
We've Just Had the Best Decade in Human History - jandrewrogers
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/12/weve-just-had-the-best-decade-in-human-history-seriously/
======
miles
An earlier article by the same author:

 _Why climate change is good for the world_ \- "Don't panic! The scientific
consensus is that warmer temperatures do more good than harm"
[https://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/10/carry-on-
warming/](https://www.spectator.co.uk/2013/10/carry-on-warming/)

His tenure at Northern Rock does not inspire confidence:

 _The man who crocked Northern Rock - and how the scandal will cost £55
BILLION_ [https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1026384/The-man-
cro...](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1026384/The-man-crocked-
Northern-Rock--scandal-cost-55-BILLION.html)

 _Lessons of the fall_ \- "How a financial darling fell from grace, and why
regulators didn't catch it"
[https://www.economist.com/briefing/2007/10/18/lessons-of-
the...](https://www.economist.com/briefing/2007/10/18/lessons-of-the-fall)

 _Northern Rock chairman quits after crisis_
[https://www.euronews.com/2007/10/19/northern-rock-
chairman-q...](https://www.euronews.com/2007/10/19/northern-rock-chairman-
quits-after-crisis)

 _Matt Ridley would turn planet into Northern Rock_
[https://theecologist.org/2018/nov/05/matt-ridley-would-
turn-...](https://theecologist.org/2018/nov/05/matt-ridley-would-turn-planet-
northern-rock)

~~~
thu2111
Is that why this article is flagged? Because of who wrote it?

Do you have any _specific_ disagreement with anything he wrote? Because it
seemed to be an interesting article with many things in it I didn't know,
written in an engaging style.

From glancing through the comments below it seems people are angry because
this guy isn't angry, and doesn't believe the world is doomed.

 _Why climate change is good for the world - "Don't panic! The scientific
consensus is that warmer temperatures do more good than harm"_

You don't explicitly pass judgement on this, apparently believing climate
sensitivity and impact of small temperature changes is so obvious as to be
beyond doubt. But there's a lot of doubt about how sensitive the climate
really is. Climatology is very far from being a precise and well understood
science, and that's before you get into some of the questionable scientific
practices found inside.

The article is, again, well written and makes good arguments. It starts by
citing a scientific meta-study into the economic impacts and goes from there.
It also acknowledges the possible counter-arguments.

For those who are interested in the question of climate sensitivity Nic Lewis
(a published climate scientist _and_ skeptic), has some good talks on the
matter, like this one:

[https://www.nicholaslewis.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/09/Lew...](https://www.nicholaslewis.org/wp-
content/uploads/2019/09/Lewis_Climate-Sensitivity_talk_Dublin2019-slides.pdf)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYZW-6jw98U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYZW-6jw98U)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Matt Ridley and James Delingpole are regulars in the Spectator and Telegraph
since their capture by the extreme. They regularly mangle facts, cherry pick
and misquote to give highly misleading pieces. So much so they have become
notorious for it. Nic Lewis, retired financier, physicist and mathematician,
is not a climate scientist, despite his interest and Lawson thinktank funded
paper. _Calling himself_ an independent climate scientist doesn't make him
one.

Let't take a look. Here's a report when it was published[1]. Even one of the
people Mr Lewis cites disputes his claims.

 _The "good news" the IPCC apparently tried to hide is that the world's
climate system is less sensitive to a doubling of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere than some scientists think it is.

The bad news for the GWPF – a secretly funded organisation founded by UK
climate science sceptic Lord Nigel Lawson - is that before the ink has even
dried on their new report, the organisation has been accused of cherry-picking
facts to make their argument stick.

And in more bad news, one of the researchers cited by the GWPF report has told
me that even if Lawson's think tank is right, then we're heading for 3C of
global heating by the end of the century (which is actually very bad news)._

Good prose does not make a good scientific or factual argument. It is as you
say, just "good talks", or hot air. Lawson was so bad at denial that his
appearances on the BBC were more a black comedy five minutes than actual
contrarianism.

[https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-
oz/2014/mar/0...](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-
oz/2014/mar/06/lord-lawson-climate-sceptic-thinktank)

------
kerkeslager
This is the worst paragraph of the whole article:

> Perhaps one of the least fashionable predictions I made nine years ago was
> that ‘the ecological footprint of human activity is probably shrinking’ and
> ‘we are getting more sustainable, not less, in the way we use the planet’.
> That is to say: our population and economy would grow, but we’d learn how to
> reduce what we take from the planet. And so it has proved. An MIT scientist,
> Andrew McAfee, recently documented this in a book called More from Less,
> showing how some nations are beginning to use less stuff: less metal, less
> water, less land. Not just in proportion to productivity: less stuff
> overall.

...and what you're leaving out here is that this is far too little, far too
late. This is like noting a decrease in the number of iceburg collisions in
the last hours before the Titanic sank.

This is NOT a cause for optimism. We're destroying the environment at a slower
rate, but that doesn't mean we're not destroying the environment.

