I was curious about the global projections for CO2 emissions for the rest of the century and I found this article from last year: http://euanmearns.com/global-co2-emissions-forecast-to-2100/

There are several plots in there. Here is a projection based on the three UN population growth estimates where the red line is the highest population growth.



The threshold of 2 degrees or 1 trillion tons of additional cumulative CO2 would be exceeded somewhere in the 2050-2055 for all three population growth scenarios. This is while factoring in the increase of renewable energy from 6% to 15% since 1965.

The author concludes:

How might the world achieve such massive reductions? Well, there’s also a near-exact correlation (R2 = 0.98) between global CO2 emissions and world GDP, and history shows that the only way of cutting CO2 emissions by any meaningful amount is by crashing the economy (the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s cut CO2 emissions in the former East Bloc states by almost 40% while the 2009 recession alone cut Spain’s emissions by 15%). Enough said.

So unless crashing the economy long term is a solution people are willing to go along with, or there is some technological breakthrough reversing the trend, we're heading for the 2-3 degree warming, at least.

just think that stopping climate change before a lot of significant damage has already happened will require a social mobilization on that scale. — Echarmion

Okay, but what does that look like?

No-one wants that, obviously, but at this point it's necessary to prevent very serious damage to the biosphere, the consequences of which are hard to predict. — Echarmion

The problem is that if nobody wants their lifestyle drastically altered, then there won't be political will to implement those policies. Let's imagine the greenest democrat wins 2020 and tries to implement some serious CO2 and consumption reduction measures. How do you see that going?

That's kinda what moderates are trying to do, but even relatively modest, market based approaches like taxing green house gasses are mostly failing because the political will isn't there. — Echarmion

Then it won't be there for anything more extreme. Politicians will simply lose elections and fail to convince their colleagues.

Roasts are slow, so come and remind me again in three years. — Shamshir

The warming is about 0.05-0.07 degrees celsius every three years. So a slow roast indeed. Climate scientists would like for emissions to drop to zero by 2050, or have that amount removed from the atmosphere to stay under a 2 degree warming since pre-industrial times to avoid more severe weather and greater sea level rise. Plus it's harder on some species or biomes like coral reefs.

But realistically, we will probably have to contend with a 2-3 degree warming, unless we can offset it with lots of trees and carbon sequestering.

Also realistically, we will have to accept that a certain loss of biodiversity is inevitable. EO Wilson put it at up to 50% by the end of the century. He called it the bottleneck before population peaks and starts to decline, and technology becomes more sustainable.

On a positive note, NASA recently revealed that the Earth is on a greening trend. We actually have more plant cover than in the recent past.

The earth is roasting, the fire is fueled by man and that's a fact. — Shamshir

The Earth is not roasting, it's in the process of warming up a by a few degrees. The Earth has been warmer in the past, and colder. And warmer. Venus is roasting. Yes, the current trend is mainly because of human activity. No, that doesn't mean we will roast like Venus.

Hyperbole doesn't help. Life will adapt as it always has and so will humans. We just want to avoid the more difficult scenarios.

None. — frank

Right, climate models aren't civilization models, and the idea that the entire Earth will become uninhabitable for humans is absurd. Earth isn't Venus. As already mentioned in this thread, some places will probably fare better as more CO2 and warmer conditions benefit plant growth in northern latitudes. But anyway, we have geological history to know that Earth won't become uninhabitable. Fossils of prehistoric crocodiles and palm trees have been found in the arctic region. The question is what sort of difficulties civilization will have to deal with at different levels of warming, and what the time frame is.

It should also be noted that there are proposed solutions that don't require drastic changes to the economy, such as planting six trillion trees, large scale carbon sequestering, and Project Vesta.

It will just lead to the end of any habitable world. — StreetlightX

Really? When the dinosaurs evolved, the CO2 in the atmosphere was six times what it was now, and it didn't result in the planet being uninhabitable for animals or plants. Granted, this happened over millions of years, so lots of time to adapt (and no doubt plenty of species went extinct), but animals also didn't have technology. We humans inhabit every climate on Earth from the desert to the arctic. We can pump water form hundreds of miles of way, we can desalanitize ocean water, and we can create climate controlled enclosures. We can also make new hybrid crops. And we can relocate farmlands to Canada and Siberia as needed.

