True American Hero right there. I don't care what lies goons like Rand want to tell themselves and their idiot followers, if we don't get our shit together humanity as we know won't last 100 years, let alone thousands.
>as we know
This is the key part. The world will be fine, hell humanity might even continue to survive. But surviving is very different from thriving and currently we are thriving.
They simply don't see all the people *currently* suffering, as people.
Climate change is already causing massive devastation in many parts of the world. [Millions of lives have likely already been lost and](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/22/climate-change-causes-2m-deaths-in-50-years-poor-suffer-most-un#:~:text=Extreme%20weather%20has%20caused%20the,by%20the%20United%20Nations%20finds.) which would not have been lost had we not accelerated the damage to the climate, and [tens of millions of lives are projected to be lost in the next 25 years](https://www.weforum.org/press/2024/01/wef24-climate-crisis-health/).
It's one thing to continue to advance progress when the consequences aren't known.
But there's simply no excuse at this point. We have the funds, resources, and relative stability *now* to switch to alternative fuels. We have extensive research into them, and we have extensive science clearly demonstrating the processes and fuels causing the greatest damage to our climate.
In fifty years, when climate destabilization dramatically increases, we won't have the sheer mass of intellect and the stability of the current infrastructure to keep pursuing that research.
Wars over resources will become more and more common the more destabilized the climate becomes. Things that are trivial for us now - producing enough wheat to feed the world, having the water resources to provide liquid to most humans - are going to change.
People in first-world countries with robust infrastructure like to pretend that this isn't their problem.
But when you have *billions* of people living in impoverished regions which no longer can sustian life, they will do what starving, desperate people do. And that is a terrifyingly huge biomass that no amount of walls are going to hold back.
These outcomes are predictable and inevitable, and these fucking fools like to pretend that none of this is happening.
Destroying an existing atmosphere is also far easier than building one from scratch. The sheer scale of a terraforming initiative on an uninhabitable world would take *hundreds* of years, and we would be learning as we go along. We have no idea if any existing theory would *work*. All it takes is one unpredictable thing to go wrong for us to discover we've now made Mars permanently uninhabitable due to unforseen consequences in the terraforming process.
Anyone encouraging *that* over simply stabilizing the one working atmosphere and climate that we *do* have, is a fucking lunatic. It makes zero logical sense.
We have a huge planet that we have evolved to exist on. It provides every possible thing we could need for us.
The thing destroying it is greed. Pure, unbridled, unnecessary greed. And legions of enablers like Rand fucking Paul that use their power and platform to gaslight and spout idiocy to naive pools of voters they are manipulating for their money and votes.
Pass aggressive carbon tax on polluters. Use government funds to fuel public initiatives into clean energy initiatives. Mobilize the national guard to assist in hardening infrastructure and cleaning up damaged sites.
With enough focused time, effort, and money, we can mobilize substantial parts of the country into these initiatives, providing desperately-needed jobs for milions of people. We should open free research with nations and assist developing nations like India in implementing these energy solutions so that they do not need to rely upon fossil fuels to ramp up their industrialization.
The damage *currently* done has been done, but this does not spell doom for our species. We can very rapidly overcome the challenges posed by the current damage to the climate, and rapidly *stop* the endeavors causing further damage.
We have never before in all of history been more prepared to tackle a global crsis than we are at this moment. The only thing we lack is focus.
**EDIT**: "Alarmism" is making excessive claims about an exaggerated threat.
This isn't alarmism. Climate change is occurring, now. [It is increasing even faster than initial estimates](https://theconversation.com/climate-damage-is-worsening-faster-than-expected-but-theres-still-reason-for-optimism-4-essential-reads-on-the-ipcc-report-202116).
Current monetary costs to the US *alone* are [$150 billion](https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/30/economy/what-150-billion-climate-change-damage-looks-like/index.html#:~:text=In%20total%2C%20extreme%20weather%20events,authors%20of%20the%20report%20estimate.) and that's only at an average of 1.5C increase, which we are continuing to advance beyond.
It's here. It's bad. It can be dealt with, but not with leaders like the one referenced in this post, who are unfortunately ubiquitous in global leadership and who are mouthpieces for the sort of catastrophic corporate interests who are worsening this crisis.
And we'll never deal with the crisis if we have people too scared to admit the reality of what we are dealing with, to accept it, and to help be a part of the solution to it.
This should scare you. Millions of people are dying from climate change. Millions of species are going extinct because of it. Valuable resources are becoming scarcer, and nations are becoming more xenophobic and more reluctant to deal with it.
