A significant number of mammals have generations every year (or less).
Of course, it doesn’t mean that we should not try to stop the impending doom that will kill off an insane amount of species, and render many populous places unlivable for humans, causing famine and wars - but Life itself will never be in any danger.
“Conditions possibly favourable for life on Venus have been identified at its cloud layers, with recent research having found indicative, but not convincing, evidence of life on the planet.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venus
See, in particular:
http://www.climate.gov/media/11332
We have a long, long way to go before Earth could be considered hot by historical standards. The IPCC worst-case warming scenario, where we do absolutely nothing to curtail global warming, puts us back at the midpoint in 2100.
Our 4.54-billion-year-old planet probably experienced its hottest temperatures in its earliest days, when it was still colliding with other rocky debris (planetesimals) careening around the solar system. The heat of these collisions would have kept Earth molten, with top-of-the-atmosphere temperatures upward of 3,600° Fahrenheit.
The second source is a chart going back 500 million years.
How is that related to IPCC projections and climate change, which are about the environment humans evolved to survive and thrive in - physiologically over 7 million years (when we had the last common ancestor with chimps), culturally and technologically over 10 thousand years.
I was not referencing the first couple paragraphs of the linked article, since obviously the first few million years of Earth’s existence are irrelevant, and they’re the same source, which tells me you did not actually read the article; please read through next time and respond charitably rather than assuming I’m some kind of crank. I would appreciate it if you read to understand rather than to respond. It’s very frustrating when people replying to you assume you are saying something completely different rather than reading what you said within its context - a Venus scenario wiping out all life. HN commenters should do much better. This isn’t Reddit. Your entire comment is premised on me saying or thinking something I never suggested or implied.
It’s true that humanity has survived during hotter and colder periods, but certainly nothing like that depicted on the 500mil graph, and anyway industrial civilization is obviously much more fragile.
This is the full text:
> In the last couple of years I've been thinking more often about a Venus scenario where life does not survive. We are just hoping that life will find a new equilibrium in the next couple million years like it has in the past. But if temperatures rise too fast, the planet will just get cooked before enough CO2 will be sequestered. The great filter is still in front of us.
Clearly, even a rapid return to the projected IPCCC 2100 worst-case numbers will not cause this scenario. Would it be deleterious for advanced industrial civilization? [1] Yes. Would it continue to be part of the mass extinctions we're causing? Yes. Will it "cook the earth" or "boil the oceans" as he suggests downthread? No.
[1] And so are a lot of other things. Whether people like it or not, advanced industrial civilization is unsustainable with or without climate change.
Is changing climate a challenge? Of course it is, for every living being that got used to the status quo. Being desperate about it is the opposite of what we want to do as desperation leads to stupid decisions (geoengineering, rapid one sided deindustrialisation etc).
Instead of dismissing other ideas - what should we do?
The last few decades has seen an exponential reduction in poverty, and the largest increase of food production in human history (It’s a statistical fact). To predict that will suddenly reverse is a heck of a bold claim.
But I won't be able to convince you with that, since you probably already know it, but choose to think happy thoughts instead.