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posted by Fnord666 on Sunday October 27 2019, @11:07PM   Printer-friendly
from the or-not dept.

A story notes that

[...] according to a new U.S. Army report, Americans could face a horrifically grim future from climate change involving blackouts, disease, thirst, starvation and war. The study found that the US military itself might also collapse. This could all happen over the next two decades, the report notes.

[...] The report paints a frightening portrait of a country falling apart over the next 20 years due to the impacts of climate change on "natural systems such as oceans, lakes, rivers, ground water, reefs, and forests.

Current infrastructure in the US, the report says, is woefully underprepared: "Most of the critical infrastructures identified by the Department of Homeland Security are not built to withstand these altered conditions."


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  • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @05:39AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 28 2019, @05:39AM (#912665)

    I think you're missing the point here. If people genuinely believed that the world was going to end unless 'a sufficient number' of people naked with a chicken on their hand screaming To Cthulu We Praise - then you'd see a shortage of chickens because you'd damn sure see the world suddenly overrun with people running around naked screaming about cthulu. If they didn't really believe it, but wanted to signal their faith to Cthulu they probably wouldn't do anything themselves, because who wants to run around screaming naked with a chicken on their head? But they'd certainly signal their Cthulu virtue by making sure to encourage everybody else to do something.

    I think one of the clearest examples is on the coast. Most coastal areas tend to be urban areas. Many of these areas with absurdly high costs of living are ultra-liberal -- places like San Francisco, Palm Beach, etc. And indeed the hyper-wealthy in those areas are disproportionately you hyperactive pro-climate change folk. But isn't that kind of weird...? Spending, collectively, billions -likely trillions- of dollars on coastal properties that you're claiming will be destroyed within 50 years? And it's not like they'll be able to get out - once the real devastation hits and people see what's happening, the property values there will hit the gutter in a very short period of time. Yet not only is there no emigration from these coastal areas, there is an active migration towards them with an ever inflating coastal land value. This makes no sense if these people actually believe what they claim to believe.

    Ultimately, I think a salient issue is that humans seem wired to need conflict. As absurd as that sounds, it's probably a big part of what drove our evolutionary success. When you're never content, you will always continue to grow - even long after you've become the most dominant force. The "problem" with this is that the developed world has entered into an unprecedented era of peace and stability. And that seems to be driving many people quite literally insane. It could, for instance, even go some way towards explaining the skyrocketing rates of mental illness in developed nations. Peace and stability is incredibly boring. We need to an enemy, we need a cause. An invisible ever-present enemy that can only be defeated by completely revolutionizing the entire world? Why, you'd make Sir Don Quixote himself blush!

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