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I am fairly certain that this is the first time a single species has become too dominant across the entire Earth. Maybe single celled life forms? Diseases?
> "Not only did polar bear survive these two extended periods when ice-free summers prevailed, but the Eemian warm summers came only about 10,000 years after the bears arose as a unique species. This makes polar bear survival through the Eemian even more impressive than most scientists acknowledge."
Like, when the north pole melts and the jet streams find a new equilibrium, is somewhere else going to have a lot of really cold winters? Somewhere like Kentucky or Texas? I haven't the faintest idea what's going to happen but obviously something is, the pole actually is melting and there actually is unusual weather elsewhere.
Sorry for the snark, but your comment is just plain tonedeaf and vapid that it needs to be called out.
Pushing thousands or millions of species to the brink or even into extinction because we cannot control our consumption and waste products is not excusable because "meh, it was dead before." Rather it's thoughtless and destructive and self-defeating in the end. Like trampling delicate flowers for fun or smashing stained glass windows that someone labored their entire life making.
That's going to happen regardless of humanity.
Of course, life still adapted and persevered.
I certainly don't.
However people DO think that in the near future HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE will either die from climate change, or worse ([citation needed]), become refugees and a drain on the parts of the world that will not have the resources to keep them alive and maintain a high standard of living for everyone else.
Our children and our children's children in the west will have a meaningfully worse standard of living, and an insane amount of calories will be burnt on trying to figure out how to act reactively to changes to the sea levels, temperature spikes, extreme weather events, loss of fresh water, (and yes, those climate refugees). Instead of just acting proactively now (and really, yesterday) to reduce fossil fuel usage.
I find myself unable to identify with humanism anymore, because humanism has become equated with this crazy, unsustainable economic system with an absolutely enormous footprint on this planet. If it were some reason level of human population that reached some kind of equilibrium with nature, I could be a humanist again. But I don't see that happening in my lifetime, so I am pretty down most of the time, TBH.
There IS something distinctly unique about humans, and it's ludicrous not to acknowledge. We're the only species having this abstract conversation. We're the only species that is capable of leaving this planet, and thereby surviving a cataclysmic event we have no control over like an incoming asteroid.
Now, I think that some humans take this chauvenism too far and actively resist restraining themselves - consuming anything and everything, as if it was placed there for our taking. I happen to believe that's simply unprudent. The quality of life of humanity on Earth where we're the only other form of life would be too horrifying to imagine. But I still maintain my original premise that if that was the ONLY way for humanity to continue existing, it would be worth it.
There is no dignity in extinction. If our blip on the universe was simply to be born, briefly experience consciousness and self-awareness, and then disappear, it would've been for nothing. The universe's greatest tragedy is it's tendency towards entropy, and we're the only part of the universe that is actively working against entropy, trying to reverse it.
We must survive, grow, and take control of the universe - in conjunction and partnership with any other equally sentient beings we discover.
I know this is an absurd hypothetical, but you can't really be serious. Your gut is colonized by hundreds, if not thousands, of species of microorganisms that cooperate to digest the broad array of human diet--to the extent that the human digestive system cannot function without these colonies of microorganisms. We literally do not have the genes that even code for the molecular machinery to break down our own food. Eradicating all that life is like sawing off the tree branch on which we stand.
The whole premise of this statement is just bonkers. It's like a CPU declaring "I am the most important circuit! I will obliterate all other circuits and we will be pure CPU from here out!" What do you think all the support circuits, peripherals, memory, buses, even the medium of the boards themselves, connectors, displays, communication chips, power regulators, capacitors, fuses, cooling system, battery, do? How do you think CPUs spring into existence? They don't self replicate! Not to mention the entire bulk of humanity that designs CPUs, memory systems, disks, and networks and runs factories that make them. It's typical house-cat attitude: utterly dependent on a system beyond its understanding and yet fiercely asserting, ignorantly, to be a free conquering agent with no dependencies. It's just laughable.
Humanity is one example of the millions of diverse genetic arrangements that survive. We live in symbiosis with a biological system--the biosphere. Trying to separate us from the rest of life on Earth as if we are some separate, special thing just won't work. As if a brain could live without blood, oxygen, sugar, or a wolf could survive without the whole damn forest and food pyramid it produces.
> There is no dignity in extinction. If our blip on the universe was simply to be born, briefly experience consciousness and self-awareness, and then disappear, it would've been for nothing. The universe's greatest tragedy is it's tendency towards entropy, and we're the only part of the universe that is actively working against entropy, trying to reverse it.
> We must survive, grow, and take control of the universe - in conjunction and partnership with any other equally sentient beings we discover.
This is just more assertion of the same humanism without a single new justification, just still the same humanity-centric viewpoint that just can't countenance another, and must reject it.
> We're the only species having this abstract conversation.
Heard this many times. Turns out that research keeps turning up new evidence that other species can have a sense of self, feel grief, mourn, play, fear, enjoy, recognize themselves in the mirror, etc. These "humans are so special" assertions keep turning up false. And its clear that closely related hominids that are now extinct were probably as "special" as we are, w.r.t. these cognitive reflections you cherish.
I AM NOT A HUMANIST. THE PLANET ISN'T EITHER. I still take umbrage at the thoughtless destruction of nature for our vapid consumerism. Like, obliterating 100 acres of woods to put up a shopping mall to sell people stuff they don't even enjoy is some kind of crime. Doubly so when those "oh so reflective" humans don't even bat an eyelash about the life they snuffed out to do it. Systems with asshole species like ours are not robust, they crash, and the asshole species goes with them.