Climate Change(d)?

[Jimmy Higgins]

I don't think that we are heading for an extinction event,

We’re not “heading to” one, we are experiencing one. This is the earth’s sixth major extinction event. Biologists estimate that 35%of animals and plants could become extinct in the wild by 2050.

No doubt. I only meant the human race is not likely to become extinct in the forseeable future, even though our numbers and way of life may be greatly reduced.

^This.

Killing billions of humans is easy. Killing all of them is hard. A few thousand survivors can repopulate the planet in fairly short order.

Except those few thousand are unlikely to have the skills to survive.

I don't know. I'd have to guess that if anyone were to survive, having survival skills would be a benefit... that or luck and circumstance.

 

[Elixir]

Except those few thousand are unlikely to have the skills to survive.

Huh?
There are 8 billion people. If only 8000 survive, they have already demonstrated survival skills that put them in the top 0.0001% of all people. They may not reproduce at 20th century rates, but unless they are evenly scattered over the surface of the earth*, they’re gonna survive in some form.

* including oceans and polar regions, each person would be about 180 kilometers from their nearest neighbor. Even then, I put the odds in their favor due to demonstrated skills.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Except those few thousand are unlikely to have the skills to survive.

Why wouldn't they?

Or those with practical survival skills may be the most likely to survive.

Exactly. It's not like the dying is likely to be completely random. The survivors will be self selected as a group of people with mutually supporting skills.

The problem is the skills to survive the collapse and the skills to survive after the collapse are very different.

Quite likely, they will be an existing (mostly self sufficient) set of tribes, maybe in the Amazon, or the New Guinea highlands, or in already isolated locales such as North Sentinal Island.

Yes, but they would likely get overwhelmed.

A technology based group of developed world survivors likely has a far lower chance to make it, though semi-self-contained military units with a high standard of training in survival skills might also get through.

And how many of those military units know farming?? And have access to what they need to farm. And can keep themselves alive long enough to produce their own food.

 

[bilby]

Except those few thousand are unlikely to have the skills to survive.

Why wouldn't they?

Or those with practical survival skills may be the most likely to survive.

Exactly. It's not like the dying is likely to be completely random. The survivors will be self selected as a group of people with mutually supporting skills.

The problem is the skills to survive the collapse and the skills to survive after the collapse are very different.

Not really. Some are; some aren't.

And, of course, it depends upon the nature and form of the collapse.

Quite likely, they will be an existing (mostly self sufficient) set of tribes, maybe in the Amazon, or the New Guinea highlands, or in already isolated locales such as North Sentinal Island.

Yes, but they would likely get overwhelmed.

By whom?

"The world is ending. We are ekeing out the last of our resources. Let's go pick a needless fight with a bunch of hostile guys in an incredibly remote location!" is not a sentence you should expect to hear.

A technology based group of developed world survivors likely has a far lower chance to make it, though semi-self-contained military units with a high standard of training in survival skills might also get through.

And how many of those military units know farming??

Most military units of any size will have farmboys amongst their number. It's practically a cliché.

And have access to what they need to farm.

If everyone has gone, that access should be fairly easy.

And can keep themselves alive long enough to produce their own food.

See "semi-self-contained military units with a high standard of training in survival skills" (above).

 

[Elixir]

The problem is the skills to survive the collapse and the skills to survive after the collapse are very different.

That’s why only the top 0.0001% survived.
They’re the ones who HAVE exceptional survival skills.

 

[DBT]

Like during the ice age when the human population was reduced to a very small number of exceptional survivors.

 

[Politesse]

Like during the ice age when the human population was reduced to a very small number of exceptional survivors.

That is a highly inaccurate description of human prehistory. There has been at least significant one population bottleneck since the evolution of our species, and another proposed in more recent times, but neither corresponds directly to the climactic period most people know as "The Ice Age". Nor would one expect them to, as ice ages (there have been many) do not have identical effects all over the globe, and ever since the wide ranging travels of H. erectus, ours has been a geographically well-distributed genus. The Younger Dryas event of around 13,000 - 11,500 BP delivered oppressively frigid weather and rapidly expanding continental glaciers... to Europe and Asia. Not surprisingly, there was a precipitous drop in population in Europe during this time. An "Ice Age" akin to that of the popular imagination, in spades. But at the same time in East Africa, humanity's perennial home, it merely brought gradually cooler winters over the course of several centuries, and somewhat more frequent occasional freezes to higher altitudes. In West Africa, changing ocean currents may have actually warmed the regional climate slightly. For humans at large, it was neved likely to be an extinction-causing event, nor for those living in the tropics, even something they would have much noticed as it was happening.

 

[DBT]

It was a brief remark in relation to this, and possibly other such events during harsh conditions, ice age, climate change, etc:

"The new research, published in the journal Scienceopens in a new window, used DNA from living people to suggest that humans went through a bottleneck, an event where populations shrink drastically. The paper estimates that as few as 1,300 humans were left for a period of around 120,000 years.

