Global Warming

And it should be that way. Once we depart, whether it is due to extinction or rehabilitation, there's no reason whatsoever to give a flying feck about what happens to Earth.

It's not my contribution, it is what it is. It's nice to think we can do something about that, but the facts say otherwise.
It doesn't, true.

Anyway, back to the main point, no one ever considered this planet to hold up for our life forever, so I don't buy into the constant criticism for humans in worsening the situation. The planet will run it's due course, if it looks like it has started to change for the worse, the only option is to get out.
This is literally the worst argument I've ever read on here.
 
This is bordering on sociopathic.
How? Anyone who has known the fate of previous species on this planet as well as the forecast with out without human intervention would be insane to argue that our survival was granted forever. The obvious action - and what is being actually done - is to look for alternatives.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say :lol:

It's the difference between knowing you are eventually going to die, and knowing you're going to be executed tomorrow.
I wouldn't say the difference is that drastic, in any case, like I said sooner rather than later we would have had to look for alternatives, which we are doing now.
 
This is bordering on sociopathic.
It's entirely a sociopathic line of thought. 'Nihilist' if one prefers such.

Something about the difficulty in trying to balance blunt logic with the human condition, when contemplating questions such as these...
 
This is a bit like going to court and saying "No, I didn't kill her when I hit her with my car. I just accelerated the speed she was going at, ergo she was going to die anyway."
:wenger: It's nothing like that, literally.

Can you give me an estimate according to you of the life-span of humans on this planet assuming the temperatures had not risen?
 
:wenger: It's nothing like that, literally.

Can you give me an estimate according to you of the life-span of humans on this planet assuming the temperatures had not risen?
50 million years
 
And now, with the rising temperatures?
Temperatures will rise in the next 100 years. Maybe future tech and future generations will solve the problems we have today (after a lot of struggle), making the life-span of humans unchanged. Maybe it will lead to such disruption that we'll be nuking each other in 75 years time.
 
Temperatures will rise in the next 100 years. Maybe future tech and future generations will solve the problems we have today (after a lot of struggle), making the life-span of humans unchanged. Maybe it will lead to such disruption that we'll be nuking each other in 75 years time.
Let's leave other assumptions for the time being and just consider the rise in temperatures with the current rate and forecast. I asked, how much would it decrease the life-span of our species by?
 
Let's leave other assumptions for the time being and just consider the rise in temperatures with the current rate and forecast. I asked, how much would it decrease the life-span of our species by?
99.99%
 
The big one is cows, isnt it?

If the world went vegetarian we would get right on top of this situation at a stroke.

It's not insignificant, but it's not a magic bullet solution. If anything it shows the scale of the challenge. Not only do we need to move to clean energy, electrify transportation and limit aviation but we also need people to significantly change their diets, something which there is little appetite (sorry) for.

If we had acted sooner and peaked emissions in the early years of this century we could have mitigated (reduced emissions) very gradually to achieve carbon neutrality at the end of this century and still limited global warming to sub-dangerous levels.

Instead we have chosen to increase net emissions every year, which means the rate at which we need to eliminate greenhouse gases becomes ever sharper. The more we eat into the carbon budget the less we have to play with when we reduce emissions.

The only positive is that emissions vaguely follow the Pareto rule (the top 20% responsible for 80% of the impact) and so we could achieve pretty significant mitigation by asking the world's worst emitters to cut back to the level of an average European.
 
Pretty sure he's wumming at this point.
Not really. My point is simple - the cause of Earth is lost. We can debate whether it was our doing, or whether it was going to change anyway. But that's nothing more than academic at this point. Astronomers aren't idiots to spend enormous amount of research in search of exoplanets - and that is the only thing we should concentrate on right now. Period.
 
Not really. My point is simple - the cause of Earth is lost. We can debate whether it was our doing, or whether it was going to change anyway. But that's nothing more than academic at this point. Astronomers aren't idiots to spend enormous amount of research in search of exoplanets - and that is the only thing we should concentrate on right now. Period.
They do it for academic interest, not because we're ever going to live on another planet. Even if we could travel close to the speed of light anyone making the journey would probably die. Cosmic dominance is for robots, really.
 
Not really. My point is simple - the cause of Earth is lost. We can debate whether it was our doing, or whether it was going to change anyway. But that's nothing more than academic at this point. Astronomers aren't idiots to spend enormous amount of research in search of exoplanets - and that is the only thing we should concentrate on right now. Period.
Yeah, definitely wumming.
 
Human life has been around way longer than 5000 years already, rcoobs. :lol:

That's a pretty insane estimate even if you mean the remaining life-span. Provide some basis, please.
I thought you meant "future lifespan".

Justification for an estimated lifespan of 50 million years without global warming: Large mammals that we know and love today such as Wolves, Horses, and great apes have already been around for tens of millions of years. Assuming we can avoid a man-made catastrophe, there is no reason to believe humans couldn't exist for a similar period of time.

Justification for an estimated lifespan of less than 50,000 years with global warming: Unchecked global warming will lead to rising temperatures for in access of 1 ice age unit. This will cause the displacement of billions of people, stirring tensions and heightening the risk of nuclear war. Even without nuclear war, global temperature rises between 5 and 10 degrees would be an earth unrecognizable compared to the one of today. World War 3 likely within 100 years as nations fight for remaining resources. Most of the world would be uninhabitable within 1000 years. The extinction of humans shortly after.
 
Not really. My point is simple - the cause of Earth is lost. We can debate whether it was our doing, or whether it was going to change anyway. But that's nothing more than academic at this point. Astronomers aren't idiots to spend enormous amount of research in search of exoplanets - and that is the only thing we should concentrate on right now. Period.

Surely the technology to save the earth is much more realistic than terraforming a new planet?
 
They do it for academic interest, not because we're ever going to live on another planet. Even if we could travel close to the speed of light anyone making the journey would probably die.
We may or may not - impossible to predict at this point. The odds are obviously in the favours of us being another bunch who were born here and died here but we haven't given up yet, far from it. That is the only way to prolong our life-span. And that was always, always the case.
 
We may or may not - impossible to predict at this point. The odds are obviously in the favours of us being another bunch who were born here and died here but we haven't given up yet, far from it. That is the only way to prolong our life-span. And that was always, always the case.
You're just chatting shit mate.
 
Sometimes people just fancy a change of scene.
We can do both. Philip K Dick always made Mars colonies sound beautifully awful, would be a fun experience.
 
Don't think there's a thread about this already but seeing as we're all shitting ourselves about Trump kicking of WWIII we might as discuss an even more permanent threat to civilisation.

Was just reading this article this morning and some of the facts and figures are genuinely terrifying. I'm sure we've all read that 2016 has been the hottest year ever but did anyone know that the temperatures over the Arctic Ocean are currently 20C warmer than normal? 20 fecking degrees!

We're all doomed, aren't we?

Or do any of you think the fears are being exagerrated?

*cracks knuckles and holds hands above keyboard*
After a WWIII global warming would be the least of our problems :lol:
 
Look lads some day we'll be able to move to another planet and some guys are already pointing their telescopes up to space, so feck it!

Absolutely no point in attempting to slow down the effects of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere to extend the life expectancy of our entire species.
 
Absolutely no point in attempting to slow down the effects of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere to extend the life expectancy of our entire species.
You don't have to make stuff up to prove your point. We are doing everything we can to improve this situation and there's no reason to cut back on any of that regardless of what the future situation might be. The whole argument was around how much humans have contributed to the change. But like I said that is pretty academic and things like the Paris deal are absolutely crucial and more such steps need to be taken.