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General Discussion & Feedback => Radio Show & Podcast Feedback => Topic started by: thedoc on 08/06/2015 09:09:16

Title: Will the earth survive human activities?
Post by: thedoc on 08/06/2015 09:09:16

Bleached Caribbean corals compromise on greedier temperature-resistant symbionts...

Read the whole story on our  website by clicking here (http://www.thenakedscientists.com/HTML/science-news/news/1000704/)

  

Title: Re: Will the earth survive human activities?
Post by: alancalverd on 08/06/2015 13:58:52

This sort of story is scientifically embarassing. The recent discovery of 500-year-old bryophytes under a retreating glacier clearly indicates that temperatures were higher 500 years ago, and miraculously, the planet survived.

But never let facts spoil a scare story.

Title: Re: Will the earth survive human activities?
Post by: chiralSPO on 08/06/2015 21:40:41

Re: the title of this thread: We couldn't destroy the planet if we tried. We probably couldn't kill everything on it if we tried. Without trying we have and will continue to be a stress on the quasi-equilibrium of the Earth's many systems.

Re:alan's comment: This issue is not so much that the temperature will be higher than it is now (as you and many others know, it has been significantly higher many times in recent and distant past), the problem is that the rate at which the temperature is likely to change is probably going to be faster than the rate at which ecosystems and species will adapt. There will likely be many extinctions and a dramatic (nearly discontinuous on a geological time scale) change in the climate and global ecosystems. (This, of course, is also not unprecedented--and none of the major extinictions erradicated all life on Earth). The questions (in my mind) are: how much of a disturbacnce will there be? can civilization survive such a disturbance? are we willing to bio-engineer animals, plants, fungi and microbes that are adapted to the new circumstances or will we wait to see what comes out of the settling dust?

Title: Re: Will the earth survive human activities?
Post by: alancalverd on 09/06/2015 00:14:17

Civilisation is doomed anyway. Either we will run out of drinkable water or the binding fabric of society will be replaced by increasingly fanatical superstitions, because the capacity of homo sapiens to reproduce and kill is way beyond its capacity for rational thought. In geological time, humanity will be a mere temporary excresence, best forgotten.

Pity about the dodo, though.