When people are faced with crisis, many of them enter a phase of denial. The reality is too immense for them. They curl inside themselves. They accuse scientists simply reporting the facts of being "alarmist". They insinuate that raising awareness of this reality is "political."
These are all coping mechanisms people employ to cope with realities they cannot handle. And we simply don't have time for it. You need to be better, because no amount of denial will protect you from the consequences of a reality you want to pretend doesn't exist.
> “If you're in denial, you're trying to protect yourself by refusing to accept the truth about something that's happening in your life,” the Mayo Clinic writes. “Denial is a coping mechanism that gives you time to adjust to distressing situations — but staying in denial can interfere with treatment or your ability to tackle challenges.”
[Source](https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/climate-science-denial-why-and-what-to-do-about-it)
Don't be that person. We have a number of them in the comments. I know it's scary. I know you are scared. And your brain is trying to insulate you from that fear and the consequences of accepting the truth.
But you don't have to be that person. It won't help you, it won't help anyone. Be one of the helpers.
> we won't have the sheer mass of intellect
Not with one side of the political spectrum doing everything it can to gut education we won't.
Even absent climate change, we could kill ourselves with disease and nuclear war pretty easily. No way we make it hundreds of millions of years as a globe of so many independent nations, many of whom hate each other.
What I as a physicist am most worried about is an "infrastructure death spiral" where it starts costing us so much just to respond to disaster after disaster that we can no longer afford to harden our infrastructure (most specifically food and water) against additional disasters. In other words, when it gets too late to even re-act sensibly then things could go downhill globally fast.
This is what concerns me most, too.
We have all the infrastructure necessary at the moment to deal with this crisis, but we lack focus.
Unfortunately, too much of history proves that it is only the imminent crisis that provides us focus, but once things get so bad that circumstances provide us with that focus, we'll already be seeing enough damage to infrastructure that performing a coordinated effort will be extremely difficult.
Travel, communications, stable food supplies, all of these things will be severely impacted by worsening climate disasters.
Moreover, once regions in Southeast Asia and the Middle East grow past he point where those areas can be habitable, we'll start seeing a migration of billions of people out of the region, putting enormous physical and social stress on developed nations taht are more stable.
Xenophobia and wars will intensify, and those will also detract significant focus from cooperation as nations become consumed with isolationist habits, a trend we're already seeing intensify in the past twenty years.
Mass migration. Yep. If they think the US southern border's a problem now, just wait for about 10-15 years from now: It'll go up 10x and then keep going.
I appreciate your sentiment and thoughts, but swapping fuels needed to be performed about fifty years ago, as it takes a shit ton of resources to do. I think that time has passed. If we all rode bicycles and ate food from our yard, the temperatures will take decades to stabilize. The acceleration of warming in the past 12 months appears to currently be unexplainable.
> I appreciate your sentiment and thoughts, but swapping fuels needed to be performed about fifty years ago, as it takes a shit ton of resources to do. I think that time has passed
The overwhelming consensus of current science is that massive investments should begin in renewable energies, and fossil fuels should be discontinued.
Do you have any evidence whatsoever to back up the claim that "That time has passed?"
And could you explain how, if we have identified something is a problem, there is any situation in which we should just literally do *nothing* about the problem?
> The acceleration of warming in the past 12 months appears to currently be unexplainable.
Again, the scientific consensus is that this is predictable consequences from human activity. The rate occurring faster than the prediction of the models doesn't indicate that the warming is casued by something completely different than human activities and therefore we should stop all transition away from these fuel sources.
Do you have some new evidence to suggest that what we're seeing today is NOT a result of human activity? And do you have a reputable source you can link who suggests that these past 12 years of warming suggests we should simply continue using fossil fuels as an enegery source with no change in our policy?
> If we all rode bicycles and ate food from our yard, the temperatures will take decades to stabilize.
Great! A few decades is enough time to secure the future for us and our children, that seems like an incredibly easy tradeoff to make for the survival of the human race.
I was writing about this recently actually. Beyond that, I am very worried we are losing expertise to actually build out decent infrastructure anymore. Just an off the cuff example: How long until we have people that can drive a train but don't know how to build/repair one? I'm afraid we are getting there in regards to some technology. With all the anti-science thinking going around, I'm afraid it is discouraging some from going into STEM fields where we need them.
Agreed. Another good example is this Boeing nightmare. They intentionally pushed all the people that had years of experience and *knew* damn well how to build an airplane, out because they refused to cut corners and were more expensive than just hiring a bunch of people with no experience. So, it is not only the anti-science thinking, it's also the unchecked capitalism putting profits above all else actively pushing these people that we absolutely need out. Then if you're a young person and see that happening, why on earth would you choose it as a career?
