Just in case it wasn't clear, that's a horrifying discovery. Like the extinction of all life on earth.
this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2025
168 points (98.8% liked)
Science
5466 readers
55 users here now
General discussions about "science" itself
Be sure to also check out these other Fediverse science communities:
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
Hopefully enough things can adapt in time and then something can give it another go
FWIW, the Earth has about 500-600My left before common photosynthesis is no longer possible, due to consequences of Sol (our sun) relentlessly heating up, gradually.
Now personally, my understanding is that unless complex life somehow adapts, then that will be the end of such upon Earth, with simpler life presumably surviving for billions more years past that mark.
Point is-- if complex life can survive the coming collapse, then it evidently does have a very nice, healthy window to work with. Personally, I suppose that might be helped out quite a bit by the 'churning of the continents,' in which landmass gets regularly cycled back in to the magma layer over the course of millions of years, with new areas appearing on the other edges, so to speak.
EDIT: clarifications
I'm enjoying the thought of our current planet being melted down into liquid hot magma and a whole new planet surface getting a chance
Right??
It's going to be glorious.
--(sotto voce)
What about life around deep sea vents?
Ahh, good point, yes.
I actually was thinking about those beautiful little deep-sea worlds when I wrote the above, but simply didn't know enough to assert a dang-ol' thing at the time. Okay, let's see:
However, although it is often said that these communities exist independently of the sun, some of the organisms are actually dependent upon oxygen produced by photosynthetic organisms, while others are anaerobic. --WP
So... looks like we have at least *some* members of these little communities carrying on, past the death of oxygenic photosynthesis, which they evidently don't need in order to survive. (meanwhile with anoxygenic photosynthesis carrying on for many millions more of years).
But off the top of my empty coconut, it does raise a couple Q's:
-
Since there are maybe a dozen or less community members who live in these little worlds, closely built in to a commensurate ecosystem, would the death of the ones who rely on traditional photosynthesis bring about a collapse, either partial or total?
-
Would rampant global warming tend to mess with the already super-heated, typically sulfurous nature of these worlds? (me, I would tend to think "nawt," since they're already so hot, but then again, I'm just some layperson really curious about all this, hah)
Ah... those beautiful, entrancing little forbidden worlds:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECBbAjoEHWI
❤️
But billionaires need bigger yachts. And more mansions. What're we to do? Can't sacrifice the billionaires ultra-mega-yachts.
Dark colored yachts
That's actually not clear at all. How did you draw this conclusion from what's written here? It cites decreased pollution across the northern hemisphere as one of the drivers of this, for example, and how is that horrifying?
Also due to reduced water vapor and ice cover lol. It’s a conclusion that can be drawn without much reliance on the article, which focuses a lot on specific climate model improvements and not the obvious concern: given our desire for the earth to reflect more of the sun’s rays and cool off, reflecting fewer and warming up is not good
"The extinction of all life in Earth" is not a reasonable conclusion to draw from this
Oh, right. I barely clock exaggerations of that sort anymore. People reach straight for the top shelf with their words. Especially in this case I think it works in environmentalists’ favor. Maybe I’m wrong and we should be more concerned about pushback when people overstate the case, but even within the left I’ve encountered few people who seem to profess that much interest in biodiversity or wild plant/animal/fungal rights to existence, so misunderstanding the issue in exaggerated terms at least evokes concern rather than apathy. It’s not like the conservative’s real issue with climate change is that akshually “life” in the broadest sense will find a way to adapt.
Yeah, between extremophiles that will probably outlast the atmosphere and the mesozoic having been pretty balmy, life finds a way. That said, complex life is about to have a very bad time, especially specialists that can't handle wide temperature ranges. It's an extinction event, and our species is gonna have to really try to survive it.
Because absorbed light is excess energy.
It's pretty big leap from the Earth absorbing slightly more energy from the sun to "the extinction of all life on Earth."
My friend, it really is not.
Life is incredibly resilient, a ton of life is going to survive and adapt just fine. You think marginally increased global temperatures are worse than the Chicxulub impact? It's crazy that in the face of environmental catastrophe people can still find ways to irrationally catastrophize
how is that horrifying?
Less albedo -> more heat -> ice caps melting -> less albedo and more greenhouse gases -> much more heat, and so on.
It's a vicious cycle, and there doesn't seem to be any viable solution. We could put shades between us and the sun, but that'd probably reduce light too much and kill most plants, leading to even more carbon being released.
We're fucked, and probably way beyond any chance of unfucking ourselves. We let those pass by years ago.
I sure hope they figure this out for all of the people dumb enough to still be having children.
They already did, and current policy is to ignore it
Well, they are certainly profiting from the despair.
at this point I'm fully expecting the only thing that keeps us from extincting ourselves with global warming is almost extincting ourselves with nuclear winter.
See we got this! We're just going to get rid of ~~mice~~ climate change with a ~~snake~~ nuclear winter!
They'll just cancel each other out perfectly 😌
I don't wish for this to happen, mind you, but we are clearly living in the dumbest possible timeline, and so it is the only solution that makes sense
We're not going extinct. FFS, we survived at least one ice age. At another point, scientists studying our DNA think we were down to as a few as a thousand individuals.
Humans are the AR-15s of the animal kingdom. Not the greatest* for strength, speed, vision, etc., but excellent at multipurpose roles. Like insects, we survive in any climate outside Antarctica. We can walk endlessly. I'm 54, not in great shape, pretty sure I could spend my entire waking day walking, stopping only to eat.
We're social animals who stick together when the going gets tough. We love fucking and we can make babies every month of the year, no waiting to go in heat.
No animal comes close to our dexterity and advanced tool use. Stone Age man was more adept at tool use than every other animal combined. We're stupid reliable, smart and tough as well.
* OK, we can throw and catch like nothing else on Earth.
global warming at this rate absolutely does have the potential to extinct us, no matter how cool we think we are. Tenacity and versatility will only carry you so far when you fuck up nature so badly that all the things you'd eat for food are themselves extinct or almost extinct. At the point we were down to a few thousand individuals, I should imagine that the climate not being super hyper mega fucked helped immensely in ensuring those people had adequate food -- you aren't going to be running down a deer (or a rabbit, or any other wild game) in the post-climate-apocalypse world if all the deer are dead because the food chain supporting the deer population collapsed. You aren't going to be farming because extreme weather variations will make it impossible, you might be in for a drought or a monsoon and you'll certainly not have accurate weather forecasting to go off of by that point. Foraging? I sure hope none of the various food chains and water cycles supporting the growth of forage-able food has collapsed either (they probably will). Fishing? Ocean acidity, microplastics, and global warming are all fighting to be the thing that kills that off, take your pick.
Emo Earth letsgoooo!
I hate you (but I also love you)
This must be what people have meant when they say we're headed for the Dark Ages.
I assume its the opposite. It's absorbing light as heat vs reflecting and cooling down.
Yes, it is, I was just making a bad joke. I am actually surprised that didn't mention that the decrease in some air pollution was also a factor. See: https://www.science.org/content/article/clearer-skies-may-be-accelerating-global-warming
Oh. Well.. Good day to you and yours :)
This is how it started on Venus too!
Yeah, loss of snow reduces albedo, this increases temperature reducing snow. It's a known factor in how stable climate positions are stable.
Here's the ad I obtained from that link....thinking what I'm thinking? Yes. Yes I am!
