6 ms·

It feels like the earth is dying. I wonder if the human population has longer than 20 years of tolerable existence left on this planet.

chrisco255 6y ago
The planet is fine. What would make you believe that, based on 5 billion years of geological history?
- rhacker 6y ago
  There's always a comment like this. How about "The habitability of this planet is dropping like a brick."
  - steffan 6y ago
    Habitability for humans. It's more or less a self-correcting problem
    - MiroF 6y ago
      Our society is so odd. I find it astonishing that so many people can be cavalier about the deaths of millions of people when it comes to environmental destruction in a way that would be totally socially unacceptable if you were talking about targeted killings or genocide.
      - paulmd 6y ago
        china is in the middle of a genocide right now and nobody cares and really, even in cases that don't involve a superpower like china, I think if there was a random genocide in some random developing country, the world wouldn't do anything about it at this moment in time, the west is just too busy with its own internal problems at the moment.
      - spaceribs 6y ago
        Our only outlet to fix this problem in our society hinges on mutual knowledge of the causes reaching unquestionable levels. Until then, it's like watching half our population play out like an "Always Sunny" episode.
      - catmistake 6y ago
        > about the deaths of millions of people when it comes to environmental destruction You're not getting it. With global environmental catastrophe the concern is not about the deaths of millions of people. It is about the deaths of all people everywhere. A symptom of the problem of environmental catastrophe is those that are cavalier about the deaths of entire species of wildlife. The planet will be fine, the plant and wildlife will recover... though it may not be the same plant or wildlife. But once humans are gone, there is very little change we are coming back. So, to be clear, though humans have and are making he planet uninhabitable for myriad of species, reducing the available variety of species, which we, in fact, depend on... it is a web... but we are also making the planet uninhabitable for people. Serious and monumental efforts in conservation of plant and wildlife and habitat is a damn good place to start. The more natural habitat there is, the more plant and wildlife there is, the better it will be for us. First thing is first... the oil industry and the chemical industry needs to go away within the next 10 years. Government, which people control, needs to make all that crap unprofitable. All pollution must cease, and we need to figure out how to clean up what has been done. Let's not bitch about energy, nor evangelize nuclear power. Let's just bite the bullet for a few generations and force everything and everyone to generate their own energy, and require that it be clean.
        MiroF 6y ago
        > You're not getting it. No, I think I am. Your comment actually misses my entire point and instead just explains climate change? My point is that a common sentiment I see articulated in response to someone saying that the biosphere soon might not be able to support humanity is "Good, humanity is a cancer on this planet and we've shown we don't deserve it." I think that statements like that should get a comparable amount of social ire to someone blithely stating that the Holocaust was good population control. It is unacceptable to view the death of millions or billions (after a long period of extremely impoverished living) as a good thing to me.
        catmistake 6y ago
        Fair enough. May I suggest that it is the depreciation of the family unit that may be causing this. Generally, in my experience, jerks had crummy parents. I don't know the solution, but maybe instead of treating young pregnant couples as sacred, we should make having children a privilege, not a right, and make them work for it. But I wouldn't know how to do that.
      - heresie-dabord 6y ago
        > in a way that would be totally socially unacceptable if you were talking about targeted killings or genocide It is neither "cavalier" nor incompassionate to refer to the age of the planet and the history of life (e.g. humans). It's a scientific fact that we haven't existed for very long in geological time and that we could become extinct by our own doing... or by a suitably large cosmic impactor (among other causes, cosmic or terrestrial). Real cavalier talk might be about the tobacco industry, the war industry, or the tens of thousands of people who die in motor-vehicle accidents every year in the US alone. > Our society is so odd. Indeed. Squeamish about the truth, comfortable in delusion.
        MiroF 6y ago
        You're being uncharitable with your interpretation of my comment. > Indeed. Squeamish about the truth, comfortable in delusion. I'm taking issue with the extinction of humanity being framed as a good thing or a solution to the problem. > we could become extinct by our own doing Yes, and that would be horrible! That would be more horrible than any action taken by the tobacco industry, the war industry, or the inevitable drunk driving.
        heresie-dabord 6y ago
        Let me say that I have thought about your position. It is not a "solution" for humanity to exterminate itself through its own idiocy. But you can see that it is a hard problem that might well "solve itself", as the thread-OP said. As a humanist, I prefer to make an effort. Although extinction through our own idiocy would be horrible, it would be of a piece with the other plagues that I mentioned. Albeit on a different scale. Extinction because of a major catastrophic event not of our causing would be tragic because there isn't much intelligent life in the neighbourhood, much less under our "own roof".
      - steffan 6y ago
        It's not cavalier as much as it is factual. Of course I would lament the loss of our entire species, but the _planet_ will go on just fine without us. We (humans) are hardly the worst thing to happen to life on the planet. If we're incapable of being good stewards of it, really we're only hastening our own demise.
      - chrisco255 6y ago
        Except human population levels are at all time highs. There is no evidence of human population suffering on account of technology. The exact opposite is true: people are living longer, have access to more food and more material goods than any time in history. Stop reading fear porn, it's bad for your mental health.
        MiroF 6y ago
        My point is simple: rooting for the extinction of humanity is bad. I'm not commenting on the veracity of claims about the extinction of humanity, although I do think that present trends do not always explain or predict future ones.
