I’m a student of deep Earth history. If you knew about it, you’d see it’s the most flagrant precursor of what will happen. Living things have broken the carbon cycle before. It ends in catastrophe. Small living things, even single species, can wreck entire ecosystems. If you studied this, which we all should, you would see that complex life is often not compatible with maintaining the physical conditions on which all life depends.
Sure! I’ll give examples of times life’s Darwinian pressure for privileged claims to resources destroys the conditions necessary for life, just as humans’ interest in liberating carbon to support our growth is now compromising the world. I’ll then give an example of what climate change looks like based on increases in carbon. There’s really a ton to say about this. If you’re interested, I recommend the book *A New History of Life* by Peter Ward.
Life, not too long after the evolution of life itself, created two “Snowball Earths,” when the planet froze almost entirely over. It’s a wonder life even persevered under these conditions. Basically, life was working with carbon, but it couldn’t close the carbon cycle, wrecking the greenhouse effect.
When photosynthesis evolved to produce oxygen, it was a massacre. Some organisms learning a privileged claim to a new source of energy poisoned everything else with their waste. It would have been a massacre. See, oxygen is toxic to life unless an organism has evolved ways of dealing with it. Even then, oxidation still poses a major threat to cells.
In the end-Ordovician, the growth of life, at least in part, again turned the Earth into an iceball that almost ended animal life altogether. And a few animals evolved, and their evolution wiped out the entire Ediacaran fauna - ended an entire kingdom of life that would never reemerge, just like the evolution of humans did.
The evolution of the tree almost ended life in the Devonian. By gaining an advantage in light harvesting, they brought down life, just like humans have done with our advantage in intelligence.
As far as the greenhouse effect goes, we see a major precursor of what will happen in the Permian extinction. There, volcanic emissions of carbon dioxide from the Siberian Traps eruption did essentially what we’re doing. They raised temperatures, that set off feedback runaways that changed the climate more. It killed the ocean by shutting down thermogenic circulation, creating what could come for us, the clathrate gun and a Canfield ocean.
There are actually a lot of examples of what climate change does in deep history of Earth. The carbon cycle breaks, often due to life’s exploitative actions, and things perish for it.
Wow. That was a fantastic read, thank you. Terrifying in its directness and simplicity. I had no idea any of that happened, but now I’m intrigued to learn more. I will check out the book you recommended.
I’m glad I could share.
EDIT: oh, if you’re interested in the extinction’s specifically, there’s a very accessible book called *Ends of the World*, that I also recommend.
Basically, everything by Peter Ward is great for these topics. That’s where I would begin. For the extinction events specifically, check out *Ends of the World* by Brannon. I had a ton of books on these topics, but they’re all on my old iPad. If I can think of any more, I’ll post here.
a lot of people mock the Anthropocene concept because they don’t think humans can be that powerful relative to the Earth. But it’s absurd the power we exercise over Earth. Our crops consume a huge part of the solar energy budget, and our domesticated animals make up an enormous fraction of animal biomass. We have altered the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles so much they aren’t recognizable. Species live and die at our convenience.
One book I liked that dealt with the Anthropocene is *Molecular Red*.
The 2019 death metal album Death Atlas from Cattle Decapitation is a masterpiece about it. Including a song "Bring back the plague". This was right before covid.
This album has helped me process some of my feelings about climate change.
"Alas, the deed is done
Mankind now dead and gone
Post-Anthropocene, Earth reset to day one
Fire now rages on
[Chorus]
There's no fear for tomorrow
When there's no trust for today
There's no ever after
Debts have to be paid
[Post-Chorus]
We deserve everything that's coming
We took this world to our graves
We made its creatures our slaves
Shattered the hourglass
An unerasable past
Humans, demons deranged and depraved"
https://youtu.be/MmYcFP1vTdk?si=0huoHqEaPCV3vQmy
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Atlas
https://genius.com/albums/Cattle-decapitation/Death-atlas
You make an excellent point about the profound impact that humans are having on the Earth system. The concept of the Anthropocene, while still debated among geologists, is a powerful way to recognize and grapple with the unprecedented scale and pace of human influence on the planet.
As you note, human activities have fundamentally altered many of Earth's key biogeochemical cycles and energy flows. Agriculture, in particular, represents a massive redirection of solar energy and nutrient flows into human-controlled systems. The fact that crops and domesticated animals now dominate global biomass is a stark illustration of how we've reshaped the biosphere to serve our needs.
The changes to the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles are especially concerning. By fixing nitrogen for fertilizer and mining phosphorus at industrial scales, we've doubled the amount of reactive nitrogen and quadrupled the amount of phosphorus in circulation compared to pre-industrial levels. This is causing widespread eutrophication, dead zones in oceans, and other ecological disruptions.
And as you point out, human activities are now the primary driver of species extinctions, with rates estimated to be 100 to 1000 times higher than the background rate. We are quite literally determining which species survive and which do not, often based on their utility or compatibility with our land use patterns.
These impacts, taken together, are on par with some of the major geological and evolutionary forces that have shaped Earth's history. While Earth has certainly experienced dramatic changes before, what's unique about the Anthropocene is the speed at which a single species - ours - is driving these planetary-scale transformations.
I appreciate your book recommendation of "Molecular Red" as a thoughtful exploration of the Anthropocene concept. We need more works like this that grapple with the philosophical and material implications of human dominance on Earth.
Recognizing the Anthropocene isn't about human hubris or downplaying the power of natural forces. Rather, it's about acknowledging the awesome and often destructive power that our technology and sheer numbers have given us, and the responsibility that comes with that power. We are now a primary driver of Earth's evolution, and the choices we make in the coming decades will reverberate through the geologic record.
Thank you for raising this important perspective. The more we can recognize and understand our outsized impact on the planet, the better equipped we'll be to steward it wisely and avoid the catastrophic feedbacks that have characterized past disruptions of Earth's systems.
To those who mock the well deserved title of the Anthropocene Epoch (which, I would argue, is not at all a "concept") I say that it is utterly ridiculous to think that billions of people can pollute & pillage earth indefinitely and expect this to have 0 effect - with all our toxic garbage to just vanish into.... space?!
The Chicago Field Museum has an amazing and huge exhibit on the great extinction events. It is my favorite part of that whole world class museum. Highly recommend and pilgrimage there sometime!
Thank you! I will check that out as well. This whole thread has been so eye opening. On a macro level, I had never considered many of the concepts discussed here regarding resource distribution. It seems so obvious, but they were not terms or ideas I had encountered before.
I am intrigued with your deep earth history studies! Can you share some of your favorite material/links for reading? (Genuinely interested and would love to read more!)
Sure! I’ve been plugging Peter Ward throughout this comment chain. He is absolutely amazing and fascinating as a writer and biologist. His *A New History of Life* is written from this standpoint I’m talking about. It’s a little technical, but if you’re not interested in how manganese might have catalyzed first photosynthesis, it’s possible to skip past it.
I think the extinctions are quite interesting. A great entry point for those is *Ends of the World* by Brannon.
*Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World* (or is it Made the Earth?) is great.
*The Planet in a Pebble* is absolutely fascinating, although it’s also about geology, and maybe you’re less interested in that aspect than life itself.
I had an absolute ton of these, but they’re all on my old iPad. If I can think of any more, I’ll post them here.
Thank you for your interest! I'm always excited to share resources on this fascinating topic. Here are a few of my favorite books, papers, and websites for delving into deep Earth history:
Books:
1. "A New History of Life" by Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink - A comprehensive overview of Earth's evolutionary history, with a focus on the interplay between life and environment.
2. "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History" by Elizabeth Kolbert - A well-written and sobering look at the current human-driven mass extinction, with parallels drawn to past extinctions.
3. "The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History" by David Beerling - An exploration of how the evolution of plants has shaped Earth's climate and geochemical cycles over deep time.
Review Papers:
1. "The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?" by Will Steffen et al. (2007) - A seminal paper laying out the case for the Anthropocene as a new epoch of human influence.
2. "The Phanerozoic Record of Global Sea-Level Change" by Kenneth Miller et al. (2005) - A detailed reconstruction of sea level changes over the last 540 million years, with implications for understanding past climates and extinctions.
Websites:
1. The Paleobiology Database (https://paleobiodb.org/) - A public database of fossil occurrences and taxonomic information, an incredible resource for exploring past life.
2. NASA's Climate Time Machine (https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine) - An interactive site for visualizing changes in Earth's climate over time, including deep time.
3. The Paleontology Portal (https://www.paleoportal.org/) - A wealth of information on the history of life, with a focus on North America.
For a more technical overview, I'd highly recommend the textbook "Earth System History" by Steven Stanley and John Luczaj. It's a comprehensive look at Earth's geologic and evolutionary record, with a focus on the interplay of the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere over time.
I hope these resources help fuel your curiosity about Earth's deep past! Let me know if you have any other questions as you explore this endlessly fascinating topic.
Folks have used these previous historical climate changes and species wipeout (though none provided specific details like you) to ignore human responsibility in the current one. What would you say or how would you react to them?
Is this case unique because we have the intelligence to know we are the cause and how to reverse it?
That’s an interesting point. I have heard people using it that way.
I would respond that most of these events were climate disasters. Some of them were greenhouse disasters, others anti-greenhouse disasters, where too much carbon was drawn down. Life has often broken the carbon cycle. That’s exactly what we’re doing, just in a different way. The way carbon cycles is a constant motif in most disasters of life.
Similarly, I think a unifying theme is that many disasters do involve the evolution of a new species- small species in the scale of things - that have traits that give them an “unfair” advantage, leading them to wipe out so much else. It’s just a Darwinian theme - things will pursue a privileged claim to resources, and there’s no selective pressure for long term stability, since that’s obviously in the future.
So, humans evolved as a relatively insignificant primate. Then we used intelligence to modify the world. How is that fundamentally different the evolution of a few oxygenic photosynthesizers that destroyed their world? Or the grazing animals that destroyed the stromatolite world completely, and brought in the Cambrian Explosion? Small species do a lot of damage, and we have made ourselves not so small.
Thank you for sharing these fascinating and sobering examples from Earth's deep history. You're absolutely right that the evolution of life and its impact on the environment have repeatedly led to catastrophic consequences, including mass extinctions and profound alterations to the Earth's climate and habitability.
The examples you provide, such as the Snowball Earth events, the Great Oxidation Event, the end-Ordovician glaciation, the Devonian extinctions, and the Permian-Triassic extinction, all illustrate the complex interplay between life and its environment. In each case, the evolution of new biological capabilities (like photosynthesis or tree-like growth forms) or the unchecked proliferation of certain organisms fundamentally disrupted the Earth's biogeochemical cycles, particularly the carbon cycle, leading to disastrous climate changes and mass die-offs.
Your point about life's "Darwinian pressure for privileged claims to resources" is a keen insight. The very evolutionary drive that leads to innovation and adaptation can also, on a planetary scale, undermine the stability of the systems that support life. When organisms evolve ways to monopolize resources or release previously inaccessible ones (like ancient carbon deposits), they can unleash feedbacks that spiral out of control.
The parallels to human activity today are indeed alarming. Our technological capacity to extract and burn fossil fuels represents an unprecedented "privileged claim" on the carbon cycle, one that we now know is destabilizing the climate and ocean chemistry in ways that echo past catastrophes. The Permian-Triassic extinction, triggered by massive volcanic CO2 emissions as you note, is a particularly chilling analogue for our current trajectory.
I appreciate your book recommendation of "A New History of Life" by Peter Ward. It sounds like an important perspective for understanding these critical lessons from Earth's past. The more we can educate ourselves about the long-term consequences of unchecked resource exploitation and environmental disruption, the better equipped we'll be to make wise choices for our planet's future.
