And what are the consequences of that? I would guess significantly milder than the predictions of mass starvation that we managed to avert.

The consequences could include things like forced mass migrations, wars over water rights, and an increase in territorial disputes among nations as land becomes more scarce than it already is. In addition, the byproducts of coal burning cause cancers and death, regardless of whether the previous stuff I mentioned actually happens (hint: it's already starting to happen).

Nobody knows, the destruction of the entire planet most likely.

The earth is dying, you can see it everywhere you look if you open your eyes.

> Nobody knows, the destruction of the entire planet most likely.

Entire planet? False.

> The earth is dying, you can see it everywhere you look if you open your eyes.

All I see when I "open my eyes" is people with your disposition making alarmist predictions based on either faulty reasoning, and/or ignorance, and/or out of fear.

How is how you and other extreme pessimists like you behave not equivalent to yelling 'fire!' in a crowded theatre? If the Earth is our crowded theatre then you're being socially irresponsible with your doom and gloom scenarios, and the Earth is humanity's crowded theatre.

My religious father used to predict the end of times, the end of the world as we know it, every few years. When the date came and went rather than revise his beliefs he'd move the date forward a couple of years. That is bonkers. Belief and identity are humanity's worst enemy: not birth-rates, not nukes, not CO2 emissions, not A(G)I, not any of these things but our own crappy cognitive mechanisms.

The earth isn't dying. It may become uninhabitable for humans, but that is quite different than the earth being dead.

Read between the lines. Nobody is that dumb to literally say that the earth is dying.

The scientists do indeed know. The scientific consensus is that sea levels will rise by a meter or 2 over the next 200 years, and cause damages measured in the couple trillions of dollars. This is all laid out in the IPCC report. Thats a lower cost than an Iraq war.

That is the scientific consensus of the IPCC, which is the official authority on climate change. And the scientific consensus is that the world is definitely not going to end, nor is it even going to come close. Listen to the science and the scientific consensus!

You're taking the mean consensus prediction as gospel. There is a smaller but still very much possible chance of much more catastrophic consequences than that. It would be irresponsible for the IPCC to present only the most dire predictions, but I think it's also unwise for us to ignore them.

Agreed. If the bomb has been defused then it's only because it has already gone off.

If solar can manage to maintain even 10% of its performance growth per annum it has had in the last decade coal will be obsolete completely everywhere except in the most geographically extreme environments by 2030.

People are very much underestimating the momentum of something cheap and with minimal side effects can have on an economic status quo. Or more particularly, is already having - solar as a percentage of global energy production doubled from 1 to 2% in the last three years, and if we keep adding almost 100GW of solar per year (and cheaper / more efficient panels just accelerate that adoption, and nothing can really slow it down unless the prices regress) the planet will be 10% solar by 2025. And thats the pessimistic status quo figure.

This article is incorrectly using the current rate of growth of solar, in CONSTANT terms, and not in percentage terms.

Solar panel is growing in percentage rates, as it has been doing so for the last 3 decades. IE, it increases by X% every year. When something doubles every Y years, it quickly overwhelms everything.

Today we are adding 100 gigawatts of solar per year. And in 2-3 years that rate of change is now 200 gigawatts ADDED every year, and then its 400 gigawatts per year.

Look at the chart, the numbers are correct, everything grows (in large amounts). We are about to double the amount of fossil fueled cars in the next 10-15 years. It will not matter how much solar we install if we keep increasing our fossil burning (as we will). In fact, we use other sources of energy than oil to extract and refine the oil.

We are terribly addicted to oil. One could say we sold our mother (Earth) for a shot of hubris. It took us to the Moon and the stars. It gives and it takes lives, one could think we are dealing with the Devil.

For each day we do not decrease our fossil fuel use nothing will make a difference, the fact is that the Earth is becoming a worse place for each of those days. Our culture is not only addicted to oil, there is a bigger picture. Our culture is dependent on growth, hence the addiction to energy, all kinds of energy. We will go on this way, no matter what, for as long as we can.