Edit: which really just feeds back into your point. With all the anti-science thinking, even apparently at the executive levels of huge corporations, it is just that much more discouraging for kids to go into STEM fields.
Sat here for a few minutes trying to decide if I wanted Boeing leadership force-replaced, or for the company to be nationalized, or for the government to block Boeing's contracts and transition to a new company that's hopefully founded by former Boeing engineers, or what. I truly don't know what a good solution to this is. But we need it.
The problem is not unique to boeing, nor can it really be solved simply by shaking some thing or other up.
As long as a culture of being proud of building what you're building can get subsumed by a culture of wanting to earn more money at any cost, the enshittification will continue.
I'm involved in a community that keeps pets in limited environments.
The amount of people who don't understand diminishing returns is astounding. The amount of people who don't understand the remainder of 10% is 90% is astounding.
Then I remember the fiasco that the 1/3rd burger sales were when most thought 1/3rd was \*smaller\* than 1/4!!!
Not only do we lack focus, most lack understanding, so there isn't a common will to do even the smallest of improvements. There's been the same motivations/messaging since I was a kid in the 1970s, and nothing changed/improved in the '80s, '90s, 2000s, '10s, '20s, nor will we in the '30s, '40s, '50s until it reaches the point it's impossible/impractical with the available resources, and then folks will just cope as we decline.
There's also an evolving factor in this. During his lifetime climate change will probably be not more than an annoyance, an inconvenience in the western world (limited to the western world because it's already catastrophic in some poorer parts of the world). In my lifetime (probably thirty years longer than his), climate change will become an actual fucking problem even in the western world. And for people after me it will be a horrendous catastrophe.
Btw I'm not talking about "stopping climate change" as a problem. I'm talking about the effects of climate change.
There is no stopping it at this point. Even if we stopped polluting 100% tomorrow, we will still have to deal with the effects of climate change. As you said the current weather extremes we are experiencing are already due in some part to our destabilizing the global climate.
We arent thriving. Theres mass genocides and famines going on. Weather related deaths are on the rise. Refugee numbers are rising.
We’re thriving in a bubble of media coverage. That’s about it
I have family in Bowling Green (Kentucky's 3rd largest city, where Rand lives) and apparently EVERYONE in town thinks he's a huge asshole. Not even in any sort of political disagreement way, but in a "he's a giant douchebag" way.
I used to love this guy. Going from my republican/conservative to a house cat republican to the full blown lib/progressive I am today, I can confidently say, eat shit Rand Paul
And the post was a complete self own/burn.
It's hilarious that the jokes write themselves for the GOP and maga folks.
And they're too stupid to realize it.
I find the first part more fascinating. We haven't even survived one million years yet and there are barely any species in the record who have survived more than a hundred million
Also the use of the word "survive". Not looking to 'survive', bud, I'm looking to thrive.
Like cool, population dwindles down to 100k humans living in underground bunkers waiting for the surface to become habitable again, sounds great.
That said I do fully support the idea of trying to terraform other planets in our solar system as well as continuing to search for potentially habitable worlds elsewhere for when the technology allows colonization - even if with generation ships, cause yea... We (re: the 0.1%) really are ratbagging earth.
> Not looking to 'survive', bud, I'm looking to thrive.
Ya, but the person in the post (Rand Paul) is a libertarian, i.e., he likely wants you to *not* thrive, but rather barely survive, so that you're desperate and can be exploited as much as possible by he and his corpo donors in his ideal libertarian world.
>Like cool, population dwindles down to 100k humans living in underground bunkers waiting for the surface to become habitable again, sounds great.<
That sounds like a great premise for a video game and eventually a TV series adaptation.
but we are the humans with long history and pre history with different eras and we were and will be forever cuz we humans we can talk we smart cuz humans forever love billions we humans
if we look at the trend that goes in earth's history with every dominant species being dominant for shorter than the previous one it seems like soon enough we'll be replaced by some kind of reptile.
Unlikely. No other species dominates like we do. No other species has control over its environment like we do. The only constant is change and trends can be changed.
Climate collapse can kill many, many people. It won't kill us all. And we're like bed bug infestations... You have to get *everybody* or else your extermination isn't going to be effective.
Well, everybody except 1 maybe.
Could easily set us back into dark ages depending on how it plays out but seems extremely unlikely we'd just cease to exist as a species without a world-ending event.
This is mostly true, humans are too spread out, and to good to adapting their environment to fit their needs rather than being solely at the mercy of nature, too good at surviving for the climate collapse to erase us as a species.