While the exact causes aren't certain, the near-extinction has been blamed on Africa’s climate getting much colder."

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/august/human-ancestors-may-have-almost-died-out-ancient-population-crash.html

 

[steve_bank]

I thought bottlenecks were old news. Didn't the Plague create genetic bottlenecks?

Humans thrived from deserts to the arctic. Crossed over to the Americas. The path out of Africa and the branches have been mapped genetically. There may be a few puzzles left.

Ötzi - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Ötzi, also called The Iceman, is the natural mummy of a man who lived between 3350 and 3105 BC. Ötzi's remains were discovered on 19 September 1991, in the Ötztal Alps (hence the nickname "Ötzi", German: [œtsi]) at the Austria–Italy border. He is Europe's oldest known natural human mummy, offering an unprecedented view of Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Europeans

Reconstructed clothes. Two layer shoes and clothes stuffed with leaves for insulation.




I do not think knowledge would be lost, books would survive. Making basic transistors is not difficult, so electronics would survive. Solar electricity is not difficult.

Global short wave radios are made by radio armatures with no formal electronics training.

In the extreme natural selection kicks in.

Humans would survive and come back short of an environmental change that did not provide enough nutrition or conditions too harsh for our bodies.

Romans, Egyptians, Mayans, and Incas were great civil engineers without our math, science, and instruments.

 

[Swammerdami]

Except those few thousand are unlikely to have the skills to survive.

Why wouldn't they?

Or those with practical survival skills may be the most likely to survive.

Exactly. It's not like the dying is likely to be completely random. The survivors will be self selected as a group of people with mutually supporting skills.
. . .
The crew of a medium sized naval vessel is typically pretty self-sufficient, as an operational necessity. They can't keep a modern ship running, but keeping themselves and their descendants alive should be do-able.

I do NOT question your general point but if by "navy" you reference the present-day American Navy, I'm not sure that is a good example of competence. (And although it mentions the U.S. Navy only briefly I continue to recommend Sean McFate's Goliath.)

Consider https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/09/24/unbelievable-incompetence-the-u-s-navys-achilles-heel/
Or this synopsis:

In February 2025, the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman collided with the merchant vessel Besiktas-M, a Panamanian-flagged bulk carrier, near Port Said, Egypt, in the Mediterranean Sea. This incident is the most recent in a series of collisions involving US Navy ships and commercial vessels. In 2017, two separate collisions involving US Navy destroyers (Fitzgerald and McCain) and commercial ships resulted in the deaths of 17 sailors.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Enjoying the lack of absurd humidity that has become a thing in NE Ohio. It was mid 80's yesterday and it wasn't that bad. Highs in the 70s, low dew point, up 90, lowish dew point. This is what I remember summer being like... ie not like Georgia or Texas. Going to be 90+ this weekend, but dew points only in the mid 60s. Not super low, but manageable.

Upper 60s to 70 degree dew point coming back next week.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

It was a brief remark in relation to this, and possibly other such events during harsh conditions, ice age, climate change, etc:

"The new research, published in the journal Scienceopens in a new window, used DNA from living people to suggest that humans went through a bottleneck, an event where populations shrink drastically. The paper estimates that as few as 1,300 humans were left for a period of around 120,000 years.

While the exact causes aren't certain, the near-extinction has been blamed on Africa’s climate getting much colder."

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/august/human-ancestors-may-have-almost-died-out-ancient-population-crash.html

Typically a volcano or multiple volcanos are the reasons for things getting quite bad.

536 wasn't quite that bad, but it was pretty bad. Sadly, not much was recorded about it.

 

[southernhybrid]

Enjoying the lack of absurd humidity that has become a thing in NE Ohio. It was mid 80's yesterday and it wasn't that bad. Highs in the 70s, low dew point, up 90, lowish dew point. This is what I remember summer being like... ie not like Georgia or Texas. Going to be 90+ this weekend, but dew points only in the mid 60s. Not super low, but manageable.

Upper 60s to 70 degree dew point coming back next week.

Georgia has been much cooler than Indy for the last week or so and will remain so for at least the end of the week. Is that climate change or is that just weird?

But, here's something that's pretty scary.

https://www.livescience.com/planet-...e-already-breached-danger-zone-study-suggests

Earth's oceans are in worse condition than scientists thought, with acidity levels so high that our seas may have entered a "danger zone" five years ago, according to a new study.


Humans are inadvertently making the oceans more acidic by releasing carbon dioxide (CO2) through industrial activities such as the burning of fossil fuels. This ocean acidification damages marine ecosystems and threatens human coastal communities that depend on healthy waters for their livelihoods.

Previous research suggested that Earth's oceans were approaching a planetary boundary, or "danger zone," for ocean acidification. Now, in a new study published Monday (June 9) in the journal Global Change Biology, researchers have found that the acidification is even more advanced than previously thought and that our oceans may have entered the danger zone in 2020.

