Just a side note that climate change would not lead to the biosphere collapse even in the worst case. Earth is pretty cold and low on life now compared to 55 million years ago, when it was hotter than the worst projections of the climate models. If anything, global warming will be good for the biosphere, though maybe not so much for humans.
I agree with you, but we should acknowledge that the problem is more serious than just how hot it is—the problem is industrial pollution, habitat destruction, microplastics, ocean acidification, etc. I see the biosphere as anti-fragile and resilient, but the environmentalist’s fear is that there is some tipping point that nature cannot recover from. And even if p(Dead Earth) is low, we wouldn’t want to exit the twenty first century with half as much biomass as we started with. That’s not a good thing.
Why would having half the biomass necessarily be a bad thing from a system level view? Is that the point the entire ecosystem, or at least the humans/human civilization, spiral into a dead planet?
I see it in a similar light to “would you rather have more or fewer cells in your body?”. If you made me choose I probably would rather have more, but only insofar as having fewer might be associated with certain bad things (e.g. losing a limb).
Correspondingly, I don’t care intrinsically about e.g. how much algae exists except insofar as that amount being too high or low might cause problems in things I actually care about (such as human lives).
Just a side note that climate change would not lead to the biosphere collapse even in the worst case. Earth is pretty cold and low on life now compared to 55 million years ago, when it was hotter than the worst projections of the climate models. If anything, global warming will be good for the biosphere, though maybe not so much for humans.
I agree with you, but we should acknowledge that the problem is more serious than just how hot it is—the problem is industrial pollution, habitat destruction, microplastics, ocean acidification, etc. I see the biosphere as anti-fragile and resilient, but the environmentalist’s fear is that there is some tipping point that nature cannot recover from. And even if p(Dead Earth) is low, we wouldn’t want to exit the twenty first century with half as much biomass as we started with. That’s not a good thing.
Why would having half the biomass necessarily be a bad thing from a system level view? Is that the point the entire ecosystem, or at least the humans/human civilization, spiral into a dead planet?
Would you rather have more biomass or less?
I see it in a similar light to “would you rather have more or fewer cells in your body?”. If you made me choose I probably would rather have more, but only insofar as having fewer might be associated with certain bad things (e.g. losing a limb).
Correspondingly, I don’t care intrinsically about e.g. how much algae exists except insofar as that amount being too high or low might cause problems in things I actually care about (such as human lives).