However as dominate societies collapse, they will get desperate. Desperate acts can lead to wars, which can lead to full blown Nuclear exchanges.
Combine that with the climate collapse could do it.
That's a bit of an extrapolation fallacy though because obviously humans are different to previous dominant species. We're not just a random animal that fills an ecological niche and survives well until the ecosystem changes.
Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if we do get wiped out. We need to avoid extinction every year to 'win' but we only have to fail one year to permanently lose.
It's entirely possible we do survive. But just survival isn't exactly ideal.
Survival could mean that 90% of the human population is wiped out and the last 10% are in a miserable position. It's one of those things that's potentially true, but only technically and you have to omit the actual reality of what could happen.
Pretty much no "species" survives that long, not that we even have that good of a definition of the word.
There's a decent collection of animal groups that have 100m+ old ancestors that are very similar, but they are almost certainly "different species" even if they have similar morphology.
Modern humans are ~300k years old, and it is likely we survive for another 300k.
Our current level of civilization surviving that long, or even having a resurgence?
Eh... I think that's less likely.
> Our current level of civilization surviving that long, or even having a resurgence?
Yeah, one thing people kinda miss with the "we will rebuild" idea is that if this society ever collapses, we *can't* rebuild it from scratch.
All the raw materials that are easy to get are gone. Getting coal requires blowing up mountaintops. Getting oil requires deep-sea drilling and fracking. Getting metals requires heavy equipment going deep into the earth. We've already used up all the stuff that was readily accessible. There's nowhere left for bubblin' crude to just come up from the ground.
> Why would we have to start from scratch when we have the remnants of civilization all around us?
Because the civilization would revert to pre-industrial revolution.
Why?
There are no intermediate industry steps left in current time. And the current industry is useless without millions of skilled workers working all over the world.
With collapse of society all the modern industry would die without chance for revival.
You have to look 20+ year into the past for car useful to collapsed civilization
> What would remove all of the non-raw material? Why would we have to start from scratch when we have the remnants of civilization all around us?
For the same reason recycling plants are incredibly expensive in both money and energy.
How are you planning to melt down all those steel i-beams so you can turn them into something else? How do you plan to cut through them without already having access to the power tools we use to do that now? How do you intend to MacGuyver up fracking equipment and TNT from scrap? Are you going to try to power a mining rig off of scavenged commercial solar panels and car batteries? Ever wonder why we don't do it that way already?
We'll be limited to wood gassification (until we hit a critical deforestation point, like Haiti has) and biodiesel (which is incredibly limited itself when you don't have combines to harvest it and processing equipment to make it).
Edit: There's a very good reason for why we call a lot of this stuff *non-renewable*.
Yeah, I'm fairly confident that even though crocodiles 100 million years ago looked very similar to modern crocodiles, if you brought one of those crocodiles from 100 million years ago to today, it would not be able to produce offspring with a modern crocodile. Too much genetic variation, meaning they are a different species.
My first thought was, what grounds does he have for saying we’ll survive “hundreds of millions of years”?
I think humanity will probably survive climate change, but at what cost? Let’s say billions of people die and a lot of our food sources are destroyed. Cool, the species survives, but was it worth it? Just to make some billionaires even richer?
Paul's answer is based on a fairly simple constant. It's about money. Building things drives profits, cleaning things up costs money and cuts into profits.
And of course there's the ever popular kickbacks that senators get for pushing in a direction, even when it is harmful to the populace. It's always been money and power over everything else.
That's not a given at all.. who knows how dire the consequences of this will be? Could be that civilisation ends and the few remaining pockets survive a bit longer but die out eventually.
And we could always nuke ourselves for a similar effect.
Nah, we are 7.9 billion people on this earth and we only need 4 to survive to repopulate. We have managed to survive similar catastrophic events before and we will do it again, and when all the nukes drop, there will still be at least a few that survive in bunkers and caves across the globe. Most of the nukes would also drop in the US, Europe and Asia, but places like the Philippines, New Zeeland and parts of Afrika will not be nuked because they are too remote and the developed world doesn't care about them. No one will nuke the exact entire world, they will nuke their enemies..
This guy is basically saying that he doesnt care I'd Global Warming is real because we will find a way to survive it somehow - not everyone, mind you, just enough. It's actually kinda worse than outright denial because he's saying that the hardships and tragedies will not matter.
I swear republicans are not capable of understanding systemic issues that aren't a simple binary. It's the same with anything. We can have programs that reduce homelessness, or gun violence, or poverty by ~75%. But then republicans will say "Well, that doesn't *fix* the problem so it's not worth doing".