    - gdubs 6y ago
      This is literally a conversation about a non-human species: birds. There’s habitability for humans, but we’re not separate from the ecosystem, we’re a part of it. In some broad, abstract way of looking at things people can say, “well it’s all just star dust and will burn out in a billion years.” But we’re not just destroying our own habitat — we’re destroying countless other species. An entire web of life. If Earth winds up a giant ocean of jellyfish, then, well - great for the jellyfish. Still a tragedy as far as I’m concerned.
  - chrisco255 6y ago
    Sensationalism is an art form that's become extremely refined in recent years. However, the habitability of the planet is just fine. Carbon dioxide is fertilizing the earth, providing a higher leaf area index than any time in recent history: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer... Global area burned in wildfires is actually down 25% over the last 20 years despite the arson in the Western United States: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145421/building-a-long-term-record-of-fire https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145421/building-a-l... Crop yields are up over 100% from 50 years ago and we produce about 10x more wheat, barley, oats, potatoes, and sugar beets per acre than we did in pre-industrial times: https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields Stop reading sensational journalism and start digging into the actual data, and you'll find there's plenty to be optimistic about.
    - redisman 6y ago
      > Global area burned in wildfires is actually down 25% over the last 20 years. That's a really interesting timeframe to pick since acres burned has about doubled in the last 30 years. (in the US) https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf
    - xkcd-sucks 6y ago
      Increased crop yields are concerning though if related to unsustainable depletion of soil/water resources, insect population crashes, loss of diversity/resilience in crop species etc.
- falcolas 6y ago
  The planet may be fine; humanity's place on the planet might not be. That's typically assumed when a human comments about the planet.
  - kzrdude 6y ago
    It is important to remember this framing, though. So that we remember what we want, and can take the right actions to get there. We want a healthy, happy life for these X humans and to accommodate that we need Y, Z. I don't think everyone understands this, and I also think it is a key to reaching more people with the message - of why we need to make changes to the status quo.
    - MiroF 6y ago
      Many people do not care remotely about the lives of others that they can't conceptualize. I'm increasingly worried that large segments of the population will not be reached by that message or any message that isn't about direct harm to themselves or their loved ones.
      - bonestamp2 6y ago
        On that note, I always knew we were the problem, but this reminds me of something I heard that changed the way I thought about it... If aliens were flying past our planet and saw all of our concrete and deforestation from space, they'd assume we're an unstoppable virus that will destroy the ecosystem if a cure is not found. That perspective hit me in a way, at a scale, that I have never thought about before. We see many of our actions as "development" which tends to have a positive meaning, but from space that same "development" looks like a disease that is overrunning the planet. A little further out there, but if other intelligent life exists and they saw us as a virus, they might try to cure the planet by eradicating us.
        MiroF 6y ago
        > A little further out there, but if other intelligent life exists and they saw us as a virus, they might try to cure the planet by eradicating us. Which would be awful, as we can all agree.
blisterpeanuts 6y ago
Mount St. Helens (in Washington state) had a massive eruption in 1980, causing huge ecological and economic damage that lasted for years.[1] But, the region recovered. Similar such natural events, such as Typhoon Maria, have caused massive casualties and damage. Yet, the Earth and humanity have persisted. I wouldn't worry about anything happening to our planet and our ecosphere, short of a mass extinction event like a huge asteroid striking the Earth. The last one 65 million years ago did some pretty nasty damage, but we now have the technology to detect and divert such objects so hopefully it will not be an issue. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Hel...
- ygjb 6y ago
  > we now have the technology to detect and divert such objects so hopefully it will not be an issue. Citations needed for that overly broad claim, because Armageddon was not a documentary.
  - blisterpeanuts 6y ago
    Nasa's Sentry system, for one. https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/ https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/ Nasa's also planning to launch the Near-Earth Object Surveillance Mission, an orbital telescope designed to detect NEO's with more accuracy than ground-based systems. https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1250770/asteroid-detection-news-how-astronomers-track-asteroid-space-nasa-news https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1250770/asteroid-dete... And ESA (Europe space agency) is building a spacecraft designed to nudge NEO's out of their path. https://arynews.tv/en/esa-asteroid-defence-mission/ https://arynews.tv/en/esa-asteroid-defence-mission/
- sp332 6y ago
  "the region recovered" Yeah, because the volcano stopped erupting. This current disaster is not short-term.
  - blisterpeanuts 6y ago
Dirlewanger 6y ago
To paraphrase George Carlin: The planet is fine, but the people are fucked.
- padseeker 6y ago
  I think about that comment from Carlin ALL THE TIME in relationship to global warming and natural disaster. Our perspective on saving the planet is very ego and species centric. As said in Jurassic Park "Life finds a way". However that life might not include humans.
  - Dirlewanger 6y ago
    Does that mean we should just let nature take its course, or maybe be proactive about it and fix some of humanity's worst tendencies i.e. our extremely wasteful society, plastic absolutely everywhere?
- redisman 6y ago
  The planet is fine, but 99% of current species and a large number of current plants are fucked.
Udik 6y ago
A thousand years ago California had droughts lasting centuries. This article puts things in perspective re. wildfires: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378112707004379 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03781... Before the 1800s, 1.8 million hectares of Californian forest burned each year.

