Might seem a bit misanthropic, but us humans probably are just going to be a blip on Earth's history, being the proverbial frog in the slowly boiling pot. But I suspect that cockroaches will carry on just fine. So at least there is hope for the future.
The asteroid that caused the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was also just a blip on Earth’s history, it did however succeed in making life on earth miserable for a few thousand years, wiping out 75% of the all the species in the process.
In your analogy we are not the frog though, we are the pot, and we are the asteroid, since we are the ones causing the catastrophe. Except on geologic timescales, the pot isn’t slowly being boiled, it is being pressured cooked on a thermo-nuclear reactor. Extinction events are seldomly this sudden and extreme as climate change is currently.
>Extinction events are seldomly this sudden and extreme as climate change is currently.
How do you figure? An asteroid impacting the planet "making life miserable for a few thousand years, wiping out 75%" in seconds of an impact, or a cataclysmic volcanic eruption that happens in seconds/minutes/hours. All of that near instant destruction compared to the 100-200 years of man made pollution on industrial scales.
Geologically speaking that is an instant roughly the equivalent of an asteroid impact. Even if for those living through it looks entirely different the outcome is the same.
Sure, speaking cosmological terms, it's like humans never happened. But speaking in terms of what is controllable by those humans, we just had a successful test that we might be able to save ourselves from an asteroid if we have significant amount of notice. Can't really do too much about volcanoes though. Man made pollution is definitely something we have control over and we've had half a century of warnings. Let's not lose sight of the actual conversation when it is still within our control even if we've decided to ignore it. Human extinction is the most probable outcome but that doesn't mean we have to accelerate it and then just shrug our shoulders
"The asteroid that caused the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event was also just a blip on Earth’s history, it did however succeed in making life on earth miserable for a few thousand years, wiping out 75% of the all the species in the process."
Sure, but that leaves a heaping helping of the remaining 25% to carry on to eventually repopulate the planet with more glorious life. It's happened before, it'll happen again, and whether we're the reason or the victim doesn't really matter. Life finds a way, with or without humans.
A cursory look at the history of the planets temperature [1] makes this sentiment seems ridiculous.
We're still in below average temperatures. Considering our dummy ancestors were around 50 million years ago, when averages were 30 degrees hotter, I don't see why man, as we are now, wouldn't survive. The poles will be nice tropics, once again [2].
Society as is, is doomed, but man is probably fairly permanent.
In the past this happened over timescales that allowed nature to adapt. We're now doing it many times faster, and at a time when nature is already greatly diminished due to human resource extraction.
We're just desertificating vast regions of the planet, not turning them into "nice tropics".
> our dummy ancestors were around 50 million years ago
While true, this vague statement may be misinterpreted by readers. Per Wikipedia[0], about 55 million years ago is the first fossil evidence of any apes. The 'homo' genus, which is what I'd consider "our dummy ancestors", doesn't appear until 2 million years ago (and anatomically modern humans 300,000 years ago).
I just don't understand why people make these arguments.
When people speak of "humanity" they don't mean "the human species". They/we mean of "human society", our current variant, which just invented computers, artificial intelligent, and until very recently seemed set on ending all resource scarcity, curing all diseases, and becoming inter-planetary.
Will humans survive somewhere in the climate as our ancestral species did before us? Of course.
But losing 2000 years of societal progress is not something to just waive away as nothing.
As long as we are succeptible to a tiny rock floating in space swiping our little planet and wiping out all of us, we must progress technologically, and a regression to merely surviving and dying of a broken ankle is not an answer.
I see this argument a lot on conservative news, "humans will adapt". Well, yes, humans will adapt, and there probably will be humans carrying on for thousands of more years.
But not US, WE, todays societies will be gone. Why is this an argument with 'conservatives'? The stupid 'woke' should stop worrying about climate, because humans will adapt.
But why is this a 'conservative' argument, when all of their religions will also be gone. When we are back in the stone ages, there will be humans, but not 'Republican'. Unless, in the dystopian future, the Christian Right does devolve into a Taliban like Ameri-stan where they can go 'Old Testament' on gays. But that does seem like a pretty long game argument. Is it really: "Deny Climate Change so we can destroy civilization back into bronze age so we can just wander the desert worshiping god, like we were supposed to"
I had a light-switch moment listening to some conservative or other on a rant about how the left is making up climate change in order to justify government control of business/society. It's the kind of comment that says more about the person making it than those they are accusing. If you loathe the idea of collective action, then an existential problem that requires collective action to solve poses a problem for you, and denial seems to be the simplest route out of any cognitive dissonance.
I was just responding to the comment "but us humans probably are just going to be a blip on Earth's history", which you also seem to disagree with.
I don't know why conservatives think that, but I think it's silly to think that humans, the animal, will be wiped out within the next 1000 years, due to the very real climate change that is happening.
