this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2023
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Science Memes

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Pretty interesting, huh? (mander.xyz)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [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.)