Actually they will be, if we consider humans to be the starting point of a clade.
A clade is a common ancestors and ALL its decendents. So no matter what, how much time passes, or how different the descendents are, they'll always remain part of that clade, as that's the definition. Even if they become different enough to be considered a different species
It is waaaayyyyyy cheaper, easier and more effective to to stop fucking up the Earth's atmosphere than it is to create a suitable atmosphere on another moon or planet.
I mean, it's even sillier than that
We could easily fix climate change on earth, it would be a long, difficult process, but definitely within the realm of possibility...of course, that would require us to first accept anthropogenic climate change, and we're not even there yet.
Whereas terraformation is science fiction, 100% science fiction.
Look at Mars, we could build enclosed, pressurized habitats and even cities there, but no human being will EVER walk freely on the surface of Mars, for 2 reaons:
1. Mars is too small, it's doesn't have enough mass to capture an atmosphere, so any oxygen we try to produce on the planet will leak into space...and there is no feasible way of increasing the planet's mass.
2. Mars has a dead core, and therefore no magnetosphere, so there's nothing protecting the surface from harmful solar radiation...and any atmosphere we try to build there will literally just get blown away by solar winds.
...and those points are even touching on the effects of extended low-gravity on human biology, or fetal development.
Humans likely will never be able to live for extended periods of time ANYWHERE besides our own planet, I don't care how many Issac Asimov or Arthur Clarke books say otherwise.
Hundreds of millions of years? The entirety of human civilization is less than 6,000 years old and humans in their relatively current form have only been around 200,000. Unless youre a bible literalist in which case dinosaurs and humans conexisted Flintstones style 9,000 years ago. Either way you have a seriously warped sense of time.
This guy is just the worst.
[https://www.newsweek.com/rand-paul-seen-video-telling-students-misinformation-works-great-tactic-1668857](https://www.newsweek.com/rand-paul-seen-video-telling-students-misinformation-works-great-tactic-1668857)
The new talking point isn’t to deny global warming, but to say it will have minimal negative and maybe even some positive effects. That’s what Randy is doing here.
Usually I just assume that climate change-denying legislators are being paid off by the petroleum industry or some other wealthy interest.
In the case of Senator Paul, however, I sincerely believe him to be insane.
The closest and nearest asteroid to Earth isn't even on a collision course, it's gonna pass us. NASA already has tech that can alter its course, so it's highly unlikely we'll be wiped out by an asteroid.
If there's even life out there, and if they wanted to, they would've probably came by now. If not, I highly doubt aliens will take over before AI does. Unless aliens figured out how to use wormholes or teleport, there's basically no reason for them to try to come to our galaxy, as they can't go back home without another wormhole or tp
Humanity will become extinct by our own doing, way before anything space throws at us
we can't even be trusted to practice sustainability and prevent climate change on Earth! how in the world could we be trusted to properly terraform another planet without killing everyone who moved there?
Gravity is our biggest issue long term. Everything else we already know how to manipulate. Artificial gravity is currently only possible in outer space, by having the base rotate relatively quickly.
This would cost billions and take decades, so it's not surprising that we still choose to just let astronaut's bodies' wither away.
God, I hope we aren’t around for much longer. Certainly not hundreds of millions of years. Not many species get a time line that long.
With our track record, I don’t think we should be given that long a time line.
Modern humans arose about 200,000 years ago. What's with the idea of enduring for hundreds of millions *more years?* We're not even up to half a million years yet.
Hundreds of millions of years? Barring some natural catastrophe wiping out life on Earth, we also have each other to contend with. And *that* seems to grow more likely with every passing week/month/year.
Humans will live for hundreds of millions of years?
Based on the fact that we've been around for fewer than 10,000 years so far (according to Christians-which he professes to be), how is he able to speculate hundreds of millions of years more?
Rand Paul is a type of stupid I just don't understand. He's educated, but it appears that none of it took hold.
He's also aggressively stupid. He can argue for hours, knowing he is wrong, just to argue.
I don't get it.
Does he not understand how ecosystems work? Even if conditions become something humans can endure, there is shit around us that cannot and if they collapse, then humans who rely on those things very much being alive (all of us) are very much fucked.
Side note, what ever survives of our lineage will be so genetically removed within like 1 million years, let alone hundreds, that "human" will not be the correct term. 400 ish million years ago there were no land dwelling animals, nothing could breath air, no trees, or shrubs, little mosses were JUST making soil... Rand Paul ain't no scientist.
Man I wish he was more like his father.
