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> Both the emergence of geologically novel climates and the rapid reversion to Eocene-like climates may be outside the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity.

> Both the emergence of geologically novel climates and the rapid reversion to Eocene-like climates may be outside the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity. A lovely little sentence, elegantly understated and used as a seemingly off-handed conclusion to the abstract, which essentially means "the world may be about to end." Also, NASA is hosting the full article: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20180008801.pdf https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/201800...

grondilu 8y ago
What is the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity, though? Life has survived everything that has been thrown at it in several billion years. We just don't know what it would take to wipe it all. So I don't think the authors were talking about the complete end of life. They were just saying that we're going towards a phase of mass extinction, and that is not much controversial.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- dpau 8y ago
  > we are effectively rewinding the climate clock by approximately 50 My, reversing a multimillion year cooling trend in less than two centuries. It’s the unprecedented suddenness of this climate change that makes it doubtful organisms will be able to adapt. Maybe we shouldn’t be concerned with whether or not some form of life will still exist, but whether or not we will.
  - politician 8y ago
    It's time to start building domes.
    - Reelin 8y ago
      Not domes so much as greenhouses. The climate change doesn't kill you, it kills the crops you depend on to live and then you starve.
      - politician 8y ago
        Agreed; I think Sundrop Farms provides a path forward here. http://www.sundropfarms.com/ http://www.sundropfarms.com/
        Reelin 8y ago
        Some other greenhouse examples that are decently large scale, although they don't necessarily use seawater or generate their own electricity. https://bchothouse.com https://bchothouse.com http://inspiredgreens.ca http://inspiredgreens.ca In case it's of interest to anyone, the more general (and extreme) concept would be vertical farming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming
    - goalieca 8y ago
      Traveler 4320, you are off-mission. Abort!
  - KnightOfWords 8y ago
    > It’s the unprecedented suddenness of this climate change that makes it doubtful organisms will be able to adapt. Another wildcard is how much damage humans may inflict on ecological systems in a desperate search for food, when crop yields decline.
    - grondilu 8y ago
      When crop yields decline, food will become scarce. I think the consequences of food scarcity will be social unrest and political chaos. People will turn against each other much before they turn against the environment.
      - KnightOfWords 8y ago
        > I think the consequences of food scarcity will be social unrest and political chaos. I also expect increased overfishing and slash & burn agriculture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burn#Ecological_implications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burn#Ecological_impl...
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  Life has indeed survived, but do we want to risk another Permian scale mass extinction? We don't know the limits, but we're currently experimenting with them. In other words we don't yet know the size of the push required to trigger that scale of extinction. Once we find out for certain it's almost certainly too late to avoid it. For civilisation, humanity and most food chains that would effectively be the end of the world even if it did not include extinction of homo sapiens.
  - userulluipeste 8y ago
    "Once we find out for certain it's almost certainly too late to avoid it." I don't understand why is that. What I do understand is that somehow, for so many like you, change is too often pictured as a bad thing. And I am glad that on the large scale we are inclined to be skeptical in our nature. And if some change happen to have something undesirable, I won't rush to blame the change, I would rather take a look at what change brought, good and bad, and only do something about the bad. So far, observing the general attitude, most of us seem to think like me. Humans can (and will) get through climatic change events well enough. Even if today we could have only 20% of our current arable land, that would be enough to feed more than our current population level, providing that the necessary diet adjustments are made (e.g. less beef). The past mass extinctions could not be mitigated by coordinated reactive actions that are possible today and it's simply wrong to attempt to project something similar with equal level of destruction into our future. We have the power to preserve almost everything we deem worth preserving and we do exactly that. Actually, if nothing else, thanks to us, the life on our planet has the highest chance of survival in the future "mass extinction events".
    - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
      It's quite simple. Once a tipping point is passed, and clearly apparent, it's too late to stop it. We're not doing anything about the bad. It's right there in our system's designed-in premise that the bad is an "externality". There is far too much evidence to no longer believe in anthropogenic climate change, or that the change is not bad. Nothing wrong with change per se. Nothing at all wrong with discoveries and inventions that have brought modern levels of health and comfort if we mitigate the costs. Everything wrong with change that makes our planet less able to support biodiversity, or to be slightly more emotive, an unpleasant, marginal, place to be for everyone. Change and develop without triggering the next great collapse. I do not want my comfort to be at the expense of every future generation. Thankfully, at least in Europe, there are signs that critical mass of public opinion is being reached and there are increasingly strident calls to do something substantive. That's at odds with the general state of political opinion which seems to be trailing public opinion markedly. > Humans can (and will) get through climatic change events well enough Based upon what? This appears to be nothing more than wishful thinking or presumption. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/06/katharine-hayhoe-interview-climate-change-scientist-crisis-hope https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/06/katharine-ha... > We have the power to preserve almost everything we deem worth preserving Which appears to be nothing unless it is profitable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction That humanity could survive is moot if it involves going through a millennia long dark age, or effectively bombing ourselves back to the iron age. > thanks to us, the life on our planet has the highest chance of survival in the future Again, our track record speaks loudly against this.
- adrianN 8y ago
  I'm not very concerned about life. Some bacteria will surely survive almost any event and given a few billion years and a little luck biodiversity will probably be restored. I'm a lot more concerned about our current technological society.
  - plushpuffin 8y ago
    The Earth doesn't have a few billion years. Multicellular life on Earth will end in about 800 million years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth
- aaronbrethorst 8y ago
  Ah, life will survive. No worries then. I'm sure civilization will sleep easy tonight knowing that cockroaches will still be around in a million years.
lmilcin 8y ago
It is absolutely nowhere near evolutionary adaptive capacity. Life will not end and the world will still be there. Life's evolutionary adaptive capacity is stagerring! Just take a look at the experiment where it barely stretches muscles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8 What I understand they mean is "Life as we know it" defined as large animals and familiar plants roughly in places where we are used to seeing them. We are looking at life with our antropocentric point of view and we basically want familiar stuff to stay the same and we don't want unfamiliar stuff to show up. We don't want things to change and that's why potential large shift in how life presents itself may be caulled as "end of the world" event, but it is not. Life doesn't care whether oceans are clean or polluted, hot or cold. It WILL adapt some way or another even if all crustaceans and fish will die because they can't adapt quickly enough to lowering pH. We should care not because life is at danger but because we are at danger. Life as we know it is a machine that supports us, let's us grow food and provides air and water and soil and climate that we need. Humans will survive for sure in one way or another even if the temperature rises by 20 degrees but what kind of life will it be and how much suffering for those that can't deal with it?

