Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

Cad_sl said:

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I dunno why you are even posting this graphic, unless your intent is to prove me correct here, Cad.

The time it took to generate corn from teosinte was close to 10,000 years.

The biggest changes have occurred over tens of thousands to millions of years. Do you not see that? The biggest swings in the pleistocene occurred over hundreds of thousands of years. The largest declines in temperatures occurred from 100 million to 10 million years ago.

Also your chart serves to downplay the modern changes by equating them, in fact making them appear longer, than hundreds of thousands of years. For instance, in the Holocene when it says 5 to 0 thousands of years before the present, the distance on the graph is the same as the distance between 400 and 200 thousand years ago in the pleistocene.

I realize that large time spans are, and I'm not saying this in any way condescendingly, very difficult for the human mind to grasp. That's a proven phenomena. We simply have a lot of trouble wrapping our heads around those types of time spans. But the amount of genetic variation and adaptational change that occurs in 200,000 years is VASTLY GREATER than 5000 years. Vastly. The average rate of significant adaptational change is something like 25,000 years for a single positive mutation in a species to appear and perpetuate to fixation in the population, if I remember correctly.

We're talking about a 2 degree AT MINIMUM increase in less than 200 years.

That's a whole nother ballgame from anything we've seen in the past. 10,000 times faster than any previous such change.

Species simply do not have the genetic variation and time available to them in that time span to adapt to these changes.

And we are in the midst of one.

Holocene extinction - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Holocene extinction, sometimes called the Sixth Extinction, is a name proposed to describe the currently ongoing extinction event of species during the present Holocene epoch (since around 10,000 BCE) mainly due to human activity.

Cad_sl said:

I post that chart for no premise other than the fact that the temperature has varied much more than 2 degrees and life continued.

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Yes, you posted that chart as a non sequitor. We know the temperature over 100,000 and more years can vary by more than 2 degrees and life continued.

That isn't the issue and that chart clearly muddies the water on the issue by failing to recognize that the issue isn't purely that climate changes and life continues, but rather that context and time scales matter, particularly in relation to the ability of biological organisms to adapt.

What does past climate change tell us about global warming?

Abrupt vs slow change.

Life flourished in the Eocene, the Cretaceous and other times of high CO2 in the atmosphere because the greenhouse gasses were in balance with the carbon in the oceans and the weathering of rocks. Life, ocean chemistry, and atmospheric gasses had millions of years to adjust to those levels.

But there have been several times in Earth's past when Earth's temperature jumped abruptly, in much the same way as they are doing today. Those times were caused by large and rapid greenhouse gas emissions, just like humans are causing today.

Those abrupt global warming events were almost always highly destructive for life, causing mass extinctions such as at the end of the Permian, Triassic, or even mid-Cambrian periods.The symptoms from those events (a big, rapid jump in global temperatures, rising sea levels, and ocean acidification) are all happening today with human-caused climate change.

So yes, the climate has changed before humans, and in most cases scientists know why. In all cases we see the same association between CO2 levels and global temperatures. And past examples of rapid carbon emissions (just like today) were generally highly destructive to life on Earth.

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Now, do you haveany evidence whatsoever that when CO2 levels have spiked dramatically, followed byrapid increases in global climatesthat life was not dramatically affects in terms of species dying off at higher than normal ratesyes or no?

Cad_sl said:

We're only kind of a biological organism now though

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Uh, no, we're ENTIRELY A BIOLOGICAL ORGANISM, and will remain such even if we start replacing large portions of our bodies with robotics.

And our ability to adapt at the speed of our inventions is limited by our society, culture, and intelligence.

Now, do you have any evidence to rebut the fact that every time CO2 and temperature increases have rapidly escalated in the past, this did not lead to mass extinctions, yes or no?

Its nice to think happy thoughts and say to ourselves we can just survive anything, but the evidence doesn't correlate with this nice thought, and furthermore, the very premise actually leaves us open to extinction.