chrisco255 6y ago

The planet is fine. What would make you believe that, based on 5 billion years of geological history?

rhacker 6y ago
There's always a comment like this. How about "The habitability of this planet is dropping like a brick."
- steffan 6y ago
  Habitability for humans. It's more or less a self-correcting problem
  - MiroF 6y ago
    Our society is so odd. I find it astonishing that so many people can be cavalier about the deaths of millions of people when it comes to environmental destruction in a way that would be totally socially unacceptable if you were talking about targeted killings or genocide.
    - paulmd 6y ago
      china is in the middle of a genocide right now and nobody cares and really, even in cases that don't involve a superpower like china, I think if there was a random genocide in some random developing country, the world wouldn't do anything about it at this moment in time, the west is just too busy with its own internal problems at the moment.
    - spaceribs 6y ago
      Our only outlet to fix this problem in our society hinges on mutual knowledge of the causes reaching unquestionable levels. Until then, it's like watching half our population play out like an "Always Sunny" episode.
    - catmistake 6y ago
      > about the deaths of millions of people when it comes to environmental destruction You're not getting it. With global environmental catastrophe the concern is not about the deaths of millions of people. It is about the deaths of all people everywhere. A symptom of the problem of environmental catastrophe is those that are cavalier about the deaths of entire species of wildlife. The planet will be fine, the plant and wildlife will recover... though it may not be the same plant or wildlife. But once humans are gone, there is very little change we are coming back. So, to be clear, though humans have and are making he planet uninhabitable for myriad of species, reducing the available variety of species, which we, in fact, depend on... it is a web... but we are also making the planet uninhabitable for people. Serious and monumental efforts in conservation of plant and wildlife and habitat is a damn good place to start. The more natural habitat there is, the more plant and wildlife there is, the better it will be for us. First thing is first... the oil industry and the chemical industry needs to go away within the next 10 years. Government, which people control, needs to make all that crap unprofitable. All pollution must cease, and we need to figure out how to clean up what has been done. Let's not bitch about energy, nor evangelize nuclear power. Let's just bite the bullet for a few generations and force everything and everyone to generate their own energy, and require that it be clean.
      - MiroF 6y ago
        > You're not getting it. No, I think I am. Your comment actually misses my entire point and instead just explains climate change? My point is that a common sentiment I see articulated in response to someone saying that the biosphere soon might not be able to support humanity is "Good, humanity is a cancer on this planet and we've shown we don't deserve it." I think that statements like that should get a comparable amount of social ire to someone blithely stating that the Holocaust was good population control. It is unacceptable to view the death of millions or billions (after a long period of extremely impoverished living) as a good thing to me.
        catmistake 6y ago
        Fair enough. May I suggest that it is the depreciation of the family unit that may be causing this. Generally, in my experience, jerks had crummy parents. I don't know the solution, but maybe instead of treating young pregnant couples as sacred, we should make having children a privilege, not a right, and make them work for it. But I wouldn't know how to do that.
    - heresie-dabord 6y ago
      > in a way that would be totally socially unacceptable if you were talking about targeted killings or genocide It is neither "cavalier" nor incompassionate to refer to the age of the planet and the history of life (e.g. humans). It's a scientific fact that we haven't existed for very long in geological time and that we could become extinct by our own doing... or by a suitably large cosmic impactor (among other causes, cosmic or terrestrial). Real cavalier talk might be about the tobacco industry, the war industry, or the tens of thousands of people who die in motor-vehicle accidents every year in the US alone. > Our society is so odd. Indeed. Squeamish about the truth, comfortable in delusion.
      - MiroF 6y ago
        You're being uncharitable with your interpretation of my comment. > Indeed. Squeamish about the truth, comfortable in delusion. I'm taking issue with the extinction of humanity being framed as a good thing or a solution to the problem. > we could become extinct by our own doing Yes, and that would be horrible! That would be more horrible than any action taken by the tobacco industry, the war industry, or the inevitable drunk driving.
        heresie-dabord 6y ago
