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I believe in global warming, but I also think a higher or lower temperature Earth with a greater level of CO2 just means that different organisms will thrive. W

I believe in global warming, but I also think a higher or lower temperature Earth with a greater level of CO2 just means that different organisms will thrive. We think that we have damaged the Earth, but the Earth is much, much older than us, and we've barely made a dent if you consider the full lifetime of everything that ever will be. Now- if we had started a global thermonuclear war and eradicated all life on Earth, I wouldn't be saying that, but all we have done is to change the temperature and the atmosphere a little, which has serious consequences for the way things currently are, but in the end it will just mean different organisms take over and what grows where will change. If anything, the thing we need to be concerned about is being ready for changes, which will happen. We might need to grow different sorts of foods, focus on better insulation for our homes or move underground or underwater. We may need new laws to avoid wasting resources. But, there is no reason to be depressed about it. Those things will happen with time.

castratikron 10y ago
But will we be able to eat the different organisms that will thrive in this environment? What happens when today's staple crops no longer produce the yields we need to sustain our civilization?
- fabled_giraffe 10y ago
  During the little ice age, people ate things that grew in colder climates, like potatoes. We will find a way to survive, and we have more technology now to help than we did then.
- rosser 10y ago
  Get ready to enjoy eating things made from jellyfish. Like, a lot of them.
  - Tushon 10y ago
    I would venture that seaweed or algae is more likely.
    - hguant 10y ago
      I don't think so, if only because seaweed isn't very calorie dense - 4 calories per 2 tablespoon according to Wikipedia (well, the google card that gets all its info from Wikipedia at least). I think it's much more plausible that we'll go the route Asimov predicted in "Caves of Steel" - genetically modified and processed yeasts, which are much more calorie dense than seaweed, and much better suited to the sort of industrial process that feeding 10+ billion people requires.
    - yongjik 10y ago
      As a Korean, I'm glad we're prepared. Jellyfish salad and seaweed soup, anyone? :)
    - rosser 10y ago
      I specifically cite jellyfish, because they're one of the few creatures that will thrive in the increasingly acidic oceans. As so many other species — including those we currently enjoy eating to the brink of extinction — die off, jellyfish will abound.
wavefunction 10y ago
My response to you is "what right do we have to usher in these changes?" You might argue the "might makes right" perspective that anything within our capability is acceptable and appropriate but I don't agree with that sentiment. I feel that we, as sentient/semi-sapient beings, must be as custodians for this world and all the life within it. We are actually the least among all, until we begin to serve the rest of this planet that has seen us to this point.
- eru 10y ago
  It's very difficult to derive 'ought' from 'is'.
- DougWebb 10y ago
  The changes are already ushered in. Our responsibility now is to manage the consequences as well as we can.
- arama471 10y ago
  He's not saying this is all fine and dandy, hes saying its not an apocalypse, just a global catastrophe from which both the earth and humanity will recover.
  - rosser 10y ago
    The odds are a bit longer on humanity surviving this mess than the planet.
    - Macylpse 10y ago
      Humanity will become extinct long before the biosphere. You need to think more inhuman [1] "It is based on a recognition of the astonishing beauty of things and their living wholeness, and on a rational acceptance of the fact that mankind is neither central nor important in the universe; our vices and blazing crimes are as insignificant as our happiness. […] Turn outward from each other, so far as need and kindness permit, to the vast life and inexhaustible beauty beyond humanity. This is not a slight matter, but an essential condition of freedom, and of moral and vital sanity.’ [1] http://dark-mountain.net/stories/books/book-1/the-falling-years-an-inhumanist-vision/ http://dark-mountain.net/stories/books/book-1/the-falling-ye...
kmonsen 10y ago
You are correct. As long as this does not mean we will hit severe resource scarcity that starts one or several wars that turns so bad that nukes starts flying.
ageofwant 10y ago
This is very human-centric point of view. How many species will be lost forever as a direct cause of this event ? Sure, it happens all the time, but typically over a much longer period meaning other species can evolve to fill the gaps. There is no time for evolution to work over the 200 years this last change happened. Another thing to consider is that the less diversity exists the harder it is for life to continue.
- maratd 10y ago