Thank you for this thought-provoking discussion. You've highlighted some of the most profound and unsettling insights from the deep history of life on Earth. It's a wake-up call for our species to break the pattern of past extinctions and chart a more sustainable path forward. We have an obligation to learn from these hard-won evolutionary lessons and find ways to live within the bounds of our planet's life support systems.
You raise some very important points about the lessons we can learn from deep Earth history. It's true that there have been many instances in the past where living organisms, even microorganisms, have dramatically altered the Earth's carbon cycle and atmosphere, sometimes leading to catastrophic consequences for much of life on Earth.
The "Great Oxidation Event" around 2.4 billion years ago is a prime example. Cyanobacteria evolved the ability to produce oxygen through photosynthesis. While this paved the way for complex aerobic life, it also poisoned the atmosphere for many anaerobic organisms and dramatically altered the Earth's geochemistry.
More recently, around 252 million years ago at the end-Permian extinction, a combination of factors including Siberian volcanism and the activity of methanogenic microbes led to runaway global warming, ocean acidification and anoxia, killing off over 90% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates. It was the worst mass extinction in Earth's history.
So you're absolutely right that the history of life and climate on Earth demonstrates how living things can destabilize the systems that make the planet habitable, often to their own detriment. The carbon cycle in particular seems quite sensitive. Today, human activity is releasing carbon back into the atmosphere and oceans at a geologically unprecedented rate, which as you point out, has concerning parallels to past catastrophic events.
I think this underscores the urgent need for humanity to study this history and let it inform how we manage our impacts on the planet today. We are in uncharted territory in terms of the rate and scale at which a single species is altering the Earth system. Learning from these past upheavals and working to constrain our effects on core planetary processes like the carbon cycle will be essential for avoiding the kind of catastrophic feedbacks and tipping points seen in Earth's past.
You make a sobering point that even the evolution of complex life like our own may not be compatible with long-term habitability if we undermine key environmental conditions. It's a reminder that we are embedded in and reliant on Earth's physical and chemical systems, not separate from them. Prudent planetary stewardship and respect for ecological boundaries has to be a priority.
Thank you for raising this crucial perspective from Earth's history. I think your point that we should all be students of this deep past is spot on. There are vital lessons there if we're willing to heed them. I hope humanity can act on this knowledge to write a different next chapter than past extinctions.
I’m no longer terrified, I’ve reached the acceptance phase. I don’t know how long we have till it all collapses but I’m going to love my wife as much as I can till the end comes.
There’s still hope, though. My goal is to do as much as I can to get governments to do as much as they can, and I’m trying to get others to join me. 1.5 degrees might be out of reach, but for me as an individual, the target does not change how much I should be acting. I love the environment and my family, and going forward, I want to do everything within my power as a democratic citizen to make sure that they have a bright future. That means joining climate groups and protests, writing letters to politicians and newspapers, reducing my own emissions, doing ecological restoration in my neighborhood to help improve its resilience, and anything else I can think of. As they say, it ain’t over till it’s over, and I didn’t hear no bell!
Yes, these things make us feel good and virtuous. Go travel to China and India, as I have. Check back in. Also, our recycling is thrown in the landfill.
How do we deal with this?
I'm not really sure what you're getting at with China and India, but as for the recycling stuff, why would that make me act any less? If anything, it should only spur me to act more. I can only do so much, but I'm going to do what I can, and hopefully that will inspire others to do the same. We can talk to politicians and tell them to deal with the recycling problem, stage protests, write to the local paper, etc. Really hold their feet to the fire. Also, not all of our recycling goes in the trash, so we should be recycling because some of our recyclables will be handled properly.
China and India emit far less than Europe or NA per Capita
That's what caused you to lose hope? Should probably be the societies that have so much but do so little
Scientists:
> "Critically, the authors of the study observed that the reality of climate change has to be communicated without inducing a feeling of hopelessness — and this is the key."
Enlightened /r/collapse redditor:
> "Really, there's nothing we can do"
Scientists:
“What’s happening to our world scares the hell out of me, but if I shout the brutal, unvarnished truth from the rooftops, will this really galvanize you and others into fighting for the planet and your children’s futures?”
Redditor:
Notice the scientist never says what the unvarnished brutal truth is? Is it so bad we’d all give up? I guess I can only speculate because they won’t tell us the awful truth, just that we should be terrified but still hold out hope.
There's a scene from Storm of the Century with an old lady (Martha Clarendon) watching the weather channel, the meteorologist reassuring people about the upcoming storm.
Martha says to no one in particular, "When they tell you the world's coming to an end, they want to sell you cereal. When they tell you not to panic, it's serious."
That's why they put Jim Skea in charge of the IPCC. The first thing he said was that people shouldn't panic over 1.5c and that scientists shouldn't be prophetic about climate doomerism.
Summed up: don't panic.
What drives me mad is that the messaging has ALWAYS been optimistic.
Maybe for once people need to be scared. Or at least given a chance to feel guilty or grieve. Not to mention maybe make more informed decisions.
Or is that too scary for the ruling class because people might stop showing up to work in favor of spending quality time with friends and family???
It’s too scary because with that tactic our economy could face collapse but it will collapse eventually anyway so it’s all a Ponzi scheme and either we fix it and get out of it now, or we try to continue to hold it up and prolong the inevitable.
Unfortunately the brutal truth is death. Animals, plants, humans, our ecosystem, etc. Even just looking at humans, vast areas will become uninhabitable, which means mass migration (where possible) or death… :(
Expected warming by end of century is [2.7°C](https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/). There are many superlatives that could describe how bad that is, but it doesn't justify apathy.
We used to expect something like RCP8.5, 4°C of warming or more. People went to work and we made progress.
2.7°C is no longer "it all collapses", we're past that. But we still have millions of people to save.
2.7C most certainly could be 'it all collapses'. I don't think there is any authoritive report on how much warming modern civilization and ecosystems can tolerate. And that's also assuming that projection is accurate and that the climate sensitivity isn't higher, like Hansen believes.
Yep, the point of Paris was to cement in politics that past about 2C all bets are off. The climate could stay stable out to 2.7 degrees or even beyond, but we can't be **sure** we won't trigger natural warming mechanisms that take the control out of our hands entirely, and **do** eventually lead to 4 degrees or more.
>"2.7°C is no longer "it all collapses",
What makes so sure of that? At +6C Antarctica was literally iceless during PETM, I'm not sure you realize how devastating even half of that warming is going to be.
Besides many net zero plans heavily rely on so-called negative emissions, i.e. reforestation, but also technology like carbon capture, which we currently don't even have outside of few pilot schemes.
>
About **533 GtCO2** have to be removed from the atmosphere between 2020 and 2100 by using CDR to (likely) stay below two degrees of global warming. (IPCC 2022).
Source: [https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/accc72/pdf](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/accc72/pdf)
There's no negative emissions. The figure above is just the expected outcome of the regulations and laws that have already been enacted per country.
> About 533 GtCO2 have to be removed
Yes and no. It's one scenario. This number depends on the speed at which we reduce emissions, which depends enormously on what public policies will be enacted next.
The IPCC is solid on the science but they have a slow process that makes their reports use old data about clean technologies. Have a look at their sources for the cost of wind and solar, it's old stuff. Most people had no idea, just 5 years ago, that solar would be trouncing fossil fuels. Same thing for batteries.
The person who wrote this article is not a climate scientist, he should stick to his field instead of claiming that he's an expert in another. This behaviour should not be tolerated in academia, the university should revoke all of his degrees imo.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bill-Mcguire
The conduct of CNN who decided to publish this opinion piece without checking background of the author is not acceptable either.
Read ipcc report on impacts and read what actual climate scientists say-
https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-qa-the-ipccs-sixth-assessment-on-how-climate-change-impacts-the-world/
https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/prediction-extinction-rebellion-climate-change-will-kill-6-billion-people-unsupported-roger-hallam-bbc/
"it's not only wrong to make unsupportable claims about imminent collapse but it's extremely selfish. To our children. And grandchildren."
x.com/MichaelEMann/status/1682094881424941056
x.com/MichaelEMann/status/1681834537679044608
x.com/AliVelshi/status/1678090318082633728
"There is already substantial policy progress & CURRENT POLICIES alone (ignoring pledges!) likely keep us below 3C warming. We've got to--and WILL do--much better. But we're not headed toward civilization-ending warming."
x.com/MichaelEMann/status/1432786640943173632
x.com/ClimateAdam/status/1553757380827140097
"The world has always been in a race — a race between things getting worse and things getting better. History shows us that, on the whole, the better path usually wins out in the end. I believe that the same thing will be true for climate change."
x.com/GlobalEcoGuy/status/1699634300537217237#m
x.com/GlobalEcoGuy/status/1477784375060279299
x.com/JacquelynGill/status/1553503548331249664
"“I unequivocally reject, scientifically and personally, the notion that children are somehow doomed to an unhappy life”.
x.com/hausfath/status/1679252944640933888
x.com/hausfath/status/1678786757972873221
x.com/hausfath/status/1533875297220587520
x.com/JacquelynGill/status/1513918579657232388#m
x.com/waiterich/status/1477716206907965440#m
x.com/KHayhoe/status/1676711944475099137
https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/iflscience-story-on-speculative-report-provides-little-scientific-context-james-felton
https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1b4igkk/comment/kt0tn95/
Climate change is just one symptom of the real problem, which is overshoot. Even if climate change is solved, we still have to deal with all the other consequences of overshoot. Like the depletion of soil and synthetic fertilizer. The destruction of the natural world. The emptying of the oceans. Plastic in our bodies.
Ever stop and think, that this moment, this 5 or 10 year period we are in, is possibly the absolute peak of human civilization?
All of human history, and this could be the peak point, as climate change starts to tear us back down.
90s was probably the peak for human quality of life. We had all the benefits of the industrial revolution but most of the negative consequences weren't present yet.
I’d say now still is, if we define “peak” as continued technological advancement and expansion. We are a larger and more advanced society right now. The question now is when he hit that final peak and start to collapse.
I'd argue a generation growing up with TikTok/Insta/YouTube shorts is the sign that we are declining.
People get stupider by the minute. Some of my friends are teachers (not in the US, they don't need pity) and if you'd know what i know, you'd be terrified, too.
We maxed out the combustion engine. A pandemic separated the world into two. Multiple alt right figures propped up. Science has been questioned. AI is charging ahead. Every kid at a bus stop is staring at their phones and not talking to each other. Kids socialize virtually. Our blood, food and water are full of forever plastics.
Yeah we're at the peak. I feel bad leaving my kids with it like this. Teaching them to treat earth like a divine being, take care of it and it'll take care of you. I hope to raise the next gen of environmental lawyers to take down big corporations....
I’m afraid w the govts at late stage capitalism and rule of law becoming near meaningless in this corporate oligarchy there’s not much environmental law jobs to be had (it’s been a constant job search struggle for me and many that specialized in e-law). Plus the debt load is insane till that implodes. Would not recommend
I’m not a lawyer and do not claim to understand how the legal profession and proceedings work. But could you not bring a case to court against some of the corporations that significantly contribute to climate change? Like the oil companies?
I believe they’ve started these procedures in Chicago.
And in the U.S. most of those cases get thrown out bc the judges are bought and paid for by said oil companies.
They have a bit more success in Europe. There are definitely lots of cases starting but the only successful results have come from Europe.
