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>> Gaia theory suggests that the world is full of these stabilizing systems. Earth may have tricks to save its ecosystem, one of them could be temporarily inc

by matt42 8y ago

>> Gaia theory suggests that the world is full of these stabilizing systems. Earth may have tricks to save its ecosystem, one of them could be temporarily increase temperatures and sea levels, just enough to end humanity.

swarnie_ 8y ago
The Great Filter in effect.
jules 8y ago
It is exceedingly unlikely that raised temperatures or sea levels would end humanity. Even if all ice melts there would still be a lot of land, and humans can and do currently survive in hot climates. The habitable zone will just shrink a bit, but it will also expand in other places. Siberia + 5 degrees is still cold.
- enraged_camel 8y ago
  No, this is very wrong. It’s not about having land to live on and being able to continue to breathe on it. Of course we would be able to do that. The issue is all the parts of the ecosystem we have come to rely on. Animals, plants, insects... the entire global economy and our ways of live are tightly intertwined with everything else and even small disruptions can have enormous repercussions, especially on more vulnerable populations in the world.
  - mbostleman 8y ago
    This description is full of hyperbolic generalities. The available land example may or may not be comprehensive, but at least it's specific. I think the biggest problem that I have about everything climate change / global warming is that we are making laws to force (don't forget that force means pointing guns at people regardless of the warm and fuzzy intentions used to sell it) entire populations and their economies in the absence of so much specific knowledge. That doesn't make me a denier because accept / deny is not really the issue. Just because I accept the general premise doesn't mean that I trust the depth of the understanding to the point that I am willing to turn a gun on my neighbor to either reduce their liberty and / or confiscate their personal property in the name of said premise.
    - DanBC 8y ago
      > (don't forget that force means pointing guns at people I'd love to know where this comes from, because it's clearly fucking bollocks but is trotted out in many threads.
      - jschwartzi 8y ago
        It comes from a very explicit reading of Ayn Rand, who frequently likens law and regulation to the explicit use of force. To be fair, it's true but the literal statement of the fact misses a lot of the nuance of living in a civil society.
        mbostleman 8y ago
        Of course it's true, no need for your generosity of fairness. Just don't obey the law and see what happens. Continue to do so and eventually you'll be looking down the barrel of a gun. Pointing this out is not Randian. It's just reality. There are no nuances of living in a civil society when solutions are implemented by law. If it's by law, then it's by gun. I don't know of any law that works otherwise. I think the nuance you're referring to is when people's minds are (actually) changed such that they work together on a common goal. There becomes a natural supply and demand of a certain behavior. But most of the effort that I see is not convincing people to support a certain shared goal per se, but rather to join a tribe to crowd source the passage of laws. The more important thing to me - and the point I meant to make, though I didn't fully articulate it - is that pointing a gun at someone (or indeed entire sectors of an economy) should be reserved for situations in which there is a very high bar of confidence in the detailed facts and predictions of the outcomes. While we may all agree that global warming causes climate change and even that it is anthropomorphic, it doesn't appear to me that we have a level of specific knowledge to say that "a reduction of carbon emission by x will result in a climate of y in the year z". If we don't have that, then I question both the morality and practicality of what appears to be a witch hunt in the form of policy making.
        CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
  - hcurtiss 8y ago
    Maybe, but none of those things necessarily end humanity.
  - jules 8y ago
    That it would hurt vulnerable populations who live in a region that becomes uninhabitable is undoubtedly true and I didn't argue against that, but that is not the end of humanity, which is what you claimed.
samfriedman 8y ago
Something I think of often when people say things like "we need to stop climate change and save the world!" The world will be fine, it's not going anywhere: humans and the species we like on the other hand...
- older 8y ago
  Are you George Carlin?
  - samfriedman 8y ago
    Ah, yes, that's where I first heard that thought! Thanks, just a bit of cryptomnesia. https://youtu.be/BB0aFPXr4n4?t=144 https://youtu.be/BB0aFPXr4n4?t=144 Side note: something I've never seen before on that Youtube video: it links the Wikipedia page for climate change right under the video. An attempt to battle misleading videos perhaps?
    - rement 8y ago
      The Wikipedia links are a new initiative Google is doing to combat fake news and misleading information [0]. 0: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2018/07/building-better-news-experience-on.html https://youtube.googleblog.com/2018/07/building-better-news-...
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
- _carl_jung 8y ago
  "The world" is a synecdoche in that context. These people don't literally think we're going to make the earth disappear.
- eanzenberg 8y ago
  Humans will be fine. Dumb humans on the other hand...
cup-of-tea 8y ago
This is surely the case. Nobody really thinks humans have the ability to wipe out all life on Earth do they? We might be able to destroy ourselves, but life will probably continue at least until the Sun turns into a red giant. Life on Earth has survived far more catastrophic events than anything we can manage.
- eganist 8y ago
  Any large system can be undermined by a small actor imposing a miniscule change. It just depends on which component of the system is disrupted. Granted your options dwindle as the disparity grows, but so long as a component is accessible to an actor, the system can be impacted.
  - cup-of-tea 8y ago
    Can you prove that? I don't believe it. Are there any theories supporting the end of all life on Earth?
- FooHentai 8y ago
  >Nobody really thinks humans have the ability to wipe out all life on Earth do they? 'all life on earth' as in down to microorganisms, amoeba etc? No, I would hope not. Short of wiping out the atmosphere in it's entirety, PLUS destroying the surface of the entire earth do an as-yet-unknown depth sufficient to reach every existing colony of microorganisms etc, humanity's destructive abilities don't extend that far, yet. But do humans have the ability to wipe out all sophisticated life on earth i.e. all plants, mammals, fish, and so on such to turn the clock back on a few billion years of evolution? Yeah I certainly believe that's within our abilities, and indeed likely if current activities continue uninterrupted.
snikeris 8y ago
The earth is not a superorganism or entity that prefers one state to another.
- cududa 8y ago
  It’s always funny to me when people say “we’re killing the planet!” Uh no, we’re just making it uninhabitable for ourselves and some other species. Earth doesn’t give a damn either way
CodeCube 8y ago
Like a fever :)