~~~
intended
Even that is wrong - we aren’t slowing the rate we are damaging the
environment- that is fated to go up.

What we are doing is reducing the rate at which our damage grows.

Reduction in acceleration is not reduction in velocity or reversal.

------
scarmig
For an invective against environmental politics, this Spectator article
somehow managed to avoid even alluding to carbon.

If you're going to say that all green types are nuts because everything is
hunky dory, you have to at least put in some claim that the Earth isn't even
really warming, or isn't warming as much as we thought, or that rapid warming
is good. Any of them would be false, but you've at least got to try.

~~~
hawkice
Or its warming but the warming isn't so terrible to outweigh the other
advances.

~~~
kerkeslager
Yes it is. Global warming is an existential threat to human existence on earth
in a way that few other environmental issues are.

~~~
ars
I really don't understand people who believe this kind of thing. Existential
means existence, yet not a single scientist believes global warming threatens
human existence.

Where exactly are you getting this from? It's certainly not from the science.

~~~
kerkeslager
> Existential means existence, yet not a single scientist believes global
> warming threatens human existence.

If you're going to argue this pedantically, perhaps don't start by claiming
you know the opinions of every scientist, because if we're being pedantic,
that's obviously not true.

Less pedantically, I think we agree that _probably_ humans will survive global
warming. But I think that we can agree that there's a temperature that's not
survivable, even if we don't know what temperature that is. There's no long-
term upper bound on how hot earth can get, and we're modeling uncharted
territory: earth has never been as hot as it's going to get, while life has
been on earth. So we really don't know how bad it will get. There is some
chance that global warming will literally wipe out humanity, and given the
stakes, I think that's a significant risk we need to be addressing.

~~~
Isinlor
> There's no long-term upper bound on how hot earth can get, and we're
> modeling uncharted territory: earth has never been as hot as it's going to
> get, while life has been on earth. So we really don't know how bad it will
> get.

Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum [0]

The associated period of massive carbon release into the atmosphere has been
estimated to have lasted from 20,000 to 50,000 years. The entire warm period
lasted for about 200,000 years. Global temperatures increased by 5–8 °C.
Paired δ13C, δ11B, and δ18O data suggest that ~12000 Gt of carbon (at least
44000 Gt CO 2e) were released over 50,000 years, averaging 0.24 Gt per year.

Since at least 1997, the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum has been
investigated in geoscience as an analog to understand the effects of global
warming and of massive carbon inputs to the ocean and atmosphere, including
ocean acidification. Humans today emit about 10 Gt of carbon per year, and
will have released a comparable amount in about 1,000 years at that rate.

Take a look also at "Abrupt climate change" article [1]:

Timescales of events described as 'abrupt' may vary dramatically. Changes
recorded in the climate of Greenland at the end of the Younger Dryas, as
measured by ice-cores, imply a sudden warming of +10 °C (+18 °F) within a
timescale of a few years. Other abrupt changes are the +4 °C (+7.2 °F) on
Greenland 11,270 years ago or the abrupt +6 °C (11 °F) warming 22,000 years
ago on Antarctica.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Therm...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_climate_change](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abrupt_climate_change)

------
grabbalacious
I broadly agree with Ridley, Pinker, et al, that material conditions,
education, crime reduction, and various other aspects of life have been
improving lately.

I would also agree that economic growth and energy usage aren't inherently
bad; these are only problematic at our _current_ level of technology. And
we're going to need a lot more of both in order to tackle future existential
problems among other things.

However one aspect of well-being which isn't always included in these
treatments is that of 'mental health' or the state of our 'souls' as it used
to be thought of. Both concepts are vague but they do point to something real
and profoundly important. So here's an unrhetorical question: are we getting
better or worse in _this_ respect, on average? Or is it simply impossible to
measure at our present inadequate level of understanding?

------
matthewmacleod
Although it would be silly to expect much better from The Spectator, this is
an shockingly bad article which does little more than say “some metrics are
better therefore green policies are shit”.

~~~
sametmax
I like positivism. And I think given what we see in the news all the time it's
important to promote good things.

