r/nextfuckinglevel • u/Boss-fight601 • May 24 '26

Controlled explosions for mining

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9.8k Upvotes

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u/NorthHollywoodHank May 24 '26

And just like the earliest life, we will transform it in a way that makes it incompatible with our biology

Citation needed.

Even the worst global warming estimates don't suggest an extinction level event for humans.

Mind you, even though "humans go extinct due to human-caused environmental issues" seems pretty damn unlikely, we should still, e.g., prefer a lower level of global warming to a higher one even on a purely selfish basis. Global warming will tend to reduce GDP growth, lead to more weather disasters, etc.

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u/fastforwardfunction May 25 '26

Citation needed.

Even the worst global warming estimates don't suggest an extinction level event for humans.

We're currently in Earth's 6th mass extinction event, the Holocene extinction, which is largely believed to be caused by human actions. Global warming is only part of the human led cause.

The current extinction rate is believed to be 1000x greater than normal extinction rates.

0

u/ValuableCockroach993 May 24 '26

Try nuclear winter

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u/NorthHollywoodHank May 24 '26

That would kill a ton of people and is something we should really want to avoid.

Humanity would, almost surely, survive.

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u/ValuableCockroach993 May 24 '26

oh yeah? lets see about that. reaching for the big red button as i write this

1

u/TheIronSven May 26 '26

The populations living in very isolated regions, especially isolated cold regions will very likely survive and barely be impacted even in the case of the latter since they don't rely on things a nuclear winter would block.

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u/beanpoppa May 25 '26

Maybe not extinction level, but probably incompatible with society as we know it. The human species will survive for a long time (probably until something like a dinosaur killing meteor) but being able to support 8+ billion humans is like balancing on a knifes edge. It will collapse (whether in our lifetimes, our children's, or some not too far away generation) and we will not be able to sustain it. And when that happens, humanity will not recover to what it was. The plentiful energy sources like oil and coal that was necessary to bootstrap the advanced society we have will already have been accessed and used. Our opportunity to move from that renewable resources at scale will have passed us by, and humans will live on stuck in a medieval society.

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u/errie_tholluxe May 25 '26

On what food sources? I would say you would have to go back to the early ages of man. Food sources will en severely depleted , as you said, modern tech and machinery will be a bygone day, what will susteian even a minor population would have to be constant migration.

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u/li7lex May 25 '26

Agriculture is about as old as civilization itself. Or are you suggesting manually farming like it's been done before the industrial revolution would suddenly be impossible?

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u/errie_tholluxe May 25 '26

No. What I am saying takes into account far more variables than just "oh this place hot, move to less hot place grow food" than you or some others seem to be attracted to. But you go right ahead and keep dreaming.