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> It is an argument for realizing that the planet is and will always be in climate flux, whether affected by human activity or not, and that our long term strat
by piva00 2y ago
> It is an argument for realizing that the planet is and will always be in climate flux, whether affected by human activity or not, and that our long term strategy needs to be adaptation and cooperation, not to engineer the climate to stay as it was in 1700 and selfishly laying claim to temporarily blessed locations.
The climate flux would take thousands to millions of year to run its course before anthropogenic activity accelerating it by thousand-fold. In that case we could adapt easily since even evolution, as slow as it is, was capable of doing so without technology.
We know that things change, including the climate, the tectonic plates, etc., the issue is how fast things change, that's where catastrophe lies and the call is not to keep the climate as close as possible to the 1700s but to deal with the mess we created and slow down the process of change so not only humans but other species have the chance to adapt as well.
- fredski42 2y agoThis is the most insightful comment here.
- stareatgoats 2y agoCould indeed have been insightful, if it was correct. It isn't: rapid climate change is nothing new, it has been more or less the norm since long before humans entered the scene.
- piva00 2y agoSources, please.
- stareatgoats 2y agoSure. First of all you can have a look at the linked graph of temperatures, especially the Pleistocene. The wildly fluctuating levels indicate how temperatures change abruptly over a few decades as a rule as glaciations came and went. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Interglacial#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Interglacial#/media/File:...) If that doesn't convince you then please read up on the Heinrich events (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_event) and Dansgaard-Oeschger events (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansgaard%E2%80%93Oeschger_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dansgaard%E2%80%93Oeschger_eve...) respectively, both of which have been recurring drastic changes in temperature in recent geological history. And that is without even mentioning all the great extinction events that have taken place. So much for the thought that the current climate change is unique among climate events. But let's not forget the greater point here: this fact doesn't mean that our situation isn't precarious. It just means means we can't tap into the quasi-religious notion that humans (or those dirty oil profiteers) somehow wrecked a pristine world in perfect balance. It still means we need to stop polluting the planet (in a myriad of ways), and that we have grave adaptive challenges ahead that we need to start working on ASAP.