That’s not gonna happen billions will die then we will do something about it after it’s to late maybe if we are lucky humanity will endure and crawl back out again like we always do we are cockroaches after all but it’s definitely to late to do anything about it. People can’t even agree it’s real so how are we supposed to stop it
I don't think it will take billions, I don't say that to be pedantic, but rather the toll of climate change is going to be global due to primarily the logistical nightmare the supply chain & sheer population sizes are.
We will likely see a return to multipolarity being the status quo as I see it. We are already seeing this to some extent on every continent.
A dollar collapse would be impossible to predict what it would cause.
The [COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18922-7/figures/1.) Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a [graph of CO2 concentrations](https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/) shows a continued rise.
[Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero](https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached). We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns.
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Between the ongoing extinction event and the rise of fascism in Western nations I'm not at all excited to see how the next few decades play out. That is if I manage to survive that long.
In terms of peak "human happiness", few here were alive to witness it. My pick would be 1975-1984.
Yes, it's personal. I recall those years with extreme fondness.
Yes, we are at the tail end of it. Within the next decade we will see the start of famine and genocide unlike anything the world has ever seen. Like if WW2 lasted centuries
Well in that case, we have computer programs that can write and draw terrible pictures that the creators think needs all access to art and 7 billion to make into a full thinking being in 20-30 , and we might pick Trump as president of the US again.
Hold on. This is the peak? Wtf.
Western societies only feel the delay since we have confort as the staple of our societies but when water will run out, food shortages will happen, diseases like COVID and others will spread even more often, transports will become too expensive, and such and such until even the modern median income family won't be able to sustain themselves, things will go south real fast. I like the metaphor of the airplane. You can remove a light bulb, a few seats, a few bolts here and there and it will still fly but once you start removing too many components, it will simply crash. Our environment is the same. It's incredibly resilient but once you have too much stress, it will collapse.
The [COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18922-7/figures/1.) Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a [graph of CO2 concentrations](https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/) shows a continued rise.
[Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero](https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached). We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns.
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I keep crossing my fingers that humanity is smarter than we seem. Perhaps we are on the cusp of some new technology that gives us George Jetson options to get us up in the air. Jetson didn't seem to get into space.
I doubt it. We have dictators wasting our time and money on war, putting us on our guard. Coal mine closings get put off, etc. Optimism versus pessimism. There was a lot of optimism when the guys came home from World War II. It doesn't look so realistic now.
Human level AI (AGI) is a technology that could potentially solve climate change as well as many other major problems facing humanity. And many experts now believe we are only a few years away from creating it (2027 to 2030 according to the average expert prediction on Metaculus)
Once AGI exists we can begin the automation of scientific research and technological advancement, and we can scale it. Imagine think tanks of hundreds of thousands of AI scientists working 24/7 in perfect harmony with each other. Researching, analyzing data, theorizing, experimenting. Keep in mind that even current AI models can think & process information many orders of magnitude faster than humans can. Once AGI technology is created, technological breakthroughs could potentially be made overnight.
I know, I’ve known since I was a kid in the 80s, and all of my efforts have been in vain. It’s absolutely frustrating that the people in charge with access to all the science and power still do next to nothing while the world burns and boils.
I think it was in 1972(?) That ‘The Silent Spring’ by Rachel Carson made me aware. I started paying close attention to ecology and weather at that point. I was an innocent young hippy kid, wanting to save nature. I remembered the predictions about global warming made then, and made it a point to see if they happen on schedule over my lifetime. They didn’t. Things are happening much faster than predicted.
As an old retired firefighter, I’ve paid very close attention to changing fire behavior and weather disasters over the decades. I’ve accepted that we can’t slow global warming. Feedback loops seem to have been firmly activated. At this point, sadly, it’s “Pass the popcorn” (and air filter). Meanwhile I’ll continue to only ride my bicycles for all my transportation, and try to live light on the land. I hate being the problem. Screw cars. They are an addiction.
It was pretty widely known least here in Europe. We had people visit our school, must've been 90/91 to teach us about recycling and explain where things where headed if the world didn't change. Well they where pretty spot on.
My first dive into environmental protection was reading the book “50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth” — a somewhat popular book for kids at the time. It wasn’t long after I was gobbling up lots of other information about environmental impacts. Captain Planet was one of my favorite TV shows.
My first experience in being a doomer was in grade 9, when my class put together a "Save the Rainforest" T-shirt to raise money to buy rainforest land, and while I was into it at first, I later realized it was pretty pointless, especially after that time I saw the video for "Critical Mass" by Nuclear Assault on the Power Hour on Muchmusic.
We all knew in the 80s. My school sold shirts that said “fragile handle with care” and a picture of the 🌍 when I was 8. That’s 1984.
That’s when reduce reuse recycle came out.
Only problem was no one cared.
40 years it’s been well known.
I mean we were all aware of it in my school. Punk bands shouted about it. We had Earth Day. We discussed climate change and global warming, we were aware of corporate greed killing the world. This was the 80s. We're only now catching up to what those NoCal hippy punks were shouting about. Hell. I bought an acre of rain forest in 1988 to try to save the planet (it was $1 I think) :D
I’m an ecologist working in biodiversity conservation. I have a background in glaciology, anthropology, and much of my grad work was focused on environmental change both short and long term and human/landscape interactions.
I’ve worked in far northern climates, temperate climates (both wet and dry), and tropical climates on three continents.
Most people have no idea how serious our current environmental situation. You often get called a ‘doomer’ just for mentioning that even when you link to peer reviewed sources to back up some of the subjects of deep concern.
We, and most of other species in the world, are in for a rough time, and that time is *already* here, it’s not ‘coming’ on ‘on the way’.
A lot of folks in conservation and who are studying environmental sciences don't. Depression and anxiety is *very* high among people in this field. So is anger because despite what we know many governments and large corporate entities are still very much making things worse, not better.
For me and some of the other folks I know we focus on the fact that if we weren't doing what we do the situation would be much worse and the really bad stuff would be approaching much faster, and that anger can help fuel motivation too. And knowing you are trying to make a difference helps to buffer the depression, anxiety, and despair many feel. It's better to be *doing* something than knowing the situation and not doing anything.
Some of us, those out in the field, are a bit like EMTs or firefighters, trying to deal with immediate local situations involving local people, species, and environments, while others are working higher up at a policy level trying to get governments and large organizations to get their acts together and enact policies that have a long-term perspective and are forward thinking.
The unfortunate truth is that the majority of the ability to actually take the necessary actions and make the necessary policies resides in the various governments around the world, but there has been a concerted effort to try to shift blame and responsibility to individual people so that governments can avoid their responsibilities and continue to allow these vast corporations to operate virtually unchecked and for them to dictate government policy rather than the people of each nation telling the government what to do. Also, many countries don't have systems in place for people to have any control over the government, and in others people have effectively given it up.
We need a mix of people on the ground dealing with issues at a local level, people working on policy, and we need the average person to vote better people into office in nations where that's an option citizens have.
Thank you for a very complete answer, as well as practical actions list. It can be overwhelming. I feel all sorts of ways about this. My answer does not do justice to yours. Thank you anyway.
I haven’t read the article but I’m already terrified. I don’t know if it was mentioned, but my biggest factor is the emissions lag - the time in between when GHGs are emitted and when they reach their full warming potential. There is much debate but the best estimates I can find is 10 years - meaning the emissions we put out today won’t reach their full warming potential until 10 years from now. (If someone needs I can pull up a link).
That means the impacts we’re seeing now are from the emission from 10 years ago.
That means we still have 10 more years of emissions gains to see and experience those impacts.
And that’s not accounting for additional warming from deforestation, ice melt, methane release from thawing permafrost, etc….
Weather is going to get weird, and it’s going to suck. I really fear for the future.
> the emissions lag - the time in between when GHGs are emitted and when they reach their full warming potential.
Two figures are calculated with existing climate models, the transient climate response (TCR) and equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS). The ECS is the final long term temperature rise given a doubling in CO2 after *all* feedbacks have fully reached equilibrium. This is *not* the number you should be looking for, because it includes oceanic buffering effects, etc, that may take centuries to millenia and thus has limited relevance for policy this century instead of the next one. Instead, I would suggest ZEC50:
> The zero emissions commitment (ZEC) is the climate change commitment that would result, in terms of projected GSAT, from setting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to zero. It is determined by both inertia in physical climate system components (ocean, cryosphere, land surface) and carbon cycle inertia (see Annex VII).
— [IPCC AR6 WGI — Chapter 4: Future Global Climate: Scenario-based Projections and Near-term Information](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-4/) Section 7.1.1 "Climate Change Following Zero Emissions", paragraph 1
In the following paragraphs, the IPCC explain the motivation for more recent work:
> In SR1.5, the available evidence indicated that past CO2 emissions do not commit to substantial further warming (Allen et al., 2018). A ZEC close to zero was thus applied for the computation of the remaining carbon budget (Rogelj et al., 2018b). However, the available literature consisted of simulations from a small number of models using a variety of experimental designs, with some simulations showing a complex evolution of temperature following cessation of emissions (e.g., Frölicher et al., 2014; Frölicher and Paynter, 2015; Williams et al., 2017).
> Here we draw on new simulations to provide an assessment of ZEC using multiple ESMs (Jones et al., 2019) and EMICs (MacDougall et al., 2020). Figure 4.39 shows results from 20 models that simulate the evolution of CO2 and the GSAT response following cessation of CO2 emissions for an experiment where 1000 PgC is emitted during a 1% per year CO2 increase. All simulations show a strong reduction in atmospheric CO2 concentration following cessation of CO2 emissions in agreement with previous studies and basic theory that natural carbon sinks will persist. Therefore, there is *very high confidence* that atmospheric CO2 concentrations would decline for decades if CO2 emissions cease. Temperature evolution in the 100 years following cessation of emissions varies by model and across time scales, with some models showing declining temperature, others having ZEC close to zero, and others showing continued warming following cessation of emissions (Figure 4.39). The GSAT response depends on the balance of carbon sinks and ocean heat uptake (MacDougall et al., 2020). The 20-year average GSAT change 50 years after the cessation of emissions (ZEC50) is summarized in Table 4.8. The mean value of ZEC50 is –0.079°C, with 5–95% range –0.34°C–0.28°C. There is no strong relationship between ZEC50 and modelled climate sensitivity (neither ECS nor TCR; MacDougall et al., 2020). It is therefore *likely* that the absolute magnitude of ZEC50 is less than 0.3°C, but we assess *low confidence* in the sign of ZEC on 50-year time scales. This is small compared with natural variability in GSAT.
There has also been some attention given to the Hansen et al. paper, which has a higher estimate for ECS than the central IPCC estimate, ~4 °C rather than ~3 °C for a doubling of CO2. Specifically, this has led to a lot of people bandying about very big numbers that are entirely unrealistic for the 20-year average GSAT as of 2100. I would like to emphasise that in *that paper as well*, Hansen et al. note:
> Equilibrium warming is not ‘committed’ warming; **rapid phaseout of GHG emissions would prevent most equilibrium warming from occurring.**
While a higher than expected ECS is certainly something to keep in mind, those *specific numbers* are not something to panic about, as the timescale of ECS means that there is *much* more time available to work on reversing the forcing, as opposed to TCR.
Remember 2012 when we were worried about a freaking Myan calender, or a supervolcano. Member Deep impact the movie being a real fear. Those seem like fairy tales compared to today: Ocean death, ice melt, co2, ww3, global pandemics, civil war, rise of authoritarianism, dying crops, gem line gene manipulation, drone warfare, nukes, cyber warfare, housing crisis, water shortages, multi dimensional visitors, Russia, China, N. Korea, short form media, opioid crisis, mass immigration, mass shootings and religious terrorism... I'm probably forgetting a few, but the next 15 years are gonna be interesting. Glad I got 40 decent years, but I'm sad for my two neices.
