Climate disasters are inevitable?

[Frida Space]

Important note: this thread doesn't focus on Earth's climate change, whether it is manmade or not or whether it even exists, so please let's avoid the topic

So, I just read an article by Adam Frank from the University of Rochester on The New York Times. The title is, 'Is a climate disaster inevitable?', and it immediately attracted my attention. Here are a few snippets, although if you have ten minutes I suggest you read the full article.

The article introduces Fermi's paradox, which is basically the "Where is everybody?" question. With the Milky Way alone containing probably billions of planets, how is it possible that no other civilization has yet contacted us?

[...] But in the intervening decades, humanity has recognized that our own climb up the ladder of technological sophistication comes with a heavy price. From climate change to resource depletion, our evolution into a globe-spanning industrial culture is forcing us through the narrow bottleneck of a sustainability crisis. [...]

Maybe we’re not the only ones to hit a sustainability bottleneck. Maybe not everyone  maybe no one  makes it to the other side. [...] From the vantage point of this relatively new field, astrobiology, our current sustainability crisis may be neither politically contingent nor unique, but a natural consequence of laws governing how planets and life of any kind, anywhere, must interact.

[...] Human civilization currently harvests around 100 billion megawatt hours of energy each year and dumps 36 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the planetary system, which is why the atmosphere is holding more heat and the oceans are acidifying.

[...] Can we generalize this kind of planetary hijacking to other worlds? The long history of Earth provides a clue. The oxygen you are breathing right now was not part of our original atmosphere. It was the so-called Great Oxidation Event, two billion years after the formation of the planet, that drove Earth’s atmospheric content of oxygen up by a factor of 10,000. What cosmic force could so drastically change an entire planet’s atmosphere? Nothing more than the respiratory excretions of anaerobic bacteria then dominating our world. The one gas we most need to survive originated as deadly pollution to our planet’s then-leading species: a simple bacterium. The Great Oxidation Event alone shows that when life (intelligent or otherwise) becomes highly successful, it can dramatically change its host planet. And what is true here is likely to be true on other planets as well.

[...] By studying these nearby planets, we’ve discovered general rules for both climate and climate change. These rules, based in physics and chemistry, must apply to any species, anywhere, taking up energy-harvesting and civilization-building in a big way. For example, any species climbing up the technological ladder by harvesting energy through combustion must alter the chemical makeup of its atmosphere to some degree. Combustion always produces chemical byproducts, and those byproducts can’t just disappear.

[...] Depending on initial conditions and choices made by the species (such as the mode of energy harvesting), some trajectories will lead to an unrecoverable sustainability crisis and eventual population collapse. Others, however, may lead to long-lived, sustainable civilizations.

[...] One answer to the Fermi paradox is that nobody makes it through  that climate change is fate, that nothing we do today matters because civilization inevitably leads to catastrophic planetary changes. But our models may show that isn’t the case.

Just thought it could be a good cause for reflection, so here it is.

[Bill Phil]

Climate change has existed since the birth of planet Earth. It is most certainly inevitable.

[Frida Space]

Climate change has existed since the birth of planet Earth. It is most certainly inevitable.

But here it's mentioned as climate disaster, not simple climate change.

[Nuke]

the notion that the environment is an unchanging thing is rather foolish. it is something that is dictated by a large number of variables where changing one or two of them will have drastic consequences. on the other hand we do know that we can change the climate, and thats the first step to engineering one.

[Brotoro]

One species' climate disaster is another species' happy occurance. Our planet and star are not static, and there will certainly be changes that will be regarded as disasters by some.

[notsosmart]

I think the point is whether a civilization can evolve without developing a letal climate change. (Even wind energy, if used too much, can lead to similar results as combustion energy).

[AngelLestat]

In these kind of topic is where we fund those who still think that global warming is just a scientific propaganda.

[notsosmart]

In these kind of topic is where we fund those who still think that global warming is just a scientific propaganda.

I guess that's exactly what he was trying to avoid with the first line. This has nothing to do with Earth sciences, it's more exoplanetology/exobiology.

[Mitchz95]

Is climate change inevitable? Absolutely. Is it the reason we've never seen evidence of alien life? No way.

I'm sure the dinosaurs weren't happy about that rock 65 million years ago. But it didn't prevent life from reaching a technologically advanced state.

