That's an assumption based on a multitude of assumption all of which could be wrong to various degrees. It's perfectly possible that birth rates will go down in the future and become negative and population will shrink and together with tech-progress it could eventually reach a sustainably level.
Yes, the chance of this happening is not great but it's not zero.
It's a bit telling how sure you are reducing emissions will kill massive amounts of humans compared to how much hope you're willing to give alternatives that don't reduce oil industry profits, like "maybe all populations will shrink naturally really soon".
If you really think this way, I suggest trying to apply the same zeal to all the options when you're trying to decide what you believe. If you don't feel this way and are just trolling or shilling then that sucks.
No one even mentioned the oil industry. You're showing your bias here.
I also never said that reducing emissions would kill people. I said the exact opposite: killing people would reduce emissions. This distinction is important because killing people on a large scale is, unfortunately, theoretically possible. Reducing emissions by the same amount without reducing the population is not.
Simply eliminating fossil-fuel-based fertilizer worldwide would cause at least a billion people to starve. And I said "would" because it's not actually going to happen... you cannot convince a billion people to starve. You would have to kill them.
If you think reducing oil emissions to zero tomorrow would result in the first curve on the XKCD image, I have bad news: it would not. There are many sources of emissions that are not related to oil, gas, or other fossil fuels, and the CO2 already in the atmosphere would not disappear if humanity stopped using oil overnight.
Emissions come from human activity. Oil is what enabled the human population to grow rapidly, but oil itself is not the root cause of emissions, humans are.
To stop emissions to that extent, you would have to reduce the population. I have not seen any proposed alternative that doesn't fall apart under even basic mathematical scrutiny.
After reducing the population, you would then have to devote a large share of the newly available resources to removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Only then could you, in theory, flatten the curve again.
Setting aside the obvious moral issues, it would also be extremely difficult to carry this out without triggering the collapse of human civilization through wars and eventually global nuclear destruction.
Who said it makes it better? It's horrible, pretending that there is some kind of "massive action" that we should take, but that massive action would need to be to kill billions of people.
If you want to do anything, go ahead, but the only thing we know that would work is killing billions of people within a very short time.
Is that what you want to do? If yes, then how? It would need to be done carefully; if the world powers just start nuking each-other, it's not going to lead to the desired outcome.
And no, it's not over, the curve will just not follow the first or second line. That's all. The planet is still habitable at +4°C according to our best models.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record
Can someone point me on the data of this, I can't find it anywhere. It seem like 1970 is the most new data we can get.
Mobile version
https://m.xkcd.com/1732/
That appears to have been published almost a decade ago, on September 12, 2016 if I'm reading this right: https://xkcd.com/1732/info.0.json
That makes me wonder how the science and predictions have changed and how much worse off we are now.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260801093239.h...
Thanks. And, that is sad to read.
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The current trajectory is also a mass dying of humans so hopefully we can thread the needle there.
That's an assumption based on a multitude of assumption all of which could be wrong to various degrees. It's perfectly possible that birth rates will go down in the future and become negative and population will shrink and together with tech-progress it could eventually reach a sustainably level. Yes, the chance of this happening is not great but it's not zero.
It's a bit telling how sure you are reducing emissions will kill massive amounts of humans compared to how much hope you're willing to give alternatives that don't reduce oil industry profits, like "maybe all populations will shrink naturally really soon".
If you really think this way, I suggest trying to apply the same zeal to all the options when you're trying to decide what you believe. If you don't feel this way and are just trolling or shilling then that sucks.
No one even mentioned the oil industry. You're showing your bias here.
I also never said that reducing emissions would kill people. I said the exact opposite: killing people would reduce emissions. This distinction is important because killing people on a large scale is, unfortunately, theoretically possible. Reducing emissions by the same amount without reducing the population is not.
Simply eliminating fossil-fuel-based fertilizer worldwide would cause at least a billion people to starve. And I said "would" because it's not actually going to happen... you cannot convince a billion people to starve. You would have to kill them.
If you think reducing oil emissions to zero tomorrow would result in the first curve on the XKCD image, I have bad news: it would not. There are many sources of emissions that are not related to oil, gas, or other fossil fuels, and the CO2 already in the atmosphere would not disappear if humanity stopped using oil overnight.
Emissions come from human activity. Oil is what enabled the human population to grow rapidly, but oil itself is not the root cause of emissions, humans are.
To stop emissions to that extent, you would have to reduce the population. I have not seen any proposed alternative that doesn't fall apart under even basic mathematical scrutiny. After reducing the population, you would then have to devote a large share of the newly available resources to removing CO2 from the atmosphere. Only then could you, in theory, flatten the curve again.
Setting aside the obvious moral issues, it would also be extremely difficult to carry this out without triggering the collapse of human civilization through wars and eventually global nuclear destruction.
Birthrates become negative!? How does that work?
We both know you understood what I meant but you have nothing acctually to say so you point out issue with the phrasing, good job dude.
and that is supposed to make it better how, exactly? should we just not do anything since it's over anyways?
Who said it makes it better? It's horrible, pretending that there is some kind of "massive action" that we should take, but that massive action would need to be to kill billions of people. If you want to do anything, go ahead, but the only thing we know that would work is killing billions of people within a very short time. Is that what you want to do? If yes, then how? It would need to be done carefully; if the world powers just start nuking each-other, it's not going to lead to the desired outcome.
And no, it's not over, the curve will just not follow the first or second line. That's all. The planet is still habitable at +4°C according to our best models.
It also could lead to a false impression that the Earth was warming regardless of human impact.