
A 500M-year survey of Earth's climate reveals dire warning for humanity - pseudolus
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/05/500-million-year-survey-earths-climate-reveals-dire-warning-humanity
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unstatusthequo
This might be / likely is trollbait (that I will not engrave in discourse on),
but it looks like we are in the bottom 15% of what’s been figured as the range
in the last 500 million years. Is it too aggressive to suggest humans have
_more_ impact that zero plants or routine catastrophic volcano eruptions? Get
over ourselves a bit? I mean, earth ruined its own atmosphere enough times,
and certainly can ruin us without too much effort really. Eventually it will.
Maybe we speed it up by N years or whatever, but the eventuality is earth
kills us or the sun immolates us or Andromeda collides with us. Either way we
are fucked. Let’s ride it out as long as we can, but this is not a permanent
home, and I doubt the human race is resilient enough to be considered
permanent by any stretch. Maybe go party this weekend?

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throwaway857384
Looking at the chart on that page, it seems like the 'low' temperatures we
have now are an anomaly rather than the norm.

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andai
True, but on a shorter time scale, we're at a peak, and due for another ice
age: [https://opentextbc.ca/geology/wp-
content/uploads/sites/110/2...](https://opentextbc.ca/geology/wp-
content/uploads/sites/110/2015/07/Glacials-and-Interglacials-.png)

~~~
acqq
That chart you give is especially misleading to understand what is going on
now:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/media/File:All_palaeotemps.svg)

Note where the year 2100 temperature is going to be (that is, _if we do
something to limit the emissions_ , otherwise it even higher) and when the
last time it was that high. Also note how fast it changes in the last 100
years and the scale of possible changes we can produce.

Also note the changes of the orders of magnitude in time in different sections
of the graph. The rate of change we are experiencing now is unbelievably fast
compared to what is known about the previous times.

