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Re:The U.S. Wheat Crop Is in Trouble by chrisco255 on Thursday July 15, 2021 @04:29AM (#27842545)
I'm not cherry picking July 12th. Temperature anomaly maps like what they're showing there on Twitter are highly variable and flux a great deal. See [1] for example and hit play. I'm talking about the entire summer ice gain in Greenland for 2021. The heat dome was a fleeting thing and the summer ice gains have been registering even in June and have continued even as the heat dome as subsided.

There is no scenario where 400ppm CO2 has ever led to any of the extreme events you are casually throwing out there as realistic possibilities. We have geological evidence of Earth's CO2 concentration and climate history going back 500 million years. We know it was close to 7000 ppm during the Cambrian explosion 500 million years ago. We know it was in the thousands of ppm for most of life's existence on this planet. We know the oceans didn't boil off.

What we know from geology is that not only is the planet extremely antifragile, life itself is as well and always adapts to the always changing climate. Nature has thrown many curve balls, including Laschamp events that caused the Earth's magnetic field to flip for a few hundred years, which led to mass extinctions in the southern hemisphere and some say, the end of the Neanderthals [2]. Or more recently, the Younger Dryas 12 thousand years ago, where temps returned to ice age levels before rapidly warming to above modern day levels [3], and also caused mass extinctions of many animals including wooly mammoths, American lions, saber tooth cats, giant ground sloths, and so much more [3].

And those two events happened with CO2 levels at less than half of what they are today. Of course, we wouldn't ever want CO2 levels to go below 150ppm, because at that level photosynthesis is not possible and all plant life chokes and dies (happens much earlier than that for higher elevation).

Thankfully that Younger Dryas episode, whatever caused it, we still don't fully understand it...subsided, CO2 levels rose back up with the warming temps to the Holocene optimum levels, that led to favorable conditions for civilization to flourish and for agriculture to take off.

We're still in an ice age, and we'll return to a glacial period once again, because volcanoes are ultimately in control of that process. We got a preview of that in 1816, the famous "year without a summer". Our job as humans is to adapt to whatever nature throws at us.

[1] https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/analysis/models/?model=gfs&r... [2] https://techthoroughfare.com/earth/laschamps-excursion-mass-... [3] https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/historictemperat... [4] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer

Re:The U.S. Wheat Crop Is in Trouble by lumost on Thursday July 15, 2021 @10:45AM (#27845365)
> We know it was close to 7000 ppm during the Cambrian explosion 500 million years ago. We know it was in the thousands of ppm for most of life's existence on this planet.

I'm really unclear on the point here. A rapid transition to the climate of the Cambrian period would annihilate most civilization - The globe was entirely free of ice at the end of the Cambrian and temperatures were 7 degrees celsius higher than today.

While it's plausible for humans to adapt to significantly colder temperatures, it's difficult for Human's to adapt to higher temperatures in a short period. There are limits to what A/C systems can handle, and I'd doubt that people would enjoy required bathing times per day for temperature reasons.

Re:The U.S. Wheat Crop Is in Trouble by qqqwerty on Thursday July 15, 2021 @11:54AM (#27846184)
By your own words, those events triggered mass extinctions. Like you, I think the most probable outcome is that climate change results in a mass extinction event. And like you, I think humans will survive in some form, albeit at significantly reduced levels. If that provides you comfort, then have at it. But I personally consider that outcome to be an epic failure on our part. Especially considering we have the knowledge and the technology to prevent this.

And if you think our geological history provides the answers to what our future with climate change will look like, I implore you to get familiar with the anthropic principle[1]. We have never significantly altered our atmosphere this fast before, there is no precedent. And using our geological past as a dataset is inherently flawed. In order for us to observe that data, we necessarily would have had to survive/emerge from that history. How many other planets had similar geological records but then took a different turn? If you can show me that data, I will re-consider you anti-fragile position.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropic_principle

Re:The U.S. Wheat Crop Is in Trouble by loopz on Thursday July 15, 2021 @05:42AM (#27842944)
Solar input is higher than hundreds million years ago, and for tens of million years there've been several extinction events above 900 ppm. Extinctions happens fast and wipes out alot of life. Researchers find CO2 to often be catalyst.

Humans are adapted to Holocene, so it seems best to not poke the bear. However, 100 years of pollution need to be undone for that.