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Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Dec 2006, 16:38:21
by Kylon
I was wondering if the planet would recover from the abuse that humans are doing to it constantly.

I know that the planet would recover if we all just disappeared/died tomorrow, but will it recover in 100 years, after we have turned the oceans into lifeless acid baths, and made the planet into one scorching desert?


What do you think?

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Dec 2006, 16:42:19
by americandream
Nope its dead....in fact we're looking at 6 billion deadmen and women walking at the moment.

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Dec 2006, 17:20:03
by gego
Who knows!

In the long scheme of things, maybe we are not so significant as we think. Maybe we humans are just the equivalent of a bad parasitic infection, and global warming is the earth's equivalent of an infection killing fever.

My guess is that earth will recover once we are gone or reduced to "in balance" population levels.

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Dec 2006, 17:21:06
by dissimulo
We might eventually kill ourselves, but more likely, we will just make it very difficult for humans to survive and our numbers will be significantly reduced.

The planet, however, will be fine. Life will go on and a new balance will be formed as plants and animals adapt to changing conditions.

The earth has been through many cycles, including some that wiped out a great deal of life on the planet. There will be many more cycles - we just might not be here to see them.

All of that said though, my bet is that humans are going to survive for many, many more generations, even if we have made things a lot less pleasant for our descendants.

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Dec 2006, 17:50:56
by billg
According to Lovelock the earth will be able to support 500m once the climate stabilizes again...

Whether this is true seems to depend on whether or not humans continue to burn fossil fuels post pole melt.

Let's hope the dolphins and whales survive so at least we have a earthly intelligent vehicle in which to reincarnate...

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Dec 2006, 17:53:36
by rogerhb
Kylon wrote:I was wondering if the planet would recover from the abuse that humans are doing to it constantly.


Depends if you think there is some supposedly standard state the world is supposed to be in.

I'll go for the Rumsfeldian description of the planet, "Stuff happens"

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Dec 2006, 17:57:20
by smallpoxgirl
First off, life on earth will be just fine. That's not really a question. Bacteria live off the sulfur in deep sea vents. They can eat crude oil and prosper. The real question is the fate of vertebrate animals. That I think, is a difficult question to answer. Personally I believe that nature has balances. When something is set terrifically out of balance, like humans have done recently, a big correction can be expected to restore order. IMHO, peak oil is that correction. The truth is that for all its self agrandizement, the current world that humans have built is based on one simple discovery long ago....fire. All of our magnificent machines are all powered in one way or another by the concept of finding things and burning them. When we run out of things to burn, balance will return. I suspect that humans and most vertebrates will survive the correction.

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Dec 2006, 17:59:05
by ohanian
"Our evidence points to the likelihood that Earth was peppered with small 'oases' of shallow-water, oxygen-producing, photosynthetic microbes around 2.7 billion years ago," stated lead author Jennifer Eigenbrode of Carnegie's Geophysical Laboratory, who collected the data while pursuing her Ph.D. at Penn State. "Over time these oases must have expanded, eventually enriching the atmosphere with oxygen. Our data record this transition."

When will Earth recover from the damage done by microbes which emitted huge amount of the toxic substance OXYGEN unceasingly 2.7 billion years ago. The damage done is so staggering that EARTH may never recover to what it was.

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Dec 2006, 20:19:51
by coyote
It's likely that Mars was once a warm and wet planet like ours. Now it's dry, cold and sterile or nearly so. Complete devastation is possible.

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Dec 2006, 20:21:24
by Tanada
A million years from now, if our species is still here, our descentents will look back and see another example of a great world wide extinction like those 65 and 250 million years ago. They might or might not link the extinction event to humans.

The ecosystem however won't care, it will go merrily on evolving species from the survivors to fill the empty or poorly competed for ecological niches in the environment. In the ecosystem web, all life forms are expendable because the processes of natural selection will evolve replacements in the niches over geological timespans.