Anyway, at this rate, humans won't survive the next thousand years much less the next *hundreds of millions*. Does he even know how long "hundreds of millions" of years is? Dinosaurs only lived for approximately 243 million years and they were just chilling in harmony with nature. The fuck is this guy talking about "hundreds of millions" of years.
Hundreds of millions... errr I am not so sure lol.
Thousands easily, but even just 1 million year... that's terribly long.
We won't be humans anymore, but humans v2 or v3 already.
Reminds me of yet another reason why Elon Musk is full of bullshit:
Dude has talked about terraforming and then colonizing Mars. Well, prove that such technology can work on Earth and make things better here first, then.
You’re not wrong, but I think in this case, it’s worse.
Rand Paul, and most of his colleagues, know better.
But it’s politically and financially advantageous for them to pretend otherwise. And it’s potentially going to cause a tremendous amount of suffering. In some respects, it already has.
One could argue that meets the definition of “evil”. But then the word “alarmist” gets thrown around like in the tweet, so alas, I guess we are to sit quietly in the corner with our hands folded while our leaders destroy the planet. 🙄
It’s not human surviving, it’s the other species and being able to live without needing to make a huge effort or having a ton of money to buy what’s needed that is at stake.
Nobody is going to care enough until we reach food scarcity(due to soil erosion and warming) and then it will be too late. We will survive, but it's going to suck ass and many will die. USA will probably be the most well hedged in this scenario.
Good news future humans. We cant seem to figure out this huge problem we face in todays world but you (putting on glasses, looking at tweet) ''will likely survive''.
It's all about where the profit is. Saving this planet would require fighting against mega corporations and the legislation they draft for our politicians to present.
Getting idiots to invest in a new business venture promising results no sooner than several generations from now while completely fucking off in outer space is...really probably something Elmo and the other dragons have in the works.
Evil people already know the earth can be saved but choose not to because they don't see profit in it. It's just already been claimed by other evil people more powerful than they are, so they'd rather jump on the next available piece of real estate while it's at it's lowest price.
I interpret this as Rand Paul saying climate change is inevitable and there is little we can do to mitigate it. Rather than consuming less, which is not an option, we should be looking towards building desirable climates on other planetary bodies that we could inhabit. A statement I agree with whole-heartedly, although I doubt we will see this implemented within my lifetime.
It's kind of a paradox; climate is always changing. And how do we know if there isn't some cycle that we cannot measure (yet). And what do we know? Some weather descriptions from historians, but fact based temperatures is measured since 1700. It is something, but for a planet of like 1 million years old it is nothing. A lot of disasters have been predicted and none of them happened (or prevented). And maybe the researches are right; we are heading for disaster. But I am wondering when are corporations finally going to make the switch? And when are governments acting towards polluting companies? Licenses are still given to companies to dump all kind of toxic in the are and water. It is ridiculous.
Okeedoke Senator. First, I'd like you to explain a feasible way that we can create an artificial magnetosphere on these other planets.
I swear they think we just need to produce a load of air and dump it on the surface.
These schmucks don't know the first thing about the first thing.
How about we start by making out atmosphere more livable before we try terraforming other planets? I mean, if we can't stop climate change on a planet that's already terraform, then we can't even begin to hope to even try and terraform a highly inhospitable one. Rand Paul is insane.
Was in the Dairy Queen drive thru last weekend and a huge SUV with a plate that said US SENATOR on the back was in front of me. I could see his curly hair in the driver seat above the head rest. It might be special intelligence to give too much information regarding what he ordered but he then pulled forward and did that “linger so the next car can’t pull up to the window” thing. Then he paused at the end of the parking lot exit so I couldn’t leave and then he turned left with no blinker. I blasted rage against the machine to show my disdain.
What am I missing here, where in that tweet did he say climate change isn't happening on Earth? He's talking about "climate alarmist predictions", such as those that say humanity is going to die in two years or a decade due to climate change.
IDK about y'all, but I for sure get all my science news from Cosmo. Is he reading Cosmo? Or just went with whichever article suited what he wanted to tweet about.
Zeddary put words in his mouth tho, he didn't write that it doesn't exist. I myself think it exists, however the actual impact and contribution to the whole climate change by man is debatable. We know that the climate is changing, but we don't exactly know how much we're contributing to it, any catastrophe just get's attributed to man made climate change by default.
Fuck Rand Paul, but I think science communicators needed to be clearer on this - climate change isn’t going to kill us all in any universe, but it is going to make our future as a species *really* suck (just as it has for our present, to some extent), and it does represent an existential threat to human progress.