Is climate change really going to make the entire planet uninhabitable? Is there any sort of scientific consensus that we're facing extinction, or just that it's best to mitigate the worst effects?

Does anybody know how to trigger major simultaneous and coordinated behavior changes in several billion people -- within 10 years? Within 50? Never mind, 50 years will be too late to begin changing. — Bitter Crank

Nope. It won't happen. Also, we'll be adding a couple more billion while large parts of Asia and Africa finish catching up. Add to that the majority of the world's population who probably don't want to go along with making major sacrifices. It's nice and all if people who agree with Greta do that, but that will be offset by 7 billion people just living their lives. A few million protesting and riding their bicycles while going vegan is a drop in the bucket.

The only way is to adapt. But I also don't believe it will end civilization. Humans are very good generalists, and we have technology. We survived an ice age with stone-aged tools and migrated all over the planet thousands of years ago.

Where just fighting a human culture though, not our bodily existence at any time and place. — TheWillowOfDarkness

You mean all of human culture? I don't think abolishing gender roles is realistic. But they can be made more equal and diverse.

Massive social mobilization would probably be required. Because of the economic impact of the policies that are now required, we're looking at the equivalent of aglobal communist revolution. — Echarmion

See this language is what fuels skepticism about taking radical action to avert climate catastrophe. It comes off sounding like an excuse to implement a preferred system by certain leftists. If you read any of the comments on Reddit related to climate change, you will see all sorts of things about eating the rich, destroying capitalism, and forcing a one world government on everyone.

It will also sound potentially threatening to the mainstream. Who wants to be forced to drastically reduce their lifestyle? Do the developing countries want to be told they can't continue developing by the developed countries?

And how do we know that such radical economic and political polices won't be the wrong action? Maybe the only way forward is to adapt with technological innovation and encourage the markets to transition, instead of trying to force everyone to consume less, which would likely cause a worldwide depression, which means less innovation.

The danger here is that the patriarchy can be justified on the grounds that humans evolved gender roles to be such. So then feminists who wish to abolish gender roles have to fight the grain of all of human history (and evolutionary psychology), and not just the past several thousand years.

It's one thing to say gender is like money, it's another thing to say it evolved with homo sapiens.

That would imply hunter-gatherer societies have no social constructs, even though they're already a "society". I don't think that works. — Echarmion

But the comparison to money, which was a social construct that came with civilization, doesn't work either. The context is generally patriarchal societies defining roles women are supposed to occupy, subjugating them to the patriarchy. But if gender roles have always existed in human society, then that can't be entirely true.

Maybe it's just the philosophy podcast I listened to recently on feminism in which the guest speaker was talking about the feminist ideal of a genderless society, which to me seems to run counter to all of human history.

Another question that comes up is whether a biological male who undergoes a sex change or even just identifies themselves as female should be allowed to compete in women's sports. You could even potentially have a gender fluid person compete in both male and female events, depending on which gender they wish to identify with for that event.

My question regarding whether gender is a social construct like money is to ask whether hunter-gatherer societies have gender roles and whether this is tied to the individual's biological sex, and if so what sort of exceptions exist. Money is a construct of civilization. But most of human history consisted of tribal groups. So I would take the hunter-gatherer experience as definitive on this matter, if there is a definitive conclusion to be reached.

The psychological question regarding whether someone feels male, female or both and how that relates to gender is trickier, but again I would defer to how most of human history was spent and not what recent civilization has specified.

A related topic is the feminist view that gender is a social construct created to subject women in favor of patriarchal societies. But this wouldn't apply to hunter-gatherers, so that should be what determines the nature of gender.

They're not free to do so under Kantian morals. But we are not responsible for making them into moral beings. — Echarmion

No, but we are responsible for preventing harm to others by said human beings if we can do so, even if it requires lying to them. This trumps any categorical imperative, because preventing harm is more important than holding to a principle.

