Recent comments in /f/science

Propeller3 OP t1_j8mfkb8 wrote

I can, yes. This is one of the top journals in Ecology & Evolution and has a stringent peer review process. Specifically from this article:

>Peer review information Nature Ecology & Evolution thanks Peter Kennedy, Toby Kiers and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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SaxManSteve t1_j8mfa2n wrote

IPCC population projection models are often criticized for having simple assumptions. They generally model predicted population based on the expected rate of world GDP growth and the correlated predicted reduction in birth rates. They don't use a system dynamics based model, that could model the complexities of overshoot and climate change and its impacts on population. For example global warming will have varying levels of cascading non-linear effects on extreme weather events, things like increases in economic inequality, increase in domestic and international conflict, increase in state fragility, increase in pandemics, increase in population displacement and migration, decrease in ecological biodiversity, decrease in food, fuel, and water resources, increase in droughts and desertification of fertile land, increased fragility of global supply chains, ect..... None of these factors are part of the IPCC models, meaning that their predictions shouldn't be taken as realistic predictions of populations. Rather they should be seen as models that predict population numbers in a world where climate change and overshoot will have little to no impact on human civilization in the near future.

It's also no secret within academic climate science circles that the IPCC has long been politically motivated to underestimate the scale of the problem. Which is why very few climate scientists actually believe that the Paris Accord is realistic. We all know there is no chance the world can avoid 1.5 C mean global warming and that we will likely see a potentially disastrous 2 C increase by 2050. Many already assume that there will be no remaining carbon budget even for the 2 C target

The IPCC infamously fails to account for carbon cycle feedbacks and their associated tipping points when setting their own emissions targets. Meaning that even a 2C warming may well trigger irreversible runaway “hothouse Earth” conditions. In coming years, we will see an ice-free Arctic Ocean, more rapidly melting permafrost, methane releases, an increase in wildfires, and other short-term positive feedbacks that will put climate change on steroids.

Even in the best case, the world can expect more and longer heat waves and droughts, more violent tropical storms, extended wild-fire seasons, accelerating desertification, water shortages, crippled agriculture, food shortages, rising sea levels, and broken supply lines. Coastal cities will be flooded and some may eventually be abandoned. Many other cities are likely to be cut off from food-lands, energy, and other essential resources with the breakdown of national highway and marine transportation networks; this alone would make urban life untenable. According to the recent Environmental Risk Outlook 2021 (2021), at least 414 cities with a total 1.4 billion plus inhabitants, are at high or extreme risk from a combination of pollution, dwindling water supplies, extreme heat stress, and other dimensions of climate change.

From this perspective, it's absurd to even entertain the idea that adding 2+ billion more people on the planet in the next 20 years would be a good idea. We should be currently engaging in an international effort to reduce our current consumption, reduce our energy demand, reduce our birth rates, reduce economic inequality, and ultimately start to move away from a growth for the sake of growth economic model towards an ecologically sustainable economic system.

It's simply immoral and reckless to keep chugging along with the business as usual economic model. Doing so is to condemn billions of people to a brutish, painful and short life.

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Talinoth t1_j8mcbdm wrote

... Of course not. A subconscious brain picks up visual signals that indicate another person is fearful, and reacts accordingly - all without conscious input.

There is no "communication", let alone telepathic communication. It's just people using their eyes and brains.

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Dr_Kintobor t1_j8mc77q wrote

Ok so i have a solution. We kill everyone once they turn 65/ stop being productive workers, and then we process them into protein bars. Like a Soylent Logan's Run. I never said it was a nice solution, but it would solve aging demographics and world hunger at the same time.

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BurnerAcc2020 t1_j8mbcxg wrote

No, I have to say that you misread the paper here.

The first sentence you quoted discusses estimates for the 21st century (i.e. up until 2100), and it explicitly refers to AIS (Antarctic ice sheet) contribution. The actual paper's estimate in the second sentence is by 2150, not 2100, and it refers to ice-sheet contributions - i.e. Antarctic ice sheet and Greenland.

You need to look at Figure 3 of that paper. You'll see that in d), their estimate for AIS alone under SSP5-8.5 (the orange line - the higher yellow line is a more primitive simulation of the same scenario they run for comparison) is about 0.2 m by 2100 and 0.7 m for 2150.

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BurnerAcc2020 t1_j8maaiv wrote

> which only speeds up the process of system wide ecological collapse that will absolutely lead to dramatic population contraction in the near future.

Not according to even the scientists who otherwise agree that the future would be "ghastly", though?

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcosc.2020.615419/full > It is therefore also inevitable that aggregate consumption will increase at least into the near future, especially as affluence and population continue to grow in tandem (Wiedmann et al., 2020). Even if major catastrophes occur during this interval, they would unlikely affect the population trajectory until well into the 22nd Century (Bradshaw and Brook, 2014). Although population-connected climate change (Wynes and Nicholas, 2017) will worsen human mortality (Mora et al., 2017; Parks et al., 2020), morbidity (Patz et al., 2005; Díaz et al., 2006; Peng et al., 2011), development (Barreca and Schaller, 2020), cognition (Jacobson et al., 2019), agricultural yields (Verdin et al., 2005; Schmidhuber and Tubiello, 2007; Brown and Funk, 2008; Gaupp et al., 2020), and conflicts (Boas, 2015), there is no way—ethically or otherwise (barring extreme and unprecedented increases in human mortality)—to avoid rising human numbers and the accompanying overconsumption. That said, instituting human-rights policies to lower fertility and reining in consumption patterns could diminish the impacts of these phenomena (Rees, 2020).

Not to mention the more mainstream views like those of the IPCC (look at their population graphs).

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