The planet; as-in this rocky, water-world orbiting Sol, will exist for BILLIONS of years.
The _life_ on this planet AS WE KNOW IT is dying, along with ourselves. That is a huge difference and one that needs to be repeated with as much clarity as possible.
Will homo-sapiens still exist in 10,000 years? maybe.
100,000 years?
doubtful.
1,000,000 years?
nope.
Will single-celled life forms, virus, prions, etc still exist?
Probably.
This entire pyramid that we have existed at the top of is brutally fragile and will not continue as it is forever. To repeat one of most favorite quotes:
"Nature is in a constant state of recovering from the previous disaster."
This is the distinction. Something as immutable as granite can't die. We can barely wrap our brains around the concept of water being able to erode such permanence. How can you expect them to believe such histrionics? But life, that is more delicate and temporary then a snowflake in the Sahara.
>The planet; as-in this rocky, water-world orbiting Sol, will exist for BILLIONS of years.
This is not a productive comment. Everyone knows that "the planet" in an environmental context refers to the living things on Earth. It's an extremely common and universal metaphor. I have no idea why threads always have this one guy who feels like pointing out that the metaphorical language isn't literally true is insightful.
What bothers me more is that when people say "we're destroying the planet" or "the planet is dying" they are not sitting there thinking that the literal physical solid rock of the planet is somehow going to go to pieces and disappear.
What they are saying is that ecosystem which is on the planet is going to hell including the ability for said ecosystem to support life. Either all life, or more specifically the ability to support human life.
No one, no one, is thinking the literal planet is going to go boom.
>The planet; as-in this rocky, water-world orbiting Sol, will exist for BILLIONS of years.
>The _life_ on this planet AS WE KNOW IT is dying, along with ourselves.
Do you honestly think the person who said this doesn't understand that rocks aren't alive and will keep on existing whether there is life on it or not?
> The planet; as-in this rocky, water-world orbiting Sol, will exist for BILLIONS of years
Well, to nitpick a bit, not billions, for the "water-world" part. A few hundred million. It'll likely be quite parched by the 1 billion mark. Large, complex life forms are expected to have a Really Bad Time starting in the 500-600 million year range and shortly (geologically speaking) be gone entirely, assuming no acute planet-scale disasters before then.
Except that this time the disaster has probably little to do with nature. I'd add that, given current situation, 10,000 years seems a bit of a stretch. IMHO it's more like 100 years to the first "maybe" - or more probably even a fraction of that.
Sure, but the point is, the planet will be fine in 10k or 100k or 1M years, it'll still be orbiting the Sun. We probably won't be here any more because we'll have killed ourselves off, but that's OK, some other lifeforms can take over. Hopefully they'll be more successful.
> Will homo-sapiens still exist in 10,000 years? maybe. 100,000 years? doubtful. 1,000,000 years? nope.
If civilization does not collapse in the next mere 1,000 years, I'm very bullish on technology indistinguishable from magic, which would come very handy in assuring our continued survival well into the billions of years.
The planet; as-in this rocky, water-world orbiting Sol, will exist for BILLIONS of years.
The _life_ on this planet AS WE KNOW IT is dying, along with ourselves. That is a huge difference and one that needs to be repeated with as much clarity as possible.
Will homo-sapiens still exist in 10,000 years? maybe. 100,000 years? doubtful. 1,000,000 years? nope.
Will single-celled life forms, virus, prions, etc still exist? Probably.
This entire pyramid that we have existed at the top of is brutally fragile and will not continue as it is forever. To repeat one of most favorite quotes: "Nature is in a constant state of recovering from the previous disaster."
This is the distinction. Something as immutable as granite can't die. We can barely wrap our brains around the concept of water being able to erode such permanence. How can you expect them to believe such histrionics? But life, that is more delicate and temporary then a snowflake in the Sahara.