But stating "best decade in human" history is really tongue in cheek. You
could has well hand pick other indicators and state "end of the world signs
were clear starting from 2010":

\- The biggest economical power in the world, China, is now turning into 1984

\- 60 % of the insect species considered extinct, and because of us

\- Micro plastics everywhere

\- USA general opioid addiction

\- For the first time literacy, IQ and lifespan decrease in some occidental
countries

\- Obesity and diabetes epidemics

\- Highest difference between rich and poor in centuries, while the former
never paid such low taxes.

\- Mass surveillance and black torture sites are now considered standard
practice

\- Extremism rising

\- Mega corporations now have more economical power than some small countries

\- Ads, ads everywhere. Comments are ads. Articles are ads. The entire
internet has been sold to PR companies.

\- Huge revealed scandals (panama papers, PRISM, Epstein, snowden, equifax...)
ended up with no consequences for the criminals, screaming to the world that
the powerful can actually do whatever they want

\- Health care and justice systems in rich countries are saturated

\- Jails are businesses, filled mostly with males from a few minorities.

\- The population is violently divided on major political issues: Trump in the
US, Brexit in the UK, Gilets Jaunes in France, Hong Kong in China...

\- Privacy is at a all time low with the rise of IoT and smart
speakers/cameras to complement the already omnipresent internet trackers and
ubiquitous phones

\- Star Wars 9

~~~
papito
I would add to that, complete collapse in civilized political discourse,
fueled by social media. Post-shame, post-fact world.

~~~
thu2111
Isn't people calling the other side names like "post fact" and "post shame"
the very collapse of civilized discourse you're lamenting?

~~~
mistermann
No side was specified. There's typically no shortage of untrue words on either
side of any divide.

------
11thEarlOfMar
There are certainly many major issues to address.

Still, it's good for our collective mental health to acknowledge that many
_really important_ elements of the human experience are _really improving_ in
meaningful ways.

If nothing else, openly acknowledging the successes of the past decades gives
humanity confidence to address the considerable challenges of the present.

Strictly focusing on either the negative or the positive is out of balance.
Balance is healthy.

------
pier25
All of this is great but it doesn't change the fact that our emissions are
ridiculously high and we are entering the most perilous time for humanity.

~~~
cm2187
And by “we” I presume you mean Asia and South America [1]. By blaming the US
and European countries, Greta & co are barking the wrong tree. What we really
need is to get China off coal to make a dent. The EU and US have been doing
some decent progress already.

[1] [https://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/Global...](https://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/10/Global-CO2-emissions-by-region-since-1751.png)

~~~
pier25
No, by "we" I mean humanity.

Edit: Also that graph doesn't show emissions per capita which is the metric
that really matters.

[https://external-
content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...](https://external-
content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.economicshelp.org%2Fwp-
content%2Fuploads%2F2014%2F03%2Fco2-emissions-per-capita.png&f=1&nofb=1)

Also see this about cumulative emissions:

[https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-
public/uploads/cumulati...](https://wriorg.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-
public/uploads/cumulative_emissions.png)

The US is still the country that has emitted more CO2.

~~~
cm2187
It’s not the consumption per capita that matters to the climate.

~~~
pier25
You shifted the conversation to responsibility by country/region.

~~~
cm2187
That’s a breakdown, not a ratio.

------
Sawamara
Just one click to the author's name reveals these titles:

[https://www.spectator.co.uk/author/matt-
ridley/](https://www.spectator.co.uk/author/matt-ridley/)

>The most dangerous thing about the Amazon fires is the apocalyptic rhetoric

>Ignore the global warming hysteria: hurricanes are not getting worse

>The eradication of South Georgia’s rats proves we can do anything

>Wind turbines are neither clean nor green and they provide zero global energy

>The world is getting greener. Why does no one want to know?

And my personal favorite:

>How hunting and shooting help wildlife – and not just in Africa

Bloody brilliant, let me tell you.

~~~
cm2187
I haven’t read those articles but I can think of a few good points behind many
of those titles. It appeared the Amazon fires weren’t worse than any other
year, wind turbines have lots of challenges that make them pretty much
unsuitable as a primary source of energy at scale, as for hunting, it seems
counter intuitive but it is often what supports financially many natural
reserves, which happen to also require population control.

~~~
Sawamara
They do reveal a pattern that is equivalent to ignoring the canaries in a
coalmine. The Amazon's fires are crucial this year not because there was not
burning previously, but because once the ecosystems collapse, there is no
regaining the rainforest. And of course it will happen, anyone who thinks
otherwise is either ignorant, stupid, or plainly paid to ignore it. Wind?
There is a difference between it being not good enough to be a primary source
vs "providing zero energy", and the list goes on.

