this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2024
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While funny. This has always been a rather retarded take. Semantics. I for one value a biosphere capable of supporting humans > "the people"
Nah, I take solace in knowing that if we destroy ourselves or collapse all civilization with our own self-destructive nature, life will go on and Earth will renew. We're fuck ups to be sure, but even we can't fuck up enough to completely sterilize the planet.
Maybe everything in all existence isn't about us. Honestly I hope not.
The runaway greenhouse effect causing a collapse of the biosphere would take out more than just humanity. It's already killed a huge number of species and it's not going to slow down as it gets worse.
Don't worry. The cockroaches will evolve and take over.
While they're better suited to hostile environments, they too are affected by global temperature increases. Their metabolic rates increase significantly in higher temperatures, causing them to need more food and more O2, both of which will be significantly reduced in a runaway greenhouse scenario.
That said, the Earth's biome is more than capable of self-repair. Even we lack the capacity to sterilize every crevice of the Earth, life overall is too hearty for that, there's innumerable species thriving where our technology barely lets us see that relies on geothermal vents more than solar radiation to keep entropic decay at bay.
Earth will rebuild when the dust settles, as it has done many times, even from one other time that we know of aside from ourselves when a costly, destructive mistake of evolution caused a mass extinction, the Devonian period, where trees captured too much carbon because the efficient means of their decomposition hadn't evolved yet, causing the opposite of what we're doing leading to an ice age.
We have already summarily executed swaths of entire ecosystems of species to build strip malls, parking lots, and oil refineries. And we've effectively ended many species we lock in cages for our amusement, wholly dependant on us breeding them having destroyed their natural habitats. Those species are ghosts, dead already, living trophies.
Long term, the species we take with us in our seeming dedication to self-annihilation will be a small price for the Earth to either be rid of us or more likelihood diminish us back to warring tribes having to subsist in a far less hospitable era of the world than the one we crawled out of and played pretend that we owned and could bend to our will. Most species that have ever lived came and went long before we arrived. Long periods of abundant life thriving in interconnected, interdependent ecosystems is whats important. Maybe it will one day birth something as remarkable, noble, sapient, and intelligent and we told ourselves we were one day, who knows? As long as theres life, there's hope.
Am I supposed to feel bad for the bully in this story?
It's capable of self repair up to a certain point. A fully fledged runaway greenhouse effect is well past that point. The atmosphere would begin to be actively hostile to carbon/water based life. I mean just look at Venus, it experienced a similar runaway greenhouse effect and while we don't know if it ever supported life, it certainly never will now.
I give Earth more credit than that. The Asteroid that killed the dinosaurs cut the earth off from photosynthetic solar radiation for 15 years and filled our atmosphere with toxic dust and ash, life suffered greatly, but it was nowhere close to the end for Earth life. There's literally bacteria that makes it's habitat in pools of acid. Humans are a weak, fragile species defended only by our ability to discern and invent the tools to do so, but Earth life in general is Amazingly robust, it grows in just about any crevice you show it. I just recently saw a story about worms that have adapted to shrug off the radiation of Chernobyl. Have you seen what a fucking tardigrade can be exposed to without dying?
Even our mother will eventually die, most likely from changes in our sun's life cycle, and the universe will eventually suffer heat death, but our species will take itself out in fairly short order. Just smart enough to be dangerous to itself, and too stupid to know better.
Nothing can survive sulphuric acid rain and 500° air temperatures. The 15 years of darkness don't even come remotely close to the level of changes a runaway greenhouse effect would bring.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC251830/#:~:text=Oxidation%20of%20elemental%20sulfur%20by%20Sulfolobus%20acidocaldarius%2C%20an%20autotroph%20which,essentially%20quantitatively%20to%20sulfuric%20acid.
These single celled organisms literally take in elemental sulfur gas and excretes sulfuric acid.
I think it's the height of arrogance to believe that an ever evolving, ever changing chain of complex life that has existed for we estimate 3,700,000,000 years can be truly done in by one of those creatures that has only been here for about 200,000 years, and has only developed the technology to play recklessly with the environment at scale for about 200 years. As I said before, we aren't even the first macro-cancer to evolve from it that then dares to threaten the whole organism.
There have been catastrophic events in that time from within and mostly without that make our hydrogen bombs we're so proud of seem relatively cute. Maybe you're right. Maybe there is a specific pedal we're pushing on that is a secret kill move that no massive asteroid collision or geological event could ever trigger in its wake, but I also think you have to look at the record of what life on Earth has endured. This bowl has hosted a lot of fragile little species of dependent little fish like us that came and went, but the bowl is as of yet undefeated if winning means life goes on.
They still require things like oxygen and liquid water, neither of which will exist in appreciable amounts under a venus-like runaway greenhouse scenario. The earth, since life existed, has not ever experienced anything close to that.
