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[wierd]

Considering that we have autochemotrophic microbes living in ocean vents, that will be unimpacted in any serious capacity by the mass ecosphere dieoffs up here on the surface, you are surely correct.  Those microbes will continue to eat sulfur compounds, and be warmed by the earth's mantle. Life will continue.

That's small consolation when all the macrofauna are extinct.

[MrRoboto75]

If a tree falls in a forest, and everyone's fucking dead, does it make a sound?

[Naturegirl1999]

Yes, the air still vibrates. Whether there are creatures with apparatuses that interprets the vibrations as sound? Maybe

[smjjames]

https://www.vox.com/2019/8/26/20833650/trump-g7-trump-doral-explained

Something something emoluments and grumble grumble corruption. Really needs pushback from the other leaders in G7, but then again, knowing Trump, he’d just go ‘F-you!’ *double middle fingers* and cancel the summit next year altogether.

Boris Johnson might have the easiest time getting the message through, but he doesn’t really seem like the type who’d be able to stand up to Trump.

[SalmonGod]

Then we start this train all over again. As I mentioned, it's pretty near impossible for us to do more damage to the planet than the worst of mass extinction events (which dumped more CO2 in the atmosphere than we have known fossil fuels to do ourselves), and given that those failed to actually reduce life back to nothing but inconsequential microbes, I'd be hard-pressed to see us do better. Even if we did manage to pull off something that devastating, as I mentioned the damage to the actual conditions on the planet would be temporary (presuming CO2 and not, say, radioactive isotopes due to a nuclear apocalypse). The same processes that turned those microbes into everything that we have today would keep chugging away to do that all over again.

For reference, it took around 650 million years to go from first bits of multicellular life (Ediacaran period) to where we are now. Presuming we somehow managed to fuck up so badly that all multicellular organisms are dead, that still leaves plenty of room before proper catastrophe (Moon getting too far away, issues with the Earth's core, ever-growing Sun) actually extinguishes life on Earth for good for things to have rebounded back to where they are now.

So, no; our grand climate fuckery will not doom the planet. It will fuck up life as we know it, and our own lives, but not damn life altogether. If you want to do that, then you need to start setting off nukes.

Someone brings this up in every conversation I've ever had about environmental collapse, and I've never been sure what the point is.

[Arx]

Business as usual will cause the collapse of modern civilisation and quite possibly the extinction of humanity, but it will not reduce the Earth to a barren hellscape cleansed of all life, never to rise again. It's not particularly enthusing, but it's a tiny consolation.

Plus... you do know the Amazon is directly responsible for a pretty big chunk of the world's oxygen supply, right?

Fortunately in one tiny aspect, this isn't as true as people think. It's probably more like 6% or less than the oft-quoted 20%, and that's not accounting for the fact that as an ecosystem it's also got oxygen consumers, and won't be replaced with the actual Sahara.

It's still a huge carbon sink and its destruction would be a disaster on a thousand other levels, but hey! It's not as much of an oxygen producer as people say, so that's nice.

[wierd]

quite; The scary one is the ocean...

https://www.nationalgeographic.org/activity/save-the-plankton-breathe-freely/

which contributes some 70%.



When you stop to realize just how dangerous ocean acidification is, this becomes alarming quickly.  But continue to sustain your machismo with your unnecessarily large land yachts and SUV cruisers that you honestly have no true need for, while demanding gas guzzling engines that go VROOOM, even though like everyone else, you typically operate it in start-stop city traffic... 

/s

('you' is the rhetorical you; aimed mostly at "My fellow Americans", who have severe masculinity issues, and need to overcompensate them with ridiculous things like "V8 Hemi Engines!")

[Reelya]

Well, just vote in the Planetary Council to Launch Solar Shade.

[wierd]

Or just get Montgomery Burns to do it.

[thompson]

Unfortunately, middle class lifestyle times 7.7 billion people = mass extinction. There's no way around that. I'd expect the status quo to fail long before civilization itself (as in, organised human societies) collapse. The question is how it all happens? I'm expecting plenty of armed conflict in the developing world. US-China great power competition could exacerbate that. WWIII? Who knows. You'd need to wipe out a few billion people for any hope of making the situation sustainable. Will eco-colonialism (and all the shameless exploitation that comes with it) become a thing?

So, what breaks first, and when? It's all rather troubling. I was hoping the relative peace of the last few decades would hold, but I really don't have any faith in that anymore.

[wierd]

Actually, there have been profound improvements in efficiency over the past 2 decades.  It is quite feasible to have a high quality of living for everyone---- just NOT with middle-men everywhere, and with conspicuous, wasteful consumption. (Like that Hemi.)

The problem, is that people ***WANT*** the conspicuous, wasteful consumption, and complain (and even set fire to infrastructure) about the push away from it.

[Arx]

I've seen figures purporting that the vast majority of lifestyle carbon emissions are from the richest 10%. The source purveying those figures was aggressively socialist, though, and I'm entirely unconvinced that they didn't neatly define "lifestyle carbon emissions" in a way that made their distribution the shape they wanted.

[Arx]

In other news, G7 countries offered money for Brazil to deal with the Amazon. Bolsonaro said no and bitched about colonialism.

This is a beautifully succinct and poetic summary of basically the whole situation. You can even generalise it!

In other news, [thing involving Brazil]. Bolsonaro said no and bitched about colonialism.

[thompson]

And that, of course, is the problem. The issue isn't so much the middle class, but rather the process of becoming middle class. Brazil needs economic development. But, since they're an underdeveloped country science and education are underdeveloped there too - so they're not competitive in those spaces. So they burn rainforest and replace it with grazing land, all the while their underdeveloped legal and governance systems ensure only the wealthiest members of society can benefit. So more rainforest must be burned to compensate, you see.

Developed countries have similar problems with corruption, but they tend to manifest themselves in different ways. Environmental standards are higher, because as people become wealthier caring for the environment doesn't seem such a great burden. Even so, I feel we're going backwards in some respects. Energy efficiency may be higher, but it doesn't stop green field property development, for instance. It will be a death of a thousand cuts, until something finally gives way.

[smjjames]

In other news, G7 countries offered money for Brazil to deal with the Amazon. Bolsonaro said no and bitched about colonialism.

This is a beautifully succinct and poetic summary of basically the whole situation. You can even generalise it!

In other news, [thing involving Brazil]. Bolsonaro said no and bitched about colonialism.

He does have a fair point about wanting representation there for any sort of decision involving Brazillian territory, but the thing is that he's previously admitted that he doesn't have the resources to fight all of the fires and yet he doesn't even want to take the help. Trump did offer help, but I don't know if Bolsonaro took it, which would make it EVEN MORE hypocritical.