Why are we here?
"Superboy Prime (the yelling guy if he needs clarification)..." - Postmania
"...dropping an orca whale made of fire on your enemies is a pretty strong opening move." - Nik
"Why throw punches when you can be making everyone around you sterile mutant corpses?" - Pendaran, regarding Dr. Fate
"Display the same behaviors of parasitic organisms".
Living (in the strictest sense of the term) or not, the Earth is our host, and we as humans are doing a pretty damn good job of killing it. Like tapeworms.
... humans would probably make decent Orange Lanterns.
Bobfleeze.
Yeah, but if you... man, we're getting into weird analogy territory, like if you disintegrated Superman's arms he wouldn't be able to go "fool! Little did you know that my arms and I are one and can be remade from me!" and will his arms back into being from pure nothingness. - Pendaran
Arx Inosaan
I mean, if we're being pedantic, we're not really killing the Earth, per say. That's not really within our scope of abilities.
We can kill a ton of animals and seriously damage all the major ecosystems that constitute the planet's primary biomes and so on. We could render things broadly barren for a couple of centuries to a millennia tops. But, despite all that, the planet will, in geological terms, dust itself off and grow new life in peace.
Because, in the game of mankind versus the Earth, we can only really kill ourselves. Planet is way too big and resilient on a long enough timeline.
We're actually not. This is classic human superiority. Earth does not care. Earth does not hurt. Earth does not feel. Earth is "used" to massive changes caused by lots of things, and whether humans survive or thrive or not, other stuff will. The sum of changes caused by humans, while somewhat dramatic for us, is a minuscule drop in the ocean of changes the Earth has gone through over the last several billion years.
I'm not a fan of falsely attributing things to things that don't care or don't notice those attributions. It causes problems down the road.
Of note: when I say this, I absolutely acknowledge anthromorphic causes for climate change, and I'm against most of what causes them. It's the same reason I'm "mostly" vegan, the same reason I don't litter or pollute more than necessary, I'm against animal cruelty, I treat people well, I don't buy fast fashion, I don't eat fast food, I don't buy bottled water or sodas, I don't own a car, I turn the shower or tap off while putting on soap or shampoo or washing hands or shaving or brushing teeth. I just don't pretend that Earth is actually affected in any way that it won't come back from enormously quickly once we stop doing bad stuff. And it might be that we stop doing that bad stuff because we're all dead. As I mentioned - we are assholes, not parasites.
"But... But I want to be a big karate cyborg... ;_;" - Nik Hasta
"Get off my lawn! ...on this forum, that just makes people think of Cyclops." - Sharpandpointies
"...makes me think the Night King just says "Screw the rules, I have magic money" when it comes to physics." -Captain Morgan
Ah this wall of text might have been avoided if I worded better.
By killing the planet I largely mean killing our ability to live on said planet. It's pretty hard, or so the Star Spawn tell me, to destroy a planet outright. But in as far as we and all the other critters living on this rock are concerned killing the planet means killing us, and everything else on it.
And again, we display parasitic characteristics. I am not saying, or at the very least stopped saying as I walked myself through it several posts back; that we are parasites.
We just follow their playbook becuase, as you note, we're assholes.
Yeah, but if you... man, we're getting into weird analogy territory, like if you disintegrated Superman's arms he wouldn't be able to go "fool! Little did you know that my arms and I are one and can be remade from me!" and will his arms back into being from pure nothingness. - Pendaran
Arx Inosaan
Side note - current speculation regarding where we're going includes the possibility of a 'runaway greenhouse effect' which will do a lot more than 'just' kill off most of the biosphere. It'll finish it.
Check out Venus, as an example. Granted, Venus has other problems wrt to life as WE are, but the 450+ Celcius temperature is pretty up there.
Basically, while it's not one of the big likelihoods- yet - it's perfectly possible for us to be the cause of effectively the end of life on Earth, outside of a very few forms of microbes, rather than 'just us and whole lot of the rest of the biosphere'.
Last edited by Sharpandpointies; 05-13-2021 at 10:52 AM.
Why are we here?
"Superboy Prime (the yelling guy if he needs clarification)..." - Postmania
"...dropping an orca whale made of fire on your enemies is a pretty strong opening move." - Nik
"Why throw punches when you can be making everyone around you sterile mutant corpses?" - Pendaran, regarding Dr. Fate
(Walks into the thread, looks around, then facepalms) Again? Goddammit, you self-deprecating, borderline misanthropic monkeys! Can't you stick to the script for ONCE?! Fuck it. Only fire can save this thread - preferably nuclear.
Ichigo: What even *are* you?!
Kenpachi: Some say my mother was a train. Some say that I'm a rejected Godzilla monster too strong for the series canon. But everyone says: I'M THE KEEEEENPACHIIIIII!!!!
Why are we here?
