The Earth is reflecting less and less sunlight, study reveals (phys.org)
from cm0002@sh.itjust.works to science@mander.xyz on 06 Oct 20:40
https://sh.itjust.works/post/47440527

#science

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BeefandSquints@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 06 Oct 20:54 next collapse

I sure hope they figure this out for all of the people dumb enough to still be having children.

salacious_coaster@infosec.pub on 06 Oct 21:49 collapse

They already did, and current policy is to ignore it

BeefandSquints@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 06 Oct 22:45 collapse

Well, they are certainly profiting from the despair.

themeatbridge@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 20:55 next collapse

Just in case it wasn’t clear, that’s a horrifying discovery. Like the extinction of all life on earth.

T00l_shed@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 21:09 next collapse

Hopefully enough things can adapt in time and then something can give it another go

JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social on 06 Oct 21:20 collapse

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

salacious_coaster@infosec.pub on 06 Oct 21:48 next collapse

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

JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social on 06 Oct 21:58 collapse

Right??

It’s going to be glorious.
–(sotto voce)

Korhaka@sopuli.xyz on 06 Oct 21:55 collapse

What about life around deep sea vents?

JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social on 06 Oct 23:03 collapse

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:

1) 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?

2) 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

❤️

Yawweee877h444@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 21:25 next collapse

But billionaires need bigger yachts. And more mansions. What’re we to do? Can’t sacrifice the billionaires ultra-mega-yachts.

fartographer@lemmy.world on 06 Oct 21:50 collapse

Dark colored yachts

protist@mander.xyz on 06 Oct 22:35 collapse

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?

themeatbridge@lemmy.world on 07 Oct 05:02 next collapse

Because absorbed light is excess energy.

protist@mander.xyz on 07 Oct 13:27 collapse

It’s pretty big leap from the Earth absorbing slightly more energy from the sun to “the extinction of all life on Earth.”

themeatbridge@lemmy.world on 07 Oct 18:42 collapse

My friend, it really is not.

protist@mander.xyz on 07 Oct 21:24 collapse

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

Jtotheb@lemmy.world on 07 Oct 05:08 next collapse

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

protist@mander.xyz on 07 Oct 14:35 collapse

“The extinction of all life in Earth” is not a reasonable conclusion to draw from this

captainlezbian@lemmy.world on 08 Oct 00:04 next collapse

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.

Jtotheb@lemmy.world on 08 Oct 22:29 collapse

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.

leftzero@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 07 Oct 17:40 collapse

how is that horrifying?

Daisyworld.

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.

PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz on 06 Oct 21:05 next collapse

Emo Earth letsgoooo!

TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works on 06 Oct 21:32 collapse

I hate you (but I also love you)

jeena@piefed.jeena.net on 06 Oct 23:26 next collapse

This is how it started on Venus too!

archonet@lemy.lol on 06 Oct 23:31 next collapse

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.

cm0002@sh.itjust.works on 07 Oct 00:24 next collapse

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 😌

archonet@lemy.lol on 07 Oct 00:25 next collapse

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

baldingpudenda@lemmy.world on 07 Oct 03:56 collapse

With how bad its going a summer without winter might give us another 10 years.

shalafi@lemmy.world on 07 Oct 19:11 collapse

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.

archonet@lemy.lol on 07 Oct 19:52 collapse

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.

zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 07 Oct 14:52 next collapse

This must be what people have meant when they say we’re headed for the Dark Ages.

altphoto@lemmy.today on 07 Oct 17:01 collapse

I assume its the opposite. It’s absorbing light as heat vs reflecting and cooling down.

zod000@lemmy.dbzer0.com on 07 Oct 17:12 collapse

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: science.org/…/clearer-skies-may-be-accelerating-g…

altphoto@lemmy.today on 07 Oct 18:14 collapse

Oh. Well… Good day to you and yours :)

altphoto@lemmy.today on 07 Oct 17:05 next collapse

Here’s the ad I obtained from that link…thinking what I’m thinking? Yes. Yes I am!

<img alt="" src="https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/e07b8e19-55c6-44f6-87ff-df82dcf38653.png">

captainlezbian@lemmy.world on 08 Oct 00:01 collapse

Yeah, loss of snow reduces albedo, this increases temperature reducing snow. It’s a known factor in how stable climate positions are stable.