• magnetosphere
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    11110 months ago

    The people responsible don’t care. They will be perfectly fine letting the rest of us die. They’ll only start giving a shit once cheap labor starts getting hard to come by.

    • Dieguito 🦝
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      1710 months ago

      Automation replaces manual works, AI replaces intellectual ones. No need for cheap labor in the short term.

      • Deme
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        3110 months ago

        Robots cost money. Sweatshop slaves work for food.

        • @NegativeInf@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Robots don’t sleep. They don’t get sick. They don’t have federally mandates days off. They don’t commit self delete via rooftop if you overwork them. If you can be replaced by something that can do your job at 10% the speed for 1% the total cost, you will be. Such is the way of capitalist automation.

          • Aviandelight
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            2010 months ago

            I have never seen automation fully replace the need for human workers. You still need people to maintain the equipment. All automation does is increase the amount of output. And when you start running machines at capacity you find out real quick just how much maintenance they really need.

          • @sveri@lemmy.sveri.de
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            610 months ago

            Half of what you say is true. But robots are expensive, in many cases way more expensive than child labours around the world. And while it’s possible to have robots do grunt work, true AI is still far away, like several decades.

          • magnetosphere
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            310 months ago

            The kind of sophisticated AI and robotics that can replace a human is much further away than some people seem to realize. That kind of technology doesn’t even exist in a lab. It will be decades before anything approaching that level even exists, and decades more before it’s an affordable, practical, mass-produced option. Even huge corporations that have the budget to invest won’t have the opportunity for quite a while.

      • TwoGems
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        1710 months ago

        AI learns from existing human work. Without innovation it will learn nothing of value.

  • uphillbothways
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    8410 months ago

    This rule is actually “an order of magnitude best estimate”, which means it’s more of a range, somewhere between 0.1 to 10 deaths per 1000 tons of carbon burned.

    That leaves a lot of room for scenarios even more dire than the one outlined here.

    “When climate scientists run their models and then report on them, everybody leans toward being conservative, because no one wants to sound like Doctor Doom,” explains Pierce.

    “We’ve done that here too and it still doesn’t look good.”

    Translation: 10 billion people will die.

    2nd translation: Almost everyone will die.

      • @deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz
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        510 months ago

        Yeah. That’s the sad part. I think most people sort of accidentally think that, without really critically thinking about it.

        The people who will suffer most area already invisible to most others.

        In NZ we’re trying to reduce carbon emissions in farming to the cries of farmers “but you’re killing our jobs” neglecting that they’re indirectly killing actual people.

    • @Urbanfox@lemmy.world
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      1110 months ago

      In Europe over 60,000 people died in 2022 due to heatwaves.

      People are blind to these deaths because they’re not being taken out by a single devastating event, but rather a series of small events the people brush off as “they were going to die anyway”.

      It’s one of the reasons I’ve not, and will not have children. This is getting exponentially worse and I couldn’t image the horror that our future will face.

      • @deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz
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        910 months ago

        … meanwhile we’re compensating people who built $10m houses on cliff tops, who then cut down the trees securing the cliff edge, and are now finding out that cliffs erode, and their houses are failing into the sea.

        … we’re exempting farmers from paying the actual costs of their carbon emissions while they pollute or water ways with reckless abandon. It’s only the poor fuckers down stream who’ll get sick and die.

        … While we still argue if old and sick people should die of COVID so that fashion shops can still hock their tat manufactured halfway around the world and shipped here on ships that burn the shittiest fuel available.

        I have had kids, and lament the world I’m giving to them.

    • @scarabic@lemmy.world
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      410 months ago

      That’s the irony. They are probably a lot of the people who contribute the least to climate change. So any misanthropes in here saying “good, this will help” are not only evil but wrong.

  • @Aidinthel@reddthat.com
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    4010 months ago

    There are some real disgusting people here. Anyone who thinks that the solution to climate change is to kill a lot of humans should consider going first.

    • Baut [she/her] auf.
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      410 months ago

      Calling people viruses is probably not the best way to go about it. It’s the way we’re doing economy at a global scale, not inherent to us as a species.

      • SokathHisEyesOpen
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        310 months ago

        I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague and we are the cure.

