4 ms·

The most sudden warmings Earth has ever seen happened at 1/100th or 1/1000th the speed of the current warming, and wiped out most life on Earth.

chipperyman573 8y ago
That is true, however one argument that can be made is that most of life on earth was nowhere near as smart as humans are and didn't have, for example HVAC. You could make the argument that humans' intelligence will outweigh nature's attempts to wipe us out. Of course, that doesn't mean that global warming isn't a massive problem, and HVAC won't save us. It's just important to consider all sides of an argument. Edit: To be clear I disagree with this argument, it's just the most common one I've heard.
- DennisP 8y ago
  I would sure hate to live in a world in which most of nature has been destroyed, and the remaining humans huddle in air-conditioned buildings.
- jellicle 8y ago
  "Humans will try hard to survive", while undoubtedly true, isn't really a counter-argument. As a counter to your "humans are smart" theory, I would point out that we've known about climate change for half a century now and have done absolutely nothing about it: each year we are putting more CO2 into the atmosphere than the year before. We are accelerating into the apocalypse. If humans were smart as you suppose, wouldn't we have done something other than jam our feet on the accelerator?
- jacquesm 8y ago
  It is a complete bogus argument. We need a functioning eco-system to survive.
tabtab 8y ago
Some big space rocks possibly made Earth cool rather quickly. In other words, more things trigger instant cooling than instant warming.
ilove_banh_mi 8y ago
I respectfully suggest you examine the onset of the Eemian, the last interglacial period, about 130k years ago. Global temperature abruptly rose by more than 5 degrees Celsius in just a few centuries. That was not the most sudden warming we know of, and its speed was not a tiny fraction of the current warming speed.

chipperyman573 8y ago

That is true, however one argument that can be made is that most of life on earth was nowhere near as smart as humans are and didn't have, for example HVAC. You could make the argument that humans' intelligence will outweigh nature's attempts to wipe us out. Of course, that doesn't mean that global warming isn't a massive problem, and HVAC won't save us. It's just important to consider all sides of an argument. Edit: To be clear I disagree with this argument, it's just the most common one I've heard.

DennisP 8y ago
I would sure hate to live in a world in which most of nature has been destroyed, and the remaining humans huddle in air-conditioned buildings.
jellicle 8y ago
"Humans will try hard to survive", while undoubtedly true, isn't really a counter-argument. As a counter to your "humans are smart" theory, I would point out that we've known about climate change for half a century now and have done absolutely nothing about it: each year we are putting more CO2 into the atmosphere than the year before. We are accelerating into the apocalypse. If humans were smart as you suppose, wouldn't we have done something other than jam our feet on the accelerator?
jacquesm 8y ago
It is a complete bogus argument. We need a functioning eco-system to survive.

tabtab 8y ago

Some big space rocks possibly made Earth cool rather quickly. In other words, more things trigger instant cooling than instant warming.

ilove_banh_mi 8y ago

I respectfully suggest you examine the onset of the Eemian, the last interglacial period, about 130k years ago. Global temperature abruptly rose by more than 5 degrees Celsius in just a few centuries. That was not the most sudden warming we know of, and its speed was not a tiny fraction of the current warming speed.