by matt42 8y ago

swarnie_ 8y ago

The Great Filter in effect.

jules 8y ago

It is exceedingly unlikely that raised temperatures or sea levels would end humanity. Even if all ice melts there would still be a lot of land, and humans can and do currently survive in hot climates. The habitable zone will just shrink a bit, but it will also expand in other places. Siberia + 5 degrees is still cold.

enraged_camel 8y ago
No, this is very wrong. It’s not about having land to live on and being able to continue to breathe on it. Of course we would be able to do that. The issue is all the parts of the ecosystem we have come to rely on. Animals, plants, insects... the entire global economy and our ways of live are tightly intertwined with everything else and even small disruptions can have enormous repercussions, especially on more vulnerable populations in the world.
- mbostleman 8y ago
  This description is full of hyperbolic generalities. The available land example may or may not be comprehensive, but at least it's specific. I think the biggest problem that I have about everything climate change / global warming is that we are making laws to force (don't forget that force means pointing guns at people regardless of the warm and fuzzy intentions used to sell it) entire populations and their economies in the absence of so much specific knowledge. That doesn't make me a denier because accept / deny is not really the issue. Just because I accept the general premise doesn't mean that I trust the depth of the understanding to the point that I am willing to turn a gun on my neighbor to either reduce their liberty and / or confiscate their personal property in the name of said premise.
  - DanBC 8y ago
    > (don't forget that force means pointing guns at people I'd love to know where this comes from, because it's clearly fucking bollocks but is trotted out in many threads.
    - jschwartzi 8y ago
      It comes from a very explicit reading of Ayn Rand, who frequently likens law and regulation to the explicit use of force. To be fair, it's true but the literal statement of the fact misses a lot of the nuance of living in a civil society.
      - mbostleman 8y ago
        Of course it's true, no need for your generosity of fairness. Just don't obey the law and see what happens. Continue to do so and eventually you'll be looking down the barrel of a gun. Pointing this out is not Randian. It's just reality. There are no nuances of living in a civil society when solutions are implemented by law. If it's by law, then it's by gun. I don't know of any law that works otherwise. I think the nuance you're referring to is when people's minds are (actually) changed such that they work together on a common goal. There becomes a natural supply and demand of a certain behavior. But most of the effort that I see is not convincing people to support a certain shared goal per se, but rather to join a tribe to crowd source the passage of laws. The more important thing to me - and the point I meant to make, though I didn't fully articulate it - is that pointing a gun at someone (or indeed entire sectors of an economy) should be reserved for situations in which there is a very high bar of confidence in the detailed facts and predictions of the outcomes. While we may all agree that global warming causes climate change and even that it is anthropomorphic, it doesn't appear to me that we have a level of specific knowledge to say that "a reduction of carbon emission by x will result in a climate of y in the year z". If we don't have that, then I question both the morality and practicality of what appears to be a witch hunt in the form of policy making.
        CuriousSkeptic 8y ago
- hcurtiss 8y ago
  Maybe, but none of those things necessarily end humanity.
- jules 8y ago
  That it would hurt vulnerable populations who live in a region that becomes uninhabitable is undoubtedly true and I didn't argue against that, but that is not the end of humanity, which is what you claimed.

