5 ms·

I'm really puzzled by the belief that the world's plant life was ever fixed at all.

by yosito 5y ago

justinator 5y ago
As with changing temperatures, I don't think it's the fact that they're changing, but the velocity of these changes that's particularity worrisome. If a 1,000 year old tree suddenly can't survive in the now new climate in the same location, that's a little bit more than curious.
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Exactly. All life has a capacity to adapt, but it is mostly[0] constrained by lifespan. Individual organisms don't adapt - their type does, over time, through generations breeding and dying. But if the environment is changing faster than that - faster than what it takes to cycle through a couple generations - then the organism type won't ever be able to catch up. -- [0] - Excluding shenanigans like horizontal gene transfer, that are mostly relevant to bacteria and archaea.
snek_case 5y ago
That's true. There's been multiple ice ages over the eons, not to mention shifting continents, and new species radically changing the landscape (the land used to be dominated by giant mushrooms, before plants came along). That being said, although climate and the makeup of life on earth changes on its own, and can greatly change over time, the big difference here is how fast this is happening. I feel quite confident that humans will never kill all life on earth, because life is very adaptable and resilient. However, rapid climate change could result in the loss of a huge amount of the biodiversity that exists now. Many species will die, and be replaced with more resilient ones. I think what we're also likely to see, is that some of the most adaptable animal species are small animals (eg: rodents) and insects, things that are typically considered invasive species. Larger animals don't reproduce as fast, and there aren't as many, so they have a smaller gene pool that doesn't recombine as rapidly as with animals that can produce large amounts of babies every year. That makes them way more vulnerable to being killed off by climate change. So, yeah, I hope you like cats, rats, possums, mosquitos and cockroaches.
kannanvijayan 5y ago
It's been relatively fixed on the timescales that human civilization has grown - in particular our modern civilization as it exists over the past few hundred years. As we have developed, we have spent the majority of our human productivity on efforts to optimize ourselves, our cultures, and our infrastructure for the relatively static status quo climate. This includes the placement of cities, the choice of crop cultivars in various regions, the effort put into irrigation systems and infrastructure, the planning of building codes and expected lifetimes of infrastructure based on regional climate, the kinds of diseases and pests we guard against in various regions, and on and on. Billions of people depend on those optimizations. A slippage of a percent in the effectiveness of those optimizations will be counted in the lives of millions. What we are about to see is the most massive and abrupt, systematic disruption of every single one of those careful optimizations. This will lead to massive direct suffering, as well as indirect suffering as people invariably react to these changes, and engage in war over shifting and scarcer resources. The chance of these conflicts going large-scale nuclear will be far higher than it ever was during the cold war.
- soperj 5y ago
  In the timescale that human civilization has grown we've had the Bering land bridge. I don't think we've had a relatively static status quo climate. Past few hundred years has had the greatest change in temperature in the last 10 thousand years according to tree studies. I don't think you can have it both ways here.
  - spankalee 5y ago
    "modern civilization"
  - throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
    > last 10 thousand years AKA roughly 3% of the times humans have been on earth. Or .0002% the age of the earth. But on the other hand, that probably doesn't matter much. The difference between human made and natural climate change is just the moral implications. If there was another (natural) ice-age on the horizon, it'd be in humanities best interest to try and prevent it.
spankalee 5y ago
Who has this belief that you're talking about? The article starts off with "Previous periods of rapid warming millions of years ago drastically altered plants and forests on Earth"
Milkman128 5y ago
compared to now? it was pretty darn fixed

I'm really puzzled by the belief that the world's plant life was ever fixed at all.

by yosito 5y ago

I'm really puzzled by the belief that the world's plant life was ever fixed at all.

As with changing temperatures, I don't think it's the fact that they're changing, but the velocity of these changes that's particularity worrisome. If a 1,000 year old tree suddenly can't survive in the now new climate in the same location, that's a little bit more than curious.

TeMPOraL 5y ago
Exactly. All life has a capacity to adapt, but it is mostly[0] constrained by lifespan. Individual organisms don't adapt - their type does, over time, through generations breeding and dying. But if the environment is changing faster than that - faster than what it takes to cycle through a couple generations - then the organism type won't ever be able to catch up. -- [0] - Excluding shenanigans like horizontal gene transfer, that are mostly relevant to bacteria and archaea.

snek_case 5y ago

That's true. There's been multiple ice ages over the eons, not to mention shifting continents, and new species radically changing the landscape (the land used to be dominated by giant mushrooms, before plants came along). That being said, although climate and the makeup of life on earth changes on its own, and can greatly change over time, the big difference here is how fast this is happening. I feel quite confident that humans will never kill all life on earth, because life is very adaptable and resilient. However, rapid climate change could result in the loss of a huge amount of the biodiversity that exists now. Many species will die, and be replaced with more resilient ones. I think what we're also likely to see, is that some of the most adaptable animal species are small animals (eg: rodents) and insects, things that are typically considered invasive species. Larger animals don't reproduce as fast, and there aren't as many, so they have a smaller gene pool that doesn't recombine as rapidly as with animals that can produce large amounts of babies every year. That makes them way more vulnerable to being killed off by climate change. So, yeah, I hope you like cats, rats, possums, mosquitos and cockroaches.

kannanvijayan 5y ago

It's been relatively fixed on the timescales that human civilization has grown - in particular our modern civilization as it exists over the past few hundred years. As we have developed, we have spent the majority of our human productivity on efforts to optimize ourselves, our cultures, and our infrastructure for the relatively static status quo climate. This includes the placement of cities, the choice of crop cultivars in various regions, the effort put into irrigation systems and infrastructure, the planning of building codes and expected lifetimes of infrastructure based on regional climate, the kinds of diseases and pests we guard against in various regions, and on and on. Billions of people depend on those optimizations. A slippage of a percent in the effectiveness of those optimizations will be counted in the lives of millions. What we are about to see is the most massive and abrupt, systematic disruption of every single one of those careful optimizations. This will lead to massive direct suffering, as well as indirect suffering as people invariably react to these changes, and engage in war over shifting and scarcer resources. The chance of these conflicts going large-scale nuclear will be far higher than it ever was during the cold war.

soperj 5y ago
In the timescale that human civilization has grown we've had the Bering land bridge. I don't think we've had a relatively static status quo climate. Past few hundred years has had the greatest change in temperature in the last 10 thousand years according to tree studies. I don't think you can have it both ways here.
- spankalee 5y ago
  "modern civilization"
- throw_nbvc1234 5y ago
  > last 10 thousand years AKA roughly 3% of the times humans have been on earth. Or .0002% the age of the earth. But on the other hand, that probably doesn't matter much. The difference between human made and natural climate change is just the moral implications. If there was another (natural) ice-age on the horizon, it'd be in humanities best interest to try and prevent it.

spankalee 5y ago

Who has this belief that you're talking about? The article starts off with "Previous periods of rapid warming millions of years ago drastically altered plants and forests on Earth"

Milkman128 5y ago

compared to now? it was pretty darn fixed