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The "clathrate gun" is terrifying. If it's happening twice as fast as we expected, that sounds bad.
by aqme28 7y ago
The "clathrate gun" is terrifying. If it's happening twice as fast as we expected, that sounds bad.
- specialist 7y agoI think humanity can handle (adapt to) the combo of forests burning, ocean acidification, and thawing tundra. At great cost, measured in lives, gold, and lost opportunities, of course. Until recently I considered the "clathrate gun" to be an extermination event. The earth hasn't had those level of CO2 and methane (in the air) since the Eocene (~2000 CO2 ppm). It's hard to imagine industry and agriculture functioning in that context. But perhaps humans are more resilient. There's growing evidence validating the Young Dryas theory, where the global temps plunged and then spiked 1000 years later. Somehow humans survived, even though our fledgeling civilization was reset.
- walleeee 7y ago> The earth hasn't had those level of CO2 and methane (in the air) since the Eocene (~2000 CO2 ppm). It's hard to imagine industry and agriculture functioning in that context. Not to mention our brains. Cognitive ability declines significantly as CO2 concentration rises.
- hcknwscommenter 7y agoSo does fertility.
- booboolayla 7y agoCO2 increase is having beneficial effects on agriculture.
- throwaway5752 7y agoWe'll all die. It's not so terrifying as depressing. Clathrate gun means death for essentially everyone. Maybe Bezos and Musk are right to make off planet life temporarily viable. Modern society is based on relatively predictable large scale agriculture being able to redistribute goods (transportation infra, tech to support distribution). We simply, as a society, are not capable of adapting to those circumstances. Most humans would die and the survivors would not enjoy a modern lifestyle.
- jobseeker990 7y agoThe nice thing is I'm not saving anything for retirement since the world is ending soon. I'm laughing at all my coworkers worrying about their 401K matches.
- throwaway5752 7y agoThat's not smart. Just look at the simplified game tree. What's your utility of what you're putting in a 401k? If we save the world you won't be destitute in old age.
- herogreen 7y agoNot op but I'd be very happy to be destitute in old age just by knowing humanity saved the world.
- netsharc 7y agoI think the same as you do, although I'm still saving money (maybe to blow it all in a good party). But a worry I have is, what if there's a way for a low percentage of people to survive, but it would cost mucho money? (Welcome to hyper-capitalism). Imagine if you could've joined this Noah's ark had you saved enough.. Not that 401ks will mean much if society collapses...
- 6nf 7y ago> Maybe Bezos and Musk are right to make off planet life temporarily viable. That doesn't make sense. Even if Earth gets completely fubar, there's NO WAY IN HELL that it's going to easier to move to Mars. Mars is waaaaay harder to 'fix' than earth and this is not going to change in many thousands of years.
- cthalupa 7y agoLiving on planets doesn't really make much sense in the long run. We talk about doing it, and terraforming planets, because we're familiar with living on planets. Bezos sees that, though. He's a big fan of O'Neill cylinders and similar. It's Musk who wants to go try and get us to live on Mars.