  > This is very human-centric point of view. How many species will be lost forever as a direct cause of this event ? Actually, it's your view that's human-centric. Species? Diversity? These are human concepts and mores. > There is no time for evolution to work over the 200 years this last change happened. Evolution doesn't "work". It's merely the process of natural and sexual selection. The flora and fauna are constantly being sculpted by the environment, even a rapidly changing one. And there is no evidence to suggest similarly rapid shifts haven't occurred in the past. In fact, there is evidence that they did and life went on.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    I find it odd to see people criticizing each other because their comments are too human-centric. I happen to be human, and I believe the same is true of most of the commenters here. I don't really care very much about what happens to the Earth as a whole, but the survival and prosperity of humanity matters a great deal to me.
    - partisan 10y ago
      > the survival and prosperity of humanity matters a great deal to me Just curious about what drives that particular viewpoint. Why do you care about the survival of the species? When you die, the world ends. It doesn't really matter what happens after that, does it? You could be dead two milliseconds and then a big rock hits the Earth and everything is gone. Still it doesn't impact you, because you are dead. And I am asking for the sake of discussion, purely.
eloff 10y ago
That's my way of thinking about it too. At any rate getting nearly 200 independent nation states to agree on anything when they all individually benefit by flouting the rules - that's madness. We'll burn oil and coal and gas until it doesn't make economic sense. I very much doubt politics will change the outcome. Technology will hopefully save us from ourselves on that front. A bigger problem is positive feedback loops. Melting ice means more dark water to absorb sunlight, and more melting. Melting permafrost releases CO2 and Methane and causes more warming. And somewhere around ~5 degrees warming the frozen methane on the ocean floor will bubble up and cause the mother of all feedback cycles. We'd be in for about 10 degrees warming and a mass extinction that would wipe out 90% or more of all species on Earth. From what I've seen of global warming predictions we won't get there - but I'm mentioning this because at some point warming temperatures doesn't just mean major changes and flooding our cities - at some point it means a terrible calamity like the Earth has only occasionally seen.
- refurb 10y ago
  A bigger problem is positive feedback loops. Historically we've had much more CO2 in the atmosphere than we do now. Why didn't the methane bubble up and kill everything then?
  - nikdaheratik 10y ago
    The methane was primarily caused by decaying biomass falling to the ocean floor. It didn't exist at the time the CO2 levels were higher.
  - eloff 10y ago
    It did. That was part of the sad chain of events causing one of the biggest mass extinctions ever 250m years ago. Its one of the theories anyway.
bjz_ 10y ago
Yes, these things will be rendered insignificant in the fullness of time, but as a human's with limited lives, it's still important to maintain empathy towards the human suffering of the here-and-now, and the very near future. It will be painful, it will be stressful, and we need to brace ourselves for the reality that many of our fellow humans will die from famine, regional war, and refugee crises whilst we struggle to adapt to and mitigate the worst of it.
- vixen99 10y ago
  Well at least we are unlikely to starve: satellite imaging shows very significant greening of the planet in many areas previously barren. How so? As the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs puts it, “The benefits of carbon dioxide supplementation on plant growth and production within the greenhouse environment have been well understood for many years. For the majority of greenhouse crops, net photosynthesis increases as CO2 levels increase from 340–1,000 ppm (parts per million). Most crops show that for any given level of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), increasing the CO2 level to 1,000 ppm will increase the photosynthesis by about 50% over ambient CO2 levels. For some crops the economics may not warrant supplementing to 1,000 ppm CO2 at low light levels. For others such as tulips, and Easter lilies, no response has been observed."
  - ObeyTheGuts 10y ago
    But this means more carbs in plant and less proteins, the diluted nutrients is said to be cause of bees dieng off, as they eat pollen for their protein needs and pollen has less protein, because plants dillute it with all that extra carbohydrate productions caused by more co2 in atmosphere
    - G43nm45ji 10y ago
      Do you have a source or any information you can point me to? Thanks,
strommen 10y ago
> different organisms will thrive Like mosquitos, ticks and other disease-carrying insects that kill 1 million humans every year.
- FuNe 10y ago
  Welcome Zika et al
aaronbrethorst 10y ago
> just means that different organisms will thrive Like non-human fauna.

