Potatos_are_not_friendsExplain that, science nerds!
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.
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.
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 ...