Will Global Climate Change Stimulate an Evolutionary Leap in Mankind?

a reply to: GodEmperor

I thought it would be fun to entertain the idea of alternative forms of life in different climates. I am by no means a biologist nor do I possess a doctoral certification but I will give this my best educated attention and use search engines as a helping device.

Two different scenarios come to mind first:

Scenario Y: Depletion of ozone causing a drastic increase in solar radiation exposure, but not quite enough to sterilize Earth. Enough though to require physical mutation.

Scenario Z: As already mentioned on this thread, a scenario of drastic CO2 level increases. Enough to require physiological mutation but not enough to sterilize planet Earth.

SCENARIO Y
So the Earth' s atmosphere is stripping away and life starts getting harsher. What are the conditions and how does life need to mutate to adapt to the new conditions? What does extreme radiation do to living organisms? I looked at some photos of recent wildlife mutations where the creatures were grotesquely disfigured and life was short lived. Wildlife that survived the radiation often took on cartoonish characteristics with giganticism in prominent physical traits and smaller forms of elephantitus type mutations. Swollen and cartoonish. Now I don't know why this common mutation becomes a trait in surviving exposed species but it seems to happen in all surviving life such as fish, birds, mammals and many types of vegetation. Creatures that don't survive and die early often have grown extra limbs and have split repetitive features wherein mutations follow geometric patterns in a kaliedescope manner. So, life would really suck. Humans are known to have low tolerance to prolonged radiation so I don't think we would fare very well. But suppose we could adapt through physical mutation to higher radiation levels, what would that be? I suppose our skin would need to change into a thicker reptilian type skin with some sort of thick deposits of radiation resistant fiber or bone-like masses. Our organs would need to shrink to thicken the protective shield. Our circulatory systems would shrink deeper into our bodies, leaving our skin dry and numb. We would probably start to look like two legged turtles without necks. Sound reasonable? I'm probably wrong.

SCENARIO Z
So there's more CO2 in the air and the trees aren't able to keep the oxygen levels up. This situation is so severe that all the life on Earth is having trouble breathing. What happens? Everything slows to a crawl because there isn't enough oxygen to support any sort of high energy activity. Nothing runs anymore and the greatest survivors of this climate change are already well suited to a lazy and slow existence. Snakes would reign supreme and humans would resort to machinery to rebalance their high resource needs. Tribes in the wild would quickly die off as civilized and advanced societies reallocate their resources and change their habits to adapt to life without excitement. 90% of humanity would bite the dust along with nearly all predatory mammals and large wildlife. Everything would get smaller and reptiles would make a huge comeback. Insects wouldn't be so harshly affected. Humans would create climate controlled underground cities and live like Martian colonists. I think I'm probably in the ball park with this theory.

Any ideas?

originally posted by: LittleByLittle
a reply to: namelesss

You'll forgive me for not wasting my time on some ignorant video when personal experience verifies it's ignorance.
Knowledge = experience.
Ignorance = lack of experience.

It's like I'm standing in the ocean to my neck in water, with an entire beach full of people, and you are claiming, by desert email, that 'water' doesn't exist/is a mirage, in your ignorance.
There are many ignorant making the same ignorant comments.
Nothing new here...

originally posted by: whywhynot

originally posted by: namelesss

originally posted by: whywhynot
Perhaps if the climate really does change in 100,000 or 200,000 years

Are you not on Earth?
Are you in a cement bubble?
6 years here?
How deep the denial?
How blind?

I don't think that there is anywhere on this planet Earth that does not experience weather instability/unpredictability.
Other than in your bubble, that is, but it must get pretty stale in there... *__-

So ridiculous attacks and ridicule is your method of comment and debate. Not very advanced.

If you haven't the tools to register the unstable weather patterns all over the globe, perhaps I should have kept my mouth shut in the first place.
My apologies.
Have a great night! *__-

a reply to: Profundity

Well, in Scenario Y, the Ozone depletion has pretty much stopped due to the ban on CFCs; it will still take decades before the ozone actually gets better.

