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Is there a chance that evolution will mitigate the rising temperatures and ocean acidity? Or are there perhaps levels those things that are fundamentally negati

Is there a chance that evolution will mitigate the rising temperatures and ocean acidity? Or are there perhaps levels those things that are fundamentally negative to life in general? Or is evolution too slow or too unpredictable to come out as a anything other than a net negative for humans?

m_mueller 10y ago
With very high certainty (with some slight chance that Earth becomes the next Venus and evolution here ends for good). Keep in mind though that a mass extinction is part of the process of accelerating evolution. You don't get a quick adaptation without a strong selection process. Edit: By 'slight chance' I mean very much near zero btw. However I'm skeptic enough of climate models to know that they aren't good enough to include all the domino effects we've never seen. The Permiam-Triassic boundary saw tremendous forest fires along with abrupt methane release, and that didn't include a species actively releasing enormous amounts of fossilised carbon. I'd imagine that if a few worst case scenarios came together - finding more fossil fuel sources, burning up all of it and causing unstoppable forest fires in all large remaining forests, it could happen. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130729-runaway-greenhouse-global-warming-venus-ocean-climate-science/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130729-runaw...
Scarblac 10y ago
It depends on whether there already exist creatures that can survive the rising temperatures and coming acidity _together with whatever they eat_.
mikeash 10y ago
Evolution will solve it eventually. The problem is the timescale. It's a common argument that climate change isn't a problem because the Earth has been even warmer in the past. That's true, but misses the point. The problem isn't merely that the climate is warming, but that it's warming extremely quickly. Nature adjusts, but nature takes a long time to do it. If the temperature goes up by 4°C in a century, that's far too fast. On the specific question of evolution, major changes happen on a timescale of thousands if not millions of years. For example, despite huge changes in our environment, humans today are basically the same as they were tens of thousands of years ago. Earth will probably return to something like an equilibrium, both in terms of climate and in terms of wildlife, in a million years or less. But that doesn't do us any good when the threat to our civilization, from climate change and ecosystem collapse, is in the next century or two.

m_mueller 10y ago

With very high certainty (with some slight chance that Earth becomes the next Venus and evolution here ends for good). Keep in mind though that a mass extinction is part of the process of accelerating evolution. You don't get a quick adaptation without a strong selection process. Edit: By 'slight chance' I mean very much near zero btw. However I'm skeptic enough of climate models to know that they aren't good enough to include all the domino effects we've never seen. The Permiam-Triassic boundary saw tremendous forest fires along with abrupt methane release, and that didn't include a species actively releasing enormous amounts of fossilised carbon. I'd imagine that if a few worst case scenarios came together - finding more fossil fuel sources, burning up all of it and causing unstoppable forest fires in all large remaining forests, it could happen. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130729-runaway-greenhouse-global-warming-venus-ocean-climate-science/ http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/13/130729-runaw...

Scarblac 10y ago

It depends on whether there already exist creatures that can survive the rising temperatures and coming acidity _together with whatever they eat_.

mikeash 10y ago

Evolution will solve it eventually. The problem is the timescale. It's a common argument that climate change isn't a problem because the Earth has been even warmer in the past. That's true, but misses the point. The problem isn't merely that the climate is warming, but that it's warming extremely quickly. Nature adjusts, but nature takes a long time to do it. If the temperature goes up by 4°C in a century, that's far too fast. On the specific question of evolution, major changes happen on a timescale of thousands if not millions of years. For example, despite huge changes in our environment, humans today are basically the same as they were tens of thousands of years ago. Earth will probably return to something like an equilibrium, both in terms of climate and in terms of wildlife, in a million years or less. But that doesn't do us any good when the threat to our civilization, from climate change and ecosystem collapse, is in the next century or two.