7 ms·

It's beside the point, but IMO the human species is at almost zero risk of extinction from climate change. Maybe you could find a better example. The worst case

It's beside the point, but IMO the human species is at almost zero risk of extinction from climate change. Maybe you could find a better example. The worst case would certainly be a calamity, but it would require an immense amount of additional failure for humanity to actually go extinct from it.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
There's a difference between biological extinction and cultural extinction. Cultures are incredibly fragile, and the chances of developing current levels of science and technology again if we lost them aren't all that great. As for runaway climate change - it's definitely a possibility. Current models don't try to estimate potential coupling between the effects of methane and CO2. It doesn't seem to be considered likely. But a lot of scientists are already surprised by the speed and scale of climate change, and the fact that we're seeing effects in a decade or two that weren't expected until the end of the century. Worries about runaway climate change may be pessimistic, but they're certainly not unscientific. Considering the stakes, more research would be wise.
danieltillett 10y ago
If we had loss of technological knowledge (say due to climate change induced conflict), it might not be possible in the future for the surviving humans to re-bootstrap back up to our our current technological level. We have exhausted all the easily accessible minerals and fossil fuels (i.e. those resources that can be extracted using stone age tools). Any break in our current technological systems might make it impossible to recover for 10s of millions of years.
- epicureanideal 10y ago
  Like the article posted last week titled "this is not a place of honor" about making obvious markers on nuclear waste to last 10,000 years... We may also want to invest in creating some "breadcrumbs" for a future civilization to build up from. Say, a reserve of easily accessible fossil fuel and other raw materials, and some long-lasting guideposts that indicate where to find them.
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    It is a good question of how much breadcrumbs you would need to jump from the stone age to using whatever accessible resources are left after us. A lack of accessible fossil fuels is likely to be the major factor as it would be really difficult to get an industrial revolution going without access to the easy energy provided by fossil fuels. We could easily find a rebooted society gets stuck in a pre-industrial state with no way of breaking out.
- adrianN 10y ago
  We have cities and garbage dumps that are full of steel, aluminium and plastic that are unlikely to be wiped out completely in any catastrophic event caused by humans. The only true problem is energy, I think. I wonder how far you could get with only biomass as a starter fuel for civilization.
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    Yes you could probably mine our dumps for metals, but if England is anything to go you will run out of forests as an energy source very early in an industrial revolution. If England had not been sitting on a large amount of easily accessed coal we would almost certainly not be having this conversation - in English anyway.
ChuckMcM 10y ago
Depends on how quickly the climate changed. Lets say one year winter came and spring never did. It simply went from less cold to more cold all year long and deciduous plants stopped growing north of say Dallas Texas. All sorts of food stocks simply die. No corn, no wheat, no cows, chickens, or pigs (in year 2) and no vegetables. Fruits from the tropics perhaps but another huge die off in that vegetation as well as temperatures drop into the 40's at night. There is no "other place" to go, so generally you see (depending on your model) 70 - 85% of the population outside the middle lattitudes die from starvation and general unrest. If you are lucky, you get someone smart enough to create a defensible space in the mid lattitudes that can support the population inside of it. The fisheries will crash in year 3 as the remaining survivors use what is left of the world wide fishing fleet to haul in ever more valuable food (aka fish). Then the people in the defensible spaces need to hold off the people outside those spaces until those outer people die and are no longer a threat. That can take a while and since the outside people will be scavenging weapons from the whole frozen world they will have a lot more ammo and war fighting resources than the people in the defensible spaces. If it changes fast enough, the people trying to survive kill off everyone. It has happened in colonies before and it can presumably happen on a more global scale. Would bands of indigenous jungle tribes survive? Good question, anything that moved would be hunted as food, jungle would clear cut to make farmland as quickly as possible. If it happened slowly? Like over a couple of decades? Sure that would probably allow people to survive relatively intact save for their ability to actually make any new things of any level of technological sophistication. Look at maps of the late Pleistocene where the glaciers were and plot those out on a modern globe. Now look at what is under those glaciers and try to figure out how long it would take to relocate that capability south. More importantly how long it would take to relocate it south. That sets the parameters for the maximum rate at which the species could tolerate the onset of a new ice age.
- jessaustin 10y ago
  I thought we were talking about global warming?
  - ChuckMcM 10y ago
    We are, but that is sort of the "trade name" for anthropocentric climate change. Which, if you read a lot of papers track the rising temperatures but have a variety of opinions of how exactly that will affect the climate. One such change can be triggering a sudden glaciation event.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago

