4 ms·

In the scale of a human lifetime this is a tragedy. We see the forests when we are children and we expect to be able to return to them again and again and that

by nsxwolf 10y ago

In the scale of a human lifetime this is a tragedy. We see the forests when we are children and we expect to be able to return to them again and again and that the same will be true for our descendants. But go a little farther out, and every asteroid impact above a certain size incinerated every last tree on earth, instantly. Giant ice sheets scraped them off en masse like barnacles. In every case, trees came back. Maybe not the same trees, but trees suited for their new environment. It will be the same for beetles or climate change or whatever comes next.

mathattack 10y ago
My time horizon is "Do we have enough trees sucking carbon out of the air before we cross the point of no return?" and "Can we plant enough trees before we lose all the coastal property?"
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  We may lose current coastal property - but it will be replaced with all new coastal property. At a terrible cost, yes.
  - mathattack 10y ago
    That's it - it's not the property, it's the mass displacement and abandonment of cities.
    - emn13 10y ago
      Also, I don't think it's obvious that whatever replaces the current habitable zones will be nearly as large or fertile as what we have now. It's by no means a necessarily long-term zero-sum game.
- adrianN 10y ago
  We are already past the point of no return.
emn13 10y ago
I'm not sure any asteroid has ever incinerated every tree - I suspect not - but realize that even fairly mild extinction events such as the one that killed the dinosaurs had rather dramatic consequences: in particular; that the planet never recovered what it lost. AFAIK no (fully) land animal even close to the size of a human survived Chicxulub and its aftermath. Crocodiles were the only large (50lb+) "land" animals to survive, and they're semi-aquatic, don't need a lot of food, and the ones that survived may well have been smaller than humans anyhow. So, you're right that there is little risk of humanity wiping all life off the planet's surface, even if we all tried. There is, however, a considerable chance that humanity might wipe most large animals and lots of plants off the surface of the planet, and it's a least imaginable we'd completely wipe ourselves out (and take with us most other vertebrates). Smaller pockets of humanity certainly managed that. You'd have to be quite the misanthropist to say "meh" to the consequences of a serious ecological collapse. I'm assuming it won't come to that, but it's not at all inconceivable.

by nsxwolf 10y ago

mathattack 10y ago

My time horizon is "Do we have enough trees sucking carbon out of the air before we cross the point of no return?" and "Can we plant enough trees before we lose all the coastal property?"

nsxwolf 10y ago
We may lose current coastal property - but it will be replaced with all new coastal property. At a terrible cost, yes.
- mathattack 10y ago
  That's it - it's not the property, it's the mass displacement and abandonment of cities.
  - emn13 10y ago
    Also, I don't think it's obvious that whatever replaces the current habitable zones will be nearly as large or fertile as what we have now. It's by no means a necessarily long-term zero-sum game.
adrianN 10y ago
We are already past the point of no return.

emn13 10y ago

I'm not sure any asteroid has ever incinerated every tree - I suspect not - but realize that even fairly mild extinction events such as the one that killed the dinosaurs had rather dramatic consequences: in particular; that the planet never recovered what it lost. AFAIK no (fully) land animal even close to the size of a human survived Chicxulub and its aftermath. Crocodiles were the only large (50lb+) "land" animals to survive, and they're semi-aquatic, don't need a lot of food, and the ones that survived may well have been smaller than humans anyhow. So, you're right that there is little risk of humanity wiping all life off the planet's surface, even if we all tried. There is, however, a considerable chance that humanity might wipe most large animals and lots of plants off the surface of the planet, and it's a least imaginable we'd completely wipe ourselves out (and take with us most other vertebrates). Smaller pockets of humanity certainly managed that. You'd have to be quite the misanthropist to say "meh" to the consequences of a serious ecological collapse. I'm assuming it won't come to that, but it's not at all inconceivable.