[Scotius]

Let's see... We use radio waves for just a tiny bit over a hundred years. We look for other civilisations for even less (if you do not count attempts to find the Martians). Compared to the size and age of our Galaxy it's less than a blink of an eye. Yet some people already are disappointed we didn't spot anyone yet - so they already mournfully declare we are alone in the Universe. And everyone else destroyed themselves horribly, or died out without leaving a trace. Really Homo sapiens? Really? Ever heard about such thing as excessive pessimism?

[Jovus]

The big difficulty with the Fermi paradox is that there is no way to verify the underlying assumption. Sure, it sounds reasonable to say that if we exist, and there are millions of other potentially bioferous planets out there, then where is everyone else, but we have absolutely no indicators of any sort for the probability of life. It's like generalizing how likely the population of the world is to get hit by a car by putting one guy out in traffic.

Only worse, because we don't even know it's a matter of probability. It might well be something else.

[Bill Phil]

The probability of life can be measured by finding the ratio of biomass to non living mass. It would be very small, but it is a starting point.

[yafeshan]

Saying that other civilizations were not successful to develop because of climate change is absurd. We have this problem whether we created it or not but thinking that others could not solve it is arrogant. Its overly earth centric vision of universe. Even we are on the brink of technological revolution, about to discover habitable worlds.

There are some more logical explanations to fermi paradox. They simply don't care about us at all. Why would they, why are we any more important than milions of other planets out there. Why do we think we should have been made first contact by now, we are still those ants in backyard of someones home, doing our own thing, our only effect on the nice garden is moving around some tiny trinkets.

[Duxwing]

Humanity will survive what it has wrought.

-Duxwing

[KerikBalm]

One species' climate disaster is another species' happy occurance. Our planet and star are not static, and there will certainly be changes that will be regarded as disasters by some.

Maybe, Maybe not.... Venus may have been habitable once, but its oceans bioled away, and... well... I think that climate disaster was a complete disaster and no species would have found it a "happy occurance"

Likewise... the change in Mars climate shoudn't be regarded as a happy occurance... even if there is some subsurface life clinging on somewhere.

[Silver_Swift]

Let's see... We use radio waves for just a tiny bit over a hundred years. We look for other civilisations for even less (if you do not count attempts to find the Martians). Compared to the size and age of our Galaxy it's less than a blink of an eye. Yet some people already are disappointed we didn't spot anyone yet - so they already mournfully declare we are alone in the Universe. And everyone else destroyed themselves horribly, or died out without leaving a trace. Really Homo sapiens? Really? Ever heard about such thing as excessive pessimism?

The point is that interstellar civilizations are likely to be really bloody obvious. If the technology and capabilities of a civilization keep increasing like ours are, then a species with a couple million years head start will be spreading their influence across the universe at near light speed.

The Fermi paradox (as I understood it) is not about single planet civilizations that are hiding out in their own star system somewhere, but about the lack of vast interstellar civilizations that come knocking on our door. The former we would likely not have noticed yet unless we looked at exactly the right time at exactly the right place, but the latter we bloody well would have noticed more or less as soon as our light cones overlapped.

Incidentally, I don't think this is pessimism. I wouldn't mind if humanity was the first or even the only technologically advanced species in our part of the universe. There is no telling whether meeting an alien civilization would end well for us and if we get bored of being alone we can always create or uplift our own fellow sentient beings.

[magnemoe]

Maybe, Maybe not.... Venus may have been habitable once, but its oceans bioled away, and... well... I think that climate disaster was a complete disaster and no species would have found it a "happy occurance"

Likewise... the change in Mars climate shoudn't be regarded as a happy occurance... even if there is some subsurface life clinging on somewhere.

Yes, however this is not very relevant for the global warming, venus had far from ideal starting conditions and Mars is too small to keep an active core or much atmosphere.

Anyway global warming will not make earth into Venus not end life on earth you will not find any serious scientists claiming so.

Having said so it might cause an civilization collapse until its rebuild because of flooding and changes in regional conditions.

Something similar might hit aliens too, they might be hit harder than us because they might be more limited in food they can use or simply has an more centralized civilization.

On the other hand aliens might have an better sense of smell (most animals have far more sensitive noses than us) and did not accept much pollution from the beginning.

yes this might also be an downside then creating an technical civilization.