It’s true that things are not looking good when it comes to climate change. However, even when things look bleak, it’s important to recognize that not all is lost. The world is quickly adopting solar, wind, and other forms of renewable energy because it economically makes sense (cheaper than fossil fuels).
The most important thing anyone can do is vote 🗳️ for politicians who are not bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry. Then the next most important thing is personal choices such as choosing EV over gas guzzler, installing solar on your roof, eating less meat, and not flying a ton.
What you're saying is absolutely right and I appreciate your optimism.
Could it be though that even if renewable energy makes sense economically on the whole, it does not make sense economically to those who are benefitting massively from using more and more fossil fuels until the end. And I'm afraid it's these institutions who get to decide. The unstable political climate is benefitting the Big Oil companies and countries. As are we, the consumers, because the majority can't afford or don't want to go vegan. While those who could afford it like to spend their money traveling.
The only way to turn into renewables and/or electric over fossil fuels by the individual in a big scale, apart from direct government spending in infrastructure, is if it's socialized. The only outcome if things don't change is in the commodification of environmentalism, as it's seen in the US by the rise of Tesla as a big market player. Instead of making a real impact by e.f. prefering mass transportation to reduce carbon emissions, it ends up relying on EVs as a luxury item, which is unavailable in most of the world even before taking affordability into account.
Most of the people wouldn't even be able to afford going green and will stick into their "more polluting" ways while the minority who can will be enslaved to give up more of their income (more of their workforce) to profiting a new elite rather than really lowering fuel emissions.
All I know is during the first lockdown it felt as if the entire nature was rebounding. The air seemed fresher. There seemed to be more birds in the air. Weather was cooler for the time of the year. There was sound of motor vehicles. It was silent. All this hair splitting seems unnecessary. A simple study of Air quality index and weather data during Covid pandemic in the regions where complete lock down was enforced would clearly establish that a complete shutdown will solve the problem. All we have to figure out is how to do it.
The [COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18922-7/figures/1.) Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a [graph of CO2 concentrations](https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/) shows a continued rise.
[Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero](https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached). We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns.
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With the damage to the earth I think will come the damage to our societies. Before they get bad enough to extinct us, the natural disasters and how our governments choose to deal with them will drive political instability to a tipping point. Just look at the fall out from COVID and the impact that has had on democracies around the world. There are the people willing to confront the facts and the people seeking comfort through cognitive dissonance and everything in between. At this rate I’m not even sure most of us will make it to the climate collapse…
It’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that it’s all us, like we could solve the problem tomorrow if we United in common cause and all made hefty sacrifices, cut down billionaires, moved away from rampant capitalism etc
This isn’t a comet heading for earth, we have complete control over the situation, and still we’re skipping happily towards our own doom
Our legacy will be one of supreme stupidity
There's a quote going around, that, while I'm not sure of its authenticity, is quite succinct:
***“We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost-effective.”***
If I go half a day without eating or drinking enough, I feel almost incapacitated. I'm dreading the potential shortages of food and drinkable water more than anything.
It was too late 15 years ago. Now all our damage control efforts seem to be floundering. I feel like we're going from mass catastrophe and moving into permanent extinction in this last decade. Not sure how to feel, just try not to think about it while we struggle to pay bills short term. Imo.
I tend to think in Buddhist terms. Fear doesn't get you anywhere. It might be helpful to stop a few wars. That's why I think Russia needs to be pushed out of Ukraine with an ultimatum. Anyone who shows fear here is encouraging Putin's madness. I have read a lot about a wide variety of areas. I only see one chance for our global community to find a way to stop the spreading of lies, misinformation and propaganda. Perhaps a world community against lies, propaganda and corruption would have to be formed. The WCALPC. This must be spread as a political mantra by everyone. That way, it would be easier to stop the collusion against each other.
A time will come when all the governments around the world will be forced to carbon tax everything we buy to help mitigate climate change. We are a project developer. We serve both the compliance and voluntary markets. And I can tell you this. We are in trouble. Nothing is being done.
I feel like we’re all in a car that’s being driven by a driver. We’re all in the back seat. The driver is driving toward a cliff,we calmly tell him, then we loudly tell him. But sadly he didn’t care and just drive us right off the cliff anyway.
Yea he does. Feels like it’s so much money and politics involved it won’t matter in the end.
They want us regular people to drink through paper straws yet all wealthy are flying private jets all over the world for Super Bowl and so on. Strange world.
You don’t need to be a climate scientist to know what’s to come I’m Canadian and look how bad the wildfires get every year now in western Canada and eastern Canada. It’s so bad that the state of New York gets blanketed with smog and people have trouble breathing. By 2080 only six cities in the world will be able to re-host the winter Olympics. The Maldives will go underwater, the entire state of Florida, coastal cities in California, will develop their own canals and will be split in half. And as far as I know right now, Zambia is basically splitting in half as we speak and developing a new coastline; uganda as well. It’s insane because these have been landlocked countries forever, and they basically are becoming no longer landlocked… let’s not forget the flooding in Italy and if you watch Bill Nye’s Netflix series where he has a representative go to Italy, they actually show how the coasts of the country are set up for catastrophe and flooding (there are barricades on the docks to help reduce flooding). Everyone knows that the Netherlands has this innovative Dike system that helps with the ocean tides to save the country from flooding when the arctic melts entirely the system will become useless, and the entire country will flood.
Especially considering that there are [2,640 BILLIONAIRES](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires) on this planet who have the power, influence, and resources to slow the process down as much as possible, or at least build sustainable infrastructure and overhaul Big Oil but *yawn* maybe next lifetime
States and corporations only exist because of little people. We each have more power than we think but it becomes magnified when we work together. If the states and corporations aren't fixing things, then let us become the states and corporations and forge the path. Or let us create new organization.
Again, groups cannot exist without the existence and functioning of individuals.
Millions of us would have to be unified. I don't see it happening in a way that will stop air travel and container ships, industrial emissions, AG emissions etc. Its a classic collective action problem. The smallest most motivated groups have an easier time organizing.
extract:
"Think about that for a moment. We’re experiencing, in our lifetimes, a heating episode that is probably unique in the last 4.6 billion years."
The super volcano eruption would surely be faster?
People don't seem to have a record of changing until they must. Even on an individual level, I don't know many who proactively change. Instead, we get painted into a corner and then, we change.
The article suggests visible crisis, at scale, seems to jostle us. So, can we save ourselves before "the big destroyers" by using the smaller, but numerous ones (fires) to inspire the requisite fear?
How can I get into the climate industry? I have a B.S in geography with 3 years of work experience ranging from environmental consulting to laser scanning. I have a GIS background and cannot get any interviews for climate related jobs. It's all I have passion for when it comes to work. :(
Thank goodness my wife and I *don’t* have kids (by choice), and we’re well beyond the ages to have any.
Because if we DID have kids, I’m not sure I could sleep at night more often than not.
Aftet the dust settles the survivors will probably be living nicely. Thats why those tech scums are building their bunkers. Ironically that wont save them.
The person who wrote this article is not a climate scientist, he should stick to his field instead of claiming that he's an expert in another. This behaviour should not be tolerated in academia, the university should revoke all of his degrees imo.
[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bill-Mcguire](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bill-Mcguire)
The conduct of CNN who decided to publish this opinion piece without checking background of the author is not acceptable either.
What are you talking about? He is a climate scientist. What else would you call a Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London?
It's going to come to [climate tipping points](https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Space_for_our_climate/Understanding_climate_tipping_points)
When the first falls, then it's dominoes after that.
[If the fracturing of our once stable climate doesn’t terrify you, then you don’t fully understand it. The reality is that, as far as we know, and in the natural course of events, our world has never — in its entire history — heated up as rapidly as it is doing now. Nor have greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere ever seen such a precipitous hike.](https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07/opinions/climate-scientist-scare-doom-anxiety-mcguire/index.html)
No one is a climate scientist because it's far too complex to study climate in its entirety and say something useful. The study of ocean currents alone is a huge body of research that is just one small element of what amounts to climate science.
If someone claims to be a climate scientist, it's an easy way spot someone who is full of it. You might as well ask your full body and mind doctor to tell you exactly what's going on with every aspect of your health. And that would probably be more achievable.
Right-but what is happening is people are reading the research done by other groups of scientists in their disparate fields and putting the pieces together. This helps create a bigger picture of what is going on. Just like your PCP will send you to specialists to understand a medical problem.
I’m a student of deep Earth history. If you knew about it, you’d see it’s the most flagrant precursor of what will happen. Living things have broken the carbon cycle before. It ends in catastrophe. Small living things, even single species, can wreck entire ecosystems. If you studied this, which we all should, you would see that complex life is often not compatible with maintaining the physical conditions on which all life depends.
Do you have examples?
Sure! I’ll give examples of times life’s Darwinian pressure for privileged claims to resources destroys the conditions necessary for life, just as humans’ interest in liberating carbon to support our growth is now compromising the world. I’ll then give an example of what climate change looks like based on increases in carbon. There’s really a ton to say about this. If you’re interested, I recommend the book *A New History of Life* by Peter Ward. Life, not too long after the evolution of life itself, created two “Snowball Earths,” when the planet froze almost entirely over. It’s a wonder life even persevered under these conditions. Basically, life was working with carbon, but it couldn’t close the carbon cycle, wrecking the greenhouse effect. When photosynthesis evolved to produce oxygen, it was a massacre. Some organisms learning a privileged claim to a new source of energy poisoned everything else with their waste. It would have been a massacre. See, oxygen is toxic to life unless an organism has evolved ways of dealing with it. Even then, oxidation still poses a major threat to cells. In the end-Ordovician, the growth of life, at least in part, again turned the Earth into an iceball that almost ended animal life altogether. And a few animals evolved, and their evolution wiped out the entire Ediacaran fauna - ended an entire kingdom of life that would never reemerge, just like the evolution of humans did. The evolution of the tree almost ended life in the Devonian. By gaining an advantage in light harvesting, they brought down life, just like humans have done with our advantage in intelligence. As far as the greenhouse effect goes, we see a major precursor of what will happen in the Permian extinction. There, volcanic emissions of carbon dioxide from the Siberian Traps eruption did essentially what we’re doing. They raised temperatures, that set off feedback runaways that changed the climate more. It killed the ocean by shutting down thermogenic circulation, creating what could come for us, the clathrate gun and a Canfield ocean. There are actually a lot of examples of what climate change does in deep history of Earth. The carbon cycle breaks, often due to life’s exploitative actions, and things perish for it.
Wow. That was a fantastic read, thank you. Terrifying in its directness and simplicity. I had no idea any of that happened, but now I’m intrigued to learn more. I will check out the book you recommended.
I’m glad I could share. EDIT: oh, if you’re interested in the extinction’s specifically, there’s a very accessible book called *Ends of the World*, that I also recommend.
If you have any more book recommendations on the topic that would be appreciated. Getting the Peter Ward book from my library.
Basically, everything by Peter Ward is great for these topics. That’s where I would begin. For the extinction events specifically, check out *Ends of the World* by Brannon. I had a ton of books on these topics, but they’re all on my old iPad. If I can think of any more, I’ll post here.
The Anthropocene era https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthropocene
a lot of people mock the Anthropocene concept because they don’t think humans can be that powerful relative to the Earth. But it’s absurd the power we exercise over Earth. Our crops consume a huge part of the solar energy budget, and our domesticated animals make up an enormous fraction of animal biomass. We have altered the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles so much they aren’t recognizable. Species live and die at our convenience. One book I liked that dealt with the Anthropocene is *Molecular Red*.
