People are so skeptic and negative about humans nowadays.
We are an incredibly hardy species. We are clever. We find ways to survive in deserts, mountains, small islands, icey tundras and anything in between.
We plan ahead, we can eat and digest pretty much anything (except for cellulose) and we have as much drive to survive as your average cockroach.
Sure our species is vulnerable. And I wouldn't rule out large percentages of our population dying at some point.
But don't bet against the inventiveness and flexibility of humans. We may be one of the last species on this planet to become extinct.
> We are an incredibly hardy species. We are clever. We find ways to survive in deserts, mountains, small islands, icey tundras and anything in between.
We’re that… so far.
But at the same time:
- our track record is short, only about 300kY, for comparison while not a specific species the dinosaurs lasted for around 175000kY, and were the dominant life form for 135000, until they were taken out by an asteroid, apex species did last for millions of years
- we’re actively moving our own environment out of spec with our survival capabilities, and as warm-blooded mammals it’s much easier to adapt to the cold than it is to the heat, 35 WBT is a hard limit (in fact it looks like it’s an over-estimate and 31 is closer, even for healthy young adults, but 35 WBT was a theorised estimate)
Drive to survive can only get you so far, you can have as much drive to survive as your average cockroach, that won’t save you from heat stroke any more than it’ll save you from drowning or a bullet wound.
> our track record is short, only about 300kY, for comparison while not a specific species the dinosaurs lasted for around 175000kY, and were the dominant life form for 135000, until they were taken out by an asteroid, apex species did last for millions of years
I think that's a pretty bad comparison. A much better comparison is with a species that's also a mammal, spread world-wide, extremely adaptable and exhibits group behavior.
The Canidae genus fits the bill nicely, which includes foxes, jackals, and of course, wolves and dogs.
They have a pretty good track record of ~9000kY of being virtually unchanged from their current forms and inhabit all parts of the world, including some fairly remote islands.
> we’re actively moving our own environment out of spec with our survival capabilities,
Technically that can be said for any species that breeds beyond carrying capacity of its local environment. Humans are no different.
>Technically that can be said for any species that breeds beyond carrying capacity of its local environment. Humans are no different.
Not at all. Most species that over breed their local environment have die offs. But, if the overpopulation is too severe they can damage the environment and go extinct from the environment.
But, you're looking at the local scale and this is much too small of scope. A few billion years ago there was something closer to the game we play called the Great Oxygen Catastrophe. This unfolded at a global scale and lead to worldwide die offs of bacteria as they produced too much oxygen. Eventually it is thought they caused the extinction of a huge portion of the oxygen producing bacteria and paved the way for lifeforms that could survive in the altered planet.
> They have a pretty good track record of ~9000kY of being virtually unchanged from their current forms and inhabit all parts of the world, including some fairly remote islands.
And we’re nowhere near that is my point. Not sure what you think yours is?
> Technically that can be said for any species that breeds beyond carrying capacity of its local environment. Humans are no different.
Absolutely not. A species exceeding their environment’s carrying capacity will have die-offs then the survivors carry on. It does not make its own environment unlivable for itself, which is what humanity is doing.
Humanity is also heading towards exceeding the planet’s carrying capacity but that is a separate issue.
To be fair, the same is true of dinosaurs — through their bird family.
But their era as dominant life ended 65M years ago despite their current wide spread existence; and something similar may happen to us — were our species to sufficiently fall apart.
> People are so skeptic and negative about humans nowadays.
Any positivity I might sometimes happen to feel about humanity quickly proves to be misguided as soon I read what other humans have to say on the internet.
Just go to Twitter, Reddit, or some comments section on YouTube, and you'll quickly come out hating the species too.
And you know, we've been poisoning ourselves for a really long time amiright? The industrial age, smog, bpa, micro plastics. THERE IS NO LIMIT TO THE ABUSE WE CAN PUT ON OURSELVES. Woo
This but unironically. Spare me your left-wing progressive snark. Humans thrive despite our propensity for self-harm. Something to celebrate, not criticize.
Conservation and awareness of our natural resources is not a "left-wing progressive" thing. Exhibit A: Ducks Unlimited. A lot of very right-wing hunters contribute millions of dollars every year to preserve natural habitats. They see and understand the impact humans have on the natural environment, and pay good money to preserve those habitats.
That's not the original post's argument and was not my response. Sanctimonious criticizing of the environmental effects of industrialization via sarcasm is absolutely a left-wing progressive thing. It's not clever, it's not cute, and it's not effective at arguing in favor of conservation.
> We could see the collapse of not just one, but all human civilization, and possibly the extinction of our species—or even all the species on the planet. In short, it would be really, really bad.
