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Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

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Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

#291

Post by midoridensha »

mr_toad wrote: post #211
louison11 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the animals. There is more than planet and humans. If it was just us - to some extent - I’d say “we get what we deserve.” But animals vastly outnumber humans, feel pain just like us, and do not deserve any of it. At least that’s what I find myself experiencing when I think about the future of our planet. Edit: I looked it up. Estimate is 20,000,121,091,000,000,000 or 20 billion billion animals. “Vastly” was clear…

And most of those animals are livestock, and most would die along with us.

Huh? No, most animals are not livestock; that's pretty ridiculous.

The vast, vast majority of animals are insects.

Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

#292

Post by midoridensha »

kjs3 wrote: post #162
pil0u wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changes are static or not depending on the scale of time you consider. In a time span of billions (even millions) of years, our planet indeed went through different eras. For a duration of one human life, the state of nature is expected to remain quite static. The problem with climate change is that we started to witness the planet entering in a new era in such a small time frame - roughly 200 years.

I often use https://xkcd.com/1732/ when someone says "well, temperature has always varied...this is just part of a natural cycle".

This isn't the greatest illustration: it only goes back 20,000 years. That's only a minuscule portion of the Earth's history, and even for humans it's just a fraction of our history (humans are roughly 2M years old).

Of course, going back to the climate the Earth had in the Cambrian era, for instance, probably would not be comfortable to humans at all, but still, humans have survived for a much longer time than is illustrated here. Human civilization, OTOH, occupies about half the time period shown here.

The thing that's most important about climate change is: how will it affect human settlements where they're located now? You can't just pick up whole cities with billions of people and move them, and many (most?) of the cities are close to water.

Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

#293

Post by kjs3 »

midoridensha wrote: post #292
kjs3 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I often use https://xkcd.com/1732/ when someone says "well, temperature has always varied...this is just part of a natural cycle".

This isn't the greatest illustration: it only goes back 20,000 years. That's only a minuscule portion of the Earth's history, and even for humans it's just a fraction of our history (humans are roughly 2M years old). Of course, going back to the climate the Earth had in the Cambrian era, for instance, probably would not be comfortable to humans at all, but still, humans have survived for a much longer time than is il…

Way to wait a week to sneak this in. Anti-science thrives when it avoids scrutiny.

If you think going back more than 20k years would in any way change the entire point of the cartoon[1], then by all means do the research, draw the graph and show where it's wrong.

[1] hint: rate of change is important.

Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

#294

Post by midoridensha »

kjs3 wrote: post #293
midoridensha wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the greatest illustration: it only goes back 20,000 years. That's only a minuscule portion of the Earth's history, and even for humans it's just a fraction of our history (humans are roughly 2M years old). Of course, going back to the climate the Earth had in the Cambrian era, for instance, probably would not be comfortable to humans at all, but still, humans have survived for a much longer time than is il…

Way to wait a week to sneak this in. Anti-science thrives when it avoids scrutiny. If you think going back more than 20k years would in any way change the entire point of the cartoon [1], then by all means do the research, draw the graph and show where it's wrong. [1] hint: rate of change is important.

I waited a week because posting it sooner gets me "You're posting too fast. Slow down". So some of my replies are quick, others get queued up for days. Fix the site, don't complain to me.

Anyway, it's not anti-science. It's well-known that the earth was hotter during the time of the dinosaurs. Sure, rate of change is important, but as I said in the end, the biggest problem for humans is rising sea levels, because of where humans live. Worse storms are also a big problem, though here again where humans live is a big problem since they tend to live on coasts and storms usually hit there.

Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

#295

Post by kjs3 »

midoridensha wrote: post #294
kjs3 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Way to wait a week to sneak this in. Anti-science thrives when it avoids scrutiny. If you think going back more than 20k years would in any way change the entire point of the cartoon [1], then by all means do the research, draw the graph and show where it's wrong. [1] hint: rate of change is important.

I waited a week because posting it sooner gets me "You're posting too fast. Slow down". So some of my replies are quick, others get queued up for days. Fix the site, don't complain to me. Anyway, it's not anti-science. It's well-known that the earth was hotter during the time of the dinosaurs. Sure, rate of change is important, but as I said in the end, the biggest problem for humans is rising sea levels, because of…

Posting too fast clears in an hour or two, not days. Learn how the site works, don't complain to me.

It's classic climate denial to continue to harp that the earth was hotter in the past so somethingsomethingsomething look over there and ignore the fact that the rate of change this century, not looking back a million years, is the point of the comic.

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