The earth is becoming more hostile to it's inhabitants. There are famines caused by climate change. We will undoubtedly within the next 20 years see mass migration from the areas hardest hit.
Climate scientists, and climate reporting, often UNDERSTATED the worst of these effects.
I think it'd be worth stating what your definition of doomerism is. For me, seeing the increases in forest fires, seeing the sky reddened and the air quality diminish and floods and hurricanes increase... I don't think being able to buy a big mac doesn't make that any less pessimistic.
If this is true then how are there more people than ever, fewer famines than ever? Migrations due to climate has been a part of human history since the beginning of all of human, and animal history. It's almost as if that's the default state of being. Are people migrating more than ever? Yes, but not just because of climate change, because it's so god damn easy to do so in modern times.
We aren't walking across a sheet of ice to try to survive a drought. We are on boats with motors and a life vest at our worst, in first class getting wine and dined at our most hedonistic. Entire (illegal) migration pipelines have been made and turned into a black-market economy. There are government funded apps created to support these migration pipelines.
Again, you're a doomer that has failed to predict the impact of what you're observing, and it mostly comes down to the fact that you underestimate human creativeness and ingenuity, and human drive for progress.
You frame every scenario as if humans will just stare at impending doom like deer in headlights and let it wash over them, while at the same time arguing that mass amounts of people are so adaptable that they would be willing to traverse the entire globe to find a better life. Your model of reality contradicts itself from the very start.
We're on a hothouse earth trajectory. All signs point to you not being aware of serious climate research and hanging on to a naive Steven Pinker "everything is always improving" outlook.
All signs point to you being a doomer that is excellent at moving the goal post. "If it doesn't happen tomorrow surely it will happen the next day."
You can do this until the end of time. A waste of brain cycles for anybody with a real job. This is the exact same pattern for every single kind of doomer and they are all wrong in the exact same way over and over. You still can't name a single doomer point of view that has played out to some kind of catastrophic society collapsing event accurately.
It's always "it's coming" eventually.
Running out of oil, overpopulation, financial system collapse that sends us back to the dark ages, climate change that causes everybody to move migrate to Colorado, a coronavirus that permanently makes us board up indoors. None of it ever plays out the way you doomers fantasize about it playing out.
When some kind of catastrophic society collapsing event happens it's most likely going to be because of something that is not in the mainstream consciousness.
If doomers were good at predicting these events and how it will play out they'd all be rich as hell, but no, they are for the most part a bunch of broke whiners. (Except for those doomers that have made their wealth off of scaring people)
All signs point to it being really easy for you to dismiss "doomers" as wrong and "scientists" as right retroactively. If someone was wrong about the direction of the climate crisis 20 years ago they were a doomer. If they were right they were a scientist. Easy!
You can apply this to anything that went to shit with the world in the past, not just the climate. If someone predicted the financial crisis of 2008, they were not a doomer, they were a particularly savvy financial analyst. All the others who keep predicting crises are wrong, until they're right, and then they're not a doomer, so your point always stands no matter what. Super convenient!
Zoom out buddy, the 2008 financial crisis is a blip. The world's financial system is almost exactly the same as it was pre-2008. Hardly the collapse that made the world stop spinning that doomers have a fetish for. That's not a good example to support your argument.
You fundamentally cannot grasp the concept of doomerism. Doomerism isn't simply observing some first order effect "The oceans will increase by 2 degrees".
Doomerism is observing that first order effect and trying to assert that we should change behavior at a societal level because they above everybody else, can predict what the secondary or tertiary+ effects are for society. "The oceans will increase by 2 degrees, all marine life will perish, hurricanes will make vast swaths of the world uninhabitable. Therefore we should stop eating beef!"
And they are wrong about it every - single - time. Do you need examples?
Society has a long history of ignoring doomers, and the impact? Society is right and Doomers are consistently wrong.
Society keeps going. We have all of history up until the current moment, but from that we understand so far, Doomers have never been right about how disruptive their observations are for society at large. If you want to provide a contradiction to this statement please do so.
Nuclear power doomers -> completely wrong. Fukashima was the latest that proved this
Covid doomers -> wrong. in 50 years covid will be as forgotten as the spanish flu was.
Climate doomers -> wrong. famines are down across the globe and population still growing, still no clear example of the disruption to society or world in a way that is new. For any disruption we can find historical disruptions of the same category with more impact to humans and the world. Floods? More people killed in historical floods and more societies extinguished from them >100 years ago. Fires? More people killed in fires and more cities completely burned down from them >100 years ago.
