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> If the waters heat up are you saying that no creatures will ever survive? That’s anti-science. • Science is a way of finding out about the world, not a list

> If the waters heat up are you saying that no creatures will ever survive? That’s anti-science. • Science is a way of finding out about the world, not a list of facts. • No, actually. Rather, these creatures will die and we might lose entire species, significantly reducing biodiversity. > The space will be reclaimed by other creatures that can survive in that environment. To think otherwise goes against basic science. On an evolutionary timescale, something will fill the niche (if the environment remains constant enough for long enough… not looking likely, if you extrapolate from today), but science most certainly hasn't found that this happens with animals over the course of decades. And you know what they say about basic biology…

plank_time 5y ago
Your understanding of “science” is absurd. Yes, those creatures that died will be dead. When the environment changes and creatures are selected against, they will die out. This is called the Theory of Natural Selection. Does it suck that it’s happening in situations like this heat wave? Yes. Should we do whatever we can to stop our contribution to this? Absolutely. Should we expect that it never should happen? No, otherwise dinosaurs would be roaming the Earth right now. There have been around 20 mass extinction events in the last 500M years. Are we causing the next mass extinction event? Probably. Will we be the cause of life to end on Earth? No. Even plastic breaks down and nuclear waste becomes harmless over a geological timeline. Again, your understanding is pretty basic. Since when is the environment “stable”? Climate is always changing. To believe that the climate has to be stable in order for life to thrive is anti-science. Life will thrive. Even a nuclear catastrophe like Chernobyl and Fukushima hasn’t stopped life from taking over in time frames that scientists thought were impossible.
- wizzwizz4 5y ago
  No, not absurd. Actually I agree with all of that stuff, up until your last paragraph. > Since when is the environment “stable”? Climate is always changing. Your car is always oxidising. https://xkcd.com/1693/ https://xkcd.com/1693/ > To believe that the climate has to be stable in order for life to thrive is anti-science. Plenty of creatures survive in the arctic. Plenty of creatures survive in the desert. Few creatures survive when you subject them to twice-daily 80°C changes of temperature. Selection pressures reduce (local) genetic variation. If the selection pressures remain high (i.e. members of a species aren't well-adapted to their environment) then you'll burn through the available genetic variation, you'll run out of individuals, and then the species will go locally extinct. Evolution isn't magic that “science” discovered. It's a consequence of lower-level rules. You can't reason about many scientific discoveries without reductionism; it seems like you're treating evolution as a Fundamental Law of Nature, when it's more like a non-axiomic property of certain mathematical systems, arising under certain conditions (but not others) in the real world. > Even a nuclear catastrophe like Chernobyl and Fukushima hasn’t stopped life from taking over in time frames that scientists thought were impossible. Okay… but that's because the environment after those kinds of nuclear catastrophe isn't actually all that different to the environment that those creatures are adapted to. (That's the once-surprising part.) Disagree? What adaptions do the plants and animals in those exclusion zones exhibit, and how is that analogous to what would be needed for the situation described in the article?

plank_time 5y ago

Your understanding of “science” is absurd. Yes, those creatures that died will be dead. When the environment changes and creatures are selected against, they will die out. This is called the Theory of Natural Selection. Does it suck that it’s happening in situations like this heat wave? Yes. Should we do whatever we can to stop our contribution to this? Absolutely. Should we expect that it never should happen? No, otherwise dinosaurs would be roaming the Earth right now. There have been around 20 mass extinction events in the last 500M years. Are we causing the next mass extinction event? Probably. Will we be the cause of life to end on Earth? No. Even plastic breaks down and nuclear waste becomes harmless over a geological timeline. Again, your understanding is pretty basic. Since when is the environment “stable”? Climate is always changing. To believe that the climate has to be stable in order for life to thrive is anti-science. Life will thrive. Even a nuclear catastrophe like Chernobyl and Fukushima hasn’t stopped life from taking over in time frames that scientists thought were impossible.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
No, not absurd. Actually I agree with all of that stuff, up until your last paragraph. > Since when is the environment “stable”? Climate is always changing. Your car is always oxidising. https://xkcd.com/1693/ https://xkcd.com/1693/ > To believe that the climate has to be stable in order for life to thrive is anti-science. Plenty of creatures survive in the arctic. Plenty of creatures survive in the desert. Few creatures survive when you subject them to twice-daily 80°C changes of temperature. Selection pressures reduce (local) genetic variation. If the selection pressures remain high (i.e. members of a species aren't well-adapted to their environment) then you'll burn through the available genetic variation, you'll run out of individuals, and then the species will go locally extinct. Evolution isn't magic that “science” discovered. It's a consequence of lower-level rules. You can't reason about many scientific discoveries without reductionism; it seems like you're treating evolution as a Fundamental Law of Nature, when it's more like a non-axiomic property of certain mathematical systems, arising under certain conditions (but not others) in the real world. > Even a nuclear catastrophe like Chernobyl and Fukushima hasn’t stopped life from taking over in time frames that scientists thought were impossible. Okay… but that's because the environment after those kinds of nuclear catastrophe isn't actually all that different to the environment that those creatures are adapted to. (That's the once-surprising part.) Disagree? What adaptions do the plants and animals in those exclusion zones exhibit, and how is that analogous to what would be needed for the situation described in the article?