Most mass extinctions and climate change occur over much longer time periods than the human eprochs climate change is occurring.
Basically, think of the collective action of genetic adaptations over successive generations as a computational problem where biology is adapting to climate.
From what I've read about the science of the chuxulucub impactor, the resulting mass extinction still took over a time period of a million years.
But humans are imposing a series of climate changes and ecosystem disruption that exceeds the ability of generationally adaptive natural selection to adapt to, because we are introducing massive changes not on the scale of millions or even hundreds of thousands of years, but just a couple hundred.
And of course what is most important, selfishly, to humans is that we have a planet that will support US. So while life may have survived the introduction of oxygen into the atmosphere and numerous other massive changes in Earth's ecosystem, we likely would not.
I’m curious how we are sure that we aren’t under sampling? The climate data sample frequency I’ve seen from the distant past has not been on the order of decades or even single centuries. Is it possible that there is sometimes a natural higher frequency temperature oscillation that doesn’t show up in the natural records with our current techniques?
If the present Earth continued warming for the next 50 years and then cooled down again, would we expect to see an extinction event in the fossil record, if we ignore human impacts other than temperature? I think the temperature change would have to be larger for that to happen?
I'm not saying this is what is happening, or commenting on how likely it is, I'm just not sure why everyone seems to be ruling it out completely and I would like someone to fill me in.
Over the next 50 years? Yeah, almost certainly. If the current change continues for the next 50 years, you’re going to have ecosystems changing _dramatically_. Of course, it’s kind of speculative, as you _can’t_ really disentangle the other effects of humanity easily, but if the current trend continues for another 50 years, it’s hard to see how that would not lead to a mass extinction event.
> I'm not saying this is what is happening, or commenting on how likely it is,
I mean, I think we can say that is _definitely_ not what is happening right now. It is not just doing it on its own. Like, what would the mechanism be?
We like to feel so important. And we are. But rooting for Team Earth to spread out beyond our planet gives me some comfort, rather than the existential horror of cosmic time scales relative to human lives. That’d be a bit like a fruit fly pining away that it only lives a few dozen hours, which must feel like a lifetime to it.
Other mass extinctions with different potential causes took longer.
If the point of colonization of Mars is to diversify where life is to avoid full extinction, we really need to think bigger. That channel is filled with examples of nearby Supernova and Quasars that could extinguish life in the solar system.
That timeline also opened my eyes to how long it took for the Cambrian explosion to occur.
I used to worry (as one does) in my 20s about quasars, but those are basically sniper rifles being fired in random directions. The probability of one scoring a critical hit is far less than a giant rock hitting us, which is probably the more pressing concern.
I’m sadly bearish on us ever getting out of our solar system. I think AIs will be able to, but flesh and blood is ill suited for the journey. And as much as I love our mechanical overlords^Wfriends, they’re ill suited for colonization via reproduction, unless you buy the theory that swarms of nanites could really become viable.
… What is this fixation people have on colonising Mars? Like, why is _that_ the reason that civilisation reemerging would be important?
(the earth itself might also become less habitable all by itself over time, but i don't know enough about that)
No, honestly I don't know either. I don't know what it even changes without mentioning Mars at all, and that's what all the "the Earth has been always gone through that" or worse advocates do not get? Besides it comparatively not being true at least at that timescale or with that population.. it all does not matter: It has never been about Earth in general or what may survive or reemerge at some point, it has always been about us (and our children)?!
Say we ran with your perspective. Mars doesn’t matter. Ok, that means it’s guaranteed that you, your children, and the descendants of everyone you know will die as our sun heats up. This is not so far away, as the video illustrates.
So then, what do you get out of this? A few dopamine hits and some nice chemical reactions before the eternal void? What’s all of our work even amount to?
We have the privilege of being the only life form ever to use technology. Technology! We can do things. Most life can’t do a damn thing. They live, briefly, and then die, gruesomely. And till the asteroid hit, that might have been the story of our planet until the sun gobbled it up. (Though imagining dinosaur astronauts is fun too.)
Would you say that asteroid is all about you and your children? It’s what even made it possible for you to be here, along with the unbroken string of cells from billions of years ago till the present day. Me and my children? We’re nothing, in that perspective. We are here thanks to everyone that came before.
And we owe it to those who come after to let them live an even better life. So unless you want the descendants of everyone you know to die horribly one day, colonizing space is our only way out.
But that’s just what I get out of it. After all, my own chemical reactions are unlikely to change a thing, over a single millisecond of that video. There’s nothing wrong with focusing on yourself and enjoying the ride. But personally, I end up a lot happier trying to make life be about more than little ol’ me. (My daughter says "gaaaa!" as I write this, which is either a salute of agreement or a firm rebuttal. Time will tell.)
But tbh, if something after us emerges again in some millions of years is similarly important to me as if any other alien life exists.. and no it won't help me any bit over the sadness of massive unnecessary suffering we will cause to ourselves and all the living beings around us in the near future. I am not a sad / depressive person, but no, a future alien population (no matter if earth or somewhere else born) will not help the current perspective at all, or make me happier?
