There's nothing wrong with socialism per se. It is just as much an illusion as capitalism or communism (my opinion). But if I could choose (which I can't) I'd choose socialism as the society to live in. It is more natural than capitalism and less brutal than 'practical' communism. People lived without much personal possessions for >3 million years, different species at the same time in the same geography. It is the unluck of self domestication that made the past 5 to 10,000 years so ... bloody, and that's just a few hundred generations.
Ok, not 100% serious, but >50
Stanislaw Lem, arguable the most intelligent and witty scifi writer of the 20th century, once said something like "The greatest misfortune of the 20th century was that communisam wasn't tried on mice before practiced on humans". As some if not most here probably know, he was raised behind the iron curtain in a communistic society (cold war Poland), so sometimes came along slightly subversive or at least ironical. Died 2006 when I was on archaeological excavation in Arabia. As a young guy, I loved reading his novels and short stories. Can definitely recommend him, most of his work has been translated into English meanwhile.
Random fact: When we increase the radius of a circle of 2cm by 1cm, its circumference increases by ~6.3cm. When we increase the radius of the earth by 1cm, its circumference increases by ... ~6.3cm. Doh.
Ok, that was trivial, this one isn't. One driver for the global ocean conveyor belt or 'thermohaline circulation' that distributes ocean heat across the globe is the 'Atlantic meridional overturning circulation' (AMOC) in the northern atlantic, where driven by density, salinity differenes and coriolis force warm salty waters sink down, dragging the golf stream after them, and flow back south and east down below (simplifying). The AMOC is knwon to weaken and strengthen over time and hypothesized to even switch states, e.g. at submerged barriers like the Greenland-Iceland-Faroe ridge, thus 'regulating' heat and moisture flow to the northern Atlantic. For instance, an outflow of freshwater from the northern American lakes is in dicussion to be responsible for a short but hefty cold period, the 'Younger Dryas', at the beginning of the current post glacial epoch, the Holocene.
A similar situation, thawing Greenland and the connected outflow of fresh water suppressing the salinity driven part of the AMOC is currently in discussion as a possible cause of future cooling in western Europe and along the eastern parts of the northern American continent. Since quite some time geoscience is pondering this, but recent rapidly accelerating thawing has been observed, models are constantly revised, just not to the 'better'. What's discussed is if the AMOC continues to weaken, if it can switch state again, and how much is needed in a warming climate for it to happen.
Be it as it may, we're currently betting against it, despite warning signs that some thresholds (Greenland thawing) have already been crossed. 20 years ago we learned in the introductory geoscience lectures that humanity can't thaw Greenland
so easily. That's yesterdays snow meanwhile, the most aggressive projections say Greenland may be good for 1m sea level rise until the end of the century. Problem: projections are constantly raised, with new data, thresholds crossed, positive feedbacks explained ...
Further reading: science journals
