A survey on attitutdes (and opinions) on human extinction

Both Dmitry Orlov and Doomstead Diner have been surveying people about their thoughts about near-term (or otherwise) extinction.

My own perspective is that it is a rather odd pastime - especially asking how comfortable people feel about extinction (what normal person would feel COMFORTABLE with the idea?!)

I agree that it is a healthy thing for people to exhange their feelings about the possibility, but this is CRAZY!

I  am with Guy on this - "ask a silly question and you will get a silly answer"

If you look at the sum of scientific knowledge and look at all the evidence it is very hard to escape the logical conclusion that this species of smart ape is headed for near-term extinction. However, there is a high degree of uncertainty (except with the general principle) and I would never, with any degree of honesty, venture to answer any of the questions included below.

I'd be talking through a hole in my head.

I will endeavour to stick with WHAT IS.

It has a lot to recommend it.

---Seemorerocks

The Extinction Survey
Dmitry Orlov

Club Orlov,

26 May, 2015

There is a survey currently running on the Doomstead Diner, which asks people to make specific, numerical estimates about the timing of human extinction. It is inspired by the work of Guy McPherson, who has amassed much scientific evidence that points to very major climate disruption occurring over the next 2-3 decades, caused by multiple runaway positive feedback effects, such as Arctic methane release. Guy's conclusion is that these changes will mean that the Earth will no longer provide a habitat for humans, leading to near-term human extinction. His reasoning, as far as I have been able to piece it together, rests on a supposition of time-invariance: the planet will be warmer than it has ever been in human experience; therefore, no humans will survive. This is far short of a proof.

I see two ways to provide a proof.

The first is based on proving the existence of an extinction mechanism. For example, humans don't function well when atmospheric CO2 concentrations exceed 5000ppm, which cause dizziness, fainting spells and asphyxiation. Right now they are around 400ppm, going up by 2ppm every year. If that stays on track, this gives us 2300 years. However, there is not enough fossil fuels to keep burning at the same rate for another 2300 years. I am not aware of any straightforward bit of math that would conclusively demonstrate the impossibility of our continued existence.

The second is to make an inventory of all possible human habitats, and lifestyles to go with them, and then demonstrate that none of these habitats will be available in just a few decades. This is tricky, because it's so easy to pass over some small niche that may remain survivable far into the future, and all it takes is one of these to narrowly avoid extinction. An examination of mitochondrial DNA showed that at one point the human population dwindled to just a handful, yet we are still around—numbering in the billions! Extermination is hard—ask any exterminator—and extinction is even harder.

Still, my personal feeling is that most of us will go extinct by this century's end. Some will have no choice: when the Himalaya stops producing the requisite amount of snow melt to irrigate much of southeast Asia, and when the monsoon fails, that will be the end for a few billions of us. In other cases, it will be a matter of not being given a choice: many people would be able to leave death-trap cities behind and filter out into the countryside, where they could fend for themselves, but the countryside is marked "Private Property" and "No Trespassing," and so they will stay in the cities and die. (However, there are effective, proven methods of disabusing people of the notion that "this land is their land," and city people can be quite resourceful.) But there are many of those for whom extinction will be a matter of cultural preference. Like the Greenland Vikings, who could very well survive by emulating the Inuit rather than trying to exterminate them, many people will refuse to survive because the sort of survival that is possible will be below their high cultural standards. In the best traditions of the British navy, they will prefer to "drown like gentlemen" rather than grab a piece of flotsam, wash up on some wild shore, and quietly go native.

Back to the survey on the Doomstead Diner: Guy found it disagreeable. Here is his take on it:

I’ve not responded to the survey, nor will I, for two primary reasons:

1. Ask a stupid question, and you’re likely to receive a stupid answer. In this case, stupid responses prevail. A relevant question would focus on habitat for humans. Such a question might produce rational responses, even from academics.

2. Science does not depend upon, and is not heavily influenced by, democratic principles. Our votes have no bearing on the outcome.

To this I would add the following. Finding out people's guesstimates on exact numbers they have no way of calculating amounts to two things:

1. a better way to "market" human extinction (creepy as hell, if you think about it); and

2. feeding the confirmation bias of a bunch of self-selected "doomers," who can then all agree with each other about things they don't know anything about.

But I am very interested in the topic of voluntary extinction: the idea that large groups of people, who could theoretically have a choice in the matter, will go to their doom voluntarily, because they are unwilling to relinquish various standards and expectations which are becoming maladaptive.