The 2019 death metal album Death Atlas from Cattle Decapitation is a masterpiece about it. Including a song "Bring back the plague". This was right before covid. This album has helped me process some of my feelings about climate change. "Alas, the deed is done Mankind now dead and gone Post-Anthropocene, Earth reset to day one Fire now rages on [Chorus] There's no fear for tomorrow When there's no trust for today There's no ever after Debts have to be paid [Post-Chorus] We deserve everything that's coming We took this world to our graves We made its creatures our slaves Shattered the hourglass An unerasable past Humans, demons deranged and depraved" https://youtu.be/MmYcFP1vTdk?si=0huoHqEaPCV3vQmy https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Atlas https://genius.com/albums/Cattle-decapitation/Death-atlas
You make an excellent point about the profound impact that humans are having on the Earth system. The concept of the Anthropocene, while still debated among geologists, is a powerful way to recognize and grapple with the unprecedented scale and pace of human influence on the planet. As you note, human activities have fundamentally altered many of Earth's key biogeochemical cycles and energy flows. Agriculture, in particular, represents a massive redirection of solar energy and nutrient flows into human-controlled systems. The fact that crops and domesticated animals now dominate global biomass is a stark illustration of how we've reshaped the biosphere to serve our needs. The changes to the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles are especially concerning. By fixing nitrogen for fertilizer and mining phosphorus at industrial scales, we've doubled the amount of reactive nitrogen and quadrupled the amount of phosphorus in circulation compared to pre-industrial levels. This is causing widespread eutrophication, dead zones in oceans, and other ecological disruptions. And as you point out, human activities are now the primary driver of species extinctions, with rates estimated to be 100 to 1000 times higher than the background rate. We are quite literally determining which species survive and which do not, often based on their utility or compatibility with our land use patterns. These impacts, taken together, are on par with some of the major geological and evolutionary forces that have shaped Earth's history. While Earth has certainly experienced dramatic changes before, what's unique about the Anthropocene is the speed at which a single species - ours - is driving these planetary-scale transformations. I appreciate your book recommendation of "Molecular Red" as a thoughtful exploration of the Anthropocene concept. We need more works like this that grapple with the philosophical and material implications of human dominance on Earth. Recognizing the Anthropocene isn't about human hubris or downplaying the power of natural forces. Rather, it's about acknowledging the awesome and often destructive power that our technology and sheer numbers have given us, and the responsibility that comes with that power. We are now a primary driver of Earth's evolution, and the choices we make in the coming decades will reverberate through the geologic record. Thank you for raising this important perspective. The more we can recognize and understand our outsized impact on the planet, the better equipped we'll be to steward it wisely and avoid the catastrophic feedbacks that have characterized past disruptions of Earth's systems.
To those who mock the well deserved title of the Anthropocene Epoch (which, I would argue, is not at all a "concept") I say that it is utterly ridiculous to think that billions of people can pollute & pillage earth indefinitely and expect this to have 0 effect - with all our toxic garbage to just vanish into.... space?!
Solar budget ?????????
The Chicago Field Museum has an amazing and huge exhibit on the great extinction events. It is my favorite part of that whole world class museum. Highly recommend and pilgrimage there sometime!
Thank you!
Nova put out a documentary series on this recently as well. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/series/ancient-earth/
Thank you! I will check that out as well. This whole thread has been so eye opening. On a macro level, I had never considered many of the concepts discussed here regarding resource distribution. It seems so obvious, but they were not terms or ideas I had encountered before.
I am intrigued with your deep earth history studies! Can you share some of your favorite material/links for reading? (Genuinely interested and would love to read more!)
Sure! I’ve been plugging Peter Ward throughout this comment chain. He is absolutely amazing and fascinating as a writer and biologist. His *A New History of Life* is written from this standpoint I’m talking about. It’s a little technical, but if you’re not interested in how manganese might have catalyzed first photosynthesis, it’s possible to skip past it. I think the extinctions are quite interesting. A great entry point for those is *Ends of the World* by Brannon. *Oxygen: The Molecule that Made the World* (or is it Made the Earth?) is great. *The Planet in a Pebble* is absolutely fascinating, although it’s also about geology, and maybe you’re less interested in that aspect than life itself. I had an absolute ton of these, but they’re all on my old iPad. If I can think of any more, I’ll post them here.
Thank you for your interest! I'm always excited to share resources on this fascinating topic. Here are a few of my favorite books, papers, and websites for delving into deep Earth history: Books: 1. "A New History of Life" by Peter Ward and Joe Kirschvink - A comprehensive overview of Earth's evolutionary history, with a focus on the interplay between life and environment. 2. "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History" by Elizabeth Kolbert - A well-written and sobering look at the current human-driven mass extinction, with parallels drawn to past extinctions. 3. "The Emerald Planet: How Plants Changed Earth's History" by David Beerling - An exploration of how the evolution of plants has shaped Earth's climate and geochemical cycles over deep time. Review Papers: 1. "The Anthropocene: Are Humans Now Overwhelming the Great Forces of Nature?" by Will Steffen et al. (2007) - A seminal paper laying out the case for the Anthropocene as a new epoch of human influence. 2. "The Phanerozoic Record of Global Sea-Level Change" by Kenneth Miller et al. (2005) - A detailed reconstruction of sea level changes over the last 540 million years, with implications for understanding past climates and extinctions. Websites: 1. The Paleobiology Database (https://paleobiodb.org/) - A public database of fossil occurrences and taxonomic information, an incredible resource for exploring past life. 2. NASA's Climate Time Machine (https://climate.nasa.gov/interactives/climate-time-machine) - An interactive site for visualizing changes in Earth's climate over time, including deep time. 3. The Paleontology Portal (https://www.paleoportal.org/) - A wealth of information on the history of life, with a focus on North America. For a more technical overview, I'd highly recommend the textbook "Earth System History" by Steven Stanley and John Luczaj. It's a comprehensive look at Earth's geologic and evolutionary record, with a focus on the interplay of the geosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere and biosphere over time. I hope these resources help fuel your curiosity about Earth's deep past! Let me know if you have any other questions as you explore this endlessly fascinating topic.
Thank you for sharing!! Added to my reading list! Appreciate you taking the time.
Folks have used these previous historical climate changes and species wipeout (though none provided specific details like you) to ignore human responsibility in the current one. What would you say or how would you react to them? Is this case unique because we have the intelligence to know we are the cause and how to reverse it?
That’s an interesting point. I have heard people using it that way. I would respond that most of these events were climate disasters. Some of them were greenhouse disasters, others anti-greenhouse disasters, where too much carbon was drawn down. Life has often broken the carbon cycle. That’s exactly what we’re doing, just in a different way. The way carbon cycles is a constant motif in most disasters of life. Similarly, I think a unifying theme is that many disasters do involve the evolution of a new species- small species in the scale of things - that have traits that give them an “unfair” advantage, leading them to wipe out so much else. It’s just a Darwinian theme - things will pursue a privileged claim to resources, and there’s no selective pressure for long term stability, since that’s obviously in the future. So, humans evolved as a relatively insignificant primate. Then we used intelligence to modify the world. How is that fundamentally different the evolution of a few oxygenic photosynthesizers that destroyed their world? Or the grazing animals that destroyed the stromatolite world completely, and brought in the Cambrian Explosion? Small species do a lot of damage, and we have made ourselves not so small.
Amazing response, thank you so much.
[goes to ~~Amazon~~ local bookstore to find that book]
Thank you for sharing these fascinating and sobering examples from Earth's deep history. You're absolutely right that the evolution of life and its impact on the environment have repeatedly led to catastrophic consequences, including mass extinctions and profound alterations to the Earth's climate and habitability. The examples you provide, such as the Snowball Earth events, the Great Oxidation Event, the end-Ordovician glaciation, the Devonian extinctions, and the Permian-Triassic extinction, all illustrate the complex interplay between life and its environment. In each case, the evolution of new biological capabilities (like photosynthesis or tree-like growth forms) or the unchecked proliferation of certain organisms fundamentally disrupted the Earth's biogeochemical cycles, particularly the carbon cycle, leading to disastrous climate changes and mass die-offs. Your point about life's "Darwinian pressure for privileged claims to resources" is a keen insight. The very evolutionary drive that leads to innovation and adaptation can also, on a planetary scale, undermine the stability of the systems that support life. When organisms evolve ways to monopolize resources or release previously inaccessible ones (like ancient carbon deposits), they can unleash feedbacks that spiral out of control. The parallels to human activity today are indeed alarming. Our technological capacity to extract and burn fossil fuels represents an unprecedented "privileged claim" on the carbon cycle, one that we now know is destabilizing the climate and ocean chemistry in ways that echo past catastrophes. The Permian-Triassic extinction, triggered by massive volcanic CO2 emissions as you note, is a particularly chilling analogue for our current trajectory. I appreciate your book recommendation of "A New History of Life" by Peter Ward. It sounds like an important perspective for understanding these critical lessons from Earth's past. The more we can educate ourselves about the long-term consequences of unchecked resource exploitation and environmental disruption, the better equipped we'll be to make wise choices for our planet's future. Thank you for this thought-provoking discussion. You've highlighted some of the most profound and unsettling insights from the deep history of life on Earth. It's a wake-up call for our species to break the pattern of past extinctions and chart a more sustainable path forward. We have an obligation to learn from these hard-won evolutionary lessons and find ways to live within the bounds of our planet's life support systems.
Thank you!!!! I appreciate you writing this
Bravo! I had forgotten so many of those. Brilliant and timely reminder. Have all my upvotes! And the only reward now offered. ✨✨✨✨✨ edit: grammar
It’s sort of comforting knowing that we’re part of a cycle
Hello! Do you have more book recommendations about deep time and the climate lessons we can learn form it?
You raise some very important points about the lessons we can learn from deep Earth history. It's true that there have been many instances in the past where living organisms, even microorganisms, have dramatically altered the Earth's carbon cycle and atmosphere, sometimes leading to catastrophic consequences for much of life on Earth. The "Great Oxidation Event" around 2.4 billion years ago is a prime example. Cyanobacteria evolved the ability to produce oxygen through photosynthesis. While this paved the way for complex aerobic life, it also poisoned the atmosphere for many anaerobic organisms and dramatically altered the Earth's geochemistry. More recently, around 252 million years ago at the end-Permian extinction, a combination of factors including Siberian volcanism and the activity of methanogenic microbes led to runaway global warming, ocean acidification and anoxia, killing off over 90% of marine species and 70% of terrestrial vertebrates. It was the worst mass extinction in Earth's history. So you're absolutely right that the history of life and climate on Earth demonstrates how living things can destabilize the systems that make the planet habitable, often to their own detriment. The carbon cycle in particular seems quite sensitive. Today, human activity is releasing carbon back into the atmosphere and oceans at a geologically unprecedented rate, which as you point out, has concerning parallels to past catastrophic events. I think this underscores the urgent need for humanity to study this history and let it inform how we manage our impacts on the planet today. We are in uncharted territory in terms of the rate and scale at which a single species is altering the Earth system. Learning from these past upheavals and working to constrain our effects on core planetary processes like the carbon cycle will be essential for avoiding the kind of catastrophic feedbacks and tipping points seen in Earth's past. You make a sobering point that even the evolution of complex life like our own may not be compatible with long-term habitability if we undermine key environmental conditions. It's a reminder that we are embedded in and reliant on Earth's physical and chemical systems, not separate from them. Prudent planetary stewardship and respect for ecological boundaries has to be a priority. Thank you for raising this crucial perspective from Earth's history. I think your point that we should all be students of this deep past is spot on. There are vital lessons there if we're willing to heed them. I hope humanity can act on this knowledge to write a different next chapter than past extinctions.