Its literally puddle thinking

This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it?In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise.I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.

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-Douglas Adams

Cad_sl said:

There's never been a species like us, so reasoning from whats happened to species before us doesn't mean too much. It's like saying, horses die if you don't give them water, so cars will also die without daily rations or water.

No, they won't. They'll be fine. They're different. We are different.

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Special pleading fallacy to engage in science denial.

I'm so disappointed that you've sunk to theistic copy cat arguments. Its very sad.

There have been species like us, by the way. Many of them.

They're all dead now.

10 Transitional Ancestors of Human Evolution - Listverse

And we almost joined them

Around 140,000 years ago Africa experienced a mega drought that made most of the tropical areas uninhabitable. This forced H. sapiens to the coasts and by some estimates dwindled down to only about 600 breeding individuals.

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So I will repeat via quoting myself

hodj_sl said:

Now, do you haveany evidence whatsoever that when CO2 levels have spiked dramatically, followed byrapid increases in global climatesthat life was not dramatically affects in terms of species dying off at higher than normal ratesyes or no?

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Cad_sl said:

Which of those had technology-based civilizations?

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Almost all of them, we've already pushed back the start of tool making to before Homo Habilis.

Thanks for playing Cad. Special pleading that modern humans are immune because we're just so much smarter is literally puddle thinking.

We're not special. If anything, our intelligence is a greater threat to our survival than any other species in history that we're aware of.

Tool making is a science.

Sorry, your ignorance of lithic shaping technology and how it is developed isn't a rebuttal.

Do you have any evidence, whatsoever, that humans are immune to climate change?

The entire rest of your post is SPECIAL PLEADING.

ALL human food sources are GENETICALLY MODIFIED, so yes. Lots of cultures that genetically modified their food have died out. The Mayans and Olmecs for starters.

You can cry about this all you want but every single question you've formed is a special pleading fallacy.

You're done here without some actual evidence. Citing the technology that we're destroying the environment with as a reason why we're immune to the environment being destroyed is infantile logic. Literally scraping the bottom of the barrel of desperation because you're ego can't take being fucking wrong.

97% of actual scientists, including biologists and climatologists, across the planet, are concerned with climate change's impact on our ability to survive as a species. So going with the experts on this, rather than a butthurt internet lawyer, is the sound decision to make for rational, thinking people who don't deny science.

Acting like we're not different is just putting your head in the sand.

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180 degrees out of phase with reality. Literally black is white double think. Pretending that we're immune because we're "just so brilliant that why of COURSE we'll come up with a MAGIC SOLUTION just in the nick of time to save OURSELVES" is literally HITLER IN THE BUNKER OF THE REICHSTAG MAGIC THINKING.

Even if it were to turn out that way, it would still be stupid to take your position, because your position BY DEFINITION would prevent us from taking the issue seriously enough to BOTHER coming up with that solution in time to save us.

Its called hope for the best but PREPARE for the worst for a reason, Cad.

wormie_sl said:

Acting like we are different is probably the biggest reason why we will be extinct.

Edit: FU hodj for being there first.

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Its all good bro. Your brevity in expressing the same thought is greatly appreciated.

Cad_sl said:

So hodj, can any of these scientists who are concerned with our survival as a species actually articulate what will kill us? You agreed no animal could out-compete us. Fine, so it won't be competition. If we ever get to the point where the last human dies because of no food, I would say every edible animal (which is most of them) on the planet must already be dead, or we'd be killing them to eat. What exactly is going to kill ALL of us?

...crickets

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Ecological collapse and rising sea levels are a pretty solid start. Inability to grow crops that are adapted to lower temperatures would be the next step.

Please, son. Its time to put the ego down, and realize you look like an idiot with these arguments.

When the honey bees die off, we will be following them shortly thereafter, since they are the key pollinators for the vast majority of human crop stock.