Humans Could Go the Way of the Dinosaur
nautil.us
nautil.us
We are an incredibly hardy species. We are clever. We find ways to survive in deserts, mountains, small islands, icey tundras and anything in between.
We plan ahead, we can eat and digest pretty much anything (except for cellulose) and we have as much drive to survive as your average cockroach.
Sure our species is vulnerable. And I wouldn't rule out large percentages of our population dying at some point. But don't bet against the inventiveness and flexibility of humans. We may be one of the last species on this planet to become extinct.
"If you don't kiss my ass I'll burn this planet to the ground"
And you wonder why some of us think that humans are on a self destructive path.
But their era as dominant life ended 65M years ago despite their current wide spread existence; and something similar may happen to us — were our species to sufficiently fall apart.
We’re that… so far.
But at the same time:
- our track record is short, only about 300kY, for comparison while not a specific species the dinosaurs lasted for around 175000kY, and were the dominant life form for 135000, until they were taken out by an asteroid, apex species did last for millions of years
- we’re actively moving our own environment out of spec with our survival capabilities, and as warm-blooded mammals it’s much easier to adapt to the cold than it is to the heat, 35 WBT is a hard limit (in fact it looks like it’s an over-estimate and 31 is closer, even for healthy young adults, but 35 WBT was a theorised estimate)
Drive to survive can only get you so far, you can have as much drive to survive as your average cockroach, that won’t save you from heat stroke any more than it’ll save you from drowning or a bullet wound.
I think that's a pretty bad comparison. A much better comparison is with a species that's also a mammal, spread world-wide, extremely adaptable and exhibits group behavior.
The Canidae genus fits the bill nicely, which includes foxes, jackals, and of course, wolves and dogs.
They have a pretty good track record of ~9000kY of being virtually unchanged from their current forms and inhabit all parts of the world, including some fairly remote islands.
> we’re actively moving our own environment out of spec with our survival capabilities,
Technically that can be said for any species that breeds beyond carrying capacity of its local environment. Humans are no different.
Not at all. Most species that over breed their local environment have die offs. But, if the overpopulation is too severe they can damage the environment and go extinct from the environment.
But, you're looking at the local scale and this is much too small of scope. A few billion years ago there was something closer to the game we play called the Great Oxygen Catastrophe. This unfolded at a global scale and lead to worldwide die offs of bacteria as they produced too much oxygen. Eventually it is thought they caused the extinction of a huge portion of the oxygen producing bacteria and paved the way for lifeforms that could survive in the altered planet.
And we’re nowhere near that is my point. Not sure what you think yours is?
> Technically that can be said for any species that breeds beyond carrying capacity of its local environment. Humans are no different.
Absolutely not. A species exceeding their environment’s carrying capacity will have die-offs then the survivors carry on. It does not make its own environment unlivable for itself, which is what humanity is doing.
Humanity is also heading towards exceeding the planet’s carrying capacity but that is a separate issue.
Any positivity I might sometimes happen to feel about humanity quickly proves to be misguided as soon I read what other humans have to say on the internet.
Just go to Twitter, Reddit, or some comments section on YouTube, and you'll quickly come out hating the species too.
We should probably note here that there's been exactly one sterilizing event in the entire history of life, and that was the formation of the moon. So even if we go, something else will survive. Even the end-Permian left survivors!
Because it's much easier to prepare to go live on Mars, apparently. /s
This is one big issue I have with the hysterical end of the climate change debate, there are 100 other threats to humanity, yet we don’t really care about them, probably because the media doesn’t care as much.
Covid is a pretty good example also, it’s killed way more people than the climate has for a long long time. A pandemic is a much bigger threat to both humanity and the economy. But somehow we’ve latched on to some event that might happen based on computer models in 50-200 years, as the biggest threat. At least according to the media. In reality even the IPCC doesn’t predict any fall in GDP due to climate change, just a slow in growth. Covid actually decreased worldwide gdp. An asteroid definitely would too.
My point is, we spend resources on a lot of things as humans. Lots of stupid things sometimes. I don’t see how one man’s goal to get to mars isn’t on the more positive side of things, and the technologies that will be developed for it will be definite positives for everyone, just look at reusable rockets.
Once things get bad enough, you start to have population migrations and political instability. Add in hunger and thirst and that leads to societal collapse and war.
Climate change gets attention because it has such wide ranging effects, both primary and secondary. Yes, there are other risks. Some, like asteroids and diseases do have people watching for them though we could always do more.
1950 human population 2.5 billion, 1977 human population 4 billion, 2023 human population 8+ billion
so in 20 / 30 years 16 billion?
