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> It happened slowly enough that other forms of life could evolve and thrive. We're changing things and killing off species too quickly for evolution. That is

> It happened slowly enough that other forms of life could evolve and thrive. We're changing things and killing off species too quickly for evolution. That is quite definitely not how evolution works: 1. Other individual forms of life don't "evolve". Evolution only works by killing off large numbers of creatures, and only ones that have genes that differ by chance, and are more fit in whatever the new environment is, exist to pass their genes to the next generation. 2. There have been a number of significant extinction events that happened in the past that were much faster than whatever humans are doing now. I'm pretty sure the meteor that wiped out the non-avian dinosaurs happened pretty quickly.

autoexec 3y ago
> Other individual forms of life don't "evolve". Of course they do. Populations can evolve with successive generations without ever killing off large numbers of creatures. They simply do it slowly as conditions change and those with certain genes become advantaged over others and become more common. It's the "passing their genes to the next generation" which becomes a huge problem when everyone in the current generation dies or any creature that is born dies before it can reproduce. > There have been a number of significant extinction events that happened in the past that were much faster than whatever humans are doing now. But not faster than what we're capable of doing if we start geoengineering and it all goes wrong. The dinosaur killing meteor took a long time to kill off everything that it did (on a human timescale). How long exactly is uncertain but likely thousands of years to tens if not hundreds of thousands of years. Time enough for a whole lot of generations. We might not have that long if we poison our atmosphere, destroy the ozone layer, or kill everything in the oceans.
- hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
  > How long exactly is uncertain but likely thousands of years to tens if not hundreds of thousands of years. I don't know where you're getting this from. Everything I've read was that the large dinosaurs were killed off due to the effects of reduced sunlight in a few years. Here is an article that says it took 15 years: https://phys.org/news/2023-10-asteroid-year-winter-dinosaurs.html https://phys.org/news/2023-10-asteroid-year-winter-dinosaurs...

autoexec 3y ago

> Other individual forms of life don't "evolve". Of course they do. Populations can evolve with successive generations without ever killing off large numbers of creatures. They simply do it slowly as conditions change and those with certain genes become advantaged over others and become more common. It's the "passing their genes to the next generation" which becomes a huge problem when everyone in the current generation dies or any creature that is born dies before it can reproduce. > There have been a number of significant extinction events that happened in the past that were much faster than whatever humans are doing now. But not faster than what we're capable of doing if we start geoengineering and it all goes wrong. The dinosaur killing meteor took a long time to kill off everything that it did (on a human timescale). How long exactly is uncertain but likely thousands of years to tens if not hundreds of thousands of years. Time enough for a whole lot of generations. We might not have that long if we poison our atmosphere, destroy the ozone layer, or kill everything in the oceans.

hn_throwaway_99 3y ago
> How long exactly is uncertain but likely thousands of years to tens if not hundreds of thousands of years. I don't know where you're getting this from. Everything I've read was that the large dinosaurs were killed off due to the effects of reduced sunlight in a few years. Here is an article that says it took 15 years: https://phys.org/news/2023-10-asteroid-year-winter-dinosaurs.html https://phys.org/news/2023-10-asteroid-year-winter-dinosaurs...