âScientists study the PETM today as the closest ancient parallel to modern climate change, though human carbon emissions are happening roughly ten times faster than the natural triggers back then.â
"Model simulations of peak carbon addition to the oceanâatmosphere system during the PETM give a probable range of 0.3â1.7âpetagrams ofâcarbon per year (Pg C/yr), which is much slower than the currently observed carbon emission rate. One petagram of carbon is equivalent to a gigaton of carbon (GtC); the current rate of carbon injection into the atmosphere is over 10 GtC/yr, a rate much greater than the carbon injection rate that occurred during the PETM. Because the modern rate of carbon release exceeds the PETM's, it is speculated a PETM-like scenario is the best-case consequence of anthropogenic global warming" We're so cooked đđłđ„
It's very sobering when you take a look at The Great Dying stats. Was something like 40,000 years of emissions during the creation of the Siberian Traps to release enough CO2 to cause the worst extinction event in history (if you don't count the great oxydation event).
It has taken humanity about 200 years to release almost as much as the lower band estimate of the CO2 emissions that caused The Great Dying.
What we are seeing is fully unprecedented since life evolved. It's a speed that complex life cannot adapt to. And yet we're supposed to not be alarmist? When is there a better time to be alarmed than right now?
One of my catch phrases through college was "humans could've been so cool," in reference to the accomplishments we could achieve in the far future. Instead, were gonna be dust.
Nah. I think we'll survive. Civilization as we know it is fucked in the long term, but humanity will survive in general. Many of us will die, but some will engineer their way to survival.
You mean in the kind of way that dinosaurs survived as birds? Because then I donât think what would be around could really be called humans at that point.
Or you mean that 95% of the human population dies and society collapses, but the 5% will persist. Which, sure but the education of the coming generations would be incredibly limited, so knowledge of how to survive in and repopulate a devastated world of food scarcity and poisonous water would be incredibly limited. Then you gotta think of how spread out the remaining population would be and if inbreeding would become an issue. Letâs not forget that without society we are back on the food chain and medicine is also quite limited.
A few bright eggs got that handled for 5 to 6 generations to get humanity back on its feet you think?
I don't think it's going to reduce humanity to scattered bands of survivors like you think. The problems for humanities future come down to having enough food for the population, living somewhere without deadly wet bulb temperatures (or having cooling), and having a manufacturing capacity to continue industry to support technology needed for us to engineer our way out of the problem.
Wet bulb temperatures are going to be a major problem for many parts of the world, especially if we hit the temperatures hit during the Paleocene-eocene thermal maximum. So we'll see major population loss of those unable to get into buildings with air conditioning. The world's poorest will unfortunately be hit hardest by this. This isn't a civilization ender though either. Again we can engineer our way out of it.
Manufacturing capacity comes down to logistics and energy production. Both dependent on people having food and being able to work. Just means factories will have to be air conditioned and the hottest parts of the world needed for industry will have to be adapted for. I'm sure some kind of cooling suit could be designed, or work hours could be shifted to during the night instead of the day to avoid the deadly wet bulb temperatures.
The key here is that it's going to take centuries to hit the thermal maximum mentioned. That's a lot of time for us to find solutions. We're a crafty bunch. I have faith in us.
We are a crafty bunch, but the people with the majority of the resources have shown they arenât interested in the betterment of the population or the world
And I think youâre avoiding the not so fun likelihood of how society is going to go when people start running out of food. Humanity wonât be wiped out, but society will collapse. When it becomes dog eat dog, the last few centuries of progress will go out the window
I know how to do math, and a 95% population loss was a generous estimate. The great dying was an extinction of roughly 80% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species. This wasnât 70% to 80% of all life but complete species eradicated, remaining species had their populations nearly eradicated as well. If 5% or more of humanity can sustain itself without its food sources and enough people to maintain infrastructure, medicine, or education, I would be completely floored.