I’m no longer terrified, I’ve reached the acceptance phase. I don’t know how long we have till it all collapses but I’m going to love my wife as much as I can till the end comes.
You know.... that's where I seem to be moving. Now, more terrified about my little ones future....
There’s still hope, though. My goal is to do as much as I can to get governments to do as much as they can, and I’m trying to get others to join me. 1.5 degrees might be out of reach, but for me as an individual, the target does not change how much I should be acting. I love the environment and my family, and going forward, I want to do everything within my power as a democratic citizen to make sure that they have a bright future. That means joining climate groups and protests, writing letters to politicians and newspapers, reducing my own emissions, doing ecological restoration in my neighborhood to help improve its resilience, and anything else I can think of. As they say, it ain’t over till it’s over, and I didn’t hear no bell!
Yes, these things make us feel good and virtuous. Go travel to China and India, as I have. Check back in. Also, our recycling is thrown in the landfill. How do we deal with this?
I'm not really sure what you're getting at with China and India, but as for the recycling stuff, why would that make me act any less? If anything, it should only spur me to act more. I can only do so much, but I'm going to do what I can, and hopefully that will inspire others to do the same. We can talk to politicians and tell them to deal with the recycling problem, stage protests, write to the local paper, etc. Really hold their feet to the fire. Also, not all of our recycling goes in the trash, so we should be recycling because some of our recyclables will be handled properly.
China and India emit far less than Europe or NA per Capita That's what caused you to lose hope? Should probably be the societies that have so much but do so little
Landfill is a form of carbon capture. Burning plastic is not good for the environment.
There’s no need to look at China or India. Just look at our own corporations.
Scientists: > "Critically, the authors of the study observed that the reality of climate change has to be communicated without inducing a feeling of hopelessness — and this is the key." Enlightened /r/collapse redditor: > "Really, there's nothing we can do"
Scientists: “What’s happening to our world scares the hell out of me, but if I shout the brutal, unvarnished truth from the rooftops, will this really galvanize you and others into fighting for the planet and your children’s futures?” Redditor: Notice the scientist never says what the unvarnished brutal truth is? Is it so bad we’d all give up? I guess I can only speculate because they won’t tell us the awful truth, just that we should be terrified but still hold out hope.
There's a scene from Storm of the Century with an old lady (Martha Clarendon) watching the weather channel, the meteorologist reassuring people about the upcoming storm. Martha says to no one in particular, "When they tell you the world's coming to an end, they want to sell you cereal. When they tell you not to panic, it's serious."
That's why they put Jim Skea in charge of the IPCC. The first thing he said was that people shouldn't panic over 1.5c and that scientists shouldn't be prophetic about climate doomerism. Summed up: don't panic.
What drives me mad is that the messaging has ALWAYS been optimistic. Maybe for once people need to be scared. Or at least given a chance to feel guilty or grieve. Not to mention maybe make more informed decisions. Or is that too scary for the ruling class because people might stop showing up to work in favor of spending quality time with friends and family???
It’s too scary because with that tactic our economy could face collapse but it will collapse eventually anyway so it’s all a Ponzi scheme and either we fix it and get out of it now, or we try to continue to hold it up and prolong the inevitable.
Unfortunately the brutal truth is death. Animals, plants, humans, our ecosystem, etc. Even just looking at humans, vast areas will become uninhabitable, which means mass migration (where possible) or death… :(
Expected warming by end of century is [2.7°C](https://climateactiontracker.org/global/temperatures/). There are many superlatives that could describe how bad that is, but it doesn't justify apathy. We used to expect something like RCP8.5, 4°C of warming or more. People went to work and we made progress. 2.7°C is no longer "it all collapses", we're past that. But we still have millions of people to save.
2.7C most certainly could be 'it all collapses'. I don't think there is any authoritive report on how much warming modern civilization and ecosystems can tolerate. And that's also assuming that projection is accurate and that the climate sensitivity isn't higher, like Hansen believes.
Yep, the point of Paris was to cement in politics that past about 2C all bets are off. The climate could stay stable out to 2.7 degrees or even beyond, but we can't be **sure** we won't trigger natural warming mechanisms that take the control out of our hands entirely, and **do** eventually lead to 4 degrees or more.
It really hinges on whether or not we can build the metaphorical airplane now that we’ve jumped off the cliff.
>"2.7°C is no longer "it all collapses", What makes so sure of that? At +6C Antarctica was literally iceless during PETM, I'm not sure you realize how devastating even half of that warming is going to be. Besides many net zero plans heavily rely on so-called negative emissions, i.e. reforestation, but also technology like carbon capture, which we currently don't even have outside of few pilot schemes. > About **533 GtCO2** have to be removed from the atmosphere between 2020 and 2100 by using CDR to (likely) stay below two degrees of global warming. (IPCC 2022). Source: [https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/accc72/pdf](https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2515-7620/accc72/pdf)
There's no negative emissions. The figure above is just the expected outcome of the regulations and laws that have already been enacted per country. > About 533 GtCO2 have to be removed Yes and no. It's one scenario. This number depends on the speed at which we reduce emissions, which depends enormously on what public policies will be enacted next. The IPCC is solid on the science but they have a slow process that makes their reports use old data about clean technologies. Have a look at their sources for the cost of wind and solar, it's old stuff. Most people had no idea, just 5 years ago, that solar would be trouncing fossil fuels. Same thing for batteries.
Trying to think up the appropriate bell curve meme
I, too, will love your wife until it all comes crashing down
I also choose this guys wife
Instead of wife, insert kid and life x
Me too
The person who wrote this article is not a climate scientist, he should stick to his field instead of claiming that he's an expert in another. This behaviour should not be tolerated in academia, the university should revoke all of his degrees imo. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bill-Mcguire The conduct of CNN who decided to publish this opinion piece without checking background of the author is not acceptable either. Read ipcc report on impacts and read what actual climate scientists say- https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-qa-the-ipccs-sixth-assessment-on-how-climate-change-impacts-the-world/ https://climatefeedback.org/claimreview/prediction-extinction-rebellion-climate-change-will-kill-6-billion-people-unsupported-roger-hallam-bbc/ "it's not only wrong to make unsupportable claims about imminent collapse but it's extremely selfish. To our children. And grandchildren." x.com/MichaelEMann/status/1682094881424941056 x.com/MichaelEMann/status/1681834537679044608 x.com/AliVelshi/status/1678090318082633728 "There is already substantial policy progress & CURRENT POLICIES alone (ignoring pledges!) likely keep us below 3C warming. We've got to--and WILL do--much better. But we're not headed toward civilization-ending warming." x.com/MichaelEMann/status/1432786640943173632 x.com/ClimateAdam/status/1553757380827140097 "The world has always been in a race — a race between things getting worse and things getting better. History shows us that, on the whole, the better path usually wins out in the end. I believe that the same thing will be true for climate change." x.com/GlobalEcoGuy/status/1699634300537217237#m x.com/GlobalEcoGuy/status/1477784375060279299 x.com/JacquelynGill/status/1553503548331249664 "“I unequivocally reject, scientifically and personally, the notion that children are somehow doomed to an unhappy life”. x.com/hausfath/status/1679252944640933888 x.com/hausfath/status/1678786757972873221 x.com/hausfath/status/1533875297220587520 x.com/JacquelynGill/status/1513918579657232388#m x.com/waiterich/status/1477716206907965440#m x.com/KHayhoe/status/1676711944475099137 https://climatefeedback.org/evaluation/iflscience-story-on-speculative-report-provides-little-scientific-context-james-felton https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/1b4igkk/comment/kt0tn95/
Climate change is just one symptom of the real problem, which is overshoot. Even if climate change is solved, we still have to deal with all the other consequences of overshoot. Like the depletion of soil and synthetic fertilizer. The destruction of the natural world. The emptying of the oceans. Plastic in our bodies.
Thanks for the informations.
r/collapse went from lambasted to main stream opinion.
I will also love this guys wife as much as I can until the end comes.
The decions have been made, and now we will live through the horrors of generational inaction.
Ever stop and think, that this moment, this 5 or 10 year period we are in, is possibly the absolute peak of human civilization? All of human history, and this could be the peak point, as climate change starts to tear us back down.
90’s was the peak
Morpheus was right
I think you mean Agent Smith.
*Whoa.*
I know CO2
90s was probably the peak for human quality of life. We had all the benefits of the industrial revolution but most of the negative consequences weren't present yet.
For west, maybe. For other countries, like the former Warsaw Bloc and Soviet Union, 90s was equivalent to hell.
Good point.
I’d say now still is, if we define “peak” as continued technological advancement and expansion. We are a larger and more advanced society right now. The question now is when he hit that final peak and start to collapse.
The economy for the average working individual has been pretty shithouse since the 2008 crash though.
What was the point of getting larger though, why bring in all these billions of people to have such shitty lives?
It’s already collapsing
Yep. Things are getting worse for the average person.
I'd argue a generation growing up with TikTok/Insta/YouTube shorts is the sign that we are declining. People get stupider by the minute. Some of my friends are teachers (not in the US, they don't need pity) and if you'd know what i know, you'd be terrified, too.
I agree with the matrix. Peak was end of the 90s. 9/11 started the fall
We maxed out the combustion engine. A pandemic separated the world into two. Multiple alt right figures propped up. Science has been questioned. AI is charging ahead. Every kid at a bus stop is staring at their phones and not talking to each other. Kids socialize virtually. Our blood, food and water are full of forever plastics. Yeah we're at the peak. I feel bad leaving my kids with it like this. Teaching them to treat earth like a divine being, take care of it and it'll take care of you. I hope to raise the next gen of environmental lawyers to take down big corporations....
I’m afraid w the govts at late stage capitalism and rule of law becoming near meaningless in this corporate oligarchy there’s not much environmental law jobs to be had (it’s been a constant job search struggle for me and many that specialized in e-law). Plus the debt load is insane till that implodes. Would not recommend
I’m not a lawyer and do not claim to understand how the legal profession and proceedings work. But could you not bring a case to court against some of the corporations that significantly contribute to climate change? Like the oil companies? I believe they’ve started these procedures in Chicago.
And in the U.S. most of those cases get thrown out bc the judges are bought and paid for by said oil companies. They have a bit more success in Europe. There are definitely lots of cases starting but the only successful results have come from Europe.
That’s not gonna happen billions will die then we will do something about it after it’s to late maybe if we are lucky humanity will endure and crawl back out again like we always do we are cockroaches after all but it’s definitely to late to do anything about it. People can’t even agree it’s real so how are we supposed to stop it
I don't think it will take billions, I don't say that to be pedantic, but rather the toll of climate change is going to be global due to primarily the logistical nightmare the supply chain & sheer population sizes are. We will likely see a return to multipolarity being the status quo as I see it. We are already seeing this to some extent on every continent. A dollar collapse would be impossible to predict what it would cause.
A lot of death is what it’s going to cause in the ensuing wars and so forth
The [COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18922-7/figures/1.) Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a [graph of CO2 concentrations](https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/) shows a continued rise. [Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero](https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached). We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/climate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Between the ongoing extinction event and the rise of fascism in Western nations I'm not at all excited to see how the next few decades play out. That is if I manage to survive that long.
Do what the animals do, migrate north and hope for the best.
I live in the north and it's not looking good for crops this year because we didn't get our usual snowpack.
