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FYI, when people are talking about helping "the Planet" they're not talking about lifeless rocks, they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the

FYI, when people are talking about helping "the Planet" they're not talking about lifeless rocks, they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet. And by balance I mean not precipitating another extinction event. Sure, they're going to happen anyway eventually, but we probably shouldn't cause an extra one if we don't have to...

lowbloodsugar 5y ago
After the dinosaurs were wiped out, millions of new species evolved. So causing a climate disaster that wipes out humans scores higher on the "diversity of life" scale than keeping humans alive. Live evolves. The Planet, "Planet" here as Gaia, will survive our extinction.
- Nevermark 5y ago
  Humans making it to other habitats beyond Earth will likely set off new explosions of diversity (in geological time) than another reset on Earth. In contrast, if Earth life doesn't achieve the ability to colonize other bodies, it is doomed to have diversity of zero once the Sun expands, if a global natural disaster doesn't kill all life before then.
- ejb999 5y ago
  How do you propose to wipe out humans and leave the animals intact?
tshaddox 5y ago
Humans might indeed cause one or more large extinction events, but there are also several known causes (and perhaps many more unknown ones we could discover) of large extinction events which seem to be unpreventable except through the actions of humans (or another intelligent and technological species). If you were to permanently halt all technological progress now, or perhaps revert to before nuclear weapons or even before the industrial revolution, you could prevent extinction events from, say, human-caused climate change, nuclear war, or Skynet. But you'd also effectively guarantee some other eventual extinction event, perhaps from an asteroid impact, a supernova, or any number of phenomena we haven't even discovered yet.
mrfusion 5y ago
> they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet. Do we know for sure that climate change will decrease diversity? I’d imagine making colder areas of the planet warmer would allow more life to thrive. I mean compare now to the last ice age. Surely there’s more life now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally on board with team climate so I hope this doesn’t come across as blasphemy.
- Nevermark 5y ago
  Any fast change to the global environments is going to cause more extinctions than speciations. That is loss of diversity. Their is no minimal time for extinctions, whereas the time to speciate significantly requires hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Having the climate change in conjunction with pouring plastic into the environment, the CO2 effects on ocean life, overfishing, destruction of wild land and life, chemicals leaking into the environment, etc - and the problem multiplies.
vasco 5y ago
> FYI, when people are talking about helping "the Planet" they're not talking about lifeless rocks, they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet. I disagree, I think this is the virtue signaling projection but most people only care about global warming because they think there's a non negligible chance they'll see real impacts _on their own quality of life_ either during their life or during the life of their direct offspring. I think there's likely plenty of individuals who truly value biodiversity but with all the evidence around us I'm pretty sure the majority doesn't actually care about saving even a non-cute mammal, much less actual diversity like thousands of species of insects or bees or whatever.
JackFr 5y ago
> Sure, they're going to happen anyway eventually, but we probably shouldn't cause an extra one if we don't have to... Honestly why not? (To be clear, I don't think we should, but I know my reasons. They're not science based, because the question "Should we care if humanity causes an extiction event?" can't have a scientific answer.)
- adventured 5y ago
  > Honestly why not? It can have a scientific answer if you set a scientific goal for the planet. We get to decide what the purpose of this planet is, insofar as we quite clearly control the planet and its condition in most respects. The planet may have the potential to produce more variations of intelligent life yet, given its seeming rich potential for such in its current more docile condition. I think it may be a worthy cause to preserve the planet in such a condition that it can continue to act as an incubator for more intelligent life for a long time to come yet (many millions of years perhaps, or as long as it can until something catastrophic happens that humans aren't primarily responsible for). Why that specific aspect? High level intelligent life (I'm obviously not talking about elephants or dolphins here) may be extraordinarily rare in the universe, and this type of incubating planet may be extraordinarily rare (that is, far more rare than is already suspected). So the scientific goal I've chosen to set for the planet is that I'd like to see other intelligent life spring up from this planet; you can disagree with that goal, that doesn't matter, I've set the goal and may choose to pursue it at will (bio-engineering, artificial intelligence, and so on) and so may a billion other people. The scientific reason to preserve the planet in a rich condition for safely incubating intelligent life, is that I would like to see what other types of intelligent life can be created. The question is: what other / how many other types of intelligent life are possible? All scientific answers result from a person having a subjective reason for wanting to pursue an answer (I want to because of x y z). They obviously don't just magically spring out of nowhere, the goal is set by the self-interest of the person acting on it.
  - tomcatfish 5y ago
    You can only get a scientific answer to an "ought" or "should" if you believe that morality is objective in the universe. Otherwise, you have a hidden principle "We should do what we like best", which itself cannot be justified and must be taken as given.
ifdefdebug 5y ago
FYI they're not talking about diversity of life either, they are talking about preserving their own habitat, nothing else.
jodrellblank 5y ago
> "they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet." Something utterly worthless to humans unless humans are part of said diversity. There is no advantage to a planet full of marmosets patiently waiting for the Sun to die. We are all there is in the way of serious tool users, and quite possibly now we've drained the surface coal and oil and tin and iron, all there ever will be. There isn't time left in the world to go through another fossil fuel era, another Dinosaur era, another mammal evolution. Edgelords and their "Humans are a cancer, everything would be better if we die out" are advocating not just human genocide but committing all known life in the Universe to end. We are currently the only known chance of anything getting off-world, ever. Any people, any machines, any bacteria, any fungus, any tardigrades, anything. We should be flinging life at Europa, Venus, Martian polar regions, asteroids, as much as we can. If life could be screaming at us to save it from being single-planetary, it would be.

lowbloodsugar 5y ago

After the dinosaurs were wiped out, millions of new species evolved. So causing a climate disaster that wipes out humans scores higher on the "diversity of life" scale than keeping humans alive. Live evolves. The Planet, "Planet" here as Gaia, will survive our extinction.