It's a scary concept to be sure. It does make me wonder, however how it wasnt triggered when the Earth was still highly geologically active with volcanoes constantly spewing the Earth's contents into the atmosphere.
If that didn't make it occur, what prevented it? If it did occur, then it was clearly a temporary state that Earth has some mechanism to mitigate to return to something resembling its current state on a massive enough timeframe. Interesting stuff.
The earth was still a primarily molten ball and hadn't cooled yet. Much of the gases that contribute to the effect are trapped in permafrost and ice at the poles. There's also, of course, the matter of all the previously trapped carbon being pulled out from underground that otherwise wouldn't ever have a chance to reenter the atmosphere. The atmosphere of the early and geologically overactive earth was also much less dense as much of the water and gases came after that period on comets.
oh yeah peer at the biodiversity we observe in venus.
Normally I'd totally agree with you but the more I see how badly we've fucked everything (google AMOC and water temps) the more I worry about runaway effects that continue far after we've been deleted entirely from the ecosystem (and most of the ecosystem to boot) - there's only so much CO2 you can pump into a system before warming becomes rapidly self sustaining - see Venus.
As far as we know, the problem with Venus is that it never developed a cycle of aerobic and anaerobic life forms. Even if we pump the atmosphere full of CO2, some photosyntethising life forms will still remain.
I don't think it's "prioritise humans over the planet" but more "we should be able to look after one another as a base level of being human. If we can't figure that out how the hell can we focus on bigger things like the planet". Not saying what we should and shouldn't do but just throwing shade at our ability.
For example, we're quickly making the planet too hot for some people to live where their homes are. We should find ways to stop heating up the planet to help them!
Honestly at this point I'd accept eco fascism. Arguing about "taking care of each other" while life support is failing and we enter triage levels of failure is inane
the problem there is it requires a power base to enforce - and all the power bases seemed determined to drive off the cliff (some are tapping the brakes but the rest are full throttle and rolling coal for lulz) at one speed or another - and a military industrial complex large enough to be strategically effective would be (like the US army) one of the largest polluters in the world.
I want something to change, I just don't see ecofascism ( a really bad term btw ) as a possible avenue.
Victor Von Doom levels of resources/soverign agency might be able to. I think us humans are going to be a sad end note in some other species' extraterrestrial archeology, after so many of them run into our radio and other emissions.
Hopefully nature finds balance post humanity.
yeah I hope we don't fuck it so thoroughly that something else can't evolve up. squid or octopus would be awesome.
Unless they live sustainably and in tune with nature, it would again, be an unbalance.
Exactly what he was implying, I agree.
Carlin's gist was that the planet will be fine, it's everything else - so we better get our shit together soon.
IIRC this was in the 90s. Not a literal take.
Yeah. I mean good luck taking care of anyone including yourself in the dystopian hellscape wrought be late stage capitalism. It's funny to be sure, but it's part of an act. Taking care of each other requires an environment that isn't toxic and bereft of food.
Stop encouraging ableist insults.
Since "general learning disability" and "Intellectual disability" is no longer called "retardation" does it matter?
I doubt anyone that says "retard" (or any variation) are actually referring in any way to ID and more to its original meaning of slow or stupid. I personally see no problem with calling people stupid (if warranted obviously).
You obviously shouldn't call people with ID "retards" though. But imo that's something entirely different.
The vast majority of people pushing for this word not to be used are people without intellectual disability. I think an argument could be made that these people are being ableist by deciding what is offensive to people with ID for them.
I have never heard the word used to refer to someone with ID in my life, and I would imagine if someone ever did, they would be immediately rebuked or scolded by others around them.
Retard and retarded also have a legitimate definition and use in math, that has nothing to do with intellectual disabilities.
Fun fact: At least some airbus planes audibly tell pilots to retard when landing. It's saying that the pilots should retard or pullback the throttle.
What it sounds like: https://youtu.be/vmbzKsqKQoI?t=26s
An explanation why: https://youtu.be/C2YjX-_g9k8
I wonder if they get as offended when people use other outdated medical terms like idiot and imbecile.
I'm hoping Cretin makes a comeback, it's got a certain feel I just think should be applied more often.
FAS baby could be used for offensive reasons but I also think it's a pretty accurate description of tons of folks in the public sphere who very much aren't helping our society writ large.
I'm probably going to hell for this post. I'm not a good person.
Yeah that's dark lol. Don't worry about it, I'd say you could count on one hand the number of truly good people who've ever existed.
TY, that stat seems depressingly accurate.
At least we'll always have Fred Rogers.
dude, right? we got lucky there; I was amazed to learn that he was a lifelong christian and preacher, and never let that cloud his message of kindness and humility he presented publicly. very christ-like, unlike so many christians.
He was the real deal.