grondilu 8y ago

What is the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity, though? Life has survived everything that has been thrown at it in several billion years. We just don't know what it would take to wipe it all. So I don't think the authors were talking about the complete end of life. They were just saying that we're going towards a phase of mass extinction, and that is not much controversial.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dpau 8y ago
> we are effectively rewinding the climate clock by approximately 50 My, reversing a multimillion year cooling trend in less than two centuries. It’s the unprecedented suddenness of this climate change that makes it doubtful organisms will be able to adapt. Maybe we shouldn’t be concerned with whether or not some form of life will still exist, but whether or not we will.
- politician 8y ago
  It's time to start building domes.
  - Reelin 8y ago
    Not domes so much as greenhouses. The climate change doesn't kill you, it kills the crops you depend on to live and then you starve.
    - politician 8y ago
      Agreed; I think Sundrop Farms provides a path forward here. http://www.sundropfarms.com/ http://www.sundropfarms.com/
      - Reelin 8y ago
        Some other greenhouse examples that are decently large scale, although they don't necessarily use seawater or generate their own electricity. https://bchothouse.com https://bchothouse.com http://inspiredgreens.ca http://inspiredgreens.ca In case it's of interest to anyone, the more general (and extreme) concept would be vertical farming. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_farming
  - goalieca 8y ago
    Traveler 4320, you are off-mission. Abort!
- KnightOfWords 8y ago
  > It’s the unprecedented suddenness of this climate change that makes it doubtful organisms will be able to adapt. Another wildcard is how much damage humans may inflict on ecological systems in a desperate search for food, when crop yields decline.
  - grondilu 8y ago
    When crop yields decline, food will become scarce. I think the consequences of food scarcity will be social unrest and political chaos. People will turn against each other much before they turn against the environment.
    - KnightOfWords 8y ago
      > I think the consequences of food scarcity will be social unrest and political chaos. I also expect increased overfishing and slash & burn agriculture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burn#Ecological_implications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slash-and-burn#Ecological_impl...
NeedMoreTea 8y ago
Life has indeed survived, but do we want to risk another Permian scale mass extinction? We don't know the limits, but we're currently experimenting with them. In other words we don't yet know the size of the push required to trigger that scale of extinction. Once we find out for certain it's almost certainly too late to avoid it. For civilisation, humanity and most food chains that would effectively be the end of the world even if it did not include extinction of homo sapiens.
- userulluipeste 8y ago
  "Once we find out for certain it's almost certainly too late to avoid it." I don't understand why is that. What I do understand is that somehow, for so many like you, change is too often pictured as a bad thing. And I am glad that on the large scale we are inclined to be skeptical in our nature. And if some change happen to have something undesirable, I won't rush to blame the change, I would rather take a look at what change brought, good and bad, and only do something about the bad. So far, observing the general attitude, most of us seem to think like me. Humans can (and will) get through climatic change events well enough. Even if today we could have only 20% of our current arable land, that would be enough to feed more than our current population level, providing that the necessary diet adjustments are made (e.g. less beef). The past mass extinctions could not be mitigated by coordinated reactive actions that are possible today and it's simply wrong to attempt to project something similar with equal level of destruction into our future. We have the power to preserve almost everything we deem worth preserving and we do exactly that. Actually, if nothing else, thanks to us, the life on our planet has the highest chance of survival in the future "mass extinction events".
  - NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    It's quite simple. Once a tipping point is passed, and clearly apparent, it's too late to stop it. We're not doing anything about the bad. It's right there in our system's designed-in premise that the bad is an "externality". There is far too much evidence to no longer believe in anthropogenic climate change, or that the change is not bad. Nothing wrong with change per se. Nothing at all wrong with discoveries and inventions that have brought modern levels of health and comfort if we mitigate the costs. Everything wrong with change that makes our planet less able to support biodiversity, or to be slightly more emotive, an unpleasant, marginal, place to be for everyone. Change and develop without triggering the next great collapse. I do not want my comfort to be at the expense of every future generation. Thankfully, at least in Europe, there are signs that critical mass of public opinion is being reached and there are increasingly strident calls to do something substantive. That's at odds with the general state of political opinion which seems to be trailing public opinion markedly. > Humans can (and will) get through climatic change events well enough Based upon what? This appears to be nothing more than wishful thinking or presumption. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/06/katharine-hayhoe-interview-climate-change-scientist-crisis-hope https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/jan/06/katharine-ha... > We have the power to preserve almost everything we deem worth preserving Which appears to be nothing unless it is profitable. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction That humanity could survive is moot if it involves going through a millennia long dark age, or effectively bombing ourselves back to the iron age. > thanks to us, the life on our planet has the highest chance of survival in the future Again, our track record speaks loudly against this.
adrianN 8y ago
I'm not very concerned about life. Some bacteria will surely survive almost any event and given a few billion years and a little luck biodiversity will probably be restored. I'm a lot more concerned about our current technological society.
- plushpuffin 8y ago
  The Earth doesn't have a few billion years. Multicellular life on Earth will end in about 800 million years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_Earth
aaronbrethorst 8y ago
Ah, life will survive. No worries then. I'm sure civilization will sleep easy tonight knowing that cockroaches will still be around in a million years.

lmilcin 8y ago

It is absolutely nowhere near evolutionary adaptive capacity. Life will not end and the world will still be there. Life's evolutionary adaptive capacity is stagerring! Just take a look at the experiment where it barely stretches muscles: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plVk4NVIUh8 What I understand they mean is "Life as we know it" defined as large animals and familiar plants roughly in places where we are used to seeing them. We are looking at life with our antropocentric point of view and we basically want familiar stuff to stay the same and we don't want unfamiliar stuff to show up. We don't want things to change and that's why potential large shift in how life presents itself may be caulled as "end of the world" event, but it is not. Life doesn't care whether oceans are clean or polluted, hot or cold. It WILL adapt some way or another even if all crustaceans and fish will die because they can't adapt quickly enough to lowering pH. We should care not because life is at danger but because we are at danger. Life as we know it is a machine that supports us, let's us grow food and provides air and water and soil and climate that we need. Humans will survive for sure in one way or another even if the temperature rises by 20 degrees but what kind of life will it be and how much suffering for those that can't deal with it?