        • Baut [she/her] auf.
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          110 months ago

          Mask off moment.
          And as with fascist arguments often the case, it has absolutely no grounding in science. This “equilibrium” you’re about is the consequence of prey and hunters (see Volterra and What’s-their-name). Some species don’t procreate under certain circumstances, but certainly “not all mammals”.
          We humans ascended any natural predators. Our population can exceed the number we currently have, but only if the way we’re living is not driven by the desire of endless growth. It’s a distributive and economic issue, enforced and backed by power-over and (state) violence. If you were looking through human history, you’d see that this is not something inherent to humans. Another world built on cooperation instead of inefficient competition is possible.
          But those questions have harder solutions than just “lol I guess we have to murder people then - what no not us kill those somewhere else who look different”. Spoiler: even with less people, you’re going to have these issues at some point if you’re producing stuff like we are on a global scale.

  • @malloc@lemmy.world
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    1910 months ago

    I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of those casualties in the USA will be in Florida and California.

    Many of the major insurance companies stopped issuing new home owners policies in those states because it was no longer profitable or very risky. IIRC, increasing housing costs and frequency of these events was the main reason they pulled out

    • magnetosphere
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      10 months ago

      Yup. The same people who deny science start paying attention once their own money becomes involved.

      In Florida, the issue is rising sea levels. If you look at one of those interactive maps showing the effects of a rising sea level, you’ll notice that all of southern Florida is at risk of major flooding.

      In California, wildfires are the problem. As the atmosphere gets warmer and rainfall becomes unreliable, forests get drier. Fires will become bigger, spread faster, and be even more frequent.

      Neither state will be a profitable place for home insurance companies.

      • @cabb@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        10 months ago

        In Florida the issue has little to do with rising sea levels at the moment. There’s a Bad Faith law that makes the insurance companies responsible for the policyholders legal bills if the decision increases the amount of the settlement. There are a lot of lawyers that take cases and only bill if they win, and if they do win they bill a lot. There is also a lot of insurance fraud in Florida, both of which drove up the legal costs to insurers. Catastrophic events are more impactful to insurers in Florida since Florida has passed a law preventing international reinsurers from being used. So when a hurricane hits rather than having the costs borne by a larger number of insurers across the globe, only US insurers will be spending money on the catastrophe. This has pushed many insurers to insolvency.

        In California rate increases could allow insurers to keep up with rising costs. Note that the percent of homes affected by wildfires is only somewhat up over the past roughly 20 years, the real problem is the increase in severity due to rising property values and insurers being unable to raise rates due to Prop 103. Prop 103 allows for public interest groups to have hearings with the DOI and the insurance company to determine if a rate increase of 7% or higher is justified, and the insurance company must pay the legal costs of the public interest group(s). The lawyers who lobbied for this law have set up a public interest group and start hearing whenever an insurer tries to increase rates at 7% or more. Said group tries to drag out the hearings as long as possible, since it’s free money.

      • @MajorJimmy@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Because when ice melts it turns to water. When lots of ice (the arctic) melts, it turns to water (the ocean). The problem is not only does this raise the sea level (effectively causing the coast to recede inward) but it causes more common and powerful natural disasters which, in turn, wreak havoc on specific parts of the country.

        Which states typically face the worst natural disasters? Florida (hurricanes) and California (wildfires). When somebody’s house gets blown or burned away, insurance is supposed to cover the cost. But what happens when the insurance company spends more on paying out claims than it brings in in revenue? It goes out of business.

        To avoid going out of business, these insurance companies are looking at market projections that use data attempting to predict future risks, or future likelyhood that they will have to pay out to their clients. Since climate change is only going to make natural disasters more severe, but ALSO more common, the companies are (intelligently) no longer pursuing business sin these states because it they are going to pay out more than they take in. If they stay, they would lose money.

        Edit: “Wreak” havoc, not “Reek”.

        • @GentlemanLoser@ttrpg.network
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          210 months ago

          Where’s the part that kills people tho?

          Original OP said the homeowners insurance debacle in FL is going to contribute to the climate change deaths mention in the article.

          I’m trying to understand how lack of property insurance results in excess deaths

          • @MajorJimmy@lemmy.world
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            110 months ago

            Fair enough. Just speculating at this point, but I would think that, since it’s rather difficult to just up and move to another state, people are going to find that they can’t insure their homes, or if they can, they would be for exorbitant rates.