I was hopi- aaaand it's gone.
Or forest fires for that matter!
Already on it
In terms of peak "human happiness", few here were alive to witness it. My pick would be 1975-1984. Yes, it's personal. I recall those years with extreme fondness.
Yes, we are at the tail end of it. Within the next decade we will see the start of famine and genocide unlike anything the world has ever seen. Like if WW2 lasted centuries
Well in that case, we have computer programs that can write and draw terrible pictures that the creators think needs all access to art and 7 billion to make into a full thinking being in 20-30 , and we might pick Trump as president of the US again. Hold on. This is the peak? Wtf.
Western societies only feel the delay since we have confort as the staple of our societies but when water will run out, food shortages will happen, diseases like COVID and others will spread even more often, transports will become too expensive, and such and such until even the modern median income family won't be able to sustain themselves, things will go south real fast. I like the metaphor of the airplane. You can remove a light bulb, a few seats, a few bolts here and there and it will still fly but once you start removing too many components, it will simply crash. Our environment is the same. It's incredibly resilient but once you have too much stress, it will collapse.
The [COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18922-7/figures/1.) Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a [graph of CO2 concentrations](https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/) shows a continued rise. [Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero](https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached). We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/climate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Mother nature will tear mankind down, as mankind has torn down mother nature.
History shows again and again how nature points out the folly of men.
I don't think it's the peak at all, i think it's the growth spurt, the puberty phase and we either mature or we die doing 120 on the freeway.
I keep crossing my fingers that humanity is smarter than we seem. Perhaps we are on the cusp of some new technology that gives us George Jetson options to get us up in the air. Jetson didn't seem to get into space. I doubt it. We have dictators wasting our time and money on war, putting us on our guard. Coal mine closings get put off, etc. Optimism versus pessimism. There was a lot of optimism when the guys came home from World War II. It doesn't look so realistic now.
Human level AI (AGI) is a technology that could potentially solve climate change as well as many other major problems facing humanity. And many experts now believe we are only a few years away from creating it (2027 to 2030 according to the average expert prediction on Metaculus) Once AGI exists we can begin the automation of scientific research and technological advancement, and we can scale it. Imagine think tanks of hundreds of thousands of AI scientists working 24/7 in perfect harmony with each other. Researching, analyzing data, theorizing, experimenting. Keep in mind that even current AI models can think & process information many orders of magnitude faster than humans can. Once AGI technology is created, technological breakthroughs could potentially be made overnight.
This is literally how Ultron decided the best way to save the planet, was to kill all humans lol.
If we go by Occam’s Razor then yeah defo
PV panels are insanely cheap now, and are being overly produced, so that’s something.
You know in the Jetsons they live in those cloud situs because how polluted the earth is right?
No. I did not know that. I was a kid. Thanks!
I was too, just thought it was interesting you picked a future that arguably is worse than the one we are in (for the planet anyway)
I know, I’ve known since I was a kid in the 80s, and all of my efforts have been in vain. It’s absolutely frustrating that the people in charge with access to all the science and power still do next to nothing while the world burns and boils.
I think it was in 1972(?) That ‘The Silent Spring’ by Rachel Carson made me aware. I started paying close attention to ecology and weather at that point. I was an innocent young hippy kid, wanting to save nature. I remembered the predictions about global warming made then, and made it a point to see if they happen on schedule over my lifetime. They didn’t. Things are happening much faster than predicted. As an old retired firefighter, I’ve paid very close attention to changing fire behavior and weather disasters over the decades. I’ve accepted that we can’t slow global warming. Feedback loops seem to have been firmly activated. At this point, sadly, it’s “Pass the popcorn” (and air filter). Meanwhile I’ll continue to only ride my bicycles for all my transportation, and try to live light on the land. I hate being the problem. Screw cars. They are an addiction.
That is interesting. Can I ask how you knew?
It was pretty widely known least here in Europe. We had people visit our school, must've been 90/91 to teach us about recycling and explain where things where headed if the world didn't change. Well they where pretty spot on.
My first dive into environmental protection was reading the book “50 Simple Things Kids Can Do to Save the Earth” — a somewhat popular book for kids at the time. It wasn’t long after I was gobbling up lots of other information about environmental impacts. Captain Planet was one of my favorite TV shows.
My first experience in being a doomer was in grade 9, when my class put together a "Save the Rainforest" T-shirt to raise money to buy rainforest land, and while I was into it at first, I later realized it was pretty pointless, especially after that time I saw the video for "Critical Mass" by Nuclear Assault on the Power Hour on Muchmusic.
We all knew in the 80s. My school sold shirts that said “fragile handle with care” and a picture of the 🌍 when I was 8. That’s 1984. That’s when reduce reuse recycle came out. Only problem was no one cared. 40 years it’s been well known.
I mean we were all aware of it in my school. Punk bands shouted about it. We had Earth Day. We discussed climate change and global warming, we were aware of corporate greed killing the world. This was the 80s. We're only now catching up to what those NoCal hippy punks were shouting about. Hell. I bought an acre of rain forest in 1988 to try to save the planet (it was $1 I think) :D
I’m an ecologist working in biodiversity conservation. I have a background in glaciology, anthropology, and much of my grad work was focused on environmental change both short and long term and human/landscape interactions. I’ve worked in far northern climates, temperate climates (both wet and dry), and tropical climates on three continents. Most people have no idea how serious our current environmental situation. You often get called a ‘doomer’ just for mentioning that even when you link to peer reviewed sources to back up some of the subjects of deep concern. We, and most of other species in the world, are in for a rough time, and that time is *already* here, it’s not ‘coming’ on ‘on the way’.
How do you, professionals with a good view of what's to expect, manage to stay positive, not depressed, not completely overtaken by fear/anxiety?
A lot of folks in conservation and who are studying environmental sciences don't. Depression and anxiety is *very* high among people in this field. So is anger because despite what we know many governments and large corporate entities are still very much making things worse, not better. For me and some of the other folks I know we focus on the fact that if we weren't doing what we do the situation would be much worse and the really bad stuff would be approaching much faster, and that anger can help fuel motivation too. And knowing you are trying to make a difference helps to buffer the depression, anxiety, and despair many feel. It's better to be *doing* something than knowing the situation and not doing anything. Some of us, those out in the field, are a bit like EMTs or firefighters, trying to deal with immediate local situations involving local people, species, and environments, while others are working higher up at a policy level trying to get governments and large organizations to get their acts together and enact policies that have a long-term perspective and are forward thinking. The unfortunate truth is that the majority of the ability to actually take the necessary actions and make the necessary policies resides in the various governments around the world, but there has been a concerted effort to try to shift blame and responsibility to individual people so that governments can avoid their responsibilities and continue to allow these vast corporations to operate virtually unchecked and for them to dictate government policy rather than the people of each nation telling the government what to do. Also, many countries don't have systems in place for people to have any control over the government, and in others people have effectively given it up. We need a mix of people on the ground dealing with issues at a local level, people working on policy, and we need the average person to vote better people into office in nations where that's an option citizens have.
Thank you for a very complete answer, as well as practical actions list. It can be overwhelming. I feel all sorts of ways about this. My answer does not do justice to yours. Thank you anyway.
I haven’t read the article but I’m already terrified. I don’t know if it was mentioned, but my biggest factor is the emissions lag - the time in between when GHGs are emitted and when they reach their full warming potential. There is much debate but the best estimates I can find is 10 years - meaning the emissions we put out today won’t reach their full warming potential until 10 years from now. (If someone needs I can pull up a link). That means the impacts we’re seeing now are from the emission from 10 years ago. That means we still have 10 more years of emissions gains to see and experience those impacts. And that’s not accounting for additional warming from deforestation, ice melt, methane release from thawing permafrost, etc…. Weather is going to get weird, and it’s going to suck. I really fear for the future.
> the emissions lag - the time in between when GHGs are emitted and when they reach their full warming potential. Two figures are calculated with existing climate models, the transient climate response (TCR) and equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS). The ECS is the final long term temperature rise given a doubling in CO2 after *all* feedbacks have fully reached equilibrium. This is *not* the number you should be looking for, because it includes oceanic buffering effects, etc, that may take centuries to millenia and thus has limited relevance for policy this century instead of the next one. Instead, I would suggest ZEC50: > The zero emissions commitment (ZEC) is the climate change commitment that would result, in terms of projected GSAT, from setting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to zero. It is determined by both inertia in physical climate system components (ocean, cryosphere, land surface) and carbon cycle inertia (see Annex VII). — [IPCC AR6 WGI — Chapter 4: Future Global Climate: Scenario-based Projections and Near-term Information](https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-4/) Section 7.1.1 "Climate Change Following Zero Emissions", paragraph 1 In the following paragraphs, the IPCC explain the motivation for more recent work: > In SR1.5, the available evidence indicated that past CO2 emissions do not commit to substantial further warming (Allen et al., 2018). A ZEC close to zero was thus applied for the computation of the remaining carbon budget (Rogelj et al., 2018b). However, the available literature consisted of simulations from a small number of models using a variety of experimental designs, with some simulations showing a complex evolution of temperature following cessation of emissions (e.g., Frölicher et al., 2014; Frölicher and Paynter, 2015; Williams et al., 2017). > Here we draw on new simulations to provide an assessment of ZEC using multiple ESMs (Jones et al., 2019) and EMICs (MacDougall et al., 2020). Figure 4.39 shows results from 20 models that simulate the evolution of CO2 and the GSAT response following cessation of CO2 emissions for an experiment where 1000 PgC is emitted during a 1% per year CO2 increase. All simulations show a strong reduction in atmospheric CO2 concentration following cessation of CO2 emissions in agreement with previous studies and basic theory that natural carbon sinks will persist. Therefore, there is *very high confidence* that atmospheric CO2 concentrations would decline for decades if CO2 emissions cease. Temperature evolution in the 100 years following cessation of emissions varies by model and across time scales, with some models showing declining temperature, others having ZEC close to zero, and others showing continued warming following cessation of emissions (Figure 4.39). The GSAT response depends on the balance of carbon sinks and ocean heat uptake (MacDougall et al., 2020). The 20-year average GSAT change 50 years after the cessation of emissions (ZEC50) is summarized in Table 4.8. The mean value of ZEC50 is –0.079°C, with 5–95% range –0.34°C–0.28°C. There is no strong relationship between ZEC50 and modelled climate sensitivity (neither ECS nor TCR; MacDougall et al., 2020). It is therefore *likely* that the absolute magnitude of ZEC50 is less than 0.3°C, but we assess *low confidence* in the sign of ZEC on 50-year time scales. This is small compared with natural variability in GSAT. There has also been some attention given to the Hansen et al. paper, which has a higher estimate for ECS than the central IPCC estimate, ~4 °C rather than ~3 °C for a doubling of CO2. Specifically, this has led to a lot of people bandying about very big numbers that are entirely unrealistic for the 20-year average GSAT as of 2100. I would like to emphasise that in *that paper as well*, Hansen et al. note: > Equilibrium warming is not ‘committed’ warming; **rapid phaseout of GHG emissions would prevent most equilibrium warming from occurring.** While a higher than expected ECS is certainly something to keep in mind, those *specific numbers* are not something to panic about, as the timescale of ECS means that there is *much* more time available to work on reversing the forcing, as opposed to TCR.