castratikron 10y ago

But will we be able to eat the different organisms that will thrive in this environment? What happens when today's staple crops no longer produce the yields we need to sustain our civilization?

fabled_giraffe 10y ago
During the little ice age, people ate things that grew in colder climates, like potatoes. We will find a way to survive, and we have more technology now to help than we did then.
rosser 10y ago
Get ready to enjoy eating things made from jellyfish. Like, a lot of them.
- Tushon 10y ago
  I would venture that seaweed or algae is more likely.
  - hguant 10y ago
    I don't think so, if only because seaweed isn't very calorie dense - 4 calories per 2 tablespoon according to Wikipedia (well, the google card that gets all its info from Wikipedia at least). I think it's much more plausible that we'll go the route Asimov predicted in "Caves of Steel" - genetically modified and processed yeasts, which are much more calorie dense than seaweed, and much better suited to the sort of industrial process that feeding 10+ billion people requires.
  - yongjik 10y ago
    As a Korean, I'm glad we're prepared. Jellyfish salad and seaweed soup, anyone? :)
  - rosser 10y ago
    I specifically cite jellyfish, because they're one of the few creatures that will thrive in the increasingly acidic oceans. As so many other species — including those we currently enjoy eating to the brink of extinction — die off, jellyfish will abound.

wavefunction 10y ago

My response to you is "what right do we have to usher in these changes?" You might argue the "might makes right" perspective that anything within our capability is acceptable and appropriate but I don't agree with that sentiment. I feel that we, as sentient/semi-sapient beings, must be as custodians for this world and all the life within it. We are actually the least among all, until we begin to serve the rest of this planet that has seen us to this point.

eru 10y ago
It's very difficult to derive 'ought' from 'is'.
DougWebb 10y ago
The changes are already ushered in. Our responsibility now is to manage the consequences as well as we can.
arama471 10y ago
He's not saying this is all fine and dandy, hes saying its not an apocalypse, just a global catastrophe from which both the earth and humanity will recover.
- rosser 10y ago
  The odds are a bit longer on humanity surviving this mess than the planet.
  - Macylpse 10y ago
    Humanity will become extinct long before the biosphere. You need to think more inhuman [1] "It is based on a recognition of the astonishing beauty of things and their living wholeness, and on a rational acceptance of the fact that mankind is neither central nor important in the universe; our vices and blazing crimes are as insignificant as our happiness. […] Turn outward from each other, so far as need and kindness permit, to the vast life and inexhaustible beauty beyond humanity. This is not a slight matter, but an essential condition of freedom, and of moral and vital sanity.’ [1] http://dark-mountain.net/stories/books/book-1/the-falling-years-an-inhumanist-vision/ http://dark-mountain.net/stories/books/book-1/the-falling-ye...

kmonsen 10y ago

You are correct. As long as this does not mean we will hit severe resource scarcity that starts one or several wars that turns so bad that nukes starts flying.

ageofwant 10y ago

This is very human-centric point of view. How many species will be lost forever as a direct cause of this event ? Sure, it happens all the time, but typically over a much longer period meaning other species can evolve to fill the gaps. There is no time for evolution to work over the 200 years this last change happened. Another thing to consider is that the less diversity exists the harder it is for life to continue.