- - - Updated - - -

The point is that interstellar civilizations are likely to be really bloody obvious. If the technology and capabilities of a civilization keep increasing like ours are, then a species with a couple million years head start will be spreading their influence across the universe at near light speed.

The Fermi paradox (as I understood it) is not about single planet civilizations that are hiding out in their own star system somewhere, but about the lack of vast interstellar civilizations that come knocking on our door. The former we would likely not have noticed yet unless we looked at exactly the right time at exactly the right place, but the latter we bloody well would have noticed more or less as soon as our light cones overlapped.

Incidentally, I don't think this is pessimism. I wouldn't mind if humanity was the first or even the only technologically advanced species in our part of the universe. There is no telling whether meeting an alien civilization would end well for us and if we get bored of being alone we can always create or uplift our own fellow sentient beings.

Yes, its no block against technological civilizations, neither an block against someone exploring or even colonizing nearby star systems. Its more a block against galactic empires as if they was even rare they would be here already. More to an question why should anybody want to colonize most of the galaxy anyway?

[cantab]

There's a lot we don't know. In particular we don't yet know how common life is. I expect that to change in the next decade or two as we start studying exoplanetary atmospheres.

But what we do know is that microbial life arose relatively quickly on Earth. The pessimistic view is about a billion years after the planet formed, there's evidence for it 200 million years before that, and it could have been earlier. On the other hand, it took a further three and a half billion years for us to appear, after many many other large, complex, multicellular species had arisen and gone extinct.

Consider also that humans have been around for 200 thousand years, and hominids more generally for a few million. Yet only for the last ten thousand or so has there been something we'd call civilization, at least that survived to the present.

So I'd hypothesise that a rare confluence of factors is needed for an intelligent lifeform to evolve and then to develop a civilization. You need an environment that makes wasting a load of energy on an intelligent, capable, and energy-hungry brain worthwhile. It seems that most environments are not like that, most creatures do just fine being thick as two short planks. Relatedly, you need a species with a body plan that can evolve to make good use of that intelligence. Primates for example can easily use our arms to manipulate objects, signal to others in our group, and so on; most other land animals need all their limbs for standing or walking most of the time. And that intelligent, capable species needs to be able to survive in a low-technology, low-civilization world for a pretty long time, without evolutionary pressures changing to push it away from intelligence, before some other factor leads it to develop a more complex civilization. (Perhaps environmental change, given civilization is thought to have arisen in six places independently, all in the current interglacial period).

It's taken half the lifespan of our Sun for that confluence of factors to happen here. It doesn't seem far fetched to think that on many worlds it never happens before life itself ends.

[KerikBalm]

Yes, however this is not very relevant for the global warming, venus had far from ideal starting conditions and Mars is too small to keep an active core or much atmosphere.

Anyway global warming will not make earth into Venus not end life on earth you will not find any serious scientists claiming so.

Well, you must be talking about anthropogenic global warming.

The consensus is that Earth has less than half a billion years before the sun's increased output leads to a runaway greenhouse, and we end up very much like Venus - long before the Sun goes into a red giant phase.

My point was more general - that a climate change can be worse for everything.

Perhaps more relevant, would be the case of the Permian extinction - the most severe extinction since there have been animals... it seems to have been caused by global warming due to CO2 output and melting of methane hydrates. It is very concerning that now we are seeing various trapped methane hydrates melting in the permaforst (if the undersea ones go... we could be in a lot of trouble).

The sun's output is even higher now.... the planet will still be habitable... but just about everything will suffer, as in the permian extinction - some will adapt and radiate, but there will be stress at first.

Another way of looking at it, is what conditions support the most biomass. By this metric, Earth's habitability peaked during the Carboniferous...

If mars was habitable, and even if it still has subsurface life.. sure that sub surface life must have come from an ancestor that adapted to the changes - but does that mean it finds the change a "happy occurance". By the biomass metric, its quite clear it would be a change for the worse (assuming it ever had *any* biomass).

There are those that look at the Earth's situation, and consider it to be only marginally habitable in the grand scheme of things - of course, they are the planet hunters looking for habitable super-Earths:

Ideally a K-type main sequence star instead of a G-type (like our sun), and about 2 Earth masses, and right in the middle of the habitable zone (Earth was in the middle 4 billion years ago, but is now close to the inner edge of the zone)

[Merandix]

I've always found the Fermi-paradox overly OPTIMISTIC in it's assumption that the universe -should- be sprawling with life.