The hunting of endangered species is a gross practice that is a natural
extension of the colonialist history of the West. When rich whites go to shoot
animals who are not capable of defending themselves, no one should kid itself
that yeah, there are alternatives to that horrid practice - and meanwhile,
illegal hunting continues to eat up entire species, so the whole talk about
hunting conserving the population is simply not true when taken in its actual
context.

And we completely ignored the times when the ruling class goes to countries,
shoots animals unlawfully, and gets away with it. Examples:

[https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/11/donald-
trump...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/dec/11/donald-trump-jr-
mongolia-rare-endangered-sheep-permit) [https://dailynewshungary.com/deputy-
pm-semjens-swedish-hunt-...](https://dailynewshungary.com/deputy-pm-semjens-
swedish-hunt-scandal-worsening/)

And we could continue with more historic examples, like this piece of art
right here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithsonian%E2%80%93Roosevelt_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smithsonian%E2%80%93Roosevelt_African_Expedition)

Makes my skin crawl.

------
bbeckerman
I appreciate the positivity until it comes at the snarky expense of
environmentalists and ecologists.

------
einpoklum
Does this guy think we were born yesterday?

> predictions I made ... that ‘the ecological footprint of human activity is
> probably shrinking’ and ‘we are getting more sustainable, not less...’...
> our population and economy would grow, but we’d learn how to reduce what we
> take from the planet. And so it has proved. An MIT scientist, Andrew McAfee,
> recently documented this in a book called More from Less, showing how some
> nations are beginning to use less stuff: less metal, less water, less land.
> Not just in proportion to productivity: less stuff overall.

That's the kind of evidence he gives?

* "Some" nations, not all nor most, nor the largest ones.

* "Beginning" to use less stuff, not "using" less stuff.

* "less stuff: [one kind], [another kind], [a third kind]" \- not using less generally, but using less of certain kinds of things, albeit important ones.

and so on. This is Junk commentary. I wouldn't be surprised if even his
sources are also painting an overly rosy picture.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> For example, a normal drink can today contains 13 grams of aluminium, much
of it recycled. In 1959, it contained 85 grams. Substituting the former for
the latter is a contribution to economic growth, but it reduces the resources
consumed per drink.

Interesting. But before I hip-hip-hurray, I'd like to know how many 13g drink
cans were made in 2019, and how many 85g cans were made in 1959.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
I don't know about cans but overall aluminium production has rocketed, see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aluminium#/media/Fi...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aluminium#/media/File:Aluminium_-
_world_production_trend.svg)

~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Yes, that bit about the cans was a very suspect statistic to quote so out of
context.

------
jonnypotty
This commentator is appealing to the idea that existential threats basically
aren't real because they aren't measurable.

Look: measurement a,b,c,d all show things are improving. So this is the truth.

It's one point of view. There are plenty of other ways to look at the world
seriously. It doesn't have to be reduced to 5 or 6 numbers.

------
Mugwort
We also passed 400 ppm CO2 in the atmosphere. Best decade ever for sealing
peoplekind's fate.

------
ilaksh
Seems like they should mention how the global debt crisis is going to be
resolved, if everything is really so great.

The "roaring 20s" preceded the great depression. And then a world war.

------
hliyan
Strangely enough, I was just compiling a list of "good things that happened
this decade" in an adjoining window for a different purpose. Here's what I got
so far:

Cheap solar energy

Electric cars

CRISPR gene editing

Real world machine learning applications

Commercial space vehicles

Ebola vaccine

Heightened public awareness of: plastics, climate change, inequality, sexual
harrassment

We fixed the Ozone hole

Extreme poverty down by half

Higgs boson and gravitational waves discovered

~~~
wallace_f
Everything has to do with science and innovation.

What about mass surveilance, rising suicides and homelessness, or never-ending
wars, among other things?

~~~
IshKebab
Those aren't good things?

~~~
wallace_f
I know that, but the topic we are discussing is that this is the greatest
decade. My response is in that context.

------
rjkennedy98
No mention of any cultural or individual progress. Of course technology will
get better because we can build on the past. Individual and cultural progress
should be the measure of a society.

~~~
ailideex
How would we measure that?

------
antihero
Tell that to all the people oppressed by the right wing shitheads that are in
power in so many countries.

------
tomrod
Soft paywall

~~~
q3k
Sounds about right.

------
Mugwort
That can't possibly be true, not while Trump is president.

------
seibelj
Honestly the world is awesome and there is no time I’d rather live than the
present. The endless complaining and “sky is falling” stories made me unplug
from the media, when I do read the news I skim over anything like that (which
is usually most of it).

My wife has a coworker who has to go to therapy to deal with her generalized
anxiety about the world’s issue, which went into overdrive after the Trump
election. She is constantly on top of the latest NYT disaster article. Her
hair has started to fall out and she’s only in her mid-30s. It’s really,
really sad.

