this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Science Memes

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Thankfully the earth is a self-stabilizing system. Unfortunately it takes a few million years for the natural carbon cycle to reach equilibrium from a swing out point such as this.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, and it will stabilize to a climate that isn't very habitable for anything that currently lives here, maybe nothing will be here but simple called organisms, we really don't know how bad it will be.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Please reread my comment. It will stabilize it will just take an epoch. We will be very dead and extinct before that happens planet will be fine though It's been through far worse. I for one am excited to see what survives the next great dying.

My field is not climate change Nor am I an climate historian, but if I remember correctly take something like 25 to 35 million years give or take for the current excess carbon to be sequestered naturally

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Sorry to be an ass but the stupid "the Earth will be fine" nonsense needs to end. Nobody thinks we're going to "kill" all the rocks, and earth's core, and the mantle and mountains lol. We're talking about our fucking habitat and ecosystem we need to survive.

We and many/most other species cannot survive/adapt fast enough to a fast and catastrophic change to our habitat, which we absolutely objectively are causing. Just because we could possibly survive this because of our ingenuity and intelligence is completely irrelevant. I don't want our greatest challenge as a species to be figuring out how to survive a dystopian apocalyptic scenario because of extreme greed and selfishness. I'd prefer our species challenges to be things like star trek warp drives and replicators and holodecks and other cool stuff instead, but no we gotta keep making sure billionaires make even more money.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I'm not very excited for the suicide of humanity

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Is it actually self-stabilizing though? Or I guess it depends what you mean by that. AFAIK the earth has been in many different stages lasting for long times, changing from one to the other due to various factors. But it's unlikely earth will return to a pre-industrial state, even after millions of years, especially if we keep emitting CO2, I believe.

But if you just mean that a new plateau will be reached eventually, then sure, a mass extinction will still happen though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

CO2 usually stabilises within tens of millions of years and would probably go back to a pre industrial level.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If the earth enters a state where most of the water is locked up in glaciers ('snowball earth'), then it is unlikely that it will be able to exit it. Similarly, if it becomes too hot, it is again unlikely that it will return to what it is now. The earth can handle small disturbances in CO2 / temp, but a sufficiently large swing can lock us into one of the extreme situations.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

True, however there were extinctions caused by far larger increases in CO2 than we have today and it didn’t happen. So at this moment it does not seem likely that we will achieve it this time.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Ah, fair. (Unless we melt the permafrost, then all bets are off.)