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This makes me wonder about evolution. If, as the article says, they have no other culling other than climate change, it seems a crazy lack of adaptability that

This makes me wonder about evolution. If, as the article says, they have no other culling other than climate change, it seems a crazy lack of adaptability that they can have large scale “breeding failure” due to a few degrees difference in average temperature. Like how did they survive this long in the first place? Surely the environment hasn’t been that stable on evolutionary time scales? Or perhaps a large portion of the population is just an overfitted population and now there is a corrective coming? Can it really wipe out the entire species?

massysett 3y ago
Maybe the temperature has been that stable over evolutionary time scales: perhaps climate change has changed temperatures much faster. Adapting to a 1 degree change over 500 years might be a lot easier than doing the same in 50.
onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago
> Can it really wipe out the entire species? Yes, climate changes historically have led to rapid and mass extinctions. > an overfitted population and now there is a corrective coming? More commonly, there's just rapid declines in populations, and the species survives and adapts and eventually - after enough adaptation - can evolve.
orlp 3y ago
> Surely the environment hasn’t been that stable on evolutionary time scales? Man-made climate change has done/will do in hundreds of years what normally takes tens of thousands...
quickthrower2 3y ago
Evolution is more of a long live the king thing. Evolution producing hardier species relies on death and loss of other species. It is pretty much replication based, and nothing more.
- ethanbond 3y ago
  Evolution does not mechanically produce hardier species. It merely eliminates species that are poorly suited for the current environment and recent past. This is an important distinction because your framing suggests rapid environmental changes would just more rapidly produce hardier species. This is not what happens. Extremely rapid environmental changes frequently just lop off whole branches of the evolutionary tree. Something will likely re-emerge to take its spot, eventually, but there is zero reason to believe that new thing will be “better” in any way than the prior thing, and definitely no reason to believe it’ll be better in terms of human preference in sharing a planet with it.
llamaimperative 3y ago
This should help put what’s going on into an evolutionary context: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/
- not_the_fda 3y ago
  This is good. For the bigger picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record The earth's climate stabilized 10k-20k years ago, that allowed agriculture and all of human civilization in the last 10k years in the holocene. We are rapidly ending the holocene through climate change and agriculture is probably going to fail, and billions of people will probably starve. The species might survive, but civilization won't and we will have to revert back to hunter gatherers.
oezi 3y ago
Well, certainly the climate is mostly very stable unless there is an external stimulus like a meteor or valcano or humans.
lamontcg 3y ago
> Surely the environment hasn’t been that stable on evolutionary time scales? We're about at the maximum temperature that has ever been seen over the past few million years. The ice age cycles normally don't exceed about where we're at, normally it was colder. We're also changing the temperature exceedingly quickly.

massysett 3y ago

Maybe the temperature has been that stable over evolutionary time scales: perhaps climate change has changed temperatures much faster. Adapting to a 1 degree change over 500 years might be a lot easier than doing the same in 50.

onlyrealcuzzo 3y ago

> Can it really wipe out the entire species? Yes, climate changes historically have led to rapid and mass extinctions. > an overfitted population and now there is a corrective coming? More commonly, there's just rapid declines in populations, and the species survives and adapts and eventually - after enough adaptation - can evolve.

orlp 3y ago

> Surely the environment hasn’t been that stable on evolutionary time scales? Man-made climate change has done/will do in hundreds of years what normally takes tens of thousands...

quickthrower2 3y ago

Evolution is more of a long live the king thing. Evolution producing hardier species relies on death and loss of other species. It is pretty much replication based, and nothing more.

ethanbond 3y ago
Evolution does not mechanically produce hardier species. It merely eliminates species that are poorly suited for the current environment and recent past. This is an important distinction because your framing suggests rapid environmental changes would just more rapidly produce hardier species. This is not what happens. Extremely rapid environmental changes frequently just lop off whole branches of the evolutionary tree. Something will likely re-emerge to take its spot, eventually, but there is zero reason to believe that new thing will be “better” in any way than the prior thing, and definitely no reason to believe it’ll be better in terms of human preference in sharing a planet with it.

llamaimperative 3y ago

This should help put what’s going on into an evolutionary context: https://xkcd.com/1732/ https://xkcd.com/1732/

not_the_fda 3y ago
This is good. For the bigger picture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record The earth's climate stabilized 10k-20k years ago, that allowed agriculture and all of human civilization in the last 10k years in the holocene. We are rapidly ending the holocene through climate change and agriculture is probably going to fail, and billions of people will probably starve. The species might survive, but civilization won't and we will have to revert back to hunter gatherers.

oezi 3y ago

Well, certainly the climate is mostly very stable unless there is an external stimulus like a meteor or valcano or humans.

lamontcg 3y ago

> Surely the environment hasn’t been that stable on evolutionary time scales? We're about at the maximum temperature that has ever been seen over the past few million years. The ice age cycles normally don't exceed about where we're at, normally it was colder. We're also changing the temperature exceedingly quickly.