Earth's ancient climate warns that we need to take urgent action, study suggests

[Admin]

Scientists looked into Earth's ancient history and found that it would take serious action in reducing fossil fuel emissions to prevent our climate from reaching prehistoric warming levels.

Earth's ancient climate warns that we need to take urgent action, study suggests : Read more

 

[Catastrophe]

The big question, of course, is: If it was so catastrophic then, how come we are here now?

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that we do nothing. Quite the opposite. I am against global warming.

Cat

 

[IG2007]

If it was so catastrophic then, how come we are here now?

Cat

Remember it took millions of years for Earth to revivify from the Catastrophe, Cat (pun intended ), and I doubt if humans would want to go back to its stage of Homo Habilis from what it is now, that too, for millions of years.

 

[Catastrophe]

Remember it took millions of years for Earth to revivify from the Catastrophe, Cat (pun intended ), and I doubt if humans would want to go back to its stage of Homo Habilis from what it is now, that too, for millions of years.

"if humans would want to go back to its stage of Homo Habilis"

Maybe we need to?

Cat

 

[IG2007]

Maybe we need to?

Cat

Why start from scrap when we can hammer out the steel?

"Only the test of fire makes fine steel.": Abraham Lincoln in his letter to his son's teacher.

 

[Catastrophe]

Why start from scrap when we can hammer out the steel?

"Only the test of fire makes fine steel.": Abraham Lincoln in his letter to his son's teacher.

"Why start from scrap when we can hammer out the steel?"
Maybe "we" (H.s.) don't know any better?

 

[IG2007]

Maybe "we" (H.s.) don't know any better?

Who knows?

 

[Crusader]

The big question, of course, is: If it was so catastrophic then, how come we are here now?

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that we do nothing. Quite the opposite. I am against global warming.

Cat

I think we do need alternative fuel sources, but killing pipelines and shutting down oil production overnight will kill us all quicker than global warming. We must all remember that CO2 is a NEEDED part of our atmosphere. But, we do need to slow fossil fuel use, I totally agree with that. Since we are living in a democracy here in the USA, opposition view points on this subject need to be posted so that we all can make actual educated decisions on our future. I only see ONE sided articles.....kill oil or we are all doomed. That is just not reality....

 

[sam85geo]

As I recall, H. Ergaster/Erectus was around for about 1 meg+ years due to a stable climate in the Pleistocene epoch. The climate changed and Evolution happened within the genus Homo. If we can't/ don't change our fossil fuel use wouldn't the same Evolution happen in response to global warming, (or cooling) provided that the change was not rapid? Hopefully, we we wouldn't go extinct. (My private list of exceptions notwithstanding). We are about halfway through the main-sequence, so it would seem that Evolution would come into effect despite us.

 

[Crusader]

As I recall, H. Ergaster/Erectus was around for about 1 meg+ years due to a stable climate in the Pleistocene epoch. The climate changed and Evolution happened within the genus Homo. If we can't/ don't change our fossil fuel use wouldn't the same Evolution happen in response to global warming, (or cooling) provided that the change was not rapid? Hopefully, we we wouldn't go extinct. (My private list of exceptions notwithstanding). We are about halfway through the main-sequence, so it would seem that Evolution would come into effect despite us.

I really like your thoughts and I think they have lots of merit. Thank you for sharing them, and yes I do think that humans are very adaptable as a species. I mean we just adapted to covid 19. As a species, we figured it out in a little over one year. So a slow roll of climate change should be something we can adapt to.

 

[Atlan0001]

As I've said before certain people are allowed to get [selectively] political on the forum because the thing that will kill us all the fastest of all, from the inside (Rome fell first from the inside), will be the utter tyranny (the utter anarchy of chains and contractions) of Utopia (of Orwell's Dystopia). You've picked the most perfect road to the totalitarian state and Armageddon in 'Environmentalism' without any alternative future or choice for freedom from an all encompassing (totalitarian state) communism of Earthly Utopia.

My answer and alternative: Initiate the Space Age as the greatest imperative of humanity and life soonest. Colonize space, therefore opening space wide open to a nova-like expansion of life from Earth. Once begun, even forcing it if necessary. Sure it's warlike. Nova-like explosion outwardly is a far better, far more benign, future than blackhole-like implosion inwardly. Divide outwardly or divide inwardly. Division in expansion outside is the only physic, absolutely the only physic, allowed by nature for unity inside and, therefore, a greater prosperity and peace for the greater many.

You (the general form of "you") can dream all you want of some kind of Utopianization of Earth (communally Utopian peace of Earth). All you will get from the actual pursuit of it, from even trying to chain all mankind to it, will be a utopian matter of dystopian anti-matter and holocaust.

I wonder if this lesson and truth of history will be allowed to stand here against a fog of utter dreaminess and denial. The only way the Earth becomes a fantastically great New Frontier is if it becomes an integral part of a fantastically greater New Frontier.

 

[Sparky]

So humanity will not die off right away but will have to alter the way we are living. Life was thriving 50 million years ago until humans screwed that up. Fossil fuels is only one part of the puzzle, deforestation is also another part of that puzzle. We do not have a great track record when it come to being the custodians of this planet. The one thing we need more then anything else including air to breath is Earth. We better get our acts together because it is already to late for the coastal cities. They are already doomed to be flooded out of existence. Nothing we do now (short of building huge retaining walls) will prevent that, the damage is already done. What we need to do is work on correcting the issues before it is too late for humans to exist as well.