            Banks require home insurance for a mortgage, so if all the insurance companies start pulling out, you’re going to have large swathes of people who can’t find or can’t afford their insurance. I’m not sure what happens to your mortgage when you lose/can’t find somebody to insure you, though, I imagine it’s nothing good.

            So if they have nobody willing to insure them (not there yet, but if all insurers start pulling out…) You’ll have swathes of people who can’t insure their homes and may go into foreclosure. Homelessness increases, and the homeless are some of the most vulnerable people in the country, so perhaps that’s what they were thinking?

            It’s certainly going to cause significant financial hardships for those states at the very least, though how climate change’s impact on the insurance industry SPECIFICALLY increases deaths, I am not sure.

        • @Mio@feddit.nu
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          210 months ago

          They insurance price will need to increase in these new risk zoones.

        • @cabb@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          110 months ago

          Insurance policies are short-term and climate change is going to take longer to really hit. Climate change isn’t why but rather legislative changes. I’ve left a more detailed comment elsewhere in this thread if you’re interested.

      • magnetosphere
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        410 months ago

        Insurance companies don’t want to offer homeowners insurance in places where mass destruction is likely. It’s just not profitable.

        Like other companies, an insurance company generally wants as many customers as possible. If an area is considered so potentially dangerous (and therefore unprofitable) that home insurers are willing to turn business away, it may be too potentially dangerous to live in at all.

        • @GentlemanLoser@ttrpg.network
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          110 months ago

          We’re not underinsured because of climate change per se in FL, it’s because every storm results in a ton of fraudulent claims.

          Again, how does lack of property insurance kill people?

    • @cabb@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      110 months ago

      It’s largely legislative changes that have made insurance unprofitable in those states. Florida’s bad faith law and banning of international reinsurers have both hurt the industry a lot. California has had wildfires for a long time and their frequency hasn’t increased much over time.

      I left a more detailed comment elsewhere in this thread if you’re interested.

    • drphungky
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      10 months ago

      It’s not actually junk prediction, though you might call it doom-bait journalism. WHO put climate change related deaths at like 150,000 people annually in the year 2000. Those numbers will obviously go up, which is why they’re backed in a lot of studies, but the real rub on reporting here is that they’re talking about “over the course of a century”. So it’s a completely reasonable estimate, it just ignores a lot of nuance like “some countries are having higher population growth so we’re not going to just lose 1 billion (though these deaths are theoretically preventable)” but also “the vast majority of these deaths will be concentrated in Southeast Asia and poorer countries.”

    • @Underwaterbob@lemm.ee
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      310 months ago

      Yeah, anyone remember “10 in 2010”? You know, where everyone was panicking because there were going to be 10 billion people on Earth in 2010. The best thing anyone can do for their case is to stick to facts.

  • @blind3rdeye@lemm.ee
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    1410 months ago

    “1 billion people on track to die”… I guess we’re doing an empirical test of the trolley problem.

    We have a choice between inconveniencing some people (especially some very rich people); vs saving billions of lives by switching tracks. And apparently the empirical choice is to equivocate and delay so that we stay on the path of death and ruin. … It isn’t the solution I would have chosen personally.

    • @Agent641@lemmy.world
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      510 months ago

      If you pull the lever, ultimately nothing changes because the tipping point was wooshed past in the 1990s and this first billion will be the lucky ones who dont survive to witness the extinction of the human race

    • Maeve
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      110 months ago

      Titan sub vs 300+ refugees in the med.

  • catreadingabook
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    1210 months ago

    “… over the next century,” continues the article after the catchy headline.

    Not that people dying is a good thing, but I was kind of hoping they’d be people alive right now. If 1/8th of the world treated climate change like it was personally going to kill them, we might still have a chance of turning things around. (As a bonus, can oil giants really keep their execs safe from 1 in 8 highly motivated people?)

    • @TheAlbacor@lemmy.world
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      1310 months ago

      It doesn’t need to kill them to completely disrupt social order. There’s an estimate out there that there will be up to 1 billion climate refugees by 2050. The Global North already does not handle refugees as well, even though they consistently cause a large amount of the refugee problems.

    • DarkThoughts
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      810 months ago

      A century isn’t that long and 1 billion people is a huge portion of the global populace.