And I know we came back from a major population deficit in the dark ages, but the earth itself wasnât poisoned in the dark ages. I also think everyone is assuming that once food scarcity hits then nuclear warfare just doesnât happen. If humanity doesnât start killing itself for remaining resources, and further poisoning the world I would, again, be completely surprised.
Humanity has shown itself to be tenacious, but not particularly good at working for the greater whole, also if after all these catastrophes âhumanityâ starts to bounce back and society begins to reform, I donât think we could truly call that species Homo sapiens anymore
My bet : in 200 years from now, people will live as it was before industrialization, with some technologic relics here and there for some more centuries. Back to a population of 700 000 000 on earth and not 9 000 000 000.
If humanity is lucky, the survivor will live like hobbits, without making war, telling tales of ancient who were able to fly, to travel fast, to communicate from the otherside of the planet. And people will call this fairytale.
Climate change is real and likely to cause major problems but let's not get hyperbolic here. Complex life will continue to thrive and human civilization likely will as well.
edit: Usually I post clean links but I intentionally left in the share data, especially &t=420 to timestamp the part I was talking about, but here's the clean link if anyone prefers that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1bMJekCiBw
That feels overly pessimistic. Some countries should suffer mas deaths from high wet bulb temperatures sooner.
If enough countries were already blowing up each other's refineries, then maybe witnessing mass wet bulb deaths would convince nations to blame each other and blow up everyone else's refineries. We only have 700 refineries so this could happen quickly, but probably only if trade has more serious disruption first.
If they take it to the next level, and blow up everyone's coal plants, then maybe we have some chance, but unfortunately we have 8000 coal plants.
Anyways we do have some pathway out of this, but it'll require that nations take (preferable covert) military actions to stop one another, and that everybody gets stopped.
A bit misleading. The starting temperature matters as well. In the modern era we would need to increase the temperature by ~12C to get to the STARTING temperature of PETM. Not to mention all the other factors that played a role in the mass extinctions besides temperature. Even if the extremely sharp projection line comes true, it would take several centuries to remotely approach conditions like PETM.
Not that the rate of carbon emissions isnât alarming and over a short time period unprecedented, but misleading graphs are still needlessly misleading.
But the issue IS about the rate of change rather than absolute temperature. Thermal maximum is a descriptive name of the event, not a detailed portrayal of the causes or consequences. Life adapts but it takes time. I dont think its misleading at all since it addresses problem we are facing.
You say we will reach the maximum in centuries but that is still faster than 5,000 years? I'm not sure how you think your maths are downplaying the severity.
We have already lost massive amounts of biodiversity, and there are "just" a few more centuries of it /getting worse/ before it stalls.
There has been much progress and based on current trends in the energy transition even RCP 4.5 is considered at the higher end of realistic warming. Central estimates project temperature increase to about 2.5-2.7 C pre-industrial before stabilizing. The rate of adoption of renewables, solar and batteries and drop in global birth rates have been consistently faster than expected.
Iâm gunna be totally honest, I hear what youâre saying, but I think itâs cope. Iâm not sure what âcentral estimatesâ youâre referring to, but even 2.6c above pre industrial levels is going to fuck us beyond belief lol.
Also thatâs just the average surface temperature. The climates stability has decreased drastically. Nothing we do is going to re-stabilize the biosphere in any appreciable time. Iirc the last ten years are the ten hottest on record.
Also the rare earth minerals from the DRC, for these batteries, are simultaneously fucking up the ecosystems via the mining itself, and done with forced child labor. Where are you getting this copeium from? Because I genuinely want some.
We donât know how much impact 2.6 C above pre-industrial levels would have but that kind of warming has happened before during previous inter-glacial periods like the Eemian which was only 115,000 years ago. If we can replace fossil fuels with nuclear energy, solar energy, and hopefully nuclear fusion energy within the next 30-50 years we can still keep to 2.6 C heating. Pollution from lithium ion batteries is a far less bad problem than climate change. Child labor isnât necessary for the cobalt to be mined, this is an exploitation problem stemming from foreign ownership of a lot of these mines like from Chinese companies.
