Climate change may have pushed ancient humans into extinction
now.northropgrumman.com
now.northropgrumman.com
Personally, I always feel gloom and doom when seeing them. We are fucked, there is no known scalable way to fix the damage if we wanted, and in fact the western world is partying straight into disaster.
Maybe I'm not alone here, so the stories get voted up but not commented on?
For what its worth, I see some hope the last few years. Some people are doing something both on a scientific and sociological level. Things are finally moving, even if it is not yet enough.
But there isn't anything to do. We missed our chance.
Focus on solutions & building resislency, not doom posting on HN
https://www.drawdown.org/ https://nori.com/podcasts/reversing-climate-change https://gimletmedia.com/shows/howtosaveaplanet
Yes... because we missed our chance to solve for this.
I get that humans on the whole will survive. But the "be the change you want to see in the world" type of feel goodery is complete bs. "You" are not the problem for climate change. Our politics are the problem and we seem determined to not solve that.
Don't be the change you want to see in the world, demand the change you want to see in your system. Don't rollover & accept defeat
While not an excuse to fuck up the planet more than we have had, we can pretty much turn it into a wasteland and still survive with modern technology it won’t be fun and it would cost many lives but realistically if you are living in a western country today you are both unfortunately and fortunately going to be shielded from most of it.
IDK, maybe.
Hypothesis:
1. Although we think its important we are tired of it because its always the same story. 2. Although we ACK the problem we want to avoid news about the imminent problem that we as individuals can not really act against.
It's a crisis which will be a catastrophe, but under no plausible endgame is extinction for us.
* [defaunation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction#Defaunatio...) * [humans just 0.01% of all life but have destroyed 83% of wild mammals](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra...) * [humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970, report finds ](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/oct/30/humanity...)
We're currently seeing a global ecosystem collapse:
* [study finds ocean ecosystems likely to collapse in 2020s and land species in 2040s unless global warming stemmed](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/apr/08/wildlife...) * [studies show drought and heat waves will cause massive die-offs, killing most trees alive today.](https://insideclimatenews.org/news/24042020/forest-trees-cli...) * [multiple overlapping crises could trigger 'Global Systemic Collapse'](https://www.sciencealert.com/hundreds-of-top-scientists-warn...) * [246 academics call on government to act now to avoid global collapse ](https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/02/04/opinion/246-acad...) * [Planet's largest ecosystems collapse faster than previously forecast](https://phys.org/news/2020-03-planet-largest-ecosystems-coll...)
World's oceans are also acidifying [to a similar rate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification#Rate) as the Permian extinction (but again in 100 years instead of 20k-60k), with an [anoxic event](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anoxic_event#Consequences ) locked in [after 1,000ppm or 360 gigatons](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170920182116.h...), which we will reach by 2100 at the latest. So that's whatever's left wiped out.
And here's what's currently happening with food production. Two different groups of 200+ scientists and academics, separately from each other, each warned of near-term global collapse:
* https://www.sciencealert.com/hundreds-of-top-scientists-warn... * https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/02/04/opinion/246-acad...
Examples of record-breaking crop failures currently happening:
* https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/06/midwe... * https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/19/extreme-heat-wave-hits-us-fa... * https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/may/15/austr... * https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/20/crop-fai... * https://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-02/low-rice-crop-lead... * https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people... * https://phys.org/news/2019-12-climate-whammy-corn-belt.html * https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/11/12/britain-facing-p... * https://weather.com/science/environment/news/2019-08-01-drou... * https://phys.org/news/2020-01-atlantic-circulation-collapse-... * https://phys.org/news/2019-12-climate-threat-global-breadbas... * https://phys.org/news/2019-12-large-atmospheric-jet-stream-g...
Scientific studies projecting future crop failures:
* [Schlenker and Roberts, 2009. Nonlinear temperature effects indicate severe damages to US crop yields under climate change. PNAS, 106(37), pp.15594-15598](https://www.pnas.org/content/106/37/15594.full) * [Mora et al, 2015. Suitable days for plant growth disappear under projected climate change: Potential human and biotic vulnerability. PLoS bio, 13(6), p.e1002167](https://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jou...) * [Schauberger et al, 2017. Consistent negative response of US crops to high temperatures in observations and crop models. Nature Comms, 8, p.13931.](https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms13931) * [Sakschewski et al, 2014. Feeding 10 billion people under climate change: How large is the production gap of current agricultural systems?. Ecological modelling, 288, pp.103-111](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/263472623_Feeding_1...) * [Liang et al, 2017. Determining climate effects on US total agricultural productivity. PNAS, 114(12), pp.E2285-E2292](https://www.pnas.org/content/114/12/E2285?collection=)
News articles about projected crop failures:
* [UN says passing 2C will have a 'very high projected risk' of global food supply instabilities](https://www.nbcnews.com/mach/news/climate-change-could-trigg...)
* [UN says passing 2C would cause 'multi-breadbasket failure'](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/08/climate/climate-change-fo...) * [UN says passing 2C would cause 60% of global wheat to be subjected to 'Severe Water Scarcity (SVS)' drought events](https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/09/26/new-research-wa...)
We have full blown plans to survive a nuclear winter, so I think with respect to les anciens, we have a better chance of beating it, unlike the other humanistic subspecies who didn’t make it out.