[mistermegabyte]

The earth will be fine. I'm sure during the ice ages with gigatons of water trapped on the surface in glacial ice it would have had to changed the tilt also and the planet survived.

The earth is such a large and variable system that over the long term, humans can't significantly permantly change something like weight distribution.

[panarchy]

Thank goodness the microbes will probably survive and maybe be able to try again in a few thousand to million years!

[to11mtm]

In about 600 million years it is estimated that we would in fact lose too much carbon dioxide for one of the main forms of photosynthesis used by plants...

[mort96]

I don't understand the point of comments like yours.

[croisillon]

(not grandparent) well one way to learn of that news is like in typical armageddon movies "humans destroyed earth and now we will all die" ; to which grandparent answers "no we didn't destroy earth (but yes we will all die)"

[xyst]

It gives them a reason to continue being a parasite on this planet rather than attempt to gather a collective and formulate plans to protect future generations on this planet.

[burnt-resistor]

“It is difficult to get a man to understand [climate change], when his salary [as a truck driver] depends on his not understanding it.” ― Upton Sinclair

[andrepd]

Well yeah, it's never really about "save the earth", it's more precisely about "save ourselves by saving an earth that is habitable by humans".

[nlitened]

Humans are literally one of the most adaptive creatures on this planet though

[vlovich123]

By what metric?

Humans have been around for what, 600k years? That’s genetically. Behaviorally (abstract reasoning, complex language) is only believed to be about 100k years old. Primates as a branch are only about 65m yold.

Crocodiles are 200m yold (mostly unchanging) while birds are 150m (wild diversity).

By whatever metric, humanity has no claim to adaptability as a species because we’re really quite too new on the scene. At best we’re more a virus - came on quick but spread at unprecedented rates all across the world bringing ecological destruction with us.

We have yet to see if we can survive the Earth’s immune response.

[nlitened]

> By what metric?

For example, humans are able to live in most climate zones of this planet, more than any other creatures (though, on land, not under water).

Another metric: by total biomass, humans far exceed any other animals their size (a huge outlier), with the exception of livestock (which is specifically grown by humans for own consumption).

[vlovich123]

Yes, humans have demonstrated quite the dominance for the world as it exists today. You’d agree that the ability to survive millions of years of changes to the worldwide ecosystem is quite different, no? For example, the world is experiencing quite a substantial desertification. Will humanity maintain its ability to build and survive at the current levels of consumption when food becomes significantly less available?

[nlitened]

My opinion is that no change of climate (beyond external impact) would be able to wipe humanity from the face of Earth. Even world-wide nuclear war would merely dent the total human population numbers for a few decades at most.

Food production and logistics are getting more effective and more efficient over time, any hunger that has happened in the past century and will ever happen — was and will be entirely social/political in nature. We’re in no danger of food randomly disappearing naturally, as far as I understand.

We are in danger of social changes though. Current civilizations might collapse, bringing hunger and death to hundreds of millions.

[burnt-resistor]

We cannot and shouldn't risk "adapting" or evolve to handle famines, hypercanes, or extreme desertification. Instead, we should fix what we broke by using the sky as a sewer for ~200 years from 425 ppm CO2 now back to ~300 ppm then.

[nlitened]

Plants stop being able to do photosynthesis efficiently at lower CO2 ppm values (plants need CO2), which lead to massive deforestation. Thanks to current 400+ ppm values, in many places of the world the greenery returned in the past decades. Values in 600—800 ppm range would be optimal for keeping our planet green and ecology.

[burnt-resistor]

Don't even start with Cato Institute pseudoscience climate denialism talking points.

[nlitened]

I don't know what Cato Institute is and what their talking points are, but you can look up photosynthesis details on Wikipedia or any other place you like.

[throw123xz]

And even the most adaptive creatures have limits.

[drdaeman]

Human intellectual/cognitive capabilities are unprecedented, though.

I'm not sure if we'll live to see it, but I'd be pretty surprised if some fine day humanity won't evolve enough to abandon the primate bodies and decouple humanity from its biology. That is, I believe we'll eventually give birth to thinking machines, and hopefully they'll keep the humanity going even if other branches would possibly fail to the environmental changes.

Unless, of course, we won't make ourselves extinct first.

[burnt-resistor]

While we may need to save some soil, we should think bigger by saving the proper noun planet we inhabit. ;)