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Dec 2006, 20:53:19
by Lighthouse
coyote wrote:It's likely that Mars was once a warm and wet planet like ours. Now it's dry, cold and sterile or nearly so. Complete devastation is possible.


But planet Mars still exists.

So will planet earth. Maybe that's the ultimate recovery for a planet? Get rid of all life before life blows the planet to oblivion?

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Dec 2006, 20:53:55
by EnergyHog
Sure thing, we're a minor infection that the earth will rid itself of.

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Dec 2006, 20:54:04
by mrflora
billg wrote:

Let's hope the dolphins and whales survive so at least we have a earthly intelligent vehicle in which to reincarnate...


Well, there's two non-sensical assumptions in that sentence.

Sure, the earth "recovered" after the K-T boundary event, so it will recover after the fossil fuel era. If there were no intelligences around to observe, it wouldn't make much difference.

Regards,
M.R.F.

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Mon 11 Dec 2006, 21:41:48
by Zardoz
billg wrote:According to Lovelock the earth will be able to support 500m once the climate stabilizes again...

Well, that's quite a turnaround for The Master Of Disaster. He's gone from "a few breeding pairs" to 500 million survivors. Hell, he's hardly a doomer at all anymore. We'll be calling him a cornucopian if he backtracks any more.

Question about his British Island paradise: If it becomes one of the most habitable places on a scorched Earth, how will the Brits be able to hold off the billions who will want to join them? I mean, talk about a Zombie Horde problem...

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Tue 12 Dec 2006, 10:05:53
by EnergyUnlimited
Will the planet recover from our abuse?

I would say yes, as long as one of following is not to come into play:

1. Some disastrous GW type of event.
Burning of all FF by tommorow would probably be not good enough, but hypothetical "planetary engineering" done in misguided attempt to "correct" initial damage could produce another, yet unpredictable and greater damage, which we could try to correct again producing even greater damage etc.
In extreme situation we could precipitate disastorous climate change, which would wipe out anyting more advanced than bacteria perhaps within few thousands of years from tipping point.

2. Nanotech go wrong.
You know, von Neuman probes, grey goo scenario, artificial non-DNA based life replacing existing one or similar story.

Those two looks obvious candidates. Any other ideas?

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Tue 12 Dec 2006, 10:38:47
by basil_hayden
Define "recover" and "abuse".

Due to hysteresis, there is no returning exactly to the origin.

Is "different" better or worse?

Like anything else, it depends on where you stand.

I don't worry about the 4% warmer times on Earth, I worry about the 96% colder times. Perhaps a long cooling period resets the balance in oceans and atmosphere. Mars never had the mass to have the gravity to have a fighting chance.

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Tue 12 Dec 2006, 11:01:55
by MrBill
My guess is that the planet will survive and bounce back, but due to individual species extermination and manmade climate changes, it will not be the same planet as we inherited. I think in terms of geological time measured in hundreds of millions of years that a mere hundred or so years is pretty insignificant. Still it is pretty sad condemnation of humanity that even knowing all that we know we cannot muster the will to save a planet worth inheriting by our children's children. Everything we have learned is utterly pointless unless we can survive as a species in a sustainable manner. Of course, that may prove difficult as well after the sun dies? ; - )

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Tue 12 Dec 2006, 11:22:04
by Doly
MrBill wrote:Still it is pretty sad condemnation of humanity that even knowing all that we know we cannot muster the will to save a planet worth inheriting by our children's children.


Hey, the disaster hasn't happened yet!

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Tue 12 Dec 2006, 13:21:17
by joewp
Doly wrote:Hey, the disaster hasn't happened yet!


It's starting, there's plenty of evidence right in this forum. Much of the damage is irreversible in time to prevent even more damage. The damage is even increasing as we talk about it.

And you can't stop it, or you'll "hurt the economy". :x

Re: Will the planet recover from our abuse?

Unread postPosted: Tue 12 Dec 2006, 13:53:18
by Revi
The earth abideth.