We should probably note here that there's been exactly one sterilizing event in the entire history of life, and that was the formation of the moon. So even if we go, something else will survive. Even the end-Permian left survivors!
while i agree that the moon formation would almost certainly have sterilised the earth, i don't know of any evidence that there was anything to sterilise.
I mean, I get the sarcasm, but at the same time we could probably monitor all asteroids from what we’re spending on climate change atm.
This is one big issue I have with the hysterical end of the climate change debate, there are 100 other threats to humanity, yet we don’t really care about them, probably because the media doesn’t care as much.
Covid is a pretty good example also, it’s killed way more people than the climate has for a long long time. A pandemic is a much bigger threat to both humanity and the economy. But somehow we’ve latched on to some event that might happen based on computer models in 50-200 years, as the biggest threat. At least according to the media. In reality even the IPCC doesn’t predict any fall in GDP due to climate change, just a slow in growth. Covid actually decreased worldwide gdp. An asteroid definitely would too.
My point is, we spend resources on a lot of things as humans. Lots of stupid things sometimes. I don’t see how one man’s goal to get to mars isn’t on the more positive side of things, and the technologies that will be developed for it will be definite positives for everyone, just look at reusable rockets.
Are we spending on climate change? I see a lot of greenwashing, but it's more marketing than spending.
This said, I think you kind of miss a few points regarding climate change. First, it hasn't happened yet, it's just starting. We are living a mass extinction right now, and that's not a computer model or some prediction; that's a fact: we can count how many trees, mammals and insects have already disappeared (something like 75%). That's not the climate change problem, it's the biodiversity problem. If we magically removed the excess of CO2 from the atmosphere today, we would still be living a mass extinction. Just because of habitat loss (for other species obviously), which is due to how we live. We are destroying the planet, that's a fact, and that's before taking into account climate change. The solution to that? Produce less, consume less. There is no serious technological solution, because technology is the problem.
Then there is the energy problem: fossil fuels are going down (we passed conventional peak oil in 2008, general peak oil is about now, LNG is close) and we don't have serious alternatives. That will threaten our whole society. Solution? Prepare to do with less energy, meaning that we won't be able to produce as much, meaning that it actually helps the climate change problem -> that's fortunate.
Finally, for both of those existential problems, they exist because of how we actively behave (as opposed to a potential asteroid that doesn't care about our actions). So of course it seems like we should do something. But it's much harder than the asteroid: for the asteroid, we should actually spend money building a solution. For the biodiversity/climate, we should generally produce less, which is not compatible with growth.
Somehow we do the opposite of what we should: we don't do anything about asteroids, but we should. We do a lot of stuff that is destroying the planet, and we should not. Because we are short-sighted and looking for profit, not long-term (mid-term, at this point?) survival.
> That's not the climate change problem, it's the biodiversity problem.
I agree with you. The state of our oceans is a much more current and verifiable problem than the actual EFFECTS climate change will have in the future. I’m not denying it exists.
But there’s a lot of conflating the mass extinction with climate change, but they’re not the same thing. And climate change gets all the money right now. Because it’s fashionable. Not because it’s necessarily optimal spending wise.
Have you missed the people dying in major, atypical weather events? As climate change increases, those events and death will increase. Hurricanes, flood, drought, etc. Tropical diseases migrating into new territory are another thing to look forward to.
Once things get bad enough, you start to have population migrations and political instability. Add in hunger and thirst and that leads to societal collapse and war.
Climate change gets attention because it has such wide ranging effects, both primary and secondary. Yes, there are other risks. Some, like asteroids and diseases do have people watching for them though we could always do more.
Agreed. And it gets attention because it is a consequence of our actions. If we stop consuming too much, it won't change the asteroid situation (there we should actively do something). But the biodiversity/climate problem is the opposite: the problem is that we are doing too much!
The fate of humans is extinction, saying otherwise is simply wrong. Be it 200 years or 2,000,000,000 at some point our species will go extinct, or whatever species we evolve into.
I understand why people get angry when you say it, but anger won’t change it because on a long enough time scale nothing will survive.
Well, eventually the sun will explode into a red giant; and if we make it past that somehow, the universe will cool down and spread out so much that we won't be able to have enough energy to do stuff. So, even if we don't "go extinct", either our solar system or our universe will.
Still, I think the question on people's minds is whether it's 2 Billion years, 200 years, or - if the US and Russia play their nuke cards - maybe less :-(
Sure. But that's not the question. I see the question more as this: "Say life will get extinct in 1000 years no matter why. And say that if you do nothing, it goes extinct in 10 years, but if you act now, it will get closer to those 1000 years. Should you do something?".
That's the same thing about the current mass extinction/biodiversity problem/climate change: we are not talking about saving the species in 200 years, we've long proven that we don't care about that. We are talking about saving our butts. Us, currently living.