There's a difference between biological extinction and cultural extinction. Cultures are incredibly fragile, and the chances of developing current levels of science and technology again if we lost them aren't all that great. As for runaway climate change - it's definitely a possibility. Current models don't try to estimate potential coupling between the effects of methane and CO2. It doesn't seem to be considered likely. But a lot of scientists are already surprised by the speed and scale of climate change, and the fact that we're seeing effects in a decade or two that weren't expected until the end of the century. Worries about runaway climate change may be pessimistic, but they're certainly not unscientific. Considering the stakes, more research would be wise.

danieltillett 10y ago

If we had loss of technological knowledge (say due to climate change induced conflict), it might not be possible in the future for the surviving humans to re-bootstrap back up to our our current technological level. We have exhausted all the easily accessible minerals and fossil fuels (i.e. those resources that can be extracted using stone age tools). Any break in our current technological systems might make it impossible to recover for 10s of millions of years.

epicureanideal 10y ago
Like the article posted last week titled "this is not a place of honor" about making obvious markers on nuclear waste to last 10,000 years... We may also want to invest in creating some "breadcrumbs" for a future civilization to build up from. Say, a reserve of easily accessible fossil fuel and other raw materials, and some long-lasting guideposts that indicate where to find them.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  It is a good question of how much breadcrumbs you would need to jump from the stone age to using whatever accessible resources are left after us. A lack of accessible fossil fuels is likely to be the major factor as it would be really difficult to get an industrial revolution going without access to the easy energy provided by fossil fuels. We could easily find a rebooted society gets stuck in a pre-industrial state with no way of breaking out.
adrianN 10y ago
We have cities and garbage dumps that are full of steel, aluminium and plastic that are unlikely to be wiped out completely in any catastrophic event caused by humans. The only true problem is energy, I think. I wonder how far you could get with only biomass as a starter fuel for civilization.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Yes you could probably mine our dumps for metals, but if England is anything to go you will run out of forests as an energy source very early in an industrial revolution. If England had not been sitting on a large amount of easily accessed coal we would almost certainly not be having this conversation - in English anyway.

ChuckMcM 10y ago

Depends on how quickly the climate changed. Lets say one year winter came and spring never did. It simply went from less cold to more cold all year long and deciduous plants stopped growing north of say Dallas Texas. All sorts of food stocks simply die. No corn, no wheat, no cows, chickens, or pigs (in year 2) and no vegetables. Fruits from the tropics perhaps but another huge die off in that vegetation as well as temperatures drop into the 40's at night. There is no "other place" to go, so generally you see (depending on your model) 70 - 85% of the population outside the middle lattitudes die from starvation and general unrest. If you are lucky, you get someone smart enough to create a defensible space in the mid lattitudes that can support the population inside of it. The fisheries will crash in year 3 as the remaining survivors use what is left of the world wide fishing fleet to haul in ever more valuable food (aka fish). Then the people in the defensible spaces need to hold off the people outside those spaces until those outer people die and are no longer a threat. That can take a while and since the outside people will be scavenging weapons from the whole frozen world they will have a lot more ammo and war fighting resources than the people in the defensible spaces. If it changes fast enough, the people trying to survive kill off everyone. It has happened in colonies before and it can presumably happen on a more global scale. Would bands of indigenous jungle tribes survive? Good question, anything that moved would be hunted as food, jungle would clear cut to make farmland as quickly as possible. If it happened slowly? Like over a couple of decades? Sure that would probably allow people to survive relatively intact save for their ability to actually make any new things of any level of technological sophistication. Look at maps of the late Pleistocene where the glaciers were and plot those out on a modern globe. Now look at what is under those glaciers and try to figure out how long it would take to relocate that capability south. More importantly how long it would take to relocate it south. That sets the parameters for the maximum rate at which the species could tolerate the onset of a new ice age.

jessaustin 10y ago
I thought we were talking about global warming?
- ChuckMcM 10y ago
  We are, but that is sort of the "trade name" for anthropocentric climate change. Which, if you read a lot of papers track the rising temperatures but have a variety of opinions of how exactly that will affect the climate. One such change can be triggering a sudden glaciation event.