alt Hacker NewsThe thing people should rightly dismiss is the idea that human engineering is a minor enough consideration in predictions of the far future that it can be ignored as a sort of rounding error. The humans have already destroyed much of Earth's ozone layer, then restored it through exactly the kind of global agreement you're dismissing as unachievable. Now they've doubled the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere, a change which would melt away the icecaps and raise sea levels dramatically over a few centuries if it weren't reversed. They don't have anything approaching world-destroying technology, but in a few decades they will.
Undoubtedly, if there are still humans after a few hundred million years, they will disagree about exactly what orbit Earth should be in, but that doesn't mean it will stay in the same orbit until after its oceans boil dry.
> The thing people should rightly dismiss is the idea that human engineering is a minor enough consideration in predictions of the far future that it can be ignored as a sort of rounding error.
Which is not my argument. At all. You’re talking about if we can, I’m talking about if we will. The article—again, rightly—explains what we predict is going to happen according to the information we have. It’s trying to be a scientific-minded article, not a science-fiction article. By your token, anyone could make up any technology to contradict the article, which is not a productive discussion.
> the kind of global agreement you're dismissing as unachievable.
I disagree it’s the same kind of agreement. The difference in magnitude and investment is gargantuan to the point it’s another category altogether. Like a group deciding where they’ll go out to dinner VS deciding which country they’ll all move to. Both require mutual agreement for the same group to advance, but that’s where the similarities end.
> Undoubtedly, if there are still humans after a few hundred million years
Which is a big if. You can’t in good faith flout “just move Earth further from the Sun” as if it was something routine without considering all the very real and very big obstacles which are in our way right now, billions of years before your proposed scenario.
The crux of my point is merely that your criticism of the article is unwarranted. Sure, phantasise about any any possible approaches to the problem you can think of, but acting like the article somehow failed to consider those options is what I’m disagreeing with.