Overpopulation doomers -> wrong, population still growing, but leveling off and not collapsing
AI doomers -> wrong on both sides so far. no bubble pop, capabilities still advancing, humans are also still relevant
Peak oil doomers -> completely wrong, more oil being discovered, didn't account for technology, didn't account for other forms of energy
With this kind of track record, you'd think that doomers would have enough self reflection to realize that their model of reality is insufficient at predicting outcomes and shut the fuck up, but nope - they just keep on trying to force a square peg into a round hole while annoying everybody around them who are trying to do something to move the needle towards a better life that doesn't involve becoming a vegetable so the earth can heal or whatever.
Compare this against another model of reality: Whatever challenges humans face, when it's dire enough, we will adapt and overcome.
You can backtest this model against all of human history. It would be dishonest to say that this model isn't more accurate so far than whatever model you're using as a doomer.
No need for doomers to virtue signal and lecture everybody about their shitty model of reality that fails to backtest
Oh, the classic "if you're so smart then why aren't you rich" non argument. I'm sure Carl Sagan was a just whiny loser because he didn't figure out how to become a billionaire from knowing how physics works. His prediction that the planet would warm several degrees by the mid to late 21st century failed to reward him what he was owed. By the way we haven't even gotten halfway there yet, so your "shifting goalposts" thesis is null.
People who push dangerous neoliberal propaganda like carbon capture or "infinite growth on a finite planet is possible" on the other hand do get very rich, and they don't even need to make good predictions. Such is the planet governed by pedophiles.
Good thing we are not confined to a closed system in any practical sense. You act like we haven't already used space for economic growth. It's also a good thing that the concept of "growth" in this context is not limited by physical constraints. You're talking about growth of value, not growth in a physical sense. Did you think the valuation of every company was based on something physical 1:1? Do you live somewhere whose financial system is based on a gold standard or something? There are multiple levels where your idea falls apart.
Crazy to so confidently assert an idea which is conceptually flawed on a surface level.
You actually think the economy has reached the point of maximum growth due to the laws of thermodynamics? Please tell me you didn't formulate your entire worldview on this idea because it's unlikely that you can function in this society in a way that makes your life better or those around you better with this flawed model of reality.
Doomers are always hurting themselves first and foremost and then dragging everybody else around them down with them.
Of course it hasn't. The real problem is that the atmosphere is being poisoned beyond repair, at an increasing pace, and that is tied to economic growth. That will eventually un-terraform the planet into a place hostile to agriculture, be it in 50 or 100 years. We're nowhere near being able to reverse this in any way, and there are no signs of it slowing down.
Are actuaries stupid doomers whose worldviews make them unable to function in society? You decide: https://actuaries.org.uk/media/ni4erlna/planetary-solvency.p...
>Good thing we are not confined to a closed system in any practical sense.You act like we haven't already used space for economic growth.
Oh, am I to believe space mining fantasies maybe? I'm sure we'll get there, just after AGI solves nuclear fusion for us in the next 5 years. Then we can have star trek replicators to go with them. I just wish it would happen sooner, that sea floor mining stuff is starting to gain traction and it isn't looking pretty.
>It's also a good thing that the concept of "growth" in this context is not limited by physical constraints
It actually is. The concept of "decoupling" of the economy from material resources has been debunked for a while now. Theoretically there can be efficiency gains that generate further growth, but those are usually quickly cannibalized by increasing demand, plus we're deep on the diminishing returns phase in a lot of fields.
I recommend this resource: https://eeb.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Decoupling-Debunk...
yet another classic bullshit doomer prediction that never plays out where you'll conveniently not be around to admit you're wrong about.
> Oh, am I to believe space mining fantasies maybe? You don't need to, we're already at the point where we are using space for economic growth, so it's not some kind of fantasy.
> It actually is. The concept of "decoupling" of the economy from material resources has been debunked for a while now.
Hilarious how something can be "debunked" yet it's exactly how the metric for "growth" that you're talking about functions today. Again if you add up the combined valuation for every company today did you think it's based on material resources? It's obviously not. Your first clue is that the valuation of companies is calculated and expressed as a dollar which is not backed by ANYTHING material. If the thing that you're using to measure growth in an economy is already an abstract concept with no basis on material resource, then it follows that "growth" is NOT CONSTRAINED by material resource.
Or did you think every time nvidia announces their quarterly results and the market puts a valuation on nvidia that we are allocating materials to nvidia? Again, your model of reality sucks. It doesn't fit