It is uncertain how large the chance is for life. I mean, if one in a million stars has a planet that is fit for developing life, and off those million planets, only one in a thousand would at some point develop life.

That means the chance for life on a planet is already one in a billion. A one in a billion chance leaves just 100-400 planets in the entire Milky Way (the milky way is estimated to have between 100 and 400 billion stars). 100-400 planets that contain life... including just bacterial life, including planets with just animal life. Considering it took nearly 3,5 billion years for life to form here, and 1 billion years to go from the earliest lifeforms to using radio-waves for communication, considering the universe is only 13.8 billion years old... Those 4,5 billion years it took for our star to develop a semi-spacefaring civilisation suddenly don't look all that short. In fact, if we assume life can only form around main-sequence starts (stars like our sun).... we're suddenly with an age restriction on the stars. Because older main-sequence stars are more likely to host advanced civilisations... but the problem with that is that there's only a 2 or 3 billion year variance possible before the parent star CEASES to support life...

Considering we literally have ALL possible stages of life possible in 100-400 planets...

Let's say half of that develops sentient life --> 50-200 planets

Let's say half of that has sentient life that's pre-radio communication --> 25-100 planets

How many civilisations that are post industrial age of those 25-100 civilisations would develop interstellar travel? Maybe one? None at all?

Now, the chances greatly increase for intergalactic travel... but then the thing against finding us is that there's a LOT of possible travel destinations. If you haven't been near earth (about 110 light year radius is the farthest our earliest radiosignals have traveled, that's roughly 1/1000th of the diameter of just our own Galaxy) there's simply no (known or predicted) way of knowing we're here!

Why haven't we been visited on any detectable scale? Probably because the total number of travellers is too low.

The problem really is with the probability, this is wild guessing, but they are educated guesses. This entire theorizing would change massively if for example we found life or traces of it on Europa or Mars. Hence why those are the focus of the 'search for life'.

Also a thing to consider: If we have people thinking up ethics for first contacts for our sci-fi series, it's likely that humanity would indeed NOT visit pre-interstellar species on an ethical basis... and that the same is a likely cause for them not visiting us if they find us. And since I believe intelligent races generally have 'empathy' as a prerequisite evolutionary trait, I also sort of believe (but that's an opinion) that a truly 'evil' intelligent race cannot exist on principle. Because non-empathic species simply wouldn't survive well enough to develop said intelligence. But that's a personal belief.

Anyway, that's my thoughts on the Fermi-paradox...

On the natural disasters: humanity has survived multiple 'cataclysmic' natural disasters. Including several ice ages. And life has pretty much survived multiple instances of a total planet freeze, a total planet scorching, and quite a bunch of atmospheric changes... Not to mention, even nuclear mishaps don't seem to be deterring life all that thoroughly.

The problem with human induced climate change on top of natural climate change is that we don't know HOW MUCH we throw the natural balance out of whack. Scientifically, as we speak, the general consensus seems to lean towards 'more than expected' rather than 'less than expected'... but natural disasters have occurred extensively in the past; and none managed to wipe out humanity (as a species, we have a few ice ages on our name already). The biggest threat seems to be in triggering a new Ice Age, which obviously won't happen instantly. Anyway, I do not believe the continued survival of the human race is decided by natural disasters. Sure, a lot of misery would happen, but as long as we are able to maintain our knowledge base and at least a part of our number, we're pretty much guaranteed to survive.

The biggest concern on modern industry is that it's not sustainable and fairly inefficient. To put it in more economic terms, we can produce more by using less, so for the life of me, I don't understand the reluctance to put some effort in moving towards that goal. And I've also never for the life of me understood why large corporations are so hell bent on short-term profit opposed to long-term.

[magnemoe]

Well, you must be talking about anthropogenic global warming.

The consensus is that Earth has less than half a billion years before the sun's increased output leads to a runaway greenhouse, and we end up very much like Venus - long before the Sun goes into a red giant phase.

My point was more general - that a climate change can be worse for everything.