> We have the privilege of being the only life form ever to use technology.
I doubt that is and will be true.
I don't get your following derivations, I think you understood me wrong.
There’s also a chance that being on Mars is exactly the right spot to be in when our sun starts to expand.
I guess I like the idea that even if we humans don’t get there, something that descends from us might. Actually, I like the idea that something a few steps up the evolutionary tree (like an alligator) will spring to life and discover the merits of language, if some cataclysm wipes us out. Or maybe reptiles in space is just my thing. The early Apollo missions were a missed opportunity to make a lizard astronaut a reality.
If there’s some other way to escape the existential dread of none of what we do mattering whatsoever, please share. It’s at least nice to imagine that one of our cells will make it from earth to mars.
Second, a permanent Mars colony will always be dependent on the Earth for regular resupply. If Earth were to become toast, so would the colonies on Mars.
This person gets into it in more detail: https://www.quora.com/How-would-we-be-able-to-live-on-Mars?n...
Further, stating that the most salient problem for us to solve now with technology is a problem that will occur 5 billion years from now - strikes me as hubris. That _we_ must be the ones to save the Earth, as if we will have failed unless _we_ are the super heroes that save humanity for all of time.
Meanwhile, the Earth is a giant garden. Given our focuses, I don't think future generations will think of us as heroes. I don't think future generations will think of us too kindly at all.
Just having a good life.. and if so, doing good things for me, whatever scope of fellows around me (could be whole humanity), and improve anything what I can influence somehow, like the near future.
That some lifeform in a far away future may have a shot colonizing Mars? Could not be more indifferent ;)
Mars will not save our species. Everything is finite, even the sun.
Speculating is fine but you can’t use pure speculation to justify things in the real world. That’s the problem.
Truth is that we have no idea about anything much past our own slice of time. In 2000 years we may be extinct, reverted to hunter gatherers, settled across the solar system like in The Expanse, or extinct or kept in zoos by superintelligent posthuman AIs that have expanded out into the cosmos. Or none of the above. Who knows.
But we seem to have been unable to outrun wars, greed and outright evil. Those you can definitely count on for the longer term unless we start to actively work against them.
You'd think WWII would teach us that lesson forever but for some strange reason we are immune to absorbing this and we have made that same mistake at least another few 100 times since then. And one of these days one of those idiots is going to kill us all. And for some reason it is always men.
No we actually did not manage to prevent it. We almost caused it but sheer luck in several cases derailed Armageddon. It could have just as easily happened, and probably more than just as easily (figure about 60:40 with us living in the '40' branch of the multiverse). Pretty good odds though. But over the longer term: not such good odds.
Root hardening is op. If a capability increases the risk of societal decline (nukes e.g.) you can increase societies abilities to recover from that by creating a video archive of your civilization techniques aka YouTube. And by increasing the ability to approach scenarios again and again, the likelihood of stable traversal to a scenario with more capabilities increases enormously. The root aka now is hardened against a negative outcome that is likely.
Longtermism with good models and no biases is a plus.
It ultimately comes down to whether you think that is good.
BTW I too am skeptical about Mars but for wholly different reasons. The Moon makes far more sense for a first step for numerous reasons, and beyond that I think settling space itself would be better than settling down in another gravity well. Become truly and permanently spacefaring.
With that in mind, many view human settlement of Mars as something as an insurance policy against decades-long periods of stagnancy like we saw from the late 70s up through the 2010s. It’ll apply strong pressure on the parties involved to continue to improve the technologies involved in getting out there and back and living there in ways that a human presence on the Moon won’t (you can’t get away with a lightly modernized rehash of the Apollo missions; that’s not good enough).
That means that there may not be anything to 'come after us' depending how much of a mess we make, and any complacency regarding all this is dangerous. We stand to lose a lot, possibly everything and there may simply not be an 'after' for intelligent life on Earth. Life will go on, but not in a form that will ever even be able to contemplate colonizing Mars, let alone to act on it.
I haven't checked the veracity of that statement recently though, I'll see if I can't find it again.
The advantage of most copper deposits in their natural form is that the rock can be crushed and the tailings are uniform and mostly heavy and inert. For what you'd get out of a 'former city' it would be far less dense in terms of copper and steel than a mineral rich vein. I think before we'd go for the cities themselves there would be the dumps and then the deposits that are today not economically feasible. Long after that the cities.
Given that the Universe is probably infinite, and certainly so stupidly big that there's no way this planet is unique, life will always continue on.
No idea why you should find this comforting. The condition of this planet, to humans, should always matter to ourselves.
> might still have a shot at colonizing Mars
Or we could just choose not to wreck this planet.
It gives a nice perspective, and it’s a visceral reminder that the planet has been through far worse than us. I find it comforting that even if we drive ourselves to extinction, life itself will continue on.
And in the multicellular era, too. This is important, because whoever (or whatever) comes after us might still have a shot at colonizing Mars. It may seem like Earth has lots of time to do it, but the video shows just how precious our tiny slice is.