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sleet_spotter | 2 years ago

A critical piece is the speed at which the climate is warming. The Earth has had much warmer and colder periods in its history that (most) life adapted to. However, life was only able to adapt happened because those changes happened at a sufficiently slow pace. To perhaps put the current trend in the context of geologic time, there have been 5 mass extinctions in the fossil record of life on Earth. These are associated with rapid changes in climate (e.g. asteroid impacts, large volcanic eruptions). Anthropogenic climate change is driving Earth's 6th mass extinction event. To be clear: what is happening now has not happened often in Earth's history. Life has survived, but it has not been pretty. Some alarmism is warranted from the ecosystem collapse alone.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction

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