However, with ozone depletion the radiation that causes damage is UV-B.

Will all these effects increase with an increase of UV-B irradiance? That is the first impression. Closer study indicates that this is not necessarily so.

www.ciesin.columbia.edu...

In the short-term, from that scenario you will see more people getting sunburns, tans, and skin aging/skin cancer.

I think the photos you were looking at were from nuclear radiation.

In the other scenario. CO2 depletion, does not necessarily mean Oxygen levels decreasing. About 25% of the atmosphere is oxygen, 0.04% of the atmosphere is CO2. Oxygen levels would have to decrease to under 15% before it became a problem, also oxygen levels over 35% would be a problem as well(flammable atmosphere). In regards to CO2, CO2 would have to be 100 times more ppm in atmosphere before it was toxic to humans. I believe we are at around 400 ppm co2 in atmosphere now, it would require 40,000 ppm co2 in atmosphere to be toxic to people.

Think of it this way, when you are indoors the average co2 levels are elevated than outside. CO2 levels indoors (ventilated) can be up to 1,000 ppm, with no problems.

You are onto something in this scenario, given a long enough time frame, assuming CO2 levels continued to rise while humans continued to destroy plant life that could balance those levels.

I'm not sure on the numbers, but it looks like about 2 ppm increase CO2 per year. We have thousands and thousands of years to fix the problem, before it actually becomes a problem, and fossil fuels are estimated to run out in 500 years.

Drawing upon all possible measures instead of waiting for first-best solutions

"As scientists we are looking at all possible futures, not just the positive ones," says co-author Wolfgang Lucht from PIK. "What happens in the worst case, a widespread disruption and failure of mitigation policies? Would plants allow us to still stabilize climate in emergency mode? The answer is: no. There is no alternative for successful mitigation. In that scenario plants can potentially play a limited, but important role, if managed well." The scientists investigated the feasibility of biomass plantations and CO2 removal from a biosphere point of view. To this end, they used global dynamic vegetation computer simulations.

So far, biomass plantations as a means for CO2 removal have often been considered as a comparatively safe, affordable and effective approach. "Our work shows that carbon removal via the biosphere cannot be used as a late-regret option to tackle climate change. Instead we have to act now using all possible measures instead of waiting for first-best solutions," says co-author Tim Lenton of the University of Exeter, UK. "Reducing fossil fuel use is a precondition for stabilizing the climate, but we also need to make use of a range of options from reforestation on degraded land to low-till agriculture and from efficient irrigation systems to limiting food waste."

"In the climate drama currently unfolding on that big stage we call Earth, CO2 removal is not the hero who finally saves the day after everything else has failed. It is rather a supporting actor that has to come into play right from the beginning, while the major part is up to the mitigation protagonist," says co-author Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Director of PIK. "So this is a positive message: We know what to do -- rapidly ending fossil fuel use complemented by a great variety of CO2 removal techniques. We know when to do it -- now. And if we do it, we find it is still possible to avoid the bulk of climate risks by limiting temperature rise to below 2 degrees Celsius."

www.sciencedaily.com...

Source for the above article...

www.pik-potsdam.de...

Further...

An air pollutant is a substance in the air that can have adverse effects on humans and the ecosystem. The substance can be solid particles, liquid droplets, or gases. A pollutant can be of natural origin or man-made. Pollutants are classified as primary or secondary. Primary pollutants are usually produced from a process, such as ash from a volcanic eruption. Other examples include carbon monoxide gas from motor vehicle exhaust, or the sulfur dioxide released from factories. Secondary pollutants are not emitted directly. Rather, they form in the air when primary pollutants react or interact. Ground level ozone is a prominent example of a secondary pollutant. Some pollutants may be both primary and secondary: they are both emitted directly and formed from other primary pollutants.

en.wikipedia.org...

a reply to: GodEmperor

We have thousands and thousands of years to fix the problem, before it actually becomes a problem, and fossil fuels are estimated to run out in 500 years.

Good news. I was hoping my scenarios were somewhat true.