Perhaps more relevant, would be the case of the Permian extinction - the most severe extinction since there have been animals... it seems to have been caused by global warming due to CO2 output and melting of methane hydrates. It is very concerning that now we are seeing various trapped methane hydrates melting in the permaforst (if the undersea ones go... we could be in a lot of trouble).

The sun's output is even higher now.... the planet will still be habitable... but just about everything will suffer, as in the permian extinction - some will adapt and radiate, but there will be stress at first.

Another way of looking at it, is what conditions support the most biomass. By this metric, Earth's habitability peaked during the Carboniferous...

If mars was habitable, and even if it still has subsurface life.. sure that sub surface life must have come from an ancestor that adapted to the changes - but does that mean it finds the change a "happy occurance". By the biomass metric, its quite clear it would be a change for the worse (assuming it ever had *any* biomass).

There are those that look at the Earth's situation, and consider it to be only marginally habitable in the grand scheme of things - of course, they are the planet hunters looking for habitable super-Earths:

Ideally a K-type main sequence star instead of a G-type (like our sun), and about 2 Earth masses, and right in the middle of the habitable zone (Earth was in the middle 4 billion years ago, but is now close to the inner edge of the zone)

Yes, I was talking about AGW, I have seen a one billion year limit before the sun get too hot, anyway most stars are smaller giving more time here even without getting down to red dwarf stars.

We have had two real huge extinctions, the one 64 millions years ago and one worse 250 million years ago who is related to the Siberian traps, an volcanic event who generate lava fields like an moon sea is likely to release a lot of co2, the global winter will also kill most plants and give an heat peak after the clouds disappear.

Related to Fermi paradox an larger and heavier planet will make it far harder to launch stuff into space. In short you can forget chemical rockets.

Lowest tech solution might be an nerva upper stage just to get an satellite into orbit. Worst case you will need an orion or good fusion.

[cantab]

Yet another thing to think about: maybe most civilizations stop looking outwards? Why spread among the stars in huge clunky spaceships when you can fit a hundred billion "people" in a virtual universe inside a computer?

[magnemoe]

Yet another thing to think about: maybe most civilizations stop looking outwards? Why spread among the stars in huge clunky spaceships when you can fit a hundred billion "people" in a virtual universe inside a computer?

Yes, this is likely to be an reason, even stuff like matrix level VR is far simpler than a starship.

Might affect aliens more than us, in fact we can imagine lots of aliens who run into traps we just avoided being humans.

An species with more limit in that they can eat will be fewer and can't spread so far limiting their numbers, they are also far more vulnerable. Predators can spread but their numbers will be limited.

This will slow down innovation as its fewer inventors. Does the planet have good domesticate plants or animals if not you stay a hunter gatherer where farming stays an side business for side dishes.

You can also have other social issues, like they being unable to organize large groups.

[Louella]

The biggest concern on modern industry is that it's not sustainable and fairly inefficient. To put it in more economic terms, we can produce more by using less, so for the life of me, I don't understand the reluctance to put some effort in moving towards that goal. And I've also never for the life of me understood why large corporations are so hell bent on short-term profit opposed to long-term.

Yearly or quarterly reports. How success is measured in those reports. Investment depending on provable rates of returns. It's easier to sell a short term scheme to investors.

The model of industry currently, is selling the same product to the same customer, again and again. Smartphones - corporations sell essentially the same smartphone to the same customer several times - only a minor variation in specifications each time.

It's more profitable to get 100m customers to want a new smartphone every year, than to increase the global number of smartphone users by 100m.

Similar for other products - domestic appliances are one example, the durability of the average washing machine reached a peak some time before the 1990's, and has declined since. Things are "beyond economic repair", when 99% of the machine is still functional, and could be returned to service. But repair of such is not possible, because of cost to employ someone to repair it, and lack of replacement parts.

Durable machines are "premium" brands, marketed to "premium customers", and sold at huge markup, and can be repaired.

Result is, there is no market for cheap, durable products. It's more profitable to sell disposable items to the same people, again and again and again.

[Frida Space]

We have this problem whether we created it or not but thinking that others could not solve it is arrogant. Its overly earth centric vision of universe.

The question isn't, "Is it really impossible to solve climate change?", but rather, "does every advanced civilization have to face a climate disaster, independently from whether they manage to deal with it or not?"