        Let me say that I have thought about your position. It is not a "solution" for humanity to exterminate itself through its own idiocy. But you can see that it is a hard problem that might well "solve itself", as the thread-OP said. As a humanist, I prefer to make an effort. Although extinction through our own idiocy would be horrible, it would be of a piece with the other plagues that I mentioned. Albeit on a different scale. Extinction because of a major catastrophic event not of our causing would be tragic because there isn't much intelligent life in the neighbourhood, much less under our "own roof".
    - steffan 6y ago
      It's not cavalier as much as it is factual. Of course I would lament the loss of our entire species, but the _planet_ will go on just fine without us. We (humans) are hardly the worst thing to happen to life on the planet. If we're incapable of being good stewards of it, really we're only hastening our own demise.
    - chrisco255 6y ago
      Except human population levels are at all time highs. There is no evidence of human population suffering on account of technology. The exact opposite is true: people are living longer, have access to more food and more material goods than any time in history. Stop reading fear porn, it's bad for your mental health.
      - MiroF 6y ago
        My point is simple: rooting for the extinction of humanity is bad. I'm not commenting on the veracity of claims about the extinction of humanity, although I do think that present trends do not always explain or predict future ones.
  - gdubs 6y ago
    This is literally a conversation about a non-human species: birds. There’s habitability for humans, but we’re not separate from the ecosystem, we’re a part of it. In some broad, abstract way of looking at things people can say, “well it’s all just star dust and will burn out in a billion years.” But we’re not just destroying our own habitat — we’re destroying countless other species. An entire web of life. If Earth winds up a giant ocean of jellyfish, then, well - great for the jellyfish. Still a tragedy as far as I’m concerned.
- chrisco255 6y ago
  Sensationalism is an art form that's become extremely refined in recent years. However, the habitability of the planet is just fine. Carbon dioxide is fertilizing the earth, providing a higher leaf area index than any time in recent history: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer... Global area burned in wildfires is actually down 25% over the last 20 years despite the arson in the Western United States: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145421/building-a-long-term-record-of-fire https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/145421/building-a-l... Crop yields are up over 100% from 50 years ago and we produce about 10x more wheat, barley, oats, potatoes, and sugar beets per acre than we did in pre-industrial times: https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields https://ourworldindata.org/crop-yields Stop reading sensational journalism and start digging into the actual data, and you'll find there's plenty to be optimistic about.
  - redisman 6y ago
    > Global area burned in wildfires is actually down 25% over the last 20 years. That's a really interesting timeframe to pick since acres burned has about doubled in the last 30 years. (in the US) https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/IF10244.pdf
  - xkcd-sucks 6y ago
    Increased crop yields are concerning though if related to unsustainable depletion of soil/water resources, insect population crashes, loss of diversity/resilience in crop species etc.
falcolas 6y ago
The planet may be fine; humanity's place on the planet might not be. That's typically assumed when a human comments about the planet.
- kzrdude 6y ago
  It is important to remember this framing, though. So that we remember what we want, and can take the right actions to get there. We want a healthy, happy life for these X humans and to accommodate that we need Y, Z. I don't think everyone understands this, and I also think it is a key to reaching more people with the message - of why we need to make changes to the status quo.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    Many people do not care remotely about the lives of others that they can't conceptualize. I'm increasingly worried that large segments of the population will not be reached by that message or any message that isn't about direct harm to themselves or their loved ones.
    - bonestamp2 6y ago
      On that note, I always knew we were the problem, but this reminds me of something I heard that changed the way I thought about it... If aliens were flying past our planet and saw all of our concrete and deforestation from space, they'd assume we're an unstoppable virus that will destroy the ecosystem if a cure is not found. That perspective hit me in a way, at a scale, that I have never thought about before. We see many of our actions as "development" which tends to have a positive meaning, but from space that same "development" looks like a disease that is overrunning the planet. A little further out there, but if other intelligent life exists and they saw us as a virus, they might try to cure the planet by eradicating us.
      - MiroF 6y ago
        > A little further out there, but if other intelligent life exists and they saw us as a virus, they might try to cure the planet by eradicating us. Which would be awful, as we can all agree.