maratd 10y ago
> This is very human-centric point of view. How many species will be lost forever as a direct cause of this event ? Actually, it's your view that's human-centric. Species? Diversity? These are human concepts and mores. > There is no time for evolution to work over the 200 years this last change happened. Evolution doesn't "work". It's merely the process of natural and sexual selection. The flora and fauna are constantly being sculpted by the environment, even a rapidly changing one. And there is no evidence to suggest similarly rapid shifts haven't occurred in the past. In fact, there is evidence that they did and life went on.
- mikeash 10y ago
  I find it odd to see people criticizing each other because their comments are too human-centric. I happen to be human, and I believe the same is true of most of the commenters here. I don't really care very much about what happens to the Earth as a whole, but the survival and prosperity of humanity matters a great deal to me.
  - partisan 10y ago
    > the survival and prosperity of humanity matters a great deal to me Just curious about what drives that particular viewpoint. Why do you care about the survival of the species? When you die, the world ends. It doesn't really matter what happens after that, does it? You could be dead two milliseconds and then a big rock hits the Earth and everything is gone. Still it doesn't impact you, because you are dead. And I am asking for the sake of discussion, purely.

eloff 10y ago

That's my way of thinking about it too. At any rate getting nearly 200 independent nation states to agree on anything when they all individually benefit by flouting the rules - that's madness. We'll burn oil and coal and gas until it doesn't make economic sense. I very much doubt politics will change the outcome. Technology will hopefully save us from ourselves on that front. A bigger problem is positive feedback loops. Melting ice means more dark water to absorb sunlight, and more melting. Melting permafrost releases CO2 and Methane and causes more warming. And somewhere around ~5 degrees warming the frozen methane on the ocean floor will bubble up and cause the mother of all feedback cycles. We'd be in for about 10 degrees warming and a mass extinction that would wipe out 90% or more of all species on Earth. From what I've seen of global warming predictions we won't get there - but I'm mentioning this because at some point warming temperatures doesn't just mean major changes and flooding our cities - at some point it means a terrible calamity like the Earth has only occasionally seen.

refurb 10y ago
A bigger problem is positive feedback loops. Historically we've had much more CO2 in the atmosphere than we do now. Why didn't the methane bubble up and kill everything then?
- nikdaheratik 10y ago
  The methane was primarily caused by decaying biomass falling to the ocean floor. It didn't exist at the time the CO2 levels were higher.
- eloff 10y ago
  It did. That was part of the sad chain of events causing one of the biggest mass extinctions ever 250m years ago. Its one of the theories anyway.

bjz_ 10y ago

Yes, these things will be rendered insignificant in the fullness of time, but as a human's with limited lives, it's still important to maintain empathy towards the human suffering of the here-and-now, and the very near future. It will be painful, it will be stressful, and we need to brace ourselves for the reality that many of our fellow humans will die from famine, regional war, and refugee crises whilst we struggle to adapt to and mitigate the worst of it.

vixen99 10y ago
Well at least we are unlikely to starve: satellite imaging shows very significant greening of the planet in many areas previously barren. How so? As the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Rural Affairs puts it, “The benefits of carbon dioxide supplementation on plant growth and production within the greenhouse environment have been well understood for many years. For the majority of greenhouse crops, net photosynthesis increases as CO2 levels increase from 340–1,000 ppm (parts per million). Most crops show that for any given level of photosynthetically active radiation (PAR), increasing the CO2 level to 1,000 ppm will increase the photosynthesis by about 50% over ambient CO2 levels. For some crops the economics may not warrant supplementing to 1,000 ppm CO2 at low light levels. For others such as tulips, and Easter lilies, no response has been observed."
- ObeyTheGuts 10y ago
  But this means more carbs in plant and less proteins, the diluted nutrients is said to be cause of bees dieng off, as they eat pollen for their protein needs and pollen has less protein, because plants dillute it with all that extra carbohydrate productions caused by more co2 in atmosphere
  - G43nm45ji 10y ago
    Do you have a source or any information you can point me to? Thanks,

strommen 10y ago

> different organisms will thrive Like mosquitos, ticks and other disease-carrying insects that kill 1 million humans every year.

FuNe 10y ago
Welcome Zika et al

aaronbrethorst 10y ago

> just means that different organisms will thrive Like non-human fauna.