Curious as to where on the list you place Yellowstone exploding and Asteroid Impact events on your Danger Scale. More likely to cause mass extinction, or less likely?
I think its going to be AI or some bio-engineered virus. The Nuclear bomb was only the first way we invented to easily wipe ourselves out and I believe that one day there will be hundreds that will become too easy for individuals or groups to do. I don't think humans have a good chance of survival thanks to our violent nature. We just evolved intelligence far too quickly and retained too much of our animalistic instincts. Biodiversity loss is a threat and we need to create nature-only zones where nature can exist untouched. I don't think its going to wipe us out. Our best hope is that we will only nearly wipe ourselves back but will still retain our technology and bounce back.
No, homo sapiens just evolved when the CO2 was a lot higher, with zero protections from the environment and no technology other than rocks and pointy sticks. You keep saying how many there were as if that makes any difference whatsoever. Either the planet was able to support human life sans technology or it wasn't. Clearly, it was. Additionally, there is NO long term association between CO2 and earths temperature.
a problem there is that we had advanced technology thousands of years ago, according to Hindu sources we also had nuclear war. This put what was left of us back into the stone age.
Extreme meaning Cat 5 hurricanes instead of the more common Cat 2 and 3. But there have been Cat 5 hurricanes all along. Extreme meaning F5 tornadoes instead of the more common F1 to F3 but there have been F5 tornadoes all along. Extreme meaning torrential rain that isn't common, but that has occurred over our planet from time to time I suppose since Noah's proverbial flood. In my state until the last year or two, we had a decade long period of severe to exceptional drought that still did not compare to the pre-industrial age drought that drove the Anazazi from their ancestral homes. We have had satellite imaging of polar ice and developing hurricanes and such for only 40 years which is far too short a time to develop any idea of what 'normal' is even in modern times, let alone over several centuries. So yes there have been some extreme weather events in the last decade or so. I would give good odds that there have been extreme weather events somewhere in every decade since creatures have inhabited the Earth. Are the more recent extreme weather events proof of anything? They are proof that extreme weather events happen. But I don't think they prove much of anything else.
Of course I see how this works but, this has nothing to do with the poster asking for "evidence" when a bunch of evidence was given in the OP. My comment was merely on the sillyness and mindlessness of the post.
CO2 emissions were only part of what was claimed in the OP. Massive pollution was another claim in the post and evidence provided. How would anyone know you were referring to CO2 when all you did was stammer out "Evidence".
In our current interglacial (the Holocene) there have been 9 previous warming/cooling cycles. Half of these have had warming rates higher than the current warming and had peak temperatures higher than where we are at today. And all of these warming periods and cooling periods have occurred at constant CO2 concentrations. There is no correlation of global temperature with CO2 in the natural history of the earth. If you believe that there is a causation there is no politically possible way to significantly reduce the rate of rise of global CO2 emissions. Therefore the best way to deal with warming is to maximize economic growth so as to be most able to respond to local adverse effects of global warming. And of course the overwhelming conclusion based on true economic analysis is that global warming is net beneficial for the human race. Alarmists deny this.
Amen. Great post. To your point about Nature's remarkable resilience and unpredictability, it's possible that all of this talk about a self-inflicted environmental breakdown/catastrophe that wipes out all life on the planet will never come to fruition. In my estimation it's more likely that such breakdowns or catastrophes will occur on a limited localized scale where there is an over-concentration of people and a lack of food, clean water, medicine and other resources to sustain them. It's nothing Mankind hasn't experienced before, and even widespread disasters such as the Black Plague that killed millions across Asia and Europe didn't touch everyone, much less kill everyone on earth. What really bothers me about all this global doomsday talk is that it's diverting attention away from what I call "practical environmentalism", which is all the things we can be doing to minimize our own impact on the environment and perhaps restore some of the biodiversity and habitat that has been lost over the years. None of this stuff requires saving the entire planet but it all adds up towards the same objective. In many respects we need to stop thinking big and start thinking small.
Massive pollution is all over, from the plastic garbage in the ocean, killing off all the fish and wildlife eating it, to nuke disasters, oil spills, endless reasons huge sections are polluted.
And that is exactly where the national discussion should be, i.e.: 1. A population of 7.5 billion people that is steadily growing will of course have environmental impact as all creatures on Earth have environmental impact in some way. 2. Climate changes with or without humans living on Planet Earth. 3. We humans act responsibly when we minimize the harmful environmental impact as much as possible, repair what we can repair, and otherwise learn how to adjust to an inevitably changing climate and the effect of people living their lives. 4. It is a fact that it is those humans who enjoy the highest standard of living who demand clean water, clean air, clean soil, aethetic beauty, and who care most for the aesthetic and practical aspects of the environment and who put the most time, energy, and resources into preserving it. People who struggle day to day just trying to scratch out food, clothing, and shelter are most concerned about that and not that concerned about the Earth and the creatures that live on it. 5. Helping people learn how to be more prosperous and sustain prosperity is the best chance we have to preserve the best of our planet and the plants and creatures that live on it.
