It’s happened before, life will prevail and eventually thrive again in some other format. I think fully eradicating life from earth will be quite difficult even if we tried. Perhaps when we get swallowed by our sun or some similar event.
Climate change, even in the worst case, won't come remotely close to eradicating all life. It won't even eradicate humans (though it'll suck for people living on the coasts or in Florida). Even the very worst imaginable catastrophe wouldn't eliminate the various single-celled organisms and extremophiles.
But there are a lot of larger species that are at risk. Maybe I'm just species-ist, but I'm more concerned about things like various bird or mammal species than I am some bacteria.
It’s definitely sad and especially so that humans are causing/contributing to it. It’s mostly because of our timescale being only witness to a decline and what’s lost is tangible and known. What’s unknown is how on an evolutionary timescale the field is being reset for the next round of species to emerge. From that perspective, it’s a bit interesting to think what could happen. Particularly in the mammal world as humans have or will have eradicated most large predators. Prey populations will swell/collapse and cause adaptation. Some current herbivores/omnivores may convert to carnivore due to the availability of resources. A lot will happen. If you freeze time to protect existing species too much, it’s mostly just for sentimental reasons. Some species do a great service to current ecosystems and are vital to human life as we know it, protecting those is a little different IMO (bees come to mind.)
> Climate change, even in the worst case, won't come remotely close to eradicating all life. It won't even eradicate humans (though it'll suck for people living on the coasts or in Florida). Even the very worst imaginable catastrophe wouldn't eliminate the various single-celled organisms and extremophiles.
I have heard intelligent people claim a good few times now, and feel like it's obviously unscientific. It seems faith-based. Sure, life on Earth has proven to be resilient and adaptable, but we've no way to be sure how the planet will develop in the coming thousands and millions of years.
Climates and ecosystems and geology change. Life on Earth has persisted through some wild misadventures and atmospheric changes, but it's a very complex system. Surely it's theoretically feasible that some surprising thing could set us off on a course towards ending up with an atmosphere similar to Venus or Mars one day? How can we know with certainty this won't happen?
To me it seems like "life-ism" rather than species-ism at that point. The idea that "life will go on, no matter what" seems so obviously intuitive to a member of the Life class. I fear it is a misguided - though romantic, and somewhat touching - sentiment.
Well, this planet's been hit by asteroids including the massive one that made the Chixhulub crater, and life persisted. I think the idea that some life wouldn't survive all but the most catastrophic event (i.e. something liquifying the entire crust) is honestly nuts. Pumping a bunch of CO2 into the atmosphere isn't going to destroy life; there's plenty of plants and bacteria that thrive with lots of CO2, even if humans don't.
