3 ms·

> Because of this, there's a feedback loop were even if the sun gets a little hotter or colder, the successful daisy would spread and either warm or cool the Ea

> Because of this, there's a feedback loop were even if the sun gets a little hotter or colder, the successful daisy would spread and either warm or cool the Earth in response, effectively acting as a stabilizer. Gaia theory suggests that the world is full of these stabilizing systems. There are several mechanisms in place on earth to stabilize changes in atmospheric composition and temperature (otherwise an sporadic eruption of a volcano or glacial eras would have thrown things out of whack long time ago). I don't think this is an hypothesis. We have seen some of them in action in recent years, like the advanced rate of reforestation due to larger levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. The problem is we don't know what would happen if we push these to the limit or what their limit really is. And they are very complex in the way the interact. For example. Warmer oceans and larger levels of CO2 will make phytoplankton grow faster, absorbing more CO2 in return, but it will also accelerate the growth of zooplankton, that feeds on it. This creates a bottleneck. So TL;DR: yeah, it's cool we have these mechanisms around but the goal should still be to keep things as close to the baseline as possible (and we have been really bad about it in the last century)

zerealshadowban 8y ago
What specific baseline do you pick, and why? are there multiple variables involved in that "baseline"? have these variables changed over the 10k years preceding the Industrial Revolution? together or separately? what about these same variables over the last 200k years?
- snikeris 8y ago
  Good questions. You also have to consider the variables that have changed since the Industrial Revolution. There are more people on earth to feed and provide a modern standard of living. We should work to reduce the costs on the planet for these things, but we can't eschew the progress we've made in order to return to some arbitrary baseline. See: ecomodernism
  - zerealshadowban 8y ago
    Yes, one would most likely have followup questions once the baseline and its variables are made explicit.
smittywerben 8y ago
> close to the baseline More like don't do one of these on accident... :-) "One of the major questions is whether the Siberian Traps eruptions were directly responsible for the Permian–Triassic mass extinction 250 million years ago. A recent hypothesis put forward is that the volcanism triggered the growth of Methanosarcina, a microbe that spewed enormous amounts of methane... altering the Earth's carbon cycle. This extinction event, also called the Great Dying, affected all life on Earth, and is estimated to have killed about 95% of all species living at the time" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps

zerealshadowban 8y ago

What specific baseline do you pick, and why? are there multiple variables involved in that "baseline"? have these variables changed over the 10k years preceding the Industrial Revolution? together or separately? what about these same variables over the last 200k years?

snikeris 8y ago
Good questions. You also have to consider the variables that have changed since the Industrial Revolution. There are more people on earth to feed and provide a modern standard of living. We should work to reduce the costs on the planet for these things, but we can't eschew the progress we've made in order to return to some arbitrary baseline. See: ecomodernism
- zerealshadowban 8y ago
  Yes, one would most likely have followup questions once the baseline and its variables are made explicit.

smittywerben 8y ago

> close to the baseline More like don't do one of these on accident... :-) "One of the major questions is whether the Siberian Traps eruptions were directly responsible for the Permian–Triassic mass extinction 250 million years ago. A recent hypothesis put forward is that the volcanism triggered the growth of Methanosarcina, a microbe that spewed enormous amounts of methane... altering the Earth's carbon cycle. This extinction event, also called the Great Dying, affected all life on Earth, and is estimated to have killed about 95% of all species living at the time" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siberian_Traps