this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
1199 points (97.3% liked)

World News

38188 readers
1978 users here now

A community for discussing events around the World

Rules:

We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.

All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.


Lemmy World Partners

News [email protected]

Politics [email protected]

World Politics [email protected]


Recommendations

For Firefox users, there is media bias / propaganda / fact check plugin.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/media-bias-fact-check/

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I mean, we left the planet. We created art. We did some good, and life will diversify again after we're gone.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

and life will diversify again after we’re gone.

Here's hoping; but that's far from a safe assumption. The kicker about the changes we're making to this planet is that a lot of them are positive feedback loops, so even if 100% of humans just got thanos-snapped out of existence RIGHT NOW, meaning a complete stop on fossil fuel consumption, deforestation, etc; the damage we've already caused will continue to get worse on its own with no further input from us.

So how far can those feedback loops go until they're broken naturally? They might stabilize; they might just carry on until this planet is molten.

There will for sure be life after the last human dies, but given a few thousand more years, even the most resilient of critters could still be fucked because of us.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

they might just carry on until this planet is molten

The odds of true runaway warming are very low, the planet has both been much hotter and had much higher CO2 levels in the past. The Holocene is actually a cool period, geologically.

We're just going to make it too hot to grow enough crops to feed the world.

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

it seems pretty likely that microprocessors will survive us, and give a BIG jump start to any species that follows. literacy seems to be a longer shot, but still a possible stepping stone for some other organism to take over our work. my money is on fungi to figure out microprocessors. if not them, then plants, especially "weeds". finally, ocean mammals might be able to work some of the junk we've made and cargo-cult themselves into the information age.

i really am hopeful for life on earth to survive the death of Sol.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

we did just waste a good few million years of evolution though (let's say 65 million accounting for the rise of mammals). earth isn't going to be habitable forever, from memory there's less than a billion years left before the temp would increase with the expanding sun enough to make liquid water impossible. feels like we kind of shot earth in the foot a bit here

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

65 million years isn't that bad on a geologic scale

As long as there isn't a runaway greenhouse effect that turns Earth to Venus, life would almost certainly continue, with or without us.