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Comment by nomel | Hacker News Reader

A cursory look at the history of the planets temperature [1] makes this sentiment seems ridiculous.

We're still in below average temperatures. Considering our dummy ancestors were around 50 million years ago, when averages were 30 degrees hotter, I don't see why man, as we are now, wouldn't survive. The poles will be nice tropics, once again [2].

Society as is, is doomed, but man is probably fairly permanent.

[1] https://www.climate.gov/sites/default/files/styles/full_widt...

from

https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-hotte...

[2] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/study-north-pole-once-was-tropi...

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In the past this happened over timescales that allowed nature to adapt. We're now doing it many times faster, and at a time when nature is already greatly diminished due to human resource extraction.

We're just desertificating vast regions of the planet, not turning them into "nice tropics".

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fer...

> our dummy ancestors were around 50 million years ago

While true, this vague statement may be misinterpreted by readers. Per Wikipedia[0], about 55 million years ago is the first fossil evidence of any apes. The 'homo' genus, which is what I'd consider "our dummy ancestors", doesn't appear until 2 million years ago (and anatomically modern humans 300,000 years ago).

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution

No doubt we could also reach world population levels that our ancestors experienced 50 million years ago.

Sure, which is why the original comment is silly. Humans will be very hard to make extinct.

I just don't understand why people make these arguments.

When people speak of "humanity" they don't mean "the human species". They/we mean of "human society", our current variant, which just invented computers, artificial intelligent, and until very recently seemed set on ending all resource scarcity, curing all diseases, and becoming inter-planetary.

Will humans survive somewhere in the climate as our ancestral species did before us? Of course.

But losing 2000 years of societal progress is not something to just waive away as nothing.

As long as we are succeptible to a tiny rock floating in space swiping our little planet and wiping out all of us, we must progress technologically, and a regression to merely surviving and dying of a broken ankle is not an answer.

> but us humans probably are just going to be a blip on Earth's history

They were clearly talking about humans, the animal, not society.

I see this argument a lot on conservative news, "humans will adapt". Well, yes, humans will adapt, and there probably will be humans carrying on for thousands of more years.

But not US, WE, todays societies will be gone. Why is this an argument with 'conservatives'? The stupid 'woke' should stop worrying about climate, because humans will adapt.

But why is this a 'conservative' argument, when all of their religions will also be gone. When we are back in the stone ages, there will be humans, but not 'Republican'. Unless, in the dystopian future, the Christian Right does devolve into a Taliban like Ameri-stan where they can go 'Old Testament' on gays. But that does seem like a pretty long game argument. Is it really: "Deny Climate Change so we can destroy civilization back into bronze age so we can just wander the desert worshiping god, like we were supposed to"

I had a light-switch moment listening to some conservative or other on a rant about how the left is making up climate change in order to justify government control of business/society. It's the kind of comment that says more about the person making it than those they are accusing. If you loathe the idea of collective action, then an existential problem that requires collective action to solve poses a problem for you, and denial seems to be the simplest route out of any cognitive dissonance.

I was just responding to the comment "but us humans probably are just going to be a blip on Earth's history", which you also seem to disagree with.

I don't know why conservatives think that, but I think it's silly to think that humans, the animal, will be wiped out within the next 1000 years, due to the very real climate change that is happening.

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