Comment by richardknop
8 years ago
Last global extinction event was 11,000 years ago when temperature rose drastically, ice sheets melted and sea levels rose by 120m. It killed most of megafauna. What caused that (and what caused the ice age in the first place) is still not well understood by scientists.
In my opinion, to think that human caused global warming and sea levels rising by 1.5mm per year will lead to global extinction event seems a bit far fetched when you compare it to what caused the last global extinction. The current climate changes are minuscule compared to huge climate changes (not caused by any human activity!) that happened quite recently.
That megafauna didn't live in e.g. megacities (containing vital infrastructure and toxic chemical factories) built on coastal flood plains. They also didn't have a (fairly) monocultured web of food items that could be devastated by climate change. Or a bee infrastructure that was already struggling and could be tipped over into extinction which then leads to much bigger problems.
Sure, we're going to have a smaller change in climate but we're also a lot more precariously placed than they were (and about as incapable of dealing with it.)
Is it well understood why bee infrastructure is struggling? I was under impression causes behind bee problems are still unknown so I wouldn't connect it to climate change necessarily.
You are right that our civilization is very vulnerable because of our agriculture and food logistics being very fragile. A single really bad draught on a global scale would cause massive problems in feeding the large population we have.
I would argue that in this respect overpopulation is a bigger problem than climate change though. Instead of focusing on emissions and renewable energy there should be more focus on decreasing world population from current unsustainable level.
> I wouldn't connect [bee troubles] to climate change necessarily.
Oh, no, sorry, I wasn't - I was just saying that it was already quite wobbly and even a small push from something like climate change could topple it.