Potatos_are_not_friendsExplain that, science nerds!
EmoPolarbearSo…. If I’m reading this right, because the giant ball of acid that eats spacecraft before they can do any meaningful exploration on the surface remains a ball we don’t have to worry about becoming more similar to said ball of acid?
Nah. Just means earth itself is gonna be fine. It’ll keep being a planet.
Humans … we’re fucked.
Earth? She good.
Could you define “good”
Annoyed_🦀 Still floating and existing. That’s good enough
Unbothered. Moisturized. Happy. In My Lane. Focused. Flourishing.
Now lets compare the lifeform counts in both planets
Women are from Venus check mate.
From. They all had to leave
theneverfoxSo you’re saying that women are causing global warming?
I’ve literally had this argument on lemmy about two weeks ago. It always goes like this:
Me: [some comment to the effect of “the planet is dying”]
Them: the planet will be fine. Yes all life will perish, but the earth itself will continue.
Me: . . .
Them: What. It’s just the fact. Don’t worry about the planet.
Sometimes they quote Carlin without realizing it and without context so to them it’s not a joke about how fucked up we are, it’s a simple truth without any additional layers. It’s a little boggling.
cRazi_manClimate change isn’t going to be an existential threat for a very long time. Realistically we’re making life incredibly difficult and expensive for ourselves. Population numbers will drop markedly over time. But people don’t see that this is still something to take urgent action on.
Depends on if you work outside for a living or live near a coastline or a forested area. It won’t be like a Star Trek: The Original Series where everyone’s in a big room and a red glow starts pulsating and we all groan and crumple to the floor. No, it won’t be like that.
It’ll be like heat exhaustion exacerbated a hitherto unknown heart condition that deaded you. Or a Cat 6 hurricane rolled a tree over you. Or failing crops mean you couldn’t fight off COVID-26 or whatever.
No, we’re not going to all die at once, as such. Depending on your timeframe for “at once”.
dohpaz42This is why I detest the concept and celebration of “technically correct”. No, it’s not the “best kind of correct”, it’s being an asshole.
It’ll be like Katrina. Probably in Florida at first. Probably in the next ten years. Probably more than once.
NeatoIt’s pedantry for the sake of being right. They care more about winning than the actual argument.
I dunno, maybe. I mean, technically they were right but even when I agreed, and explained how while that’s correct it’s also beside the point, they didn’t like that either.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It’s like talking about powers and saying “The square of 4 is 16” and they’ll bleat “Actually, a square is a shape” and you’re trying to find a way to tell them that their contribution is absolutely worthless and irrelevant to the topic.
This is why I detest the concept and celebration of “technically correct”. No, it’s not the “best kind of correct”, it’s being an asshole.
I mean, in the example you’re responding to, many of the people aren’t doing the “technically correct” answer of, “microbial life will continue”.
They’re just morons who heard, “life finds a way” and assume humans will be fine.
No, it’s not the “best kind of correct”, it’s being an asshole.
That’s the joke, though.
The character being quoted, from Futurama, is usually insufferable and often miserable.
It’s not even pedantic. It’s that same logic you could use to say killing a person does no harm to them because their body still exists afterward.
not even all life. i’m sure some microbe or spore will survive long enough past human extenction and life will flourish once again. there are some very robust little lifeforms out there, living in boiling volcanic water or surviving frozen in permafrost. i’m sure some can manage in high CO2 levels and hot climate.
sigh
Yes.
Life existed long before there were any significant levels of oxygen in the air. I doubt humans can undo much of the ~20% oxygen level that exists today. And I think that’s reason enough that life even bigger than microbes won’t die out.
Yes all life will perish, but the earth itself will continue.
Why would all life perish? From what I’ve heard and read about nuclear disaster exclusion zones, humans disappearing tends to make space for other forms of life that had previously been displaced by cities full of humans and such. To my understanding long time life probably won’t care about anything for the next few million years.
