Extinction is Natural, So is Global Warming | Hacker News Reader

Extinction is Natural, So is Global Warming

paradite.com

4 pointsparaditedc8 comments

If we stretch the meaning of natural to include global warming then everything becomes natural and the distinction of man-made vs natural becomes meaningless. There’s a very important distinction and it’s between things we nominally have control over and things we have little/no control over like industrial pollution vs solar output cycles. It’s also a question of intentionality we choose to continue using (even trying to encourage in the case of some groups) the use of heavily polluting power sources like coal.

Also in response to the dinosaur example I think if they had done something like that we would speak about them very differently. I think there’s a level where when a species starts making large scale changes to their own environment that things go from being the product purely of nature to being the fault and responsibility of whatever species does it. That line is partially drawn by scale and partially by intentionality/sapience where the species can decide about what they’re doing and choose other paths.

Re: the dinosaur example, I agree. A non-hypothetical example is the Great Oxygenation Event, where the microbes which produced free O2 did not "decide" that they would destroy their anaerobic environment. Hence we talk about it in a different way that we do for humans.

What rot. Its not about the existence of change; its the rate and ecological upset that will accompany this catastrophically rapid change.

That's like saying a skyscraper is natural or einsteinium is natural.

I think there's an argument for einsteinium to be excluded from the nature, as it is something fundamental and yet absent in naturally occurring world.

But skyscrapers, to me, are nothing more than beehives or limestone caves. The former has impeccable geometric precision and latter has marvelous outlook and properties.

It seems like needless pedantry to argue that humans are natural and therefore human-induced global warming is natural and human-caused species extinction is also natural.

Quoting from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature : "[Nature] is often taken to mean the "natural environment" or wilderness–wild animals, rocks, forest, and in general those things that have not been substantially altered by human intervention, or which persist despite human intervention. For example, manufactured objects and human interaction generally are not considered part of nature, unless qualified as, for example, "human nature" or "the whole of nature". This more traditional concept of natural things which can still be found today implies a distinction between the natural and the artificial, with the artificial being understood as that which has been brought into being by a human consciousness or a human mind."

That Wikipedia entry even touches on observation "Bottom-line is, we as a species are governed by the same laws of physics, chemistry and biology as other species, there is nothing separating us from the rest of nature." saying "Depending on the particular context, the term "natural" might also be distinguished from the unnatural or the supernatural."

"Natural" in the context of global warming does not mean supernatural, as Arrhenius well knew when he worked out in 1896 the connection between human-caused CO2 emissions and the greenhouse effect.

If you don't want to maintain the artificially constructed delineation of "natural" vs. "human caused", then use "anthropogenic", as in "anthropogenic extinction" and "anthropogenic global warming." That will get your point across without running into problems with the widely-used interpretation of what "natural" means.

Eg, "The Scientific Case for Modern Anthropogenic Global Warming" - https://monthlyreview.org/2008/07/01/the-scientific-case-for... and "Anthropogenic extinction threats and future loss of evolutionary history in reef corals" - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3678474/ .

Even if you managed to convince everyone to use your definition of "natural", it doesn't change a thing, because what's the point? Polio is natural. Lead in the water system is natural. We don't want either of them.

Thanks for the long reply. I guess you didn't really get my point, which is kind of implied in the article:

Whatever we do to "save the earth or the environment", they are not really "saving" the earth or the environment, because the earth and the environment don't really care about humans. The nature does not differentiates hot vs cold, high CO2 concentration or low CO2 concentration, earth covered by lava or forest. What we call destructions or damages, are just natural processes by a highly intelligent species. All we are doing is making the earth more suitable for humans to live, that's it.

Then you don't really get my point which is that emphasis on the precise meaning of "natural" or what is "saving" is pedantry that no one cares about.

The meaning of "save" in this concept is well understood to mean the connection between human needs/wants and the earth or environment.

The whole point of my lengthy reply was to object to the validity making an argument like "just natural processes".

Polio is "just [a] natural process". One which killed many children. It was a natural process that humans worked hard to eradicate. So, great - let's say anthropogenic global warming is a natural process ... and work hard to eradicate it too.

CFCs in the air are a natural process. We worked hard to eradicate them.

Human killing of whales is a natural process. We decided that we should instead "save the whales".

"All we are doing is making the earth more suitable for humans to live, that's it."

That's too simplistic. We also work to change the human understanding of what "suitable" means.

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