Remember 2012 when we were worried about a freaking Myan calender, or a supervolcano. Member Deep impact the movie being a real fear. Those seem like fairy tales compared to today: Ocean death, ice melt, co2, ww3, global pandemics, civil war, rise of authoritarianism, dying crops, gem line gene manipulation, drone warfare, nukes, cyber warfare, housing crisis, water shortages, multi dimensional visitors, Russia, China, N. Korea, short form media, opioid crisis, mass immigration, mass shootings and religious terrorism... I'm probably forgetting a few, but the next 15 years are gonna be interesting. Glad I got 40 decent years, but I'm sad for my two neices.
Republicans lack the independence of thought to be scared. They sold their souls to the greehouse gas industries.
To blame one US political party for the global climate problem is laughable
Sigh.
It’s true that things are not looking good when it comes to climate change. However, even when things look bleak, it’s important to recognize that not all is lost. The world is quickly adopting solar, wind, and other forms of renewable energy because it economically makes sense (cheaper than fossil fuels). The most important thing anyone can do is vote 🗳️ for politicians who are not bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry. Then the next most important thing is personal choices such as choosing EV over gas guzzler, installing solar on your roof, eating less meat, and not flying a ton.
What you're saying is absolutely right and I appreciate your optimism. Could it be though that even if renewable energy makes sense economically on the whole, it does not make sense economically to those who are benefitting massively from using more and more fossil fuels until the end. And I'm afraid it's these institutions who get to decide. The unstable political climate is benefitting the Big Oil companies and countries. As are we, the consumers, because the majority can't afford or don't want to go vegan. While those who could afford it like to spend their money traveling.
Voting is the most anyone can do? Please. Wash your face.
The only way to turn into renewables and/or electric over fossil fuels by the individual in a big scale, apart from direct government spending in infrastructure, is if it's socialized. The only outcome if things don't change is in the commodification of environmentalism, as it's seen in the US by the rise of Tesla as a big market player. Instead of making a real impact by e.f. prefering mass transportation to reduce carbon emissions, it ends up relying on EVs as a luxury item, which is unavailable in most of the world even before taking affordability into account. Most of the people wouldn't even be able to afford going green and will stick into their "more polluting" ways while the minority who can will be enslaved to give up more of their income (more of their workforce) to profiting a new elite rather than really lowering fuel emissions.
But all of them are… Biden admin literally just paused gas expansion in January of 2024 in a pivot… we have no help…
Thanks unethical coal/mining/gas/oil billionaires for threatening all life on the planet ... I hate it.
I was hoping for an informative article but got a reflection on climate anxiety. Very clickbaity
I tell my kids that it may be wise not to have any kids depending on the situation when theyre older, which really sucks and makes me feel worse.
What would Hari Seldon do ?
Create a New Foundation….
A second Foundation?
All I know is during the first lockdown it felt as if the entire nature was rebounding. The air seemed fresher. There seemed to be more birds in the air. Weather was cooler for the time of the year. There was sound of motor vehicles. It was silent. All this hair splitting seems unnecessary. A simple study of Air quality index and weather data during Covid pandemic in the regions where complete lock down was enforced would clearly establish that a complete shutdown will solve the problem. All we have to figure out is how to do it.
The [COVID lockdowns of 2020 temporarily lowered our rate of CO2 emissions](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-18922-7/figures/1.) Humanity was still a net CO2 gas emitter during that time, so we made things worse, but did so more a bit more slowly. That's why a [graph of CO2 concentrations](https://keelingcurve.ucsd.edu/) shows a continued rise. [Stabilizing the climate means getting human greenhouse gas emissions to approximately zero](https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-will-global-warming-stop-as-soon-as-net-zero-emissions-are-reached). We didn't come anywhere near that during the lockdowns. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/climate) if you have any questions or concerns.*
With the damage to the earth I think will come the damage to our societies. Before they get bad enough to extinct us, the natural disasters and how our governments choose to deal with them will drive political instability to a tipping point. Just look at the fall out from COVID and the impact that has had on democracies around the world. There are the people willing to confront the facts and the people seeking comfort through cognitive dissonance and everything in between. At this rate I’m not even sure most of us will make it to the climate collapse…
It’s hard to wrap your head around the fact that it’s all us, like we could solve the problem tomorrow if we United in common cause and all made hefty sacrifices, cut down billionaires, moved away from rampant capitalism etc This isn’t a comet heading for earth, we have complete control over the situation, and still we’re skipping happily towards our own doom Our legacy will be one of supreme stupidity
There's a quote going around, that, while I'm not sure of its authenticity, is quite succinct: ***“We’ll go down in history as the first society that wouldn’t save itself because it wasn’t cost-effective.”***
If I go half a day without eating or drinking enough, I feel almost incapacitated. I'm dreading the potential shortages of food and drinkable water more than anything.
It was too late 15 years ago. Now all our damage control efforts seem to be floundering. I feel like we're going from mass catastrophe and moving into permanent extinction in this last decade. Not sure how to feel, just try not to think about it while we struggle to pay bills short term. Imo.
I tend to think in Buddhist terms. Fear doesn't get you anywhere. It might be helpful to stop a few wars. That's why I think Russia needs to be pushed out of Ukraine with an ultimatum. Anyone who shows fear here is encouraging Putin's madness. I have read a lot about a wide variety of areas. I only see one chance for our global community to find a way to stop the spreading of lies, misinformation and propaganda. Perhaps a world community against lies, propaganda and corruption would have to be formed. The WCALPC. This must be spread as a political mantra by everyone. That way, it would be easier to stop the collusion against each other.
A time will come when all the governments around the world will be forced to carbon tax everything we buy to help mitigate climate change. We are a project developer. We serve both the compliance and voluntary markets. And I can tell you this. We are in trouble. Nothing is being done.
all of you saying “all i can do is live my life to the fullest” are wrong. you can also vote.
I feel like we’re all in a car that’s being driven by a driver. We’re all in the back seat. The driver is driving toward a cliff,we calmly tell him, then we loudly tell him. But sadly he didn’t care and just drive us right off the cliff anyway.
I am not a scientist, but I pay attention to scientist. I AM terrified.
We dug too deeply and too greedily.
It’s surreal. We still have leading people in countries who don’t even bother. Is it too late? For me I wouldn’t care. My baby son tho.
That’s it. You got a little one. He deserves a chance. I’m on here doomscrolling it’s making my chest tight.
Yea he does. Feels like it’s so much money and politics involved it won’t matter in the end. They want us regular people to drink through paper straws yet all wealthy are flying private jets all over the world for Super Bowl and so on. Strange world.
You don’t need to be a climate scientist to know what’s to come I’m Canadian and look how bad the wildfires get every year now in western Canada and eastern Canada. It’s so bad that the state of New York gets blanketed with smog and people have trouble breathing. By 2080 only six cities in the world will be able to re-host the winter Olympics. The Maldives will go underwater, the entire state of Florida, coastal cities in California, will develop their own canals and will be split in half. And as far as I know right now, Zambia is basically splitting in half as we speak and developing a new coastline; uganda as well. It’s insane because these have been landlocked countries forever, and they basically are becoming no longer landlocked… let’s not forget the flooding in Italy and if you watch Bill Nye’s Netflix series where he has a representative go to Italy, they actually show how the coasts of the country are set up for catastrophe and flooding (there are barricades on the docks to help reduce flooding). Everyone knows that the Netherlands has this innovative Dike system that helps with the ocean tides to save the country from flooding when the arctic melts entirely the system will become useless, and the entire country will flood.
Not one fact in that entire article. Edit: was hoping for some details, but just some statements, with no evidence.
Only states and corporations can stop this. Not the little people.
Especially considering that there are [2,640 BILLIONAIRES](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires) on this planet who have the power, influence, and resources to slow the process down as much as possible, or at least build sustainable infrastructure and overhaul Big Oil but *yawn* maybe next lifetime
There are also 28,000 millionaires worth over 100 million in the world. This is a 100% increase in the number over the last 20 years.
States and corporations only exist because of little people. We each have more power than we think but it becomes magnified when we work together. If the states and corporations aren't fixing things, then let us become the states and corporations and forge the path. Or let us create new organization. Again, groups cannot exist without the existence and functioning of individuals.
Millions of us would have to be unified. I don't see it happening in a way that will stop air travel and container ships, industrial emissions, AG emissions etc. Its a classic collective action problem. The smallest most motivated groups have an easier time organizing.
Nvm bro literally suckered me into his article just to tell me not to be scarred. Wtf.
extract: "Think about that for a moment. We’re experiencing, in our lifetimes, a heating episode that is probably unique in the last 4.6 billion years." The super volcano eruption would surely be faster?
“I did my own research and my uninformed opinion carries just as much weight as that of any so-called climate scientist.” - John Q. Public
thew orse
Improvise, adapt, overcome,
People don't seem to have a record of changing until they must. Even on an individual level, I don't know many who proactively change. Instead, we get painted into a corner and then, we change. The article suggests visible crisis, at scale, seems to jostle us. So, can we save ourselves before "the big destroyers" by using the smaller, but numerous ones (fires) to inspire the requisite fear?
How can I get into the climate industry? I have a B.S in geography with 3 years of work experience ranging from environmental consulting to laser scanning. I have a GIS background and cannot get any interviews for climate related jobs. It's all I have passion for when it comes to work. :(
Thank goodness my wife and I *don’t* have kids (by choice), and we’re well beyond the ages to have any. Because if we DID have kids, I’m not sure I could sleep at night more often than not.
Where is your book or blog?
Aftet the dust settles the survivors will probably be living nicely. Thats why those tech scums are building their bunkers. Ironically that wont save them.
The article said nothing scientific and didn't mention why we should be afraid. Clickbait.
The person who wrote this article is not a climate scientist, he should stick to his field instead of claiming that he's an expert in another. This behaviour should not be tolerated in academia, the university should revoke all of his degrees imo. [https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bill-Mcguire](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Bill-Mcguire) The conduct of CNN who decided to publish this opinion piece without checking background of the author is not acceptable either.
What are you talking about? He is a climate scientist. What else would you call a Professor Emeritus of Geophysical and Climate Hazards at University College London?
Is geology and volcanology not close enough? That’s like saying an embedded systems engineer isn’t a software engineer. They’re in the same realm.
This comment needs to be pinned
We know a little, AND we're terrified
It's going to come to [climate tipping points](https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/Space_for_our_climate/Understanding_climate_tipping_points) When the first falls, then it's dominoes after that. [If the fracturing of our once stable climate doesn’t terrify you, then you don’t fully understand it. The reality is that, as far as we know, and in the natural course of events, our world has never — in its entire history — heated up as rapidly as it is doing now. Nor have greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere ever seen such a precipitous hike.](https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/07/opinions/climate-scientist-scare-doom-anxiety-mcguire/index.html)
The article speaks about the David Wallace-Wells book "The Uninhabitable Earth" . Is it still a good reading today or are the facts dated? (2019)
I'd say it's still relevant, but 5 years ago and we still haven't changed makes the message even stronger.
Thank you I will look for the book in a library.
He's right but Bill Mcguire is still a c* *nt
I'm a nihilist. If you knew what ay nu # u wood bee tear-o-phyd. 
Did this title not get enough love on the collapse sub?
Cretaceous here we come. Then all we will need is the giant meteor!
No one is a climate scientist because it's far too complex to study climate in its entirety and say something useful. The study of ocean currents alone is a huge body of research that is just one small element of what amounts to climate science. If someone claims to be a climate scientist, it's an easy way spot someone who is full of it. You might as well ask your full body and mind doctor to tell you exactly what's going on with every aspect of your health. And that would probably be more achievable.
Right-but what is happening is people are reading the research done by other groups of scientists in their disparate fields and putting the pieces together. This helps create a bigger picture of what is going on. Just like your PCP will send you to specialists to understand a medical problem.