"the fact is that the Earth is becoming a worse place for each of those days

There is absolutely no evidence of this.

The average person today, whether in the First World or the Third, lives a life that is better than almost every respect than a comparable person a hundred years ago.

At the same time, environmental quality in the First World has improved dramatically.

"At the same time, environmental quality in the First World has improved dramatically."

I do not know where to begin, but i am facing the tongue of our mother culture. I am facing not only your arguments, i am facing an operating system. It is high time we clean our disks.

To mention a few, we now get microplastics from our tap water [1], and bottled water [2]. Reports of substantial insects loss from all over the world [3][4].

Study shows that the oceans will be dead if we continue as we do [5]. Life loses 150-200 species a day, we are currently living in the Sixth mass extinction [6], i was about to write "the planet loses", but the planet simply does care, only life do. Our way of farming is killing the soils [7], it is fake, all fake. We kill the soils and we depend on a limited supply of chemical fertilizer. People have the idea that the soils are made for this, one of the greatest lies.

How can you say that the life is better when were at 407 PPM of CO2 and counting, and we have no clue about what is about to happen. The limits in the glacial/interglacial system we've been in for the past million years are 180-280 PPM.

I could go on an on but to put it simply. All the problems we've solved are problems of our culture, that said, we have not solved any other problem and we have not solved all our problems. Our problem is that we can't stop our growth. Event if we stopped the population growth all the other charts would point straight up!

Why did 20,000 scientists give a dire warning in their 'letter to humanity'? [8] It is us, we keeps this going, we all need more stuff, more energy to take us to new highs of 'humanity'.

Far better life, yes, we work and we feed and we Netflix™. Far better than what? There was a life before domestication by, for and in our culture. We've been Homo for three million years and we've been Homo Sapiens Sapiens for three hundred thousand. Being born today is a roulette spin, there is no guarantees that your genes will match this system. Our current culture is so far off from what our bodies, minds and that small process which we call 'me' are made for.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/sep/06/plastic-... [2] http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-43388870 [3] https://www.news-leader.com/story/sports/outdoors/2017/08/30... [4] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/world/europe/krefeld-germ... [5] https://www.theinertia.com/environment/the-oceans-could-be-d... [6] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/aug/16/nature-e... [7] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-... [8] http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/letter-to-humanity-...

> To mention a few, we now get microplastics from our tap water

There is no evidence that "microplastics" (which are just the latest entry in a long, long, history of things that are going to KILL US NOW) pose any health risks.

> How can you say that the life is better when were at 407 PPM of CO2 and counting

There is no evidence that current CO2 levels are harmful to animal life, and plenty of evidence that higher CO2 levels are beneficial to plant life.

> Our way of farming is killing the soils

Nonsense.

https://plantsciences.missouri.edu/grains/corn/graphs/USA-co...

> There was a life before domestication by, for and in our culture.

Yes. It was nasty, brutish, and short.

The original author shouldn't have done linear calculations but exponential.

That said: the longer that it takes to get that exponential; the more there is in the atmosphere.

I wonder how those curves compare to linear and where break even is...

Don't worry, it will be solar panels soon enough. Simply because it will be cheaper.

Not mentioned besides the ecological footprint- there is with high density, a high chance for infectious disease to wipe out great parts of this humanity.

Another aspect is, that liberal society is only kept as "guest" for bribes- as long as capitalism delivers continously improvements and sedates the population with trinkets- it is accepted- the moment that wanes, anti-liberal sentiments come back with full force from all sides.

Thus interesting at the moment is not what great archievments the west accomplishes, but wether science, free debate and education can exist on in decaying societs like North Korea (extreme end) or Turkey/ Russia (at the start).

Can a scientist work in a country in the middle east or mexico. If that is the "default" state of humanity, that is where our interest should be.

There will be no city on mars, but there might be a secret society, doing fusion research in a slum filled with racists and relgious fanatic luddites - condemning us as the decadent golden past.