Ocean acidification is mostly caused by the ocean absorbing CO2. The ocean takes up around 30% of CO2 in the atmosphere, so as human activities pump out CO2, they are forcing more of it into the oceans. CO2 dissolves in the ocean, creating carbonic acid and releasing hydrogen ions. Acidity levels are based on the number of hydrogen ions dissolved in water, so as the ocean absorbs more CO2, it becomes more acidic.

The hydrogen ions bond with carbonate ions in the ocean to form bicarbonate, which reduces the carbonate available to marine life like corals, clams and plankton. These animals need carbonate for their bones, shells and other natural structures, which they make out of calcium carbonate (CaCO3). Researchers measure aragonite — one of the soluble forms of CaCO3 — to track ocean acidity levels.

But, what do these scientists know? I've heard that all of this is simply a rapture like cult from a great authority that has never mentioned his science credentials. Who ya gonna believe, scientists or our local expert on the weather in Santa Monica?

 

[steve_bank]

Around here we have not had the extended heat waves of recent summers.

This summer typically 50s-60s at night, 70-mid 80s during the day occasionally peaks over 90.

We had a few days where it did nit cool down at night.

We have been statistically on the cool side.

The main problem remains lack of rain and reduced snow packs for summer irrigation.

 

[DBT]

It was a brief remark in relation to this, and possibly other such events during harsh conditions, ice age, climate change, etc:

"The new research, published in the journal Scienceopens in a new window, used DNA from living people to suggest that humans went through a bottleneck, an event where populations shrink drastically. The paper estimates that as few as 1,300 humans were left for a period of around 120,000 years.

While the exact causes aren't certain, the near-extinction has been blamed on Africa’s climate getting much colder."

https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2023/august/human-ancestors-may-have-almost-died-out-ancient-population-crash.html

Typically a volcano or multiple volcanos are the reasons for things getting quite bad.

536 wasn't quite that bad, but it was pretty bad. Sadly, not much was recorded about it.

Sure, but my question was, how well would we handle such an event? Are our economic, food production and social structures resilient enough to come through it reasonably well?

 

[steve_bank]

COVID shows we are not prepared at all.

I have enough food to last a few weeks if a big quake happens.

Grocery stores run out in 1-2 weeks without resupply.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Except those few thousand are unlikely to have the skills to survive.

Why wouldn't they?

Or those with practical survival skills may be the most likely to survive.

Exactly. It's not like the dying is likely to be completely random. The survivors will be self selected as a group of people with mutually supporting skills.

The problem is the skills to survive the collapse and the skills to survive after the collapse are very different.

Not really. Some are; some aren't.

And, of course, it depends upon the nature and form of the collapse.

To survive the collapse you need combat and scavenging skills. Production skills are of no value. To survive after the collapse you're going to need production skills.

Quite likely, they will be an existing (mostly self sufficient) set of tribes, maybe in the Amazon, or the New Guinea highlands, or in already isolated locales such as North Sentinal Island.

Yes, but they would likely get overwhelmed.

By whom?

"The world is ending. We are ekeing out the last of our resources. Let's go pick a needless fight with a bunch of hostile guys in an incredibly remote location!" is not a sentence you should expect to hear.

No. The problem is there will be more weapons than food production. It's going to be "we are starving, there is food over there." If you have anything of value you are going to have quite a problem with keeping it.

A technology based group of developed world survivors likely has a far lower chance to make it, though semi-self-contained military units with a high standard of training in survival skills might also get through.

And how many of those military units know farming??

Most military units of any size will have farmboys amongst their number. It's practically a cliché.

But that's not the same thing at all. Look at Zimbabwe--land handed to the farmers produced basically nothing because they knew their part of the job, not the whole job. Nor did they have the resources to plant for future harvest.

And have access to what they need to farm.

If everyone has gone, that access should be fairly easy.

Farm with what? All the tech needs fuel. Virtually all modern crops are not going to do well without fertilizer.

And can keep themselves alive long enough to produce their own food.

See "semi-self-contained military units with a high standard of training in survival skills" (above).

I think you're being extremely optimistic here.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Simple, practical evidence of climate change:

The Felon wants to burn the satellites that are reporting on it. You don't shoot the messenger unless they are bringing bad news.

 

[Elixir]

Farm with what? All the tech needs fuel. Virtually all modern crops are not going to do well without fertilizer.

Farm with sticks if that’s all there is. We’re not talking about feeding millions or thousands or even hundreds at s time. Primitive means will yield plenty of food for small tribes if biodiversity isn’t totally trashed. Of course many things that could reduce humans to a few thousand individuals, could also destroy almost every other “higher” life form on the planet. But in that case, hopefully algae or slime mold turns out to be an acquired taste.

 

[DBT]

But...but...but, it's a fine sunny day in Santa Monica....