Short term many or most humans might die or suffer. I don’t think it’s easy to predict how fragile humankind is, civilization may crumble. I doubt all of humankind will be gone in a thousand years, though I wouldn’t bet against a semi “post apocalyptic” future.
GormadtBasically it’s due to the heat, acidification of the ocean, and the massive drop in oxygen production as the ocean acidifies.
Most of the oxygen we breathe is produced by microorganisms in the ocean and as the ocean gets more acidic (from absorbing CO2 from the air) and hotter (from greenhouse effects) it makes it harder for those little fellas to survive. And when they die their impact on our breathable air goes away. And if course the stuff that’s eats those organisms no longer have food and due off.
That’s not even mentioning just the heating from greenhouse effects making unlivable temperature conditions (humidity + heat = unable to cool down and overheat) more likely to occur.
All life wouldn’t perish per se but the current complex animals we have (and us humans) would be greatly impacted to say the least.
Do I understand this right that the really big argument here is actually ocean acidification? I can’t really believe that this wouldn’t open up niches for other life forms in oceans. I’m certain that complex animals will be greatly impacted - they already are - but temperature shifts will lead to animals migrating and complex life will keep flourishing one way or another.
I feel as though the assumption that humans had the ability to kill all complex life like some people suggest is exaggerating the significance of humans. To my understanding humans have about the same impact as many other of the more impactful species do and while many have lead to big changes on the planet, to my knowledge none have managed to come close to “ending all life”. That’s reserved for grander desasters, either from inside Earth or extraterrestrial.
There’s a chance that the aluminum residue from hundreds of annual rocket launches will destroy the ozone layer, without which the earth will lose its atmosphere relatively quickly.
will destroy the ozone layer, without which the earth will lose its atmosphere relatively quickly.
What?
The aluminum and other metals in the space crafts bond with the ozone, which could fuck with our magnetosphere. It turns out it’s mostly from satellites burning up on reentry, which makes way more sense though.
And a messed up ozone layer means the atmosphere will… disappear?
Nah it could leak out into space.
If the ozone layer fills with metallic alloys, it fucks with the magnetosphere, potentially to the point that the magnetosphere no longer protects us from solar winds, and that would lose us the atmosphere.
It also might not be that serious, but there’s no way to know until there’s a problem. Companies are rapidly increasing the number of artificial satellites in our orbit without any consideration to the potential consequences though.
Is this similar to the ozone depletion and ozone holes that were always a big deal in the early 2000s and had lead to bans of chlorofluorocarbons eg in refrigerants and other products, or is this an entirely different topic?
To me it sounds similar so I wonder why the danger of Earth losing its atmosphere “very quickly” hadn’t caused panic back then, it was only things like “stay inside so you don’t get sunburns”. Though the atmosphere disappearing would be a way bigger deal.
It’s different because these are now metallic compounds, which can become magnetically charged and may be able to affect the magnetosphere.
The magnetosphere is basically the ball of magnetic force around the earth that insulated us from solar winds.
Solar winds can destroy planetary atmospheres, when the planet isn’t otherwise protected.
The hole in the ozone layer was also a problem, but it’s more because the ozone layer protects us from a lot of ultraviolet light. The hole (which was not exactly a hole, but that works better for marketing) would have caused a bunch of cancer and exposed us to higher levels of toxic ozone on the ground, which are both big problems, but not for all life on earth
BurstarI feel as though the assumption that humans had the ability to kill all complex life like some people suggest is exaggerating the significance of humans
It absolutely is. There are microbes that thrive at the bottom of the ocean in the boiling acidic conditions of hydrothermal vents. There is absolutely no way anything humans can do at this point would kill ALL life on the planet. There will absolutely be some specialist microbe somewhere that looks at whatever we did to the planet and says ‘yup, now is my time to shine!’.
Just a heads up, you quoted me writing “kill all complex life (…) is exaggerating”. Then as far as I understand you wrote “it absolutely is [an exaggeration]”. Then you argued that surely microbes would survive. However, to my knowledge microbes do not count as complex life.
