist slavery today. The world would be a much better place.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
You win the prize for invalid extrapolation based on incoherent hypothesis and no data. Congrats.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
Just out of curiosity, how many times did you flunk chemistry?
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
What global warming means is new distribution fights for ressources.
We have had the ability to harness virtually unlimited nuclear energy since the 1950s. Argument 1 â" utterly debunked. If our survival depended on it I'm sure we could chuck a few hippies into the sea and get back on track with fission (As China is already doing on a massive scale). With recent advances in hydroponics and agricultural technology, I'd say we're on track to feed the world of tomorrow no sweat.
Even small, local climate changes by moving trade wind patterns caused civilisations to collapse, accompagnied by war, pandemics and devastation of large regions.
Civilizations have also collapsed over things such as: Taxes, Family Feuds, Middle Management, Bananas, Sexual Insecurity, Poor PR and more! Climate Change in this context is utterly irrelevant. Civilizations come and go all the time.
we face a global war, and we still have overkill capacity -- even if we don't use the nuclear arsenal.
Earth is more peaceful than it's ever been in the history of mankind. Food is cheap and abundant. We've built intelligent machines, travelled to the moon, split the atom, and (With the help of theUS, EU, downfall of USSR, globalization, Internet, etc.), have built a stable, interconnected world such as has never been seen. Why all the damned pessimism? For some reason going from horse and carriage to space travel in 100 years isn't good enough for you guys? I honestly don't get it and it's sad state of things that people have stopped dreaming about the future.
A typo does not make you any less ignorant or the winner of an argument.
Ok, you are right. ANYTHING and EVERYTHING is a pollutant. But we aren't talking about taxing farts, banning air ionizers, forbidding the planting of trees that spread pollen, and fining people who aim flashlights in the sky. All of these have negative externalities. The point is that there is no measurable, direct, and/or traceable effect of CO2 emissions on any single person's property. The law cannot solve that.
As far as the dog shit on the lawn, it happens, and as long as it doesn't ruin your lawn most people just grumble about it and get on with their lives because short of forensics on the feces, you'll never find anyone to try to sue over damages.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Exact measurement isn't possible, no. Nor is it actually possible to directly measure how much your health was affected if a nuclear plant melts down and exposes you to some rads., You can only roughly estimate it.
Pretending the damage is zero only benefits the ones causing the harm.
You can roughly estimate it, but that should be the threshold of liability for damages. If you lived around Three Mile Island, you have scarce if any evidence that any real harm was caused, but if you lived in Pripyat, the evidence is far more substantial. Pretending the damage is significant benefits the ones who stand to benefit from selling snake oil solutions.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I am not going to sit here and claim that "carbon offsets" in most cases is anything but snake oil. You're right on that part.
Look, we can probably agree at least on one thing. The fuel we're burning has a negative value. That is, we may not know precisely the numerical number, but we know the sign is negative.
This means that PAYING the oil companies to get the fuel even more cheaply is a bad thing, right? I mean, even if we can't agree on a carbon tax amount, we should at least stop giving them public money, right? (and yes, a special tax break they get but other companies don't is basically the same thing as just writing them a check from the general treasury)
So you would like and prefer that to happen as opposed to preventing it and living like this?
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
Some caveats : Many people will point at the coelacanth as a long-lived species. The present species (genus Latimeria) has no known close fossil relatives until you get back to the mid-Cretaceous (about 100 million years ago, genus Macropoma). The genera are related, but not particularly closely - compare dogs and bears, for example. The longest-lived genus I can think of is Lingula, a brachiopod genus with a fossil record from the Cambrian (500 million years ago) to the present. Those two are extreme examples though. And we'll just not get into the discussion over morphological versus reproductive species, but it's a real discussion.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
What tax break do oil companies get that others don't? Most of the "tax breaks" people think are oil subsidies are tax breaks for construction, capital investment, and mining/capital extraction. Even if there were direct oil government handouts, they would pale in comparison to the subsidies for competing energy sources and be dwarfed again by the cost of regulation on oil companies that is oil specific. Not to mention the fact that while "renewable" energy plants are being built practically everywhere, new ways to supply conventional fuels are being blocked by local, state, and federal governments across the country.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
Oil company FUD. I believe Elon Musk's "5+ trillion" quote over some random idiot online. Go vote for Trump, buddy.
Yes, a random large number from a famous guy over a random internet commenter. Also, FYI, I'm a libertarian and I don't like Trump at all. I'll be voting third party as I always do. As for where I get my information from regarding how oil companies handle taxes, it comes from working for two different major oil companies... Does that make me a paid shill?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
I know the concept of depreciating capital assets. I know that isn't really a tax break - capital assets do lose actual real value the moment they are purchased and with every year of service. I know that even when the depreciation formula is too fast for the asset's real value decline, if the company ever sells the asset they pay the difference, so yeah basically asset depreciation is cost of doing business and not evading taxes.
I'm not going to pretend to know where the trillions come from, except that I've heard it from numerous credible sources...including the IMF. http://www.imf.org/external/pu...
Any source can be biased but unless you can produce someone with similar credentials...not just "I see some of their taxes, trust me there's no special treatment", no rational person would believe you.
I get where you are coming from and it SOUNDS good. But the burden of proof for all of these tax benefits for oil companies is on the people making the claim on these trillions. The IMF link you cite certainly gives data for huge subsidies, but they count global warming, air pollution, and other externalities as "subsidies." And not only do they count it, but based on the graphs, it's the lion's share of their trillions estimates.
Most of this arises from countries setting energy taxes below levels that fully reflect the environmental damage associated with energy consumption.
Based on that logic doctors get tax subsidies for making medical mistakes that kill people if they don't get sued for it. You can't realistically count estimates of global or local damages as a tax subsidy or the words tax and subsidy have no meaning anymore. Going into the actual data for the USA from the IMF citation provided, the actual pre-tax subsidies totals $10.94 billion. The remainder is global warming (185 billion), air pollution (180 billion), congestion (120 billion), accidents (48 billion), road damage (8 billion) and forgone consumption tax revenue (52 billion). So yes, they are actually counting road accidents as a subsidy and even worse, ROAD DAMAGE which fuel tax pay for maintenance of whereas ELECTRIC CARS DO NOT. If anything road damage "subsidies" should be negative as carbon fuel taxes pay for road maintenance.
So back to the $11 billion of direct tax subsidies. In 2015 according to the EIA https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs... the USA consumed 7.08 billion barrels of petroleum products. Ignoring the fact that a barrel of oil yields more than a barrel of products and ignoring all other fossil fuel energy sources (natural gas and coal primarily), that amounts to a tax subsidy of 3.7c per gallon of fuel (42 gallons per barrel). Are we really claiming that the huge tax subsidies oil companies get is that extreme vs the federal fuel taxes of 18.4c per gallon of gasoline or 24.4 for diesel?
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?