And so, as a first thing, I thought I'd do a survey myself, to see where my readers' comfort level is in discussing the subject. A low comfort level would be indicative of an unwillingness to entertain thoughts of breaking cultural taboos and embracing choices that "civilized" people find distasteful. If the average score turns out to be low, then there is no reason to proceed. But if it is reasonably high, then the next step is to ask which cultural adaptations elicit the most discomfort, and which the least.

I am not interested in marketing extinction to a bunch of "doomers." The "doomers" are doomed by definition. I am interested in proposing cultural adaptations and small-scale technologies that might prevent extinction.

And so, without further ado, here is my survey (which is now closed, so here it is in text form).

1. How comfortable are you with the idea that Homo Sapiens, just like every other species, is doomed to eventual extinction?

2. How comfortable are you with the idea that the human species may go extinct in the not-too-distant future?

3. How comfortable are you with the thought that many coastal cities, in which much of the global population lives, will be underwater by the end of the century?

4. How comfortable are you with the thought that reduced snow-pack and glacial melt will wipe out entire farming regions, on which billions of people depend?

5. How comfortable are you with the reality of national boundaries dissolving under the influx of political, economic and environmental migrants?

6. How comfortable are you with the idea of overwhelmed health care systems leading to much higher disease loads, widespread mortality from currently preventable causes, much higher infant mortality and much lower life expectancy?

7. How comfortable are you with the thought that, due to shortages of nonrenewable resources of all kinds, dense population centers will not be maintainable, turning cities into death traps?

8. How comfortable are you with the prospect that unstable and extreme weather will make farming and kitchen-gardening unreliable, forcing the few survivors to revert to a nomadic lifestyle, gleaning what they can when and where they can, then moving on?

9. How comfortable are you with the prospect of civilized, urban humanity going extinct, being survived by widely dispersed, feral populations of hominids that eventually evolve into different hominid species?

For each question, the answers were:

Extremely uncomfortable

Somewhat uncomfortable

Indifferent

Somewhat comfortable

Perfectly comfortable

...

Update: between 3am and 8:44am I've collected more than enough data—a few hundred sets of responses. But unfortunately I used a service called SurveyMonkey, which allowed me to put up a survey for free, but then, unannounced, decided to hold the results hostage unless I pay them $300, which I won't do. After some email back-and-forth, they admitted that I own the data, and then refused to give it to me. So, don't use SurveyMonkey unless you want your data stolen. I managed to scrape the first 100 results off their web site (they won't let me download any results unless I pay up) but they are interesting and significant in any case. In short, I got the data I was looking for. Here is how they break down.

1. How comfortable are you with the idea that Homo Sapiens, just like every other species, is doomed to eventual extinction?

6 12 21 13 47

This was a calibration question, to get the dirt out of the data. People who are uncomfortable with the age and size of the universe, and our utter insignificance on the scale of things, aren't ready to discuss near-term human extinction. The 6 "Extremely uncomfortable" and the 12 "Somewhat uncomfortable" responses on the left are skewing the data. To adjust for this skew, I subtract 6 from the "Extremely uncomfortable" column, 12 from the "Somewhat uncomfortable," and add 18 to "Indifferent" (because indifference cuts both ways, you know).

0 0 39 13 47

The data that follow have been adjusted accordingly. Ah, much better! We will all go extinct eventually, and if you are uncomfortable with this, please seek help elsewhere. Yes, this does mean that 18% of the audience won't benefit from this exercise, but I think we should proceed for the sake of the remaining 82%.

2. How comfortable are you with the idea that the human species may go extinct in the not-too-distant future?

17 16 33 11 22

Now, this is very interesting indeed, because the data is split very evently: 1/3 uncomfortable, 1/3 indifferent, and 1/3 comfortable. Now, it doesn't seem all that normal to be perfectly comfortable with everyone you know and their children going extinct in the next few decades. Some amount of emotional discomfort seems normal, given the subject matter. And look at the spike over on the right! I believe that at least some of the 22 "Extremely comfortable" respondents answered the wrong question: not whether they are comfortable with it, but whether they believe in it. This is another sort of skew, but let's hope that it is confined to this question.

3. How comfortable are you with the thought that many coastal cities, in which much of the global population lives, will be underwater by the end of the century?

2 7 37 19 33

This, I would guess, is the result of the story of rising ocean levels being endlessly repeated: people have become comfortable with the idea, in the sense of their senses having been dulled. But this isn't something to be comfortable or complacent about.

4. How comfortable are you with the thought that reduced snow-pack and glacial melt will wipe out entire farming regions, on which billions of people depend?

11 19 30 12 27

But this one hasn't been talked about quite so much. Yes, the California drought is a big story, and Lake Mead which feeds Las Vegas is drying up, but the full scale of the disaster globally hasn't quite sunk in yet. So this is a gap in coverage that is worth addressing.

