Assuming everyone understands that, it's an interesting case study in psychology as to why the second one might be scarier than the first one.
I don't buy that. Beginning of a new dark age with a breakdown of civilization and loss of advancements? Yes. Extinction-level event? No.
> The worst case scenario for antibiotic resistance is that people live with the medical uncertainties our grandparents and great-grandparents lived with.
No, actually the worst case is that the antibiotic period breeds superbugs that are both more virulent and harder to kill than those that came before. Antibiotic resistance comes about because of unintentional selective breeding of bacteria. We don't really know what other traits we are unintentionally selecting for. We could potentially be breeding a wordwide pandemic and not realize it. Which could bring about a new dark age with a breakdown of civilization and loss of advancements.
- Venus is about 3/4 the distance from the Sun as Earth.
- Venus has slow, retrograde rotation that leaves a given portion of the surface exposed to the Sun for 56 Earth days at a time.
- Venus has no magnetic field, which causes the loss of water vapor and other light gases due to the solar wind
>I don't buy that. Beginning of a new dark age with a breakdown of civilization and loss of advancements? Yes. Extinction-level event? No.
Extinction-level event is a scientific term which refers to the rate of extinctions and the associated loss of biodiversity, it doesn't necessarily mean that we all die. And if you think there's a meaningful distinction between "civilization ends" and "breakdown of civilization"... wow, okay.
By the scientific definition, I will agree that climate change can be an extinction event. However, I still stand by my assertion that it will not end civilization.
> And if you think there's a meaningful distinction between "civilization ends" and "breakdown of civilization"... wow, okay.
"Civilization ends" is total and permanent. "Breakdown of civilization" is partial and temporary. That is why I referenced a dark age. We have been through civilization breakdowns before, albeit not since we became globally connected.
If anything, antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria would generally be less fit in a world without antibiotics. E.g., sulfa drugs inhibit DHPS which is involved in producing what eventually becomes formic acid. Bacteria can resist sulfonamides by eliminating their dependence on DHPS, but then they depend on folic acid being present in their environment, and it won't always be available in human blood.
> Assuming everyone understands that, it's an interesting case study in psychology as to why the second one might be scarier than the first one.
It doesn't make sense to base decisions on a worst case scenario without taking probability into account.
I am also not aware of how climate change could lead to human extinction.
The last scenario talks about, if I recall correctly, the oceans becoming more welcoming to bacteria that produce hydrogen sulfide. Sorry, I don't remember the details, but will update tonight from the book at home if I remember.
Thumbnail sketch of the event: something (possibly massive volcanic eruptions near in time to a significant meteorite impact) deoxygenated the water enough to cause a substantial marine life die-off. The death of so much marine life in such a short time encouraged sulfate-reducing bacteria, which would have released significant amounts of hydrogen sulfide into the atmosphere. Hydrogen sulfide would have killed plant (and, therefore, animal) life and weakened the ozone layer, exposing the suriving flora and fauna to further UV radiation.
"96% of all marine species[5] and 70% of terrestrial vertebrate species becoming extinct."
There is some concern regarding a risk (I have no idea how big the risk is) that anthropogenic global warming could "tip the scales" of the global ecology towards the conditions that allow for a Permian-Triassic-style cascade.
I'm sure you can find some individual scientists who want to get in front of a camera tot ell us it's the end of the world, just like you can some individual scientists who say it's all crap. I want to see what's in the IPCC's 99.9th percentile of things going wrong.
Antibiotic resistance, on the other hand, kills our wellbeing and lifespan by making common medical procedures/surgeries impossible, and does so permanently.
WHAT?? What kind of nonsense have you been reading?
The worst case is coastal flooding, some people have to move inland, and some plant and animal species go extinct. Perhaps some areas become desert (but people live in incredibly hot areas now, so those places will still be habitable).
Other plants and animals will move into the now vacant environment niches. Yes, it's a loss of a species, and yes, a loss of coastal land.
But civilization ends??
It really only takes one war to escalate too far to bring about a nuclear conflict, which could clearly have significant effects on the viability of civilization.
The distinction between "best case" and "worst case" is meaningful and I'm not sure you understand it.
What you're describing is a credible best case scenario - basically a very gentle extrapolation of what's happening right now into the future - and not the worst case.
Something like the clathrate gun effect playing out in one of the very bad ways that's hypothesized (or one of the many other hypothesized killers which we believe we've observed in the fossil records, in the earth's crust, in ice, and so on - there's too much to discuss here), and the subsequent effects of that on our environment and later on our politics as the bottom falls out of everything, represents a worst case.
If you just go ahead and decide all those hypothesis are bullshit, well, ok. In that case the notion of a worst case doesn't have a lot of meaning.
Otherwise things like: Atmospheric expansion from heat could increase the drag on the moon causing it to fall on us, could be considered worst case scenario too.
People really really love thinking of all possible things that could go wrong - the more disastrous the better (see: Hollywood; black holes from the super collider; or the atmosphere igniting from nuclear tests). But the earth is rather large, it's rather resilient, it's been through a lot and it's still here and working.