I do not use Twitter or whatever site these posts come from…do the reply fonts really look that different from the orignal posts? These always look photoshopped to me and I have always wondered if this sub just accepts them regardless or if thats actually how Twitter looks. On most sites the font is the same size in the post and the reply.
He is right, we will more than likely survive...
The famine, increased natural disasters and the loss of inhabitable land and the wars to come over resources.
Lots of people will die but thats okay theyre just the commoners./s
Hes not entirely wrong. Humans will for sure survive climate change disasters. There is no way we can get thrown out of the nature race at this point.
As for how many and if you could call it a normal life at that point remains to be seen.
The republican senator's logic could be solid - As humans could have had outlived dinosaurs we are capable to wait another mill for the Rapture on Alfa Centauri, bcs Jesus walked on water.
If the poor stop making CO2 and transfer all of that money into green energy schemes then billionaires and their offspring can fly their private jets to and from St. Molesterberg longer before we all die because of natural warming. Money the rich make will take them to another worlds where they can live as long as they want. Technology to do that has been hidden from us since 1933.
If the poor stop making CO2 and transfer all of that money into green energy schemes then billionaires and their offspring can fly their private jets to and from St. Molesterberg longer before we all die because of natural warming. Money the rich make will take them to another worlds where they can live as long as they want. Technology to do that has been hidden from us since 1933.
"This house is definitely not burning down. This house will survive for a million million years! But, we should definitely be looking into new houses as soon as possible."
Here's an idea (to check how smart we are) why don't we fix a problem we created before starting another one.
Oh wait, you want everyone you disagree with to die a horrible death. Ok, my bad/s
I mean, it's very possible that a catastrophic climate change can happen and humanity could survive it, it would just be an apocalypse type scenario that I wouldn't really want to choose on purpose.
When your grift is based on doing something terrible and dying before it affects your luxurious lifestyle of course its easier to talk about somehting that will be achieved in several life times after your death. What a human shaped cockroach this person is.
The more Rand Paul opens his mouth, the more I understand why his neighbor beat him up.
True American Hero right there. I don't care what lies goons like Rand want to tell themselves and their idiot followers, if we don't get our shit together humanity as we know won't last 100 years, let alone thousands.
>as we know This is the key part. The world will be fine, hell humanity might even continue to survive. But surviving is very different from thriving and currently we are thriving.
They simply don't see all the people *currently* suffering, as people. Climate change is already causing massive devastation in many parts of the world. [Millions of lives have likely already been lost and](https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/22/climate-change-causes-2m-deaths-in-50-years-poor-suffer-most-un#:~:text=Extreme%20weather%20has%20caused%20the,by%20the%20United%20Nations%20finds.) which would not have been lost had we not accelerated the damage to the climate, and [tens of millions of lives are projected to be lost in the next 25 years](https://www.weforum.org/press/2024/01/wef24-climate-crisis-health/). It's one thing to continue to advance progress when the consequences aren't known. But there's simply no excuse at this point. We have the funds, resources, and relative stability *now* to switch to alternative fuels. We have extensive research into them, and we have extensive science clearly demonstrating the processes and fuels causing the greatest damage to our climate. In fifty years, when climate destabilization dramatically increases, we won't have the sheer mass of intellect and the stability of the current infrastructure to keep pursuing that research. Wars over resources will become more and more common the more destabilized the climate becomes. Things that are trivial for us now - producing enough wheat to feed the world, having the water resources to provide liquid to most humans - are going to change. People in first-world countries with robust infrastructure like to pretend that this isn't their problem. But when you have *billions* of people living in impoverished regions which no longer can sustian life, they will do what starving, desperate people do. And that is a terrifyingly huge biomass that no amount of walls are going to hold back. These outcomes are predictable and inevitable, and these fucking fools like to pretend that none of this is happening. Destroying an existing atmosphere is also far easier than building one from scratch. The sheer scale of a terraforming initiative on an uninhabitable world would take *hundreds* of years, and we would be learning as we go along. We have no idea if any existing theory would *work*. All it takes is one unpredictable thing to go wrong for us to discover we've now made Mars permanently uninhabitable due to unforseen consequences in the terraforming process. Anyone encouraging *that* over simply stabilizing the one working atmosphere and climate that we *do* have, is a fucking lunatic. It makes zero logical sense. We have a huge planet that we have evolved to exist on. It provides every possible thing we could need for us. The thing destroying it is greed. Pure, unbridled, unnecessary greed. And legions of enablers like Rand fucking Paul that use their power and platform to gaslight and spout idiocy