Here’s hoping; but that’s far from a safe assumption. The kicker about the changes we’re making to this planet is that a lot of them are positive feedback loops, so even if 100% of humans just got thanos-snapped out of existence RIGHT NOW, meaning a complete stop on fossil fuel consumption, deforestation, etc; the damage we’ve already caused will continue to get worse on its own with no further input from us.
So how far can those feedback loops go until they’re broken naturally? They might stabilize; they might just carry on until this planet is molten.
There will for sure be life after the last human dies, but given a few thousand more years, even the most resilient of critters could still be fucked because of us.
they might just carry on until this planet is molten
The odds of true runaway warming are very low, the planet has both been much hotter and had much higher CO2 levels in the past. The Holocene is actually a cool period, geologically.
We’re just going to make it too hot to grow enough crops to feed the world.
The lake Toba Eruption caused a 4°C drop in global temperatures, covered asia in inches to feet of ash, and may have taken the climate 1000s of years to recover.
Even more extreme, the lava floods that created the Siberian Traps 250 million years ago raised ocean temps to 40°C, killed off 90% of all life, and might have taken millions of years to recover.
We are tiny. The climate and the Earth are formidable. Sure, we might have the capacity to destroy all multicellular life on earth, but she’s recovered from even worse.
We shouldn’t ever give up, but I think the earth is capable of handling even our worst fuck-ups.
it seems pretty likely that microprocessors will survive us, and give a BIG jump start to any species that follows. literacy seems to be a longer shot, but still a possible stepping stone for some other organism to take over our work. my money is on fungi to figure out microprocessors. if not them, then plants, especially “weeds”. finally, ocean mammals might be able to work some of the junk we’ve made and cargo-cult themselves into the information age.
i really am hopeful for life on earth to survive the death of Sol.
we did just waste a good few million years of evolution though (let’s say 65 million accounting for the rise of mammals). earth isn’t going to be habitable forever, from memory there’s less than a billion years left before the temp would increase with the expanding sun enough to make liquid water impossible. feels like we kind of shot earth in the foot a bit here
There were a couple of hundred thousand years of humans managing not to fuck up the entire planet, before the two centuries of doing so for the sake of money.
There were periods in which we were nicer to the planet, but we’ve always been pretty horrible to each other. Even at the stage of civilization we’re at now - with all the advancements and comforts etc - we’re still going to war with each other just for the hell of it; murdering each other over shit like skin color or what we find sexually attractive; not only profiteering off the suffering of others, but actively manufacturing suffering to profiteer off.
Did we, though?
We created a lot of value for the shareholders.
ref. https://economicsociology.org/2014/10/07/yes-the-planet-got-destroyed-but-for-a-beautiful-moment-in-time-we-created-a-lot-of-value-for-shareholders/
Cool thing about Lemmy - you can past images directly from your clipboard!
i know, but i kind of thought that the linked references below the image were interesting too
@Gsicht @Sterile_Technique And “pragmatic” solutions to the climate crisis. Oh wait …!
Compost the rich?
I call dibs on driving the thresher!
Depends on how you quantify it. We sure did make a lot of money, or at least the winners did.
I mean, we left the planet. We created art. We did some good, and life will diversify again after we’re gone.
Here’s hoping; but that’s far from a safe assumption. The kicker about the changes we’re making to this planet is that a lot of them are positive feedback loops, so even if 100% of humans just got thanos-snapped out of existence RIGHT NOW, meaning a complete stop on fossil fuel consumption, deforestation, etc; the damage we’ve already caused will continue to get worse on its own with no further input from us.
So how far can those feedback loops go until they’re broken naturally? They might stabilize; they might just carry on until this planet is molten.
There will for sure be life after the last human dies, but given a few thousand more years, even the most resilient of critters could still be fucked because of us.
The odds of true runaway warming are very low, the planet has both been much hotter and had much higher CO2 levels in the past. The Holocene is actually a cool period, geologically.
We’re just going to make it too hot to grow enough crops to feed the world.
deleted by creator
The lake Toba Eruption caused a 4°C drop in global temperatures, covered asia in inches to feet of ash, and may have taken the climate 1000s of years to recover.
Even more extreme, the lava floods that created the Siberian Traps 250 million years ago raised ocean temps to 40°C, killed off 90% of all life, and might have taken millions of years to recover.
We are tiny. The climate and the Earth are formidable. Sure, we might have the capacity to destroy all multicellular life on earth, but she’s recovered from even worse.
We shouldn’t ever give up, but I think the earth is capable of handling even our worst fuck-ups.
it seems pretty likely that microprocessors will survive us, and give a BIG jump start to any species that follows. literacy seems to be a longer shot, but still a possible stepping stone for some other organism to take over our work. my money is on fungi to figure out microprocessors. if not them, then plants, especially “weeds”. finally, ocean mammals might be able to work some of the junk we’ve made and cargo-cult themselves into the information age.
i really am hopeful for life on earth to survive the death of Sol.
we did just waste a good few million years of evolution though (let’s say 65 million accounting for the rise of mammals). earth isn’t going to be habitable forever, from memory there’s less than a billion years left before the temp would increase with the expanding sun enough to make liquid water impossible. feels like we kind of shot earth in the foot a bit here
65 million years isn’t that bad on a geologic scale
As long as there isn’t a runaway greenhouse effect that turns Earth to Venus, life would almost certainly continue, with or without us.
Did you do any of these things yourself?
Is there any reason you would think me not producing art means that humans haven’t?
Maybe he’s a master in ASCII art, what do you know
There were a couple of hundred thousand years of humans managing not to fuck up the entire planet, before the two centuries of doing so for the sake of money.
There were periods in which we were nicer to the planet, but we’ve always been pretty horrible to each other. Even at the stage of civilization we’re at now - with all the advancements and comforts etc - we’re still going to war with each other just for the hell of it; murdering each other over shit like skin color or what we find sexually attractive; not only profiteering off the suffering of others, but actively manufacturing suffering to profiteer off.
We really are horrible.
We also managed to kill off almost all the large animals thousands of years ago, come to think of it.