alt Hacker NewsWe'll be much closer to a greenhouse earth than a glacial earth if we get that 4°C warming, so the distinction is more academic than practical in most contexts. What's a century here or there in geologic time?
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Cthulhu_ • today at 11:13 AM
Assume that there will be a mass extinction event somewhere in the next 1000 years - meteor, WW3, whatever. If you'd then play a timelapse of earth, you'd see it on fire, cooling down, oceans forming, greenery forming, continental drift, north/south poles icing over and clearing, snowball (?) earth a few times, then in a short blip the rise and fall of humanity, then uh. more of the same. Geological (and universal) time scales are mind blowing.
The Cambrian and Eocene reached around +14C compared to today[1]. Two of the warmest periods in Earth's history, granted. But life thrived. Governments, private property ownership, civilization, not as battle tested.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geologic_temperature_record#/m...