5. How comfortable are you with the reality of national boundaries dissolving under the influx of political, economic and environmental migrants?

7 6 28 16 42

This is interesting, because there is a supermajority of people who are comfortable with the traditional nation-state going away. It would appear that most national politicians who try to make use of immigration as a "hot button" issue are in fact quite far behind the curve on this one. Since my work is very much international, not in terms of nation-states but in terms of ethnic nations, this result makes me happy.

6. How comfortable are you with the idea of overwhelmed health care systems leading to much higher disease loads, widespread mortality from currently preventable causes, much higher infant mortality and much lower life expectancy?

9 18 27 12 32

Here we have a clear multimodal distribution, its two peaks representing resignation (in the middle) and indifference (on the right). I don't think that this is a particularly helpful result. It is very hard for a society that has had the resources to be compassionate to embrace austerity and to ration treatment, limiting it to those who are either productive or promising to become so. Coming to terms with this transition is quite a task, and this is another area that needs much more attention. If it did, people might be a bit less comfortable with it.

7. How comfortable are you with the thought that, due to shortages of nonrenewable resources of all kinds, dense population centers will not be maintainable, turning cities into death traps?

7 10 27 16 39

Same multimodal distribution, but overall leaning even more heavily toward "comfortable." It would seem that, in light of all we see, many people have lost hope that there will still be prosperous urban islands, with the help of advanced technology perhaps. (If you study the data, bauxite, used to smelt aluminum, will be the only nonrenewable industrial input that will still be abundant by mid-century; but the energy to smelt it won't be.) The demise of megacities is another subject worth tackling, and it is clear that there is an audience for it.

8. How comfortable are you with the prospect that unstable and extreme weather will make farming and kitchen-gardening unreliable, forcing the few survivors to revert to a nomadic lifestyle, gleaning what they can when and where they can, then moving on?

12 9 33 20 26

The surprise here, if any, is the lack of strong sentiment on the issue: the majority is either indifferent or only somewhat comfortable with the idea.

9. How comfortable are you with the prospect of civilized, urban humanity going extinct, being survived by widely dispersed, feral populations of hominids that eventually evolve into different hominid species?

10 -5 35 18 42

Bottom line: extremely comfortable. The -5 is the result of a few people who were far out in left field in question 1. lurching even further to the left. The subject of feral humanity should also be on the menu.

Thank you for your responses. This has been most enlightening!

Here is the ongoing survey of the Doomstead Diner 

You can still take The Human Extinction Survey and be Counted

Homo Saps will go Extinct in:

• 20 Years
• 50 Years
• 100 Years
• In the Year 2525
• In 1000 Years
• When the Sun Goes Red Giant
• When the Universe Ends
• Never

You can explain your reasons for your Extinction choice here (optional)

How many people will be left on Earth in 50 years?

• None
• <10,000
• 10K-100K
• 100K-1M
• 1M-100M
• 100M-1B
• 1B-3B
• 4B-6B
• 7B-10B
• >10B

You may explain your reasons for this number here (optional)

The Proximal Cause of Human Extinction will be:

• Anthropogenic Climate Change
• Geological Climate Change
• Global Thermonuclear War
• Asteroid Impact
• Supervolcanic Eruption
• Alien Invasion
• Sun Going Red Giant

You can explain your choice of Proximal Cause here (optional)

Near Term Human Extinction can still be avoided if:

• We use the Democratic System to Elect better Leaders
• We Passively Resist the current system by Withdrawing from it
• We engage in Violent Revolution to Overthrow the Elite
• We develop locally based Transition Communities
• Near Term Human Extinction cannot be avoided, we are DOOMED!
• There will not be a Near Term Human Extinction

You can explain your Avoidance choice here (optional)

If Homo Sap does NOT go Extinct in the next Century, the remaining Homo Saps will be:

• Still Industrial & Technological
• Agricultural & Permacultural
• Hunter-Gatherers
• Other (explain below)
• None, we will be Extinct

Explain why you think this will be the main form of living in a Century (NOT Optional if you clicked "other")

If Extinction of Homo Sap in the Near Term could have been avoided, the last time it could have been avoided was:

• 2000 (prior to 911)
• 1970 (Back to the Land Movement)
• 1850 (Beginning of the Age of Oil)
• 1750 (Beginning of the Industrial Revolution)
• 10,000 BC (Beginning of the Age of Agriculture)
• 250,000 Years Ago (accepted figure for the control of Fire by Homo Sap)
• It never was avoidable in the Near Term

Explain your reasons for choosing this era as the last moment in History Near Term Human Extinction could have been avoided (optional)