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Comment by ryan_j_naughton | Hacker News Reader

The six mass extinction event that humanity is currently causing is going to affect billions of people for centuries to come. If we have systemic ecosystem collapses and 90% of species go extinct, there will be a profound effects. When crops fail and fresh, potable water is extremely constrained, authoritarianism will sweep the world at an even more accelerated pace and regional and world wars are likely. It will be interesting to see how mutually assured destruction holds up and prevents nuclear war when climate change will have already guaranteed many levels of destruction and created a very desperate populace.

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If humanity is causing extinctions, it's due to habitat destruction and local pollution. Climate change (+0.38C from 1980-2010) is not the cause.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/06/first-mammal...

Do you have a response to this?

We live in an ever-changing planet. The sea level has been rising since 20,000 years ago, during the last deep ice age. We're still technically in an ice age, we're just in a temporary warming period called an interglacial. The state of various species is always in flux.

CO2 is fertilizing plant life on the earth. And satellite data confirms this: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...

Since plant life is thriving, so too will overall animal life. Although extinction will continue to occur just as it always has throughout the history of the planet.

It peeves me to no end to you just brought out the whole climate change skeptics handbook so surreptitiously, why didn't you make your opinions known in your earlier comments?

Which fact have I mentioned that you think is incorrect?

It's not as simple as more CO2 = better plant growth. In fact it is likely the opposite for C3 plants. [0] Things like Corn, which uses C4 photosynthesis will hardly be affected by more CO2 in the atmosphere. I could go on and on, but this thread is the wrong place for this discussion.

[0]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4036122/

https://science.gu.se/english/News/News_detail/increased-car...

https://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/effects-of...

It looks like doubling CO2 causes increase in carbs and a decrease in proteins but the difference is only 1.5-14% depending on the plant species, with soy beans being the least affected. Still, a doubling of CO2 can cause certain tree species overall mass to increase by 138%.

If the yields and plant mass overall increase by more than 14%, then perhaps the trade-off is worth it. And this is perhaps why commercial greenhouse growers pump CO2 into them up to 1200PPM.

At any rate it does seem like an interesting question. What sort of species will thrive in a high CO2 environment? I do have faith in plants and their ability to adapt to such conditions, as it was the conditions they thrived under in the Mesozoic and beyond.

At any rate, thank you for the interesting studies.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/j.1365-2486...

https://academic.oup.com/treephys/article-abstract/14/7-8-9/...

The sea level has been rising since the last glacial period, but it slowed down considerably 6000 years ago. Of course we're in an ice age, we haven't melted our poles yet and they usually last millions of years. You comment about the interglacial doesn't mean anything except giving us more runway to burn oil until we can't back out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation#Next_gla...

> The state of various species is always in flux.

You asked for instances of climate change causing an extinction, this is your response to me fulfilling your request?

And don't forget in your other conversation about CO2 and plants about the increased temperatures predicted under climate change: "the diverse impacts of higher temperatures on other metabolic processes are likely to feed back on carbon metabolism in ways that we do not currently appreciate."

https://nph.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/nph.15283

I know why you got downvoted, but i actually think you're overestimating the impact climate change would have on animals.

Earth has known far more extreme climate in the past than even the +4 degrees that we could reach because of human CO2 emissions. Some species may disappear from some parts of the globe, but for sure new ones would emerge thanks to increased temperatures in colder places.

However, never has a single specie had such a huge direct mechanical impact on the habitat of all the other species all around the world.

How did you come to this conclusion?

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