Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

Cad_sl said:

So your theory is that we're going to go, fuck we can't grow X crop anymore. Fuck it, lets all just die. ?? Really?

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Cad_sl said:

That is literally what you just said. You said "Inability to grow crops that are adapted to lower temperatures would be the next step."

And that was all you said. So we can't grow a particular crop, and we just give up, we don't find anything else to grow, we don't move to an area where we can grow, we just all die. Every last one of us. Extinction. Right?

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Cad_sl said:

My apologies if you have a hand-wavingly stupid position that when I quote you, it looks like a strawman. Try not being such a retard in the first place.

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Human beings have recklessly exploited the resources on this planet and continue to do so despite the obvious widespread negative consequences. Due to the severe effects of human expansion in the last 10,000 years, some scientists now believe that the Earth has entered a new "extinction phase".[1] According to the World Resources Institute, the current rate of species extinction is between 50 and 1000 times more than the geo-historical norm.[2] The World Conservation Union's (IUCN) Red List reports that of the 40,117 species the organization examined, 16,119 were in danger of extinction: one in eight species of birds, one in three of amphibians, and one in four of mammals.[3]...

1. Aquatic Systems
1.1. Plankton
Plankton is a blanket term for many species of microorganisms that drift in open water and make up the base of the aquatic food chain. There are two types of plankton, phytoplankton and zooplankton. Phytoplankton make their own food through the process of photosynthesis, while zooplankton feed on phytoplankton. Zooplankton are in turn eaten by larger animals. In this way these tiny organisms sustain all life in the oceans. According to the NASA, phytoplankton populations in the northern oceans have declined by as much as 30% since 1980.[4] While the cause of this decline remains uncertain, there are several theories.
One theory points to global warming as the main cause.[5] Phytoplankton require nutrients obtained from the bottom of the ocean to reproduce. At the Earth's poles, ocean water is colder at the surface than down in the depths. Therefore water from the bottom of the ocean rises to the top, carrying with it essential nutrients from the ocean floor. However, as the water near the surface becomes warmer due to climate change, less water rises from the bottom, resulting in less nutrients for the phytoplankton. This consequently hinders their reproduction processes.
Another theory suggests that carbon dioxide emissions are causing this decline in plankton population. The ocean has always absorbed a significant amount of carbon dioxide, but in recent years its capacity for this pollutant may not have been able to keep up with the level of human output. Recent studies suggest that the carbon dioxide the ocean absorbs is turned into carbonic acid, which lowers the pH level of the ocean.[6] This acidification is highly corrosive to sea animals that form shells, including pteropods, which are a type of zooplankton. Pteropods are a food source for countless larger animals such as salmon and cod. If they are unable to survive in an acidic ocean, then the entire ocean system will be threatened...

2. Terrestrial Systems
2.1. Bees
Bees are central to the systems that support food production for human beings. An international study of 115 food crops grown in over 200 countries showed that 75% of the crops were pollinated by animals, especially by bees.[20] According to the International Bee Research Association, bees pollinate 80% of the food grown in the United Kingdom.[21] Bees play such an integral role in maintaining many of the planet's ecosystems that Albert Einstein once said, "If the honeybee goes extinct, we have four more years on Earth." Both domesticated bees and wild bees contribute significantly to global pollination, but unfortunately both are facing threats to their survival.
Domesticated bees serve a vital economic function. Farmers can no longer just depend on wild bees to adequately pollinate their crops, so they must rent domesticated bees for that purpose in the spring. Without a sufficient supply of domesticated bees, crops simply would not be able to reproduce. The total economic value of domestic bees in the world is unknown, but in North America alone they support tens of billions of dollars of agricultural products.[22]
The domestic bee population worldwide is being threatened by several factors. In 1987 apiarists in the United States began noticing that domestic hives were being infested with small mites. Without interference, the mites could destroy a colony of bees in as little as two weeks. The mites are dangerous to bees in two ways. First, they hide in the cells of bee larvae and inhibit the larvae's development. A colony infested with mites often has many juvenile bees with missing legs or wings or with deformed body segments. Secondly, the mites can bore holes in the exoskeletons of adult bees, making them extremely susceptible to viruses. Scientists believe that these mites originated in Asia, where the native bee population has developed a resistance to them.[23] But American bee populations have not been so lucky, and they continue to face this threat to their existence.
In the last several years apiarists and scientists have been documenting a very strange phenomenon they label "colony collapse disorder" (CCD). A hive affected by CCD may appear normal at first glance, but upon closer inspection almost all of the adult bees in the hive have vanished. These hives usually contain a large amount of stored food, and many cells are filled with larvae that are being cared for by juvenile bees.
There are two aspects of CCD that leave apiarists extremely puzzled. First, there are no bodies of dead adult bees in or around an affected hive, which is to be expected if the hive has been infected with a disease. Secondly, other bees do not take over the affected hive for two weeks or more. This is especially strange as ordinarily a strong bee colony will colonize a weaker neighbor immediately. Scientists studying CCD are unable to pinpoint a cause, but they have noticed that all the affected hives were subjected to constant migration. They suggest that the process of transporting the hive may weaken the colony in some way.[24] The number of hives affected by CCD exploded exponentially in the US in 2006, and if this trend continues it will seriously jeopardize human food production.

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Global warming is serving to "crush bumblebees in a kind of climate vice", according to the leader of a team that has revealed a dramatic shrinkage in the range of these crucial pollinators.

As temperatures rise, the southern limits of many North American and European bumblebee species' ranges are moving north - by as much as 300 kilometres in some cases, researchers report today (9 July) in Science1. But the northern edges of the bees' ranges are staying in place, leading to an overall contraction of the insects' habitat.

Jeremy Kerr, a biodiversity researcher at the University of Ottawa in Canada, and his colleagues collated more than 400,000 observations of bumblebee species collected in North America and Europe between 1975 and 2010. When the researchers charted the locations of these bee populations over time, they found that many of the 67 species analysed were retreating northward from their southern limits.

"Bumblebee species across Europe and North America are declining at continental scales," says Kerr. "Our data suggest that climate change plays a leading, or perhaps the leading, role in this trend."

Bees have been under scrutiny in recent years, with populations of honeybees and bumblebees markedly declining in some parts of Europe. Suggested causes include habitat change due to agriculture, diseases, parasites and the use of insecticides, particularly neonicotinoids.

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Cad_sl said:

As long as there are animals for us to kill, we aren't going to be extinct.

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We could drastically reduce in population, which I've said from the beginning.

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Cad_sl said:

So hodj, is your theory now that there will literally be no food left on the earth and that every last human will starve if the climate changes 2 degrees?

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What. Kills. Us?

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Furry_sl said:

when the planet was hotter in the past everything was extinct. Clearly everything would extinct again, shitlord.

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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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AngryGerbil_sl said:

I'm not sure I understand what answer your looking for.

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Cad_sl said:

So, you don't know, and in fact predicting that WE WILL ALL DIE IF THE CLIMATE CHANGES 2 DEGREES was bullshit?

Well, ok then. Glad we straightened that out.

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Cad_sl said:

But if plant and animal life continue, then we can continue killing and eating them. I don't see why this is a ridiculous proposition.

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we don't have nuclear powered food replicators

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