samfriedman 8y ago

Something I think of often when people say things like "we need to stop climate change and save the world!" The world will be fine, it's not going anywhere: humans and the species we like on the other hand...

older 8y ago
Are you George Carlin?
- samfriedman 8y ago
  Ah, yes, that's where I first heard that thought! Thanks, just a bit of cryptomnesia. https://youtu.be/BB0aFPXr4n4?t=144 https://youtu.be/BB0aFPXr4n4?t=144 Side note: something I've never seen before on that Youtube video: it links the Wikipedia page for climate change right under the video. An attempt to battle misleading videos perhaps?
  - rement 8y ago
    The Wikipedia links are a new initiative Google is doing to combat fake news and misleading information [0]. 0: https://youtube.googleblog.com/2018/07/building-better-news-experience-on.html https://youtube.googleblog.com/2018/07/building-better-news-...
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
_carl_jung 8y ago
"The world" is a synecdoche in that context. These people don't literally think we're going to make the earth disappear.
eanzenberg 8y ago
Humans will be fine. Dumb humans on the other hand...

cup-of-tea 8y ago

This is surely the case. Nobody really thinks humans have the ability to wipe out all life on Earth do they? We might be able to destroy ourselves, but life will probably continue at least until the Sun turns into a red giant. Life on Earth has survived far more catastrophic events than anything we can manage.

eganist 8y ago
Any large system can be undermined by a small actor imposing a miniscule change. It just depends on which component of the system is disrupted. Granted your options dwindle as the disparity grows, but so long as a component is accessible to an actor, the system can be impacted.
- cup-of-tea 8y ago
  Can you prove that? I don't believe it. Are there any theories supporting the end of all life on Earth?
FooHentai 8y ago
>Nobody really thinks humans have the ability to wipe out all life on Earth do they? 'all life on earth' as in down to microorganisms, amoeba etc? No, I would hope not. Short of wiping out the atmosphere in it's entirety, PLUS destroying the surface of the entire earth do an as-yet-unknown depth sufficient to reach every existing colony of microorganisms etc, humanity's destructive abilities don't extend that far, yet. But do humans have the ability to wipe out all sophisticated life on earth i.e. all plants, mammals, fish, and so on such to turn the clock back on a few billion years of evolution? Yeah I certainly believe that's within our abilities, and indeed likely if current activities continue uninterrupted.

snikeris 8y ago

The earth is not a superorganism or entity that prefers one state to another.

cududa 8y ago
It’s always funny to me when people say “we’re killing the planet!” Uh no, we’re just making it uninhabitable for ourselves and some other species. Earth doesn’t give a damn either way

CodeCube 8y ago

Like a fever :)