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Microplastics & Melting Ice Reveal Deepening Crisis

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AnonymousAnonymous
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17 Jun 2025, 6:38 pm

Full Title:
Microplastics and Melting Ice Reveal Deepening Crisis In Antarctica

https://news.mongabay.com/2025/06/microplastics-and-melting-ice-reveal-deepening-crisis-in-antarctica/


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17 Jun 2025, 9:16 pm

:cry:


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17 Jun 2025, 9:22 pm

During much of the Holocene Climatic Optimum -- roughly in the period of 5,500 to 9,500 years ago -- when the Earth was warmer than now, sea levels were something like two meters higher than today.

Lower ocean salinity, but somehow the Earth managed to survive.



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18 Jun 2025, 5:36 pm

The expectation is that this time climate change will be unusually rapid and many species and habitats will not be able to change quickly enough.


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18 Jun 2025, 5:58 pm

Double Retired wrote:
The expectation is that this time climate change will be unusually rapid and many species and habitats will not be able to change quickly enough.


Even worse than the start and the end of the Younger Dryas?



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18 Jun 2025, 6:21 pm

Well, in a thousand years check-in here again and we can compare notes.


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18 Jun 2025, 7:26 pm

Double Retired wrote:
Well, in a thousand years check-in here again and we can compare notes.


In the Younger Dryas, the temperature changes of something like 10 F are thought to have happened in a decade or so.

The real danger to us will be when the Holocene ends and we begin the next hundred thousand years of glaciation. When that happens, two things are likely:
1) Starvation and death by starvation will become very common.
2) Massive wars will likely be fought for the Earth's dwindling resources.

Like it or not, a warmer planet is a more productive planet. It can feed more people. A colder planet, on the other hand, inevitably means death. In contrast to the warmer period prior, the lesser cooling of The Little Ice Age led to starvation becoming a very real problem.

As for now and the future warming, the sky is not falling.



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18 Jun 2025, 8:39 pm

We'll see. Anything that causes massive extinctions sounds bad to me.


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18 Jun 2025, 9:46 pm

What mass extinctions has this caused?



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19 Jun 2025, 9:55 am

I agree climate has always changed. Dinosaurs had forest fires. Dinosaurs had geologic changes. Dinosaurs cut down whole forests to make space for agriculture. Dinosaurs pumped huge quantities of petrochemicals out of the Earth and burnt them. Dinosaurs mined mountains of coal and burnt it.

Nothing is changing.


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19 Jun 2025, 1:49 pm

Double Retired wrote:
I agree climate has always changed. Dinosaurs had forest fires. Dinosaurs had geologic changes. Dinosaurs cut down whole forests to make space for agriculture. Dinosaurs pumped huge quantities of petrochemicals out of the Earth and burnt them. Dinosaurs mined mountains of coal and burnt it.

Nothing is changing.


What are you smoking?



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19 Jun 2025, 4:24 pm

So you agree that, on this topic, the past does not foretell the future?


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19 Jun 2025, 4:43 pm

Double Retired wrote:
So you agree that, on this topic, the past does not foretell the future?


Still smoking?

If you look at the past, you should see that this is not even the warmest part of the Holocene -- the current warm period between glaciations in this ice age -- and is not even warmer than the warmest parts of the Eemian -- the previous interglacial warm period.

When this interglacial period ends, the carrying capacity of the Earth will decline drastically. We need to take advantage of the warm period while we can.



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19 Jun 2025, 8:55 pm

My point is that Earth survived even extreme events caused due to natural problems. But the results were still mass extinction events. And what we are seeing now is happening with causes more than extreme natural events and therefore much more likely to be very, very bad events worse than the previous mass extinctions.


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19 Jun 2025, 9:28 pm

Double Retired wrote:
My point is that Earth survived even extreme events caused due to natural problems. But the results were still mass extinction events. And what we are seeing now is happening with causes more than extreme natural events and therefore much more likely to be very, very bad events worse than the previous mass extinctions.


It's not even close.

Precisely which mass extinctions are we seeing from Global Warming?

Can you imagine what happens when the temperature changes by 10 F in a decade or so? Or when a massive asteroid or climate hits the Earth? Or when a large supervolcano erupts?

Don't panic.



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20 Jun 2025, 8:37 pm

(a) Global warming is not necessarily what caused previous extinction events. It is the change they see coming now.

(b)

Quote:
Can you imagine what happens when the temperature changes by 10 F in a decade or so? Or when a massive asteroid or climate hits the Earth? Or when a large supervolcano erupts?
Um...climate change?!


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