blisterpeanuts 6y ago

Mount St. Helens (in Washington state) had a massive eruption in 1980, causing huge ecological and economic damage that lasted for years.[1] But, the region recovered. Similar such natural events, such as Typhoon Maria, have caused massive casualties and damage. Yet, the Earth and humanity have persisted. I wouldn't worry about anything happening to our planet and our ecosphere, short of a mass extinction event like a huge asteroid striking the Earth. The last one 65 million years ago did some pretty nasty damage, but we now have the technology to detect and divert such objects so hopefully it will not be an issue. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Helens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_eruption_of_Mount_St._Hel...

ygjb 6y ago
> we now have the technology to detect and divert such objects so hopefully it will not be an issue. Citations needed for that overly broad claim, because Armageddon was not a documentary.
- blisterpeanuts 6y ago
  Nasa's Sentry system, for one. https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/ https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/ Nasa's also planning to launch the Near-Earth Object Surveillance Mission, an orbital telescope designed to detect NEO's with more accuracy than ground-based systems. https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1250770/asteroid-detection-news-how-astronomers-track-asteroid-space-nasa-news https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1250770/asteroid-dete... And ESA (Europe space agency) is building a spacecraft designed to nudge NEO's out of their path. https://arynews.tv/en/esa-asteroid-defence-mission/ https://arynews.tv/en/esa-asteroid-defence-mission/
sp332 6y ago
"the region recovered" Yeah, because the volcano stopped erupting. This current disaster is not short-term.
- blisterpeanuts 6y ago

Dirlewanger 6y ago

To paraphrase George Carlin: The planet is fine, but the people are fucked.

padseeker 6y ago
I think about that comment from Carlin ALL THE TIME in relationship to global warming and natural disaster. Our perspective on saving the planet is very ego and species centric. As said in Jurassic Park "Life finds a way". However that life might not include humans.
- Dirlewanger 6y ago
  Does that mean we should just let nature take its course, or maybe be proactive about it and fix some of humanity's worst tendencies i.e. our extremely wasteful society, plastic absolutely everywhere?
redisman 6y ago
The planet is fine, but 99% of current species and a large number of current plants are fucked.

Udik 6y ago

A thousand years ago California had droughts lasting centuries. This article puts things in perspective re. wildfires: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0378112707004379 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03781... Before the 1800s, 1.8 million hectares of Californian forest burned each year.