"Superboy Prime (the yelling guy if he needs clarification)..." - Postmania
"...dropping an orca whale made of fire on your enemies is a pretty strong opening move." - Nik
"Why throw punches when you can be making everyone around you sterile mutant corpses?" - Pendaran, regarding Dr. Fate
You really cannot compare a planet that is half as far from the sun as Earth, with an atmosphere of sulfuric acid, to Earth. Venus isn't a couple of degrees warmer - it's hundreds of degrees hotter.
Also, what most doomsaying forgets is that there ARE emergency solutions that could be put into place to mitigate temperature increase - doping the upper atmosphere with reflective particles, etc. Not to say they wouldn't have other effects, and damn I hope we don't wind up resorting to these types of solutions just because we were too stupid to prioritize correcting bad behavior, but things like that would be done if the alternative was "extinction of all human and cuddly mammal life."
We've seen this before - industrial pollution threatened life and it was mitigated in the west. Acid rain and life-destroying smog don't exist in Europe and NA any more. You are about my age, you certainly remember that in the 80's, everyone was CERTAIN that we'd destroy the ozone layer and need sunblock 3 billion just to walk outside by 2021. Instead, we need a mask.
You know that I'm not advocating doing nothing against climate change - I've been clear about that above - but the way to deal with this is with honest, likely outcomes, clearly presented. Because if not, we'll have what happened during the IPCC meet in Copenhagen a few years back. It was after a hot summer that of course everyone blamed on global warming (not how that works of course - even the most painful models don't predict 2 degree spikes in a year or even 20 years). Unfortunately, the weather in Copenhagen was minus 20 with half a meter of snow and driving winter gales. So the people who wanted to argue against action just used the same torofecundian arguments that the people arguing for action used a few months before.
"But... But I want to be a big karate cyborg... ;_;" - Nik Hasta
"Get off my lawn! ...on this forum, that just makes people think of Cyclops." - Sharpandpointies
"...makes me think the Night King just says "Screw the rules, I have magic money" when it comes to physics." -Captain Morgan
To your point about Copenhagan, this is part of the reason the term "Climate Change," was adopted as opposed to "Global Warming,"
While, in essence, it's the heating of the planet that is the issue, that causes people to only look at hot weather as consequences. What that heating actually means is that all weather skews more extreme. Bigger storms happening more often, longer drier summers, colder and deeper winters. We are losing the balmy middle ground of our weather patterns and that does not bode well.
Of course. And even that is reductive. Because the "negative" effects are primarily going to be in places where rich-ish people with loud voices live or visit. My parents, with waterfront property in south Florida. Buildings on the NY/Tokyo/Shanghai/Amsterdam/Hong Kong/Sydney waterfront. Resorts in Saint Barths or Majorca. Europe, if Greenland melts. There are a lot of places which would/could be better off, actually, given predicted effects of moderate warming, but those places are full of "those" people and we in the west and the rich East give basically zero f's about them.
"But... But I want to be a big karate cyborg... ;_;" - Nik Hasta
"Get off my lawn! ...on this forum, that just makes people think of Cyclops." - Sharpandpointies
"...makes me think the Night King just says "Screw the rules, I have magic money" when it comes to physics." -Captain Morgan
So, I did say that Venus has a host of other problems, and that this is not considered to be one of the serious possibilities, just that it IS considered a possibility that we could trigger this. And that Venus is just an example.
But let's go with 'doomsaying'. <-- Don't particularly like this word.
https://www.technologyreview.com/201...fect-on-earth/
Here's an article that points out that even the people who are refuting the idea admit that it's possible and that their research doesn't take everything into account.
"Is there any missed physics or weak assumptions that have been made, which if corrected could mean that the runaway is a greater risk? We cannot answer this with the confidence which would make us feel comfortable.”
As an example of just one factor of which they are aware, they didn’t take clouds into account.
This was written back in 2012. Since then, we've learned that our permafrost melting - which is happening now - is another cycle that will warm the planet, because it'll dump untold amounts of methane into the atmosphere.
NOT to say that will trigger anything, but to point out 'we don't know a lot of stuff, and it's tending to show up more and more that the things we don't know are bad.'
Will it happen? Probably not. But as I pointed out, it's a possibility that even the scientists studying it say 'yeah, there's a chance. We don't know.' So to say 'there's no way we can annihilate the biosphere' maybe isn't a point of view we should have.
That was my entire point. Not to argue that it's going to happen.
But to quote me -
That's it.Side note - current speculation regarding where we're going includes the possibility of a 'runaway greenhouse effect' which will do a lot more than 'just' kill off most of the biosphere. It'll finish it.
Last edited by Sharpandpointies; 05-14-2021 at 05:33 AM. Reason: Accuracy of phrasing, removal of loaded and inaccurate qualifier. :)
Why are we here?
"Superboy Prime (the yelling guy if he needs clarification)..." - Postmania
"...dropping an orca whale made of fire on your enemies is a pretty strong opening move." - Nik
"Why throw punches when you can be making everyone around you sterile mutant corpses?" - Pendaran, regarding Dr. Fate