It allows us to allow others to cause injury. Because it takes the freedom of others seriously. — Echarmion

Do we really want others to be free to cause injury? Is that sort of freedom moral?

Does Nick Bostrom have anything to say about Tipler's cosmology? Anyway, there are physical limits to potential future technologies, however advanced.

Looks like the difference between Platonism and Constructivism. If you think mathematical objects are real and have existence beyond humans calculating or proving them, then infinity is actual. If you don't, then it's only potential, because we'll never add all the way up to infinity.

Why was Adam and Eve punished for actually failing to understand good and evil? — TheMadFool

Depending on how you interpret the myth, it seems one or more of the following:

1. This is the Jewish version of Pandora's box, meant to explain why bad stuff exists and how it relates to knowledge and making choices. It's also an allegory for growing up.

2. They were punished for disobeying God, not trusting or believing what God said.
2b. They were punished for giving into temptation, listening to the snake instead.

3. It was a setup. God intended for the snake to deceive Adam & Eve. That way, the plan for redemption could be unfolded, and the possibility for evil choices could be worked through.

3b. God predestines everything, so it happened exactly as God wanted, because how else could it happen, given God's omni-abilities?

#2 has free will at the center, #3b is the Calvinistic view, while #3 is a mix between the two. The really interesting theological question here is the snake. Let's assume the Christian interpretation that it was Lucifer who rebelled and became Satan.

How did this happen, and wouldn't God have known about it before creating Lucifer? So why create him? How does a perfectly created being become proud? Isn't that a character defect? Wouldn't wanting to be God be a colossal misunderstanding on the part of a created being? Doesn't much sound like Lucifer was created perfectly.

Basically, if God is omni-everything, then God can choose what sort of world to create and who will populate it. God doesn't have to create anyone who will choose evil. So it's ultimate God's responsibility. The Calvinists have a more consistent theology.

Of course that means God can't be all-good in the way we humans understand good.

And if we are totally determined, then it still feels like free will -- so what difference does it make? — Bitter Crank

It might make a difference if it's the aliens making us feel like we have free will while they totally determine our actions. Like burning fossil fuels and rainforests to terraform the climate for their arrival.

In my opinion, "agile" is epistemically worthless. — alcontali

The motivation isn't. The reason agile became a thing is because often it's the case that during a software project the requirements change as the customer comes to realize what they really want which they were unable to specify at the outset. This is particularly true for web and app software.

I was just in a meeting today where with a deadline a couple weeks away where the customer once again is changing the requirements. And this customer is state funded.

That's part of the reason why programming isn't math. In a platonic software world, you would know the exact requirements before starting. But in the real world it's often the case that the process is one of discovery and negotiation. Agile is meant to address that reality. But whatever you call it, software engineering needs to take into account changing requirements when you can't nail them down before starting the project.

And sometimes you just have to ship it to meet a deadline, even if it's hacked together. The whole "real developers ship" is contrasted against having mathematically rigorous software specifications nailed down first where shipping less than perfect code is financially prudent.

Now it's a bit different if safety is the number one requirement, say for flying a plane or autonomous cars.

Logical positivists were dumb ? :smile: — Wittgenstein

No, merely human. They based their philosophy on a principle of empirical verification which itself can't be empirically verified. The counter to that is to relax the principle to be more of a guide than a rule. But then one can't just rule out metaphysics a priori. Instead a positivist needs to show why a metaphysical position needs empirical verification to be meaningful before they can rule it out as meaningless.

Otherwise, empirical verification is itself meaningless.

One problem with the view that metaphysics is meaningless is that a lot of people, including philosophers, have found it meaningful enough to discuss at length. So then it's up to the anti-metaphysicians to argue that the people who do find metaphysics meaningful are somehow mistaken. And the best the skeptics can do is to say how they don't find metaphysics meaningful because of A,B,C. But the people who do find it meaningful won't accept reasons A,B,C, so then what?