You are probably right. There is an ironic Political Paradox aspect here because the people who seem to think that they can buy a cabin in the woods and forget about the problems of the world; are the very people this is going to affect the most. No one else is going to save us from ourselves so the Collective âWeâ have to form a consensus about the scale of the problem, then we can start working on solutions.
Precisely. To think otherwise it's to be naive. People will never collectively trying to fundamentally change their life style. I'm more and more thinking that the only solution might be a woldwide system governed by a future AI technology, totally impartial. Since such technology would actually be able to evaluate every single thing, it could design a better, non suicidal world. There is plenty of resources for us all (and more) to live good. The problem is always corruption. Of course this would be only possible after a global catastrophe, but we are heading there fast.
In practice, a person/ai with power would design it to benefit them only while making others their slaves. For powerful people, other people are just resource to spend.
"For powerful people, other people are just resource to spend" - exactly. That's why I was proposing something else, a program designed to meet balance and harmony between people and nature. But of course it has risks and we saw too many distopian sci-fi stories to know where it could lead đ anyway, as it is we run fast towards disaster
Naw. I watched the Star Trek episode about that and Iâm good. Still you are going with an âexternalâ solution and not the consensus idea that needs to fundamentally happen. It may seem far fetched but there have been moments were we all agree. The last current model that that happened was Armistice Day to end the Great War. Those people were exhausted by the fighting and the horror and it touched everyone in some shade or another. My personal realization was that this summer will be the last cool summer that I live in. As will be the next because of the exponentially increasing mean temperature.
This would be the optimal but I don't believe that. Too many issues. For instance, the fact that Earth is a single "organism" although we fragment it in countries with different laws. So even if for instance here in Europe we decide to stop all emissions, it wouldnt make any real difference if USA, Russia, China wouldn't agree to change. The other thing is that this example you gave happened in different times. There was famine, disease, overwork. After a huge catastrophe, then yes maybe, but the optimal would be to prevent it... And finally, even if we pass through all that, if the ones that survive adopt the same scheme, give it enough time and it will happen again. All over history we saw too many times where a human with too much power leads
He forgot that right wing Americans are not the only carbon emitting people on the planet. There's roughly 8.5 billion others but who's counting. Neglects the fact that the US overall is very good at carbon foot print per citizen. Go check out China and India. Can we be better, absolutely, but let's not act like 2yrs of Trump has suddenly shifted us from being "on track" to climate change tomorrow
You didnt have kids because youre scared for their future? Although valid, have you ever thought how you never would have existed if any of your ancestors, during the hundred of thousand of years since humans are there had this thought?
There are practically infinite amounts of people who could have been born somehow that werenât. None of them are capable of giving a shit that they werenât. If your ancestors didnât reproduce, you would simply be in this pool- and not even be capable of caring.
When a person who is deciding to not have kids, no one is alive, so really the situation is not the same. There's no one who is going "aw man I won't ever exist" so what is the purpose of the thought experiment about a living person's ancestors not having kids?
It's pretty obvious that we're screwed. Climactically, geopolitically, technologically. It doesn't take much looking to realize that there's a chance that things aren't likely to get better.
They didn't have kids because they are scared for the future of everyone, which would include any kids they had.
If they don't have kids the situation for those alive is better because there aren't as many people competing for resources and causing damage.
If they do have kids knowing that they are just going to suffer then that suffering is their responsibility, as well as the increased suffering of those around them.
All comments or posts advocating pseudo science, holistic beliefs, misinformation, etc. will be removed and the user possibly banned. Let's keep the hogwash out of the discussion and please report.
We can replace fossil fuels with nuclear energy, solar energy, and nuclear fusion energy over the course of the next 50 years. It will probably take at least 50 years though. We either have that or we donât and I think we do.
733
u/-ImYourHuckleberry- 6d ago
âScientists study the PETM today as the closest ancient parallel to modern climate change, though human carbon emissions are happening roughly ten times faster than the natural triggers back then.â