I wasn’t trying to prove what would survive, merely show how resilient life can be. If a simple microbe is guaranteed to survive in hell, something more complex able to behaviourally adapt/relocate is likely to as well. The greatest danger to complex life is having nothing to feed on.
Tropical fish might have to survive in the Arctic Ocean, or grasses in the northern prairies, insects of a zillion different types and sizes. Life, uh, finds a way.
We won’t kill everything. No matter what we do. Life will continue and more of it than anyone thinks will, even of the plants and animals. It is humans and most of the large animals and intolerant plants that need fear the impending Climate catastrophe.
I didn’t say it’d kill all complex life, I said complex life would be greatly impacted.
For example ocean acidification is tempered by reacting with build ups of calcium which is the building blocks of many things in the ocean. Shelled critters and corals immediately come to mind as examples of directly impacted complex life.
As the corals die and can no longer form due to acidification that whole ecosystem collapses.
The stuff that eats the phytoplankton (sensitive to ocean acidification and heat) no longer can eat it due to it dying along with the other little micro organisms, also suffers from ecological collapse.
A big issue that impacts complex life is how quickly it can adapt to the changes in their ecosystem and if they can find new places to go or new things to eat.
For example E. Coli: it has quick generations so it can adapt really quickly. This experiment has been going since the late 80s and the E. Coli has gone through over 70,000 generations and they’ve seen a lot of changes. If you went back that many human generations it would take you back before modern homo sapiens.
I didn’t say it’d kill all complex life, I said complex life would be greatly impacted. True! I tried to acknowledge that with my first paragraph and add that they already are greatly impacted. My second paragraph wasn’t aimed at your person, I merely wanted to bring it up/let it out.
Because the threat is not a nuclear winter. It’s the disruption of all environmental systems that regulate the planet that is the threat in question. Which, in turn, disrupts the food chain, which starves whatever requires that food, which is for all intents and purposes, all life.
I don’t understand how this is such a conversation with so many people here.
Well disruptions of a system eventually lead to new, different forms of stability where things will settle down. I can’t imagine life is as fragile as you make it.
That sounds like a misconception humans made up. After all, humankind always liked feeling important, feeling special and putting itself in the center: pretending they life at the center of a disc, pretending the whole universe revolves around the planet, pretending only human bodies were inhabited by an eternal soul, pretending an all-powerful being cared about them, pretending they’re the peak of evolution, pretending machines could never outperform them.
Humans always try to find new things that make them unique and set them apart from other forms of life. Yet they keep getting disproven.
And what are you, a Klingon?
And what are you, a Klingon?
Qo’
The reason I use the term “human” is because this phenomenon seems to exist throughout all of history, it wasn’t limited to one specific person or culture or era. This is also why I gave so many examples. If you think there’s a better way to convey the point without using this term, let me know.
jabathekekWhy would all life perish?
All life wouldn’t perish, the only things that will be left will be certain bacteria, phagocytes and viruses that can tolerate and indeed will likely proliferate in extreme environments. Everything larger then that will die of starvation due to a cascade of failing systems, likely starting with the death of the marine biosphere when the temperature rises to unsustainable levels and/or the pH lowers too much for the same effect. Though of course no one really knows what will actually happen because there are too many unknown variables.
LibertyLizardThere is absolutely, unequivocally, no evidence that this will happen and no serious scientific prediction that this will happen from climate change has ever been made.
The science illiteracy here is getting almost as bad as the right wingers.
Though of course no one really knows what will actually happen because there are too many unknown variables.
Though of course no one really knows what will actually happen because there are too many unknown variables.
Though of course no one really knows what will actually happen because there are too many unknown variables.
It was fun thinking of it. Chill the fuck out.
But we do know because thousands of hardworking scientists have devoted their lives to answering this question.
Sorry this is a pet peeve of mine because I think it feeds into a paralyzing pessimism. People need to understand that we aren’t doomed to feel like they can work for a better future.