This said, I think you kind of miss a few points regarding climate change. First, it hasn't happened yet, it's just starting. We are living a mass extinction right now, and that's not a computer model or some prediction; that's a fact: we can count how many trees, mammals and insects have already disappeared (something like 75%). That's not the climate change problem, it's the biodiversity problem. If we magically removed the excess of CO2 from the atmosphere today, we would still be living a mass extinction. Just because of habitat loss (for other species obviously), which is due to how we live. We are destroying the planet, that's a fact, and that's before taking into account climate change. The solution to that? Produce less, consume less. There is no serious technological solution, because technology is the problem.
Then there is the energy problem: fossil fuels are going down (we passed conventional peak oil in 2008, general peak oil is about now, LNG is close) and we don't have serious alternatives. That will threaten our whole society. Solution? Prepare to do with less energy, meaning that we won't be able to produce as much, meaning that it actually helps the climate change problem -> that's fortunate.
Finally, for both of those existential problems, they exist because of how we actively behave (as opposed to a potential asteroid that doesn't care about our actions). So of course it seems like we should do something. But it's much harder than the asteroid: for the asteroid, we should actually spend money building a solution. For the biodiversity/climate, we should generally produce less, which is not compatible with growth.
Somehow we do the opposite of what we should: we don't do anything about asteroids, but we should. We do a lot of stuff that is destroying the planet, and we should not. Because we are short-sighted and looking for profit, not long-term (mid-term, at this point?) survival.
I agree with you. The state of our oceans is a much more current and verifiable problem than the actual EFFECTS climate change will have in the future. I’m not denying it exists.
But there’s a lot of conflating the mass extinction with climate change, but they’re not the same thing. And climate change gets all the money right now. Because it’s fashionable. Not because it’s necessarily optimal spending wise.
I understand why people get angry when you say it, but anger won’t change it because on a long enough time scale nothing will survive.
Still, I think the question on people's minds is whether it's 2 Billion years, 200 years, or - if the US and Russia play their nuke cards - maybe less :-(
That's the same thing about the current mass extinction/biodiversity problem/climate change: we are not talking about saving the species in 200 years, we've long proven that we don't care about that. We are talking about saving our butts. Us, currently living.
Yes Sherlock we can. So fucking what? If there are actionable things that can be researched and developed to protect us from some potential existential disaster I believe we have started doing it.
If however something that we can not prevent comes crushing down, what's the point thinking about it?
We've got time for this to bubble up on the priority list.
Students sit in the classroom scrolling tiktok.
I don't think we're going to make it.
Humanity hasn't always had nukes. I think Ukraine/Russia is somewhat likely to go worldwide, and it's going to be hard to stop a large nuclear exchange at that point. I'd be surprised if we have 5 years left.
The spread of the "humans suck, we're so awful" rhetoric in the left-wing media really puts a bad taste in my mouth.
Huh? H. Sapiens is a recent species, and has in its short career already brought most ecosystems worldwide to near collapse. It is 'successful' in the way a wastrel scion of a wealthy family appears at the height of his spending, just before penury, destitution, and syphilis hits.
I happen to think a major nuclear exchange will take us out in the next few decades, but if not, nothing is likely to prevent the continuing destruction of most life on our planet. Fouling the nest can work for a while. But then it doesn't.
and don't get started on living on mars, or elsewhere - not going to happen.
It's a specious argument. Just because our species lifespan has been short until now doesn't mean anything about how long it will last from here out.
There are other, legitimate reasons to think maybe humans won't last very long, but, this certainly isn't one.
i don't think the primate tree is going to be terminated that soon, but i think it might be pruned.
And I think our version of seafaring, spacefaring, will be fruitful over a timescale of thousands of years, and maybe much shorter than that.
Our ancestors walked from Africa to the corners of the globe. Today, the cheapest and safest way to travel thousands of miles (as well as the most common) is to hurtle across the sky at nearly the speed of sound at altitudes that would kill you if not in a pressurized volume. The energy used for this, a round trip from one side of the globe to the other, is about the same as needed to place you in orbit (with hyper-optimized chemical rockets). I don’t see why we think the last ~50 years is the end of such progress of our technology.
I am not that interested in the opinion of people insistent that humans won’t exist in the future (and calling those who disagree “delusional”) if those people have a flawed understanding of human existence in the past.
It is pretty delusional to claim knowledge of what is going to happen to us in this time frame be it one way or the other
What now?
p=h/λ
Edit - mislead by Google, corrected.