Damn, we actually collapsed our environment in the name of profit. This must be the great filter. Its the enticing imaginary bullshit that leads to total obliteration over advancement. The chasing of made-up dragons to make some nonexistent number rise.
There's a scene in Sagan's Cosmos where he's exploring the possibilities of life elsewhere. He's in the Ship of the Imagination, looking around at various potentials. He runs across one planet teeming with a civilization, from orbit it had even more lights and connections that our own at night. And then the lights suddenly go out. He discusses how even thriving life can suddenly die and speculates on a few reasons why this one might have, like resources or war or whatever. Summary from memory, I have no idea which episode it's in.
In reality it wouldn't be a sudden disappearance, but a longer decay. The lights shutting off was just to illustrate how easy it is to lose something assumed to be permanent. I'd also recommend the beginning of Revolution to get that same surreal feeling, although the rest of the series was blah.
Ah, Cosmos, I remember watching that when I still believed people were creatures of knowledge and advancement. We'll never know any of those things cause we spent the last 50 years prioritizing profit over all else. It didnt have to be like this.
I don't believe planet self-destruction is the The great filter, just our filter and we failed. In all fairness it's probably the first of many future filters that would have gotten us too.
So, what does this all mean for us? It means we have even less time to get our act together. Reducing emissions isn’t just a good idea — it’s crucial.
Our planet’s systems are interconnected in ways we’re only beginning to understand. If we want to keep things from getting worse, we need to act now. Every little bit counts, and the clock is ticking.
We're likely to see a lot of suffering and disruption along with increased mortality, but humans are way too resourceful to go extinct, even with a severe disruption to the climate
The trick to capitalism is to pay very close attention to who is asserting that it is a virtuous system. Not unlike the proper way to read a fortune cookie, one must add the phrase "for me" to the end of any such statement.
Great Britain will get more than chilly. Arable land was expected to drop from 32% of the region down to 22% by 2080, slashing their economy by a third. If the AMOC is already showing signs of breakdown, that timeline will need to be shortened.
There have been lifeforms that have survived multiple global extinction events over millions of years.
Humans won't. Which is why I stopped caring anymore about efforts to save ecosystems. Humans don't deserve this planet and will righteously reap what we sow.
Other life will go "Oh no, humans are gone... Anyways."
Whales, Elephants, and the other Great Apes are all likely to go too, and they don't deserve it. Humans brought this on ourselves, but the loss of peaceful intelligent life is a true tragedy.
Haha, I have no hope left. I might just keep playing league and trash talking my teammates. At least when my mind is filled with hate, the despair can't creep back in :)
Yes, collapse here is a fear mongering term, because it makes you think the current will stop without actually saying the word "stop." It's just shifting. Changing. We are in the process of coming out of an ice age. Things gonna be moving.
About to be a total Doomer, but I would just like to remind everyone that the current effects we are seeing are due to carbon pumped into the atmosphere 30 YEARS AGO! And emissions have only increased since then.
As a millennial, it's been a hard reckoning that greed and evil truly won before I was born. There was nothing I could ever have done about it. All I can do is just ride it out. In a way, I am privileged. I've always had an interest in history, how fortunate I am to witness it's end.
“This would bring big changes to the climate and ecosystems, including faster warming in the southern hemisphere, harsher winters in Europe, and weakening of the northern hemisphere’s tropical monsoons.”