We end up with metaphysical topics being meaningful to some people and not others, depending upon one's philosophical perspective. Which doesn't resolve the matter for everyone. It just ends up being another metaphysical dispute lacking consensus, because people have different philosophical starting points. If one finds Wittgenstein or Carnap persuasive, then one is likely to be skeptical of metaphysical discussion in general. But if one doesn't, then one probably won't be ask skeptical.

I cannot think the question of responsibility alone, in isolation from the other. If I do, I have taken myself out of the mode of address (being addressed as well as addressing the other) in which the problem of responsibility first emerges” (Butler, Giving An Account of Oneself). For as Butler notes, responsibility is ultimately relational: it is only in relation to another that one is responsible, accountable, for what one has said and done. There would be no ‘problem of responsibility’ without the relation to the other. — StreetlightX

I can think of exceptions. Once I drove my car into high water and ruined the engine. It was under my control. I didn't have to drive the car when I knew there was going to be a downpour. I could have taken a different route on higher ground. I could have slowed down and not gone through the deeper water, or backed up and turned around. But nope, I was impatient and misjudged the situation.

There was nobody else to be responsible to, but I was still responsible for ruining my engine. I couldn't blame the weather. Nobody else could forgive me for what I had done, and no apologies were owed.

And you sound irrational.

So, the Senate is undemocratic therefore it's bad and thus should be abolished, irregardless of existing political realities. That's the argument being presented in this thread.

Because Hitler was bad?

This isn't even an argument! — Maw

If you think the US Senate shouldn't exist, then you have to deal with the reality of the states as well, since that's the reason for the Senate existing.

Ah, it only took four pages to mention Hitler.

You simply don't have a sound argument justifying it's modern day existence, because there is none. — Maw

The argument is that the states exist as a fundamental political unit of organization making up the US. You don't have to like it, but it is a reality. Also, it's not the only part of government which is not representative of the population. The US wasn't setup to be a democracy first and foremost. It is a republic where the representatives get voted in.

I don't trust foreigners, particularly if they're European.

And also maybe a requirement that the President has to win the popular vote in addition to the electoral college. If they win one but not the other, then there's some sort of runoff or it goes to the House for a vote.

I also think reform to the election process needs to happen. Voter ranked choice would be nice. And money should be removed from elections. The candidates receive the same funding for that particular office.

The electoral college and gerrymandering practices where politicians pick their voters are also unrepresentative. — Noah Te Stroete

I agree with you on gerrymandering, but I'm on the fence about the Electoral College, because once it's done away with, the candidates will focus much more on the large population areas.

Maybe instead the States could split their electoral votes based on percentages instead of winner take all.

“Unrepresentative” is a better term and more in line with what I intended. — Noah Te Stroete

Right, the senators are elected by the people, but the Senate is not representative of the state populations. This is more of an issue today than near the founding of the country because the Federal government has become more powerful and the state governments less so.

“Mob mentality” and “angry mob” are terms that the uber wealthy use to denigrate ordinary people like us. — Noah Te Stroete

So why not just get rid of representatives and go with straight democracy using the internet? We vote on everything. Majority rules.

So then saying the Senate is anti-democratic isn't saying much by itself. The argument would need to be that the Senate is anti-democratic in a way that's bad for governing, unlike the other anti-democratic parts of US government.

Or the argument is that being anti-democratic is bad full stop, so we need to try a more pure form of democracy, which doesn't stop with abolishing the Senate. But the mob rule would need to be addressed.

We can also ask how democratic is a two party system? You have two parties representing the wishes of several hundred million people. If we really want to get down to it, how democratic is the US? Federal Judges are appointed and serve for life. The President is almost above the law. The CIA and some other elements of government act almost outside the law. The military answers to the President as their commander in chief, not the people.

And the of course there is the influence of corporations and special interests. Successful elections require money.

free people aren’t truly free if the government isn’t accountable to them. I don’t believe that the Senate is accountable to the majority of the US population. — Noah Te Stroete

It doesn't seem like the current president is either. He can get voted out next election, but so can senators.

The question of the OP is in the title. Seems like we both agree the answer is in the affirmative. — StreetlightX

Then it's not much of a philosophical discussion.