~~~
rboyd
Or my two unemployed Facebook friends that spend every waking hour on their
endless political crusade. I want to shake them and tell them: maybe your
world view is tainted by your local environment. It's convenient to attack
political leaders for your problems, but maybe you need to spend all that time
and energy focusing on finding an income instead of adding another useless
voice to the chorus.

------
justforyou
Propoganda.

------
crazygringo
The best decade technologically and economically? Yes, no question.

But the best decade politically? Not even close. Nobody saw the resurgence of
right-wing populism coming, of anti-immigrant vitriol, of rejecting the
international institutions safeguarding peace, or breakdown of constitutional
norms.

And with climate change on its way, I wouldn't count our chickens before
they're hatched.

~~~
solveit
Name a better decade. Seriously. Starting from 1900, every one up to the '40s
is out because two world wars, then all of the ones until the '90s is out
because we were literally a paranoid mid-ranking officer away from global
thermonuclear destruction, giving us the '90s, the '00s, and the '10s to work
with. So we seem quite unarguably in the top 25% of the past 12 decades, so
"not even close" is rather unfair. I will not argue the relative rankings of
the past three decades except to state that it is not obvious what they should
be.

I am not disputing that our world is on a knife edge. I am saying that it has
_always_ been like this, or worse.

~~~
crazygringo
You literally just answered your own question -- the other decades since the
cold war, meaning the 90's and 00's were obviously far, far better
politically.

But I'd argue that what's particularly scary is the fact that things have
gotten _worse_ politically. It's not that the 10's were improving less fast --
it's that long-trusted political institutions are _falling apart_ , and nobody
knows how much further they have to go, or if they'll be able to be put back
together.

~~~
UncleEntity
> it's that long-trusted political institutions are falling apart, and nobody
> knows how much further they have to go, or if they'll be able to be put back
> together.

Or... we're witnessing a rebalancing of power where an executive branch will
no longer have carte blanche and there will once again be a balance of power
between the three branches of government (in the US at least, can't speak to
how other countries do their politics).

One can hope at least.

~~~
crazygringo
Except we're _not_ witnessing that rebalancing of power. I don't know where
you would even get that hope from. There are literally _zero_ signs of any
rebalancing currently. The Senate claiming to conduct a sham trial is a new
low, not a pendulum swinging back.

------
trevyn
Sadly, it hasn’t really been a great decade for human dignity.

~~~
Matticus_Rex
Compared to which one?

~~~
birdyrooster
Your definition of what is great for humanity doesn’t necessarily need to be
relative. You can have absolute criteria for what you consider a great decade
for human dignity. Perhaps there has not yet been a great decade for human
dignity.

~~~
solveit
Sure, but then you're playing semantics to grandstand and detract from real
achievements.

------
cagenut
I didn't make it past the first paragraph because I really can't stand the
worst logic flaw in web performance being turned into a worldview. Hiding
glaring flaws behind averages by just trying to overwhelm the average with a
much higher volume of "good" traffic.

If poverty is an error, then a 60% error rate on 1 billion requests and a 10%
error rate on 6 billion requests is _the exact same thing_ for those people.

~~~
Isinlor
You should look at the data and not invent some silly comparisons to error
rates. Poverty is declining both in absolute and relative terms.

There is less poor people now than there was 10 years ago.

[https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-
poverty](https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty)

~~~
mpax
Those data on poverty are a joke! Read for example:
[https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/4/27/200-years-to-
end-...](https://www.jasonhickel.org/blog/2019/4/27/200-years-to-end-poverty)

It's basically the World Bank covering its ass for its own spectacular
failure.

------
_aleph2c_
There is an interesting phenomenon happening here on hacker news.

Optimistic comments are being voted down by the moderators (who have a high
enough ranking to do so). Yet, this article has been pushed to the top by
regular members.

The messages within the down-voted comments aren't breaking any of the
community rules. So the down-voting is happening because of a political
disagreement. The moderators are intolerant of an opposing view and rather
than engage in open debate; they instead wink the things they disagree with,
out of the conversation entirely.

~~~
dang
By 'moderators' it seems that you mean users with enough karma to downvote
and/or flag. Those are the users who've been affecting this thread. What
you're seeing here is that the article is a divisive one, which is
unsurprising, no?

It's always been ok for downvoting to express disagreement on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16131314).