Thanks for opening this thread. It's nice to discuss something we can agree about. Personally, I think things have been a mixed bag. When I was a kid, the Potomac River was so polluted it was illegal to step foot in it. Today, you can swim in it and commercial fishing has resumed - it's an amazing success story. Same thing for the James River. There were parts below Richmond where the water was so polluted many of the native wildlife populations were wiped out. Today it is once again home to one of the largest bald eagle populations in the United States and they're spreading across the state. Peregrine falcons are back, too. It's fantastic. On the other hand, we have BIG problems concerning the Chesapeake Bay that have gotten worse over the years and it's going to require a lot of time, work and money to solve those problems, but the good news is that they can get fixed. Where there's a will there's a way. I think you're overstating the case, but what we need to do is strike the proper balance between regulation and usage. We've gone overboard in both directions at times, and it would be nice if we could find and maintain a happy medium. We're in agreement. There's a proper and necessary role for government and regulation here, and an informed electorate is necessary so that individual citizens can do their part to improve the environment. Enjoy! I'm getting ready to begin mine right now.
If that is true we should be going to genetically modified crops which require less fertilizer, no ??
How many nuke disasters ?? Where ?? How many oil spills ?? Where ?? Where does all this plastic come from ??
Perhaps but not necessarily as this presents other problems due to decrease in genetic diversity. Pollution of the oceans also comes from other sources such as heavy metals and persistent organic pollutants. Not sure if you are aware but pollution of the oceans is the #1 environmental issue .. way ahead of CO2 -although this is also part of the pollution problem. What is messes up is that you almost never hear of this issue. CO2 is not even second... at best it is 4th on the list. Population growth and industrialization of the earths population are 2/3. Obviously if we did not have so many people - pollution would be less. The real biggie though is industrialization. A study I read some years ago looked at by products of human consumption ( pollutants, CO2 and so on). Someone in the first world was at (36) .. someone in China at the time was at (11).. someone in Africa eating a bowl of rice a day was at (1). In a nutshell the study stated that if China was to reach our level of consumption - world resource production would have to double. To put this in perspective .. only 1.4 Billion are industrialized. This is a small fraction of 7.5 Billion on the planet. It is not just China that is industrializing .. India, Asia and "God forbid" Africa. If we are messing up the oceans with 1.4 Billion industrialized .. what happens when we double this to 2.8 Billion - at which point we are still less than half the world ? Same with the CO2 equation. When you take someone eating a bowl of rice a day - and all of a sudden they are eating meat on a regular basis and using an iphone .. this is a massive increase in consumption - requiring more fertilizer and way more CO2. Say we managed to cut our emissions by 20% over the next 10 years (unlikely but lets go with this figure). Say this happened over all 1.4 Billion industrialized people (again unlikely given many are already very efficient). Now put the total emissions (pollutants, CO2 and so on) of this group at 100. Now take 1.4 Billion who are essentially at next to zero and industrialize them. The industrialization process in notoriously dirty. Not sure if you have seen pics of the air pollution in China but - it is beyond ridiculous. This group will go to 200 units prior to settling down to first world levels in perhaps 20 years. So the total initially is 100 due to industrialized folks. 10 years later they have cut this by 20% down to 80. In the meantime .. we have 200 units of new pollution due to industrialization for a total of 280 units. As you can see - despite our 20% decrease - the total pollution output has almost tripled due to industrialization. And this assuming industrialization of only 2.8 Billion - out of 7.5 which expected to reach 8.5 Billion by 2030 - roughly 10 years from now. This is the problem that almost no one is talking about .. the big elephant in the room that is not being addressed. Right now - more than 2 cans of tuna a week and you exceed the mercury limit for pregnant women. Sure this is low but - still. We are hitting thresholds. What happens when we triple the pollutants entering the Ocean. The fertilizer issue is massive. Google "dead zones". What happens is that the nitrogen stimulates bacteria which use up all the oxygen creating a "dead zone". Dumping raw sewage into the Ocean is another source of nitrogen. One thing you will not find in these industrializing nations is a lack of dumping raw sewage and other pollutants into the oceans. I don't think we will make it long enough to see some of the more pressing impacts of climate change prior to some much large environmental catastrophe due to ocean pollution. Rising tides and flooding and bigger storms are nothing by comparison. Cortez and these other NGD clowns are making the problem worse. Blocking the Keystone for example. How does this help ? This will not change oil consumption in the US by one drop. All it does is changes who we get the oil from. Right now 46% of crude coming into US refineries is imported from 70 different nations. We can either get this from "Canada" - a nation that has environmental standards and does not dump stuff directly into the Ocean or "Nigeria" a nation that is a polluted wasteland. All we are doing by blocking the pipeline is transferring the pollution problem to nations like Nigeria and exacerbating the problem as they are far bigger polluters. Further we are incentivizing industrialization by diverting our supply to them.
