Yeah. The way things are going it will be much sooner.
Hey, you could kill lots of things, but it seems unlikely you could kill everything.
Life tends to move into places left vacant by other things.
Humans: Hold my beer.
Edit:Newer article.
By 2050, the loss of critical habitats such as coral reefs and mangroves was expected to contribute to āsubstantial declinesā for tropical fisheries, on which many human communities depended, said the researchers.
So only most of what we need. Not all.
āLifeā in the abstract will be fine. Lifeā¦ finds a way. Massive extinction events like P/T open niches that are eventually exploited by other organisms, as you say. Of course, thatās on a time scale of millions of years.
The two questions of climate change as I see it are, 1) what are the consequences for human life (in all its interconnectedness to other species), and 2) self-preservation aside, do we have a responsibility to preserve existing biodiversity (at which weāre doing a pretty pisspoor job, btw)?
Left unchecked, the bacteria in the human gut would multiply at rate that it would cover the earth in a few weeks. All biological life acts this way, its one and only goal is to reproduce. But everything in nature is checked by something else.
In this sense, humans arenāt any different. The problem is there isnāt anything to check humans except ourselves. And Iāve always thought that check would be ethics, empathy and altruism. It turns out that a lot, maybe even most humans are completely lacking those constructs. (Organized religion, and now capitalism pretty much push us towards the opposite spectrum.)
But living organisms experience emotions (we merely need watch our pets to know that) and they want to live as much as you and I do. So yes, nature is intrinsically worthy of protection even beyond the utility they might bring to humans (Thoreau, Muir and Leopold articulate this very well. In fact I urge anyone with an interest to read A Sand County Almanac by Leopold.)
So sure, 99% of all life that ever lived on Earth has gone extinct. But those extinctions occurred due to some catastrophic natural disaster. The 6th mass extinction now occurring is wholly avoidable, but we choose not to and the cavalier reaction of wiping out entire species with a shrug is just beyond my understanding.
Speaking of species extinction, the northern white rhino is not in a good spot:
Kenya had 20,000 rhinos in the 70ās. By the 90ās they had 450 left. 20 years to wipe out a species that survived for millions of years. Their story is being repeated all over the planet.
Iām pretty sure Trumpās douchebag sons have shot rhinos in addition to their other outstanding kills.
The headline mentions Trump, but itās a near-global problem.
Wonder if Canada will say āsorryā for their tar sands 50 years from now. :/
Scientists are studying the only other time in geologic history where the climate warmed as fast as it is now (56 million years ago.)
Oh boy.
https://twitter.com/NASAEarth/status/979057461566066688
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2691/far-northern-permafrost-may-unleash-carbon-within-decades/
Permafrost in the coldest northern Arctic ā formerly thought to be at least temporarily shielded from global warming by its extreme environment ā will thaw enough to become a permanent source of carbon to the atmosphere in this century, with the peak transition occurring in 40 to 60 years, according to a new NASA-led study.
The study calculated that as thawing continues, total carbon emissions from this region over the next 300 years or so will be 10 times as much as all human-produced fossil fuel emissions in the single year 2016.
Some days Iām glad I donāt have children to worry about.
Wait, is that article saying that the average carbon emission per year from permafrost in the Arctic will be equal to about 3.3% of the total human carbon emissions in the year 2016?
Maybe thereās some ramping effect, but the 10x over 300 years (which sounds like the sum over 300 years) is an interesting way to put itā¦
Iām just making robots to take over. Robots living on in the future is, to me, just as good as humans continuing to exist.
If I was faced with the choice of saving a Trump supporter, or saving Johnny 5, it wouldnāt be a hard decision.