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Re:Extreme weather and extreme politics (2018) by chrisco255 on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @02:10AM (#20221186)
Listen, life has thrived on this planet for well over a billion years. It's seen carbon levels much, much higher and primates literally evolved during such periods. It's ludicrous to suggest that billions will die.
Re:Extreme weather and extreme politics (2018) by adrianN on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @02:12AM (#20221200)
As far as I know it's been a really long time since the climate changed as rapidly as it's changing now. I'm not sure whether it ever warmed up as quickly before. Evolution needs time. We're already in the midst of a major extinction event. Life will most likely go on, but I see no reason to believe that we'll survive the transition at our current numbers.
Re:Extreme weather and extreme politics (2018) by chrisco255 on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @02:29AM (#20221253)
I see no reason to believe that we won't, unless you think we'll suddenly lose all technology that we've developed over the past 5000 years.

Also, here's a list at some of the dramatic swings in temperature and sea levels over just the past 2 million years, including many events impacting modern human history, such as the Little ice age: http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7x.html

Re:Extreme weather and extreme politics (2018) by NeedMoreTea on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @06:04AM (#20222080)
> unless you think we'll suddenly lose all technology that we've developed

Which is normally what happens after a civilisation crash.

Getting back to the level of the Middle Ages is fairly easy to do - many, many people can figure out some of the basics even from first principles. Figure out a windmill, weaving, fulling, irrigation etc just from the basics people got going through school probably in just a few years.

Yet the more advanced tech? That's a system fragility. Easy to lose, hard to get back if lost. If there's mass destruction of cities, relocations, perhaps wars and huge numbers of deaths and displaced people why expect a globalised, technological and mainly online world to survive?

Could just as easily find ourselves in the same boat as those in the worlds after the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians etc. Lots of things we can see but have no idea how to recreate. It could take hundreds of years to claw our way back to creating chips. Once the first generation that remembers high school or uni is passed, it gets even harder...

Re:Extreme weather and extreme politics (2018) by adrianN on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @03:26AM (#20221465)
Note the scale of the x-axis here and the predicted jump for the next 100 years: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/All_pala...

It doesn't look like we had such rapid warming before, at least not in the last million years where we have decent data. We don't know how the ecosystem will handle it.

Re:Extreme weather and extreme politics (2018) by milankovic on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @03:27AM (#20221470)
Which major extinction event? Do you really think this is an appropriate comparison to proven major extinction events of the past (e.g Chicxulub, 66 m. years ago)?
Re:Extreme weather and extreme politics (2018) by adrianN on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @03:29AM (#20221481)
The human impact on biodiversity forms one of the primary attributes of the Anthropocene. Humankind has entered what is sometimes called the Earth's sixth major extinction. Most experts agree that human activities have accelerated the rate of species extinction. The exact rate remains controversial – perhaps 100 to 1000 times the normal background rate of extinction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene#Biodiversity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

Re:Extreme weather and extreme politics (2018) by slavik81 on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @04:21AM (#20221663)
It's not just a modern trend, either. Most of the North American megafauna went extinct ~10,000 years ago, around the time when humans first arrived on the continent. We lost the mammoth, mastodon, saber-tooth tiger, dire wolf, giant beaver, ground sloth and more.

New Zealand was the same. Humans arrived around 1300 and we lost the moa and Haarst's eagle (the world's largest flying bird) by around 1400.

Incidentally, the largest species of bird that ever lived was the elephant bird of Madagascar. It weighed up to 730kg (1600lbs) and stood 3m (10ft) tall. It went extinct around the year 1200.

There used to be a lot more interesting animals around, but our ancestors hunted them to extinction. Nobody misses them because nobody alive today ever had them in the first place.

It's sad, but even the extinctions of the coolest, most amazing creatures are quickly forgotten. When the giraffe or blue whale is gone, it will just be another story like the elephant bird.

Re:Extreme weather and extreme politics (2018) by tremon on Wednesday June 19, 2019 @05:53AM (#20222049)
Yet, billions will die. Regardless.

Setting aside snide remarks, the concern most people have for the environment is not about "life", it is about our civilization. We have seen huge advances in quality of life in the past 100 years, because of increases in medicine, trade, and mobility. These characteristics rely on a relatively peaceful coexistence across the globe.

The fear is that increased survival pressure will void most of those advances. If global trade breaks down, we might lose the technology and infrastructure that enables us to feed 7+ billion people. So regardless of whether the Earth's climate will kick us out, we still might end up returning to population levels of the 1900s.