 

[Atlan0001]

So humanity will not die off right away but will have to alter the way we are living. Life was thriving 50 million years ago until humans screwed that up. Fossil fuels is only one part of the puzzle, deforestation is also another part of that puzzle. We do not have a great track record when it come to being the custodians of this planet. The one thing we need more then anything else including air to breath is Earth. We better get our acts together because it is already to late for the coastal cities. They are already doomed to be flooded out of existence. Nothing we do now (short of building huge retaining walls) will prevent that, the damage is already done. What we need to do is work on correcting the issues before it is too late for humans to exist as well.

Sorry to disappoint you but we weren't evolved to be custodians of this planet. We were evolved to be exactly where we are and exactly what we are and are exactly pointed toward doing, which is expanding life from this planet. The last thing in this world we frontier life-type-- we Space Age creature type -- were evolved for is to be Utopian-type custodians of the planet. We either do the job we were designed to do or be marked by nature for violence from within, a design too, exactly the same design, but for extinction.

Earth-life has suffered several mass extinctions it has had to fight back from. Circling and waiting for the next one that might just wipe out all life here in its little corner of space is not why it put all its eggs, merged all its life types, in the human basket; the apex of the pyramid of Earth-life. This child now advanced in body (in enormous complexity of [Space Age] structure) and capabilities and needs and wants to the point of birthing, and needing to begin birthing, was never meant to occupy the womb world into perpetuity.
-------------------------
-------------------------
"Do not stay too long past the due time of birth" (what I vaguely remember reading of an ancient sage speaking to and about the need of a people to birth as a nation or else. I'm saying exactly the same thing today regarding the need to move on moving out from Earth. So too did Stephen Hawking warn, in his own words of course, before he died).

 

[sam85geo]

"We have met the enemy and it is us". ...... a quote from the cartoonist inventor of "Pogo". Today's maudlin concept follows: For me, Nature and Evolution have a cycle. A "successful" species overpopulates for the available resources needed for sustaining/maintaining life or those resources availability changes, then the species dies off to sustainable numbers and/or evolves to make use of other resources. Given our genetic rapaciousness and aggression, we can't/won't change voluntarily or pro actively. Perhaps lucky groups of humans will make it off Earth to colonize. For the majority of us remaining, Nature and Evolution will be our increasingly constant companions.

 

[bolide]

The big question, of course, is: If it was so catastrophic then, how come we are here now?

Please do not misunderstand me. I am not suggesting that we do nothing. Quite the opposite. I am against global warming.

Cat

We are here now because that episode of warming took place before "we" existed. We came along after things had settled down to the comparative Garden of Eden that we evolved in. The point they are making is that we are threatening to drive Earth's climate into a regime that no humans ever lived through.

 

[bolide]

As I recall, H. Ergaster/Erectus was around for about 1 meg+ years due to a stable climate in the Pleistocene epoch. The climate changed and Evolution happened within the genus Homo. If we can't/ don't change our fossil fuel use wouldn't the same Evolution happen in response to global warming, (or cooling) provided that the change was not rapid? Hopefully, we we wouldn't go extinct. (My private list of exceptions notwithstanding). We are about halfway through the main-sequence, so it would seem that Evolution would come into effect despite us.

"provided that the change was not rapid"
The trouble is that we are driving change at a rate orders of magnitude faster than anything that we evolved through.

 

[bolide]

Sorry to disappoint you but we weren't evolved to be custodians of this planet. We were evolved to be exactly where we are and exactly what we are and are exactly pointed toward doing, which is expanding life from this planet. The last thing in this world we frontier life-type-- we Space Age creature type -- were evolved for is to be Utopian-type custodians of the planet. We either do the job we were designed to do or be marked by nature for violence from within, a design too, exactly the same design, but for extinction.

Earth-life has suffered several mass extinctions it has had to fight back from. Circling and waiting for the next one that might just wipe out all life here in its little corner of space is not why it put all its eggs, merged all its life types, in the human basket; the apex of the pyramid of Earth-life. This child now advanced in body (in enormous complexity of [Space Age] structure) and capabilities and needs and wants to the point of birthing, and needing to begin birthing, was never meant to occupy the womb world into perpetuity.
-------------------------
-------------------------
"Do not stay too long past the due time of birth" (what I vaguely remember reading of an ancient sage speaking to and about the need of a people to birth as a nation or else. I'm saying exactly the same thing today regarding the need to move on moving out from Earth. So too did Stephen Hawking warn, in his own words of course, before he died).

We are not waiting for the next Great Extinction to come along. It's here, and we are driving it.

 

[bolide]

So humanity will not die off right away but will have to alter the way we are living. Life was thriving 50 million years ago until humans screwed that up. Fossil fuels is only one part of the puzzle, deforestation is also another part of that puzzle. We do not have a great track record when it come to being the custodians of this planet. The one thing we need more then anything else including air to breath is Earth. We better get our acts together because it is already to late for the coastal cities. They are already doomed to be flooded out of existence. Nothing we do now (short of building huge retaining walls) will prevent that, the damage is already done. What we need to do is work on correcting the issues before it is too late for humans to exist as well.

There were no humans 50 million years ago. Whatever primates existed then were too small in number to have global effects.