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Reposting a previous comment... What is generally not understood is that our current icehouse phase is rare. 'A "greenhouse Earth" is a period during which no
by chasil 8mo ago
Reposting a previous comment...
What is generally not understood is that our current icehouse phase is rare.
'A "greenhouse Earth" is a period during which no continental glaciers exist anywhere on the planet... Earth has been in a greenhouse state for about 85% of its history.
'Earth is now in an icehouse state, and ice sheets are present in both poles simultaneously... Earth's current icehouse state is known as the Quaternary Ice Age and began approximately 2.58 million years ago.'
Modern humans have existed for 60k years, all of which have been in this current icehouse.
To cast a different shade on the meaning, this climate period is rare, easily disturbed, and difficult to restore even with vastly more powerful technology.
The more common greenhouse state is unlikely to lead to a Venus runaway, but it will be hostile to us.
We might very well require the rare climate, and perish in the common.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earthhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earthh...
- jongjong 8mo ago[flagged]
- reverius42 8mo agoThe dinosaurs did great with a bit of difficulty, too!
- seanw444 8mo agoFinally a human with a context window larger than a few hundred years.
- bryanlarsen 8mo agoPrevious climate changes happened over tens of thousands of years. This one is happening in decades. It's the speed, not the magnitude that matters. Change faster than evolution and migration will destroy ecosystems.
- alt227 8mo agoYeah, I wonder how fast Chicxulub affected the earth when the majority of large dinosaurs were wiped out. The earth survived and evolved another set of new large animal masters. The beauty and diversity of nature we see around us has all evolved after several extinction level events which have all very rapidly killed ecosystems and changed the earths climate. It will do the same again after all humans are gone. This is the outcome I am hoping comes sooner rather than later.
- bryanlarsen 8mo agoWikipedia says 5,000 - 10,000 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event#Duration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_e...
- alt227 8mo agoI see you have cherry picked a very specific date range from that paragraph. Quite clearly missing the statement: > "the period of global darkness following the Chicxulub impact would have persisted in the Hell Creek Formation nearly 2 years"
- alt227 8mo agoThis only really matters if you think humans are really important and should exist forever no matter what. I personally think that humans are a blot on the earths history, and soon should be wiped out to let nature and evolution retake its course. From this perspective we are just following the natural course of the earth, and will be made extinct just like other various groups of large animals on this planet in the past. We may require the rare climate, but other species certainly dont and more will evolve to take the place of humans when we cannot survive on these planets conditions any longer.