Dr. Hansen from 2008:
“Given the solar constant that we have today, how large a forcing must be maintained to cause runaway global warming? Our model blows up before the oceans boil, but it suggests that perhaps runaway conditions could occur with added forcing as small as 10-20 W/m2 (Watts per square meter – a 60 watt light bulb provides 3 to 6 times more forcing per unit of area than is required to turn the Earth into a Venus)”
“There may have been times in the Earth’s history when CO2 was as high as 4000 ppm without causing a runaway greenhouse effect {the Mesozoic period – time of the dinosaurs}. But the solar irradiance was less at that time. What is different about the human-made forcing is the rapidity at which we are increasing it, on the time scale of a century or a few centuries. It does not provide enough time for negative feedbacks, such as changes in the weathering rate, to be a major factor. There is also a danger that humans could cause the release of methane hydrates, perhaps more rapidly than in some of the cases in the geologic record. In my opinion, if we burn all the coal, there is a good chance that we will initiate the runaway greenhouse effect. If we also burn the tar sands and tar shale (a.k.a. oil shale), I think it is a dead certainty.”
I may have stated it slightly too strongly but this is wild speculation on Hansen’s part. Show me a published prediction.
Even if what he said was accurate, burning that much fossil energy is almost certainly impossible.
It was not just speculation, here is the 2012 update to the 2008 paper that those quotes discussed: www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3785813/
Here is a relatively comprehensive look at runaway greenhouse modeling, although it is a bit outdated (2012 - cloud modeling is slightly better now): sseh.uchicago.edu/…/Goldblatt_and_Watson_2012.pdf
You’ll note that it is not written from a catastrophizing perspective, yet it confirms the possibility of runaway warming with the release of just the CO2 in known FF deposits as expressed by Hansen. Hansen isn’t much of a catastrophizer and is considered by many to be the best scientific modeler ever, but I suppose it doesn’t hurt to present external validation of his work.
This is all a little overkill, though! No runaway feedback loops are needed.
All that is needed for the situation described by the top-level comment is for plant carbon fixation pathways to fail, which occurs with just a few degrees of warming.
If runaway feedback loops are within reach, then just a few degrees is obviously within closer reach. Even on the milder end of 4-8C projected warming from existing emissions using updated ECS, warming will average around double over landmasses. Photosynthesis efficiency for plants is already past the peak in summer months with current warming, as demonstrated by this paper (from 2007 so the climate assumptions are very out of date): …wiley.com/…/j.1365-3040.2007.01682.x
As for burning that much FF being impossible, at current rates we are estimated to burn through known FF deposits in 30-50 years. Whether or not it happens, burning that much is certainly possible to do.
Climate sensitivity, sea level and atmospheric carbon dioxide
Cenozoic temperature, sea level and CO[2] covariations provide insights into climate sensitivity to external forcings and sea-level sensitivity to climate change. Climate sensitivity depends on the initial climate state, but potentially can be accurately ...
Even life will never perish. We’re certainly going to cause an apocalyptic level extinction event, taking many species with us, but life will always find a way.
Likely as slimy mats on the floor of what’s left of the ocean. Also whatever’s left in hot-springs and caves.
Life is way hardier than you think… Unless we completely blast the world with nukes, we will not get that far.
SanctusThere is one single planet we know of that hosts complex organisms. Dont go claiming extraordinary things like that, when all evidence points to the opposite. Life is extremely fragile, and only comes about in very specific conditions. New data models show we may be the only creatures capable of communicating vast distances in the entire galaxy. We should be treating this with the severity it actually has, potential universal blackout. What is the universe if there is nothing there to experience it?
That’s very lovely, but ultimately egotistical. I mean, I romanticise about it too, but the universe ultimately just… is. The only severity is for us humans. No other species has a sense of “species” as a community AFAIK. Heck, even humans have a terrible track record. We can’t even seem to sterilise machines we sent to space no matter how hard we try, even after being exposed to outer space. That’s the evidence we have.
From our perspective, only human eyes record history. Without us around to experience and document the universe, is it any different from not existing at all? It doesn’t matter that the universe is. What is is if there is nothing around to define it?