Yes Sherlock we can. So fucking what? If there are actionable things that can be researched and developed to protect us from some potential existential disaster I believe we have started doing it.
If however something that we can not prevent comes crushing down, what's the point thinking about it?
I wonder what's the longest period in human history in which someone was not predicting the imminent demise of humanity... it's like a very small period.
Given H. Sapiens' manifest unfitness for the planet-dominating role it has bred and slaughtered itself into, loss of it would be no bad thing. Shame about the other species though.
Every generation has said similar despairing things about the next, yet there always is a next generation to complain about. No, it's not different this time.
I don't know that this is true. Christendom has a longstanding eschatological tradition, but I'm not sure that it's been in any way universal. Cyclical views of long time are pretty common, for example.
Humanity hasn't always had nukes. I think Ukraine/Russia is somewhat likely to go worldwide, and it's going to be hard to stop a large nuclear exchange at that point. I'd be surprised if we have 5 years left.
More progressive propaganda thinly packaged as journalism. Humans are animals, and nature has selected us to survive again and again. For crying outloud, we've made it to outer space, one of the most hostile environments for life forms, and we're pushing to go further.
The spread of the "humans suck, we're so awful" rhetoric in the left-wing media really puts a bad taste in my mouth.
> Humans are animals, and nature has selected us to survive again and again.
Huh? H. Sapiens is a recent species, and has in its short career already brought most ecosystems worldwide to near collapse. It is 'successful' in the way a wastrel scion of a wealthy family appears at the height of his spending, just before penury, destitution, and syphilis hits.
I happen to think a major nuclear exchange will take us out in the next few decades, but if not, nothing is likely to prevent the continuing destruction of most life on our planet. Fouling the nest can work for a while. But then it doesn't.
anyone that thinks humans will be around in even a million years time is, imho, delusional. we were not there up until now in that timespan, and won't be after it.
and don't get started on living on mars, or elsewhere - not going to happen.
Okay, but you’re objectively wrong in your second sentence. There were archaic humans (genus homo, specifically Homo habilis and then Homo erectus) about 2-3 million years ago. They used various tools, and as of ~1 million years ago (late erectus to early Homo heidelbergensis, the common ancestor of anatomically modern humans and the Neanderthals) were possibly using (a gestural?) language, likely fire, maybe even seafaring.
I am not that interested in the opinion of people insistent that humans won’t exist in the future (and calling those who disagree “delusional”) if those people have a flawed understanding of human existence in the past.
Why do you think that it's so certain? There are moments in history were the number of humans in existence numbered in the thousands. What kind of event are you imagining of that is certain to occur that will kill every single last human?
i was thinking that we are obviously a fast-evolving species - look at all our mostly extinct relatives. so in a million years we will probably go the same way.
Right. Archaic humans that existed 1 million years ago are still recognizable very much as humans and had many of our current capabilities in nascent form.
in nascent form - so, not developed. if there is one thing that defines modern humans, it is their use of technology, which has only really happened in the last 5K years, and mostly in the last few hundred. compare this with a million years.
i don't think the primate tree is going to be terminated that soon, but i think it might be pruned.
I would consider fire, seafaring, language, and clothes to absolutely be “technology” and they existed well before 5000 years ago.
And I think our version of seafaring, spacefaring, will be fruitful over a timescale of thousands of years, and maybe much shorter than that.
Our ancestors walked from Africa to the corners of the globe. Today, the cheapest and safest way to travel thousands of miles (as well as the most common) is to hurtle across the sky at nearly the speed of sound at altitudes that would kill you if not in a pressurized volume. The energy used for this, a round trip from one side of the globe to the other, is about the same as needed to place you in orbit (with hyper-optimized chemical rockets). I don’t see why we think the last ~50 years is the end of such progress of our technology.
we may be ok for the next ~50 years (but i have my doubts, and i really don't think we will ever get much out of earth orbit), but a million years? i don't think many people realise how long that is, and how we could be human at the end of it.
Absolutely. I don't understand why people think there is something grand in their neurotic reflexive attachment to the species they just happen to belong to. Supporting the human attack on the ecosphere (now near-terminal) is as crudely chauvanistic as pub fights over football games. But it's dressed up as belief in 'destiny' (which, like so many views professed by people who misunderstand theirselves as inheritors of scientific beliefs, is purely religious in origin).
We are an incredibly hardy species. We are clever. We find ways to survive in deserts, mountains, small islands, icey tundras and anything in between.
We plan ahead, we can eat and digest pretty much anything (except for cellulose) and we have as much drive to survive as your average cockroach.
Sure our species is vulnerable. And I wouldn't rule out large percentages of our population dying at some point. But don't bet against the inventiveness and flexibility of humans. We may be one of the last species on this planet to become extinct.