Nevermark 5y ago
Humans making it to other habitats beyond Earth will likely set off new explosions of diversity (in geological time) than another reset on Earth. In contrast, if Earth life doesn't achieve the ability to colonize other bodies, it is doomed to have diversity of zero once the Sun expands, if a global natural disaster doesn't kill all life before then.
ejb999 5y ago
How do you propose to wipe out humans and leave the animals intact?

tshaddox 5y ago

Humans might indeed cause one or more large extinction events, but there are also several known causes (and perhaps many more unknown ones we could discover) of large extinction events which seem to be unpreventable except through the actions of humans (or another intelligent and technological species). If you were to permanently halt all technological progress now, or perhaps revert to before nuclear weapons or even before the industrial revolution, you could prevent extinction events from, say, human-caused climate change, nuclear war, or Skynet. But you'd also effectively guarantee some other eventual extinction event, perhaps from an asteroid impact, a supernova, or any number of phenomena we haven't even discovered yet.

mrfusion 5y ago

> they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet. Do we know for sure that climate change will decrease diversity? I’d imagine making colder areas of the planet warmer would allow more life to thrive. I mean compare now to the last ice age. Surely there’s more life now. Don’t get me wrong, I’m totally on board with team climate so I hope this doesn’t come across as blasphemy.

Nevermark 5y ago
Any fast change to the global environments is going to cause more extinctions than speciations. That is loss of diversity. Their is no minimal time for extinctions, whereas the time to speciate significantly requires hundreds of thousands or millions of years. Having the climate change in conjunction with pouring plastic into the environment, the CO2 effects on ocean life, overfishing, destruction of wild land and life, chemicals leaking into the environment, etc - and the problem multiplies.

vasco 5y ago

> FYI, when people are talking about helping "the Planet" they're not talking about lifeless rocks, they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet. I disagree, I think this is the virtue signaling projection but most people only care about global warming because they think there's a non negligible chance they'll see real impacts _on their own quality of life_ either during their life or during the life of their direct offspring. I think there's likely plenty of individuals who truly value biodiversity but with all the evidence around us I'm pretty sure the majority doesn't actually care about saving even a non-cute mammal, much less actual diversity like thousands of species of insects or bees or whatever.

JackFr 5y ago

> Sure, they're going to happen anyway eventually, but we probably shouldn't cause an extra one if we don't have to... Honestly why not? (To be clear, I don't think we should, but I know my reasons. They're not science based, because the question "Should we care if humanity causes an extiction event?" can't have a scientific answer.)

adventured 5y ago
> Honestly why not? It can have a scientific answer if you set a scientific goal for the planet. We get to decide what the purpose of this planet is, insofar as we quite clearly control the planet and its condition in most respects. The planet may have the potential to produce more variations of intelligent life yet, given its seeming rich potential for such in its current more docile condition. I think it may be a worthy cause to preserve the planet in such a condition that it can continue to act as an incubator for more intelligent life for a long time to come yet (many millions of years perhaps, or as long as it can until something catastrophic happens that humans aren't primarily responsible for). Why that specific aspect? High level intelligent life (I'm obviously not talking about elephants or dolphins here) may be extraordinarily rare in the universe, and this type of incubating planet may be extraordinarily rare (that is, far more rare than is already suspected). So the scientific goal I've chosen to set for the planet is that I'd like to see other intelligent life spring up from this planet; you can disagree with that goal, that doesn't matter, I've set the goal and may choose to pursue it at will (bio-engineering, artificial intelligence, and so on) and so may a billion other people. The scientific reason to preserve the planet in a rich condition for safely incubating intelligent life, is that I would like to see what other types of intelligent life can be created. The question is: what other / how many other types of intelligent life are possible? All scientific answers result from a person having a subjective reason for wanting to pursue an answer (I want to because of x y z). They obviously don't just magically spring out of nowhere, the goal is set by the self-interest of the person acting on it.
- tomcatfish 5y ago
  You can only get a scientific answer to an "ought" or "should" if you believe that morality is objective in the universe. Otherwise, you have a hidden principle "We should do what we like best", which itself cannot be justified and must be taken as given.

ifdefdebug 5y ago

FYI they're not talking about diversity of life either, they are talking about preserving their own habitat, nothing else.

jodrellblank 5y ago

> "they're talking about preserving the diversity of life on the Planet." Something utterly worthless to humans unless humans are part of said diversity. There is no advantage to a planet full of marmosets patiently waiting for the Sun to die. We are all there is in the way of serious tool users, and quite possibly now we've drained the surface coal and oil and tin and iron, all there ever will be. There isn't time left in the world to go through another fossil fuel era, another Dinosaur era, another mammal evolution. Edgelords and their "Humans are a cancer, everything would be better if we die out" are advocating not just human genocide but committing all known life in the Universe to end. We are currently the only known chance of anything getting off-world, ever. Any people, any machines, any bacteria, any fungus, any tardigrades, anything. We should be flinging life at Europa, Venus, Martian polar regions, asteroids, as much as we can. If life could be screaming at us to save it from being single-planetary, it would be.