Remix clone Hacker News

We can pretty clearly delineate how much of warming and CO2 concentration is human-caused.

That's clearly what they mean by "how its supposed to be". Yes there's no true "how it's supposed to be" but there's no use in being pedantic when we all clearly understand what they're talking about.

▲

card_zero 5 days ago | parent [-]

I think you're hesitating over saying "it's supposed to be nice for people".

But that is what most of us tacitly suppose. Ultimately the world's a park.

▲

culi 4 days ago | parent [-]

That's not what I'm saying at all. The typical approach is to compare co2 concentration and/or temperatures to pre-industrial levels

▲

card_zero 3 days ago | parent [-]

Why not say it, though? There's only us here capable of doing any supposing. Why would we say "it's supposed to be nice for cyanobacteria"? Which of course isn't even an option under consideration, only the pre-industrial levels thing is considered, never pre-photosynthesis levels. (Won't somebody think of the archaea?) Why this bias? Because humans like a certain kind of environment with trees and megafauna, that's why. It's a park.

	▲	culi 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		What's your point? This point is completely off topic The original comment made it seem like it was a completely arbitrary point of comparison for what "humans like". Instead, the benchmark that is used is what the environment would be like if we took out the massive contributions to global warming and CO2 concentration caused by industrialism Are pre-industrial levels "more comfortable" for humans? Sure, maybe I guess. It's probably "more comfortable" for the vast majority of species that are currently adapted for that biosphere. Why does that matter? The point is we're rapidly changing the global temperature levels as well as the co2 concentration rates (and many other environmental "abiotic" factors) at a rate that threatens most of life on earth. Shooting for "pre-industrial levels" as a benchmark is an obvious and easy, if a bit lazy, way to work towards an environment that most of life on earth is already adapted for