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> Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine... TBH statements like these really grate on me. Yes, Earth will be fine in the same sense that you'd be fine

by titzer 8y ago

> Earth will be fine. Life on Earth will be fine... TBH statements like these really grate on me. Yes, Earth will be fine in the same sense that you'd be fine if you surgically removed your arms, legs, eyeballs, ears, and tongue and then were fed intravenously and your waste disposed of for you. You might live a long life and have lots of nice dreams. The reality is that we are in early stages of kicking off a cascade of effects that could wipe out the majority of the food web on Earth--let's say, everything larger than your finger. Yeah sure, insects and microbes will reboot it all--in a hundred millions years, if ever. Wonderful! To make such flippant remarks about so profoundly annihilating the bioversity of this very special planet is not helpful in the dialogue. Let's please work on this problem seriously.

ryanwaggoner 8y ago
I’d love to see a credible source suggesting that climate change has any kind of remote chance of wiping out all life on earth larger than a few cm.
- titzer 8y ago
  It's not just climate change, it's the combined effects of a lot of different things, not the least of which is overfishing, deforestation, loss of habitat, and selective destruction of ecosystems. So far we've really only scratched the surface, but there have been hundreds of local mass die-offs (billions of individual animals each). https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150113-mass-die-off-disease-animals-environment-science/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150113-mass... The Great Barrier Reef is about half dead now. In two years. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/since-2016-half-the-coral-in-the-great-barrier-reef-has-perished/558302/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/since-20... But look at what happened at the end of the Permian age. 96% of species were lost. It was due to CO2/methane causing climate change. https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinctions https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinction... (btw we still have no idea what caused the extinction at the end of the Triassic). We're basically on the way to combining all of these causes of mass extinctions in a super-short timeframe that may mushroom into one super-massive extinction. And as far as what-if's go, if climate change sets off a global conflict, and there's a nuclear war, forget it.
  - ryanwaggoner 8y ago
    All those things are horrible. None of them have the remotest chance of wiping out all life larger than a few cm.
- adrianN 8y ago
  Phytoplankton seems to decline due to warming[1]. If this trend continues we're going to have a bad time. Phytoplankton produces at least half of the oxygen we breathe and is key to the oceanic food web. [1] https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/news.2010.379.html https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/news.2010.379.h...
mahasvin 8y ago
I worked a bit around the data, and I am very sceptical about humanity ability to produce enough CO2 for The Climate Change. Volcanic activity was, is, and will be the main contributor to the CO2 pool. Humanity is not the geological force, regretfully.
- dplavery92 8y ago
  That's simply incorrect. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/volcano-carbon-emissions/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/volcano-carbon-emissions/ https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-volcanoes-or-human-activities https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits... https://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm https://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warmin... https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/06/06/how-much-co2-does-a-single-volcano-emit/#15760f7b5cbf https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/06/06/how-... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcan...
  - mahasvin 8y ago
    Ah, Forbes always was an authoritative source on climate change. I am not in the mood for battling over the authors who are unable to consider 250 000 underwater volcanoes. You know, 250 000 underwater volcanoes cannot be wrong.
    - m_mueller 8y ago
      So you‘re biased against one source and ignore all the others given here?
    - plopilop 8y ago
      That's a nice cherry-picking over the sources you're doing here. From Scientific American, quoting USGS: > According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the world’s volcanoes, both on land and undersea, generate about 200 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, while our automotive and industrial activities cause some 24 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year worldwide But I guess you're more knowledgeable on the subject than the US geological survey? > On average, human activities put out in just three to five days, the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide that volcanoes produce globally each year https://www.usgs.gov/news/human-activities-produce-more-carbon-dioxide-emissions-do-volcanoes https://www.usgs.gov/news/human-activities-produce-more-carb...

by titzer 8y ago

ryanwaggoner 8y ago

I’d love to see a credible source suggesting that climate change has any kind of remote chance of wiping out all life on earth larger than a few cm.

titzer 8y ago
It's not just climate change, it's the combined effects of a lot of different things, not the least of which is overfishing, deforestation, loss of habitat, and selective destruction of ecosystems. So far we've really only scratched the surface, but there have been hundreds of local mass die-offs (billions of individual animals each). https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150113-mass-die-off-disease-animals-environment-science/ https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2015/01/150113-mass... The Great Barrier Reef is about half dead now. In two years. https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/since-2016-half-the-coral-in-the-great-barrier-reef-has-perished/558302/ https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/04/since-20... But look at what happened at the end of the Permian age. 96% of species were lost. It was due to CO2/methane causing climate change. https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinctions https://cosmosmagazine.com/palaeontology/big-five-extinction... (btw we still have no idea what caused the extinction at the end of the Triassic). We're basically on the way to combining all of these causes of mass extinctions in a super-short timeframe that may mushroom into one super-massive extinction. And as far as what-if's go, if climate change sets off a global conflict, and there's a nuclear war, forget it.
- ryanwaggoner 8y ago
  All those things are horrible. None of them have the remotest chance of wiping out all life larger than a few cm.
adrianN 8y ago
Phytoplankton seems to decline due to warming[1]. If this trend continues we're going to have a bad time. Phytoplankton produces at least half of the oxygen we breathe and is key to the oceanic food web. [1] https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/news.2010.379.html https://www.nature.com/news/2010/100728/full/news.2010.379.h...

mahasvin 8y ago

I worked a bit around the data, and I am very sceptical about humanity ability to produce enough CO2 for The Climate Change. Volcanic activity was, is, and will be the main contributor to the CO2 pool. Humanity is not the geological force, regretfully.

dplavery92 8y ago
That's simply incorrect. https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/volcano-carbon-emissions/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/volcano-carbon-emissions/ https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits-more-carbon-dioxide-volcanoes-or-human-activities https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/which-emits... https://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warming.htm https://www.skepticalscience.com/volcanoes-and-global-warmin... https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/06/06/how-much-co2-does-a-single-volcano-emit/#15760f7b5cbf https://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2017/06/06/how-... https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcanoes-or-humans/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/earthtalks-volcan...
- mahasvin 8y ago
  Ah, Forbes always was an authoritative source on climate change. I am not in the mood for battling over the authors who are unable to consider 250 000 underwater volcanoes. You know, 250 000 underwater volcanoes cannot be wrong.
  - m_mueller 8y ago
    So you‘re biased against one source and ignore all the others given here?
  - plopilop 8y ago
    That's a nice cherry-picking over the sources you're doing here. From Scientific American, quoting USGS: > According to the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the world’s volcanoes, both on land and undersea, generate about 200 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) annually, while our automotive and industrial activities cause some 24 billion tons of CO2 emissions every year worldwide But I guess you're more knowledgeable on the subject than the US geological survey? > On average, human activities put out in just three to five days, the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide that volcanoes produce globally each year https://www.usgs.gov/news/human-activities-produce-more-carbon-dioxide-emissions-do-volcanoes https://www.usgs.gov/news/human-activities-produce-more-carb...