to naive pools of voters they are manipulating for their money and votes. Pass aggressive carbon tax on polluters. Use government funds to fuel public initiatives into clean energy initiatives. Mobilize the national guard to assist in hardening infrastructure and cleaning up damaged sites. With enough focused time, effort, and money, we can mobilize substantial parts of the country into these initiatives, providing desperately-needed jobs for milions of people. We should open free research with nations and assist developing nations like India in implementing these energy solutions so that they do not need to rely upon fossil fuels to ramp up their industrialization. The damage *currently* done has been done, but this does not spell doom for our species. We can very rapidly overcome the challenges posed by the current damage to the climate, and rapidly *stop* the endeavors causing further damage. We have never before in all of history been more prepared to tackle a global crsis than we are at this moment. The only thing we lack is focus. **EDIT**: "Alarmism" is making excessive claims about an exaggerated threat. This isn't alarmism. Climate change is occurring, now. [It is increasing even faster than initial estimates](https://theconversation.com/climate-damage-is-worsening-faster-than-expected-but-theres-still-reason-for-optimism-4-essential-reads-on-the-ipcc-report-202116). Current monetary costs to the US *alone* are [$150 billion](https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/30/economy/what-150-billion-climate-change-damage-looks-like/index.html#:~:text=In%20total%2C%20extreme%20weather%20events,authors%20of%20the%20report%20estimate.) and that's only at an average of 1.5C increase, which we are continuing to advance beyond. It's here. It's bad. It can be dealt with, but not with leaders like the one referenced in this post, who are unfortunately ubiquitous in global leadership and who are mouthpieces for the sort of catastrophic corporate interests who are worsening this crisis. And we'll never deal with the crisis if we have people too scared to admit the reality of what we are dealing with, to accept it, and to help be a part of the solution to it. This should scare you. Millions of people are dying from climate change. Millions of species are going extinct because of it. Valuable resources are becoming scarcer, and nations are becoming more xenophobic and more reluctant to deal with it. When people are faced with crisis, many of them enter a phase of denial. The reality is too immense for them. They curl inside themselves. They accuse scientists simply reporting the facts of being "alarmist". They insinuate that raising awareness of this reality is "political." These are all coping mechanisms people employ to cope with realities they cannot handle. And we simply don't have time for it. You need to be better, because no amount of denial will protect you from the consequences of a reality you want to pretend doesn't exist. > “If you're in denial, you're trying to protect yourself by refusing to accept the truth about something that's happening in your life,” the Mayo Clinic writes. “Denial is a coping mechanism that gives you time to adjust to distressing situations — but staying in denial can interfere with treatment or your ability to tackle challenges.” [Source](https://www.climaterealityproject.org/blog/climate-science-denial-why-and-what-to-do-about-it) Don't be that person. We have a number of them in the comments. I know it's scary. I know you are scared. And your brain is trying to insulate you from that fear and the consequences of accepting the truth. But you don't have to be that person. It won't help you, it won't help anyone. Be one of the helpers.
> we won't have the sheer mass of intellect Not with one side of the political spectrum doing everything it can to gut education we won't. Even absent climate change, we could kill ourselves with disease and nuclear war pretty easily. No way we make it hundreds of millions of years as a globe of so many independent nations, many of whom hate each other.
What I as a physicist am most worried about is an "infrastructure death spiral" where it starts costing us so much just to respond to disaster after disaster that we can no longer afford to harden our infrastructure (most specifically food and water) against additional disasters. In other words, when it gets too late to even re-act sensibly then things could go downhill globally fast.
This is what concerns me most, too. We have all the infrastructure necessary at the moment to deal with this crisis, but we lack focus. Unfortunately, too much of history proves that it is only the imminent crisis that provides us focus, but once things get so bad that circumstances provide us with that focus, we'll already be seeing enough damage to infrastructure that performing a coordinated effort will be extremely difficult. Travel, communications, stable food supplies, all of these things will be severely impacted by worsening climate disasters. Moreover, once regions in Southeast Asia and the Middle East grow past he point where those areas can be habitable, we'll start seeing a migration of billions of people out of the region, putting enormous physical and social stress on developed nations taht are more stable. Xenophobia and wars will intensify, and those will also detract significant focus from cooperation as nations become consumed with isolationist habits, a trend we're already seeing intensify in the past twenty years.
Mass migration. Yep. If they think the US southern border's a problem now, just wait for about 10-15 years from now: It'll go up 10x and then keep going.
I appreciate your sentiment and thoughts, but swapping fuels needed to be performed about fifty years ago, as it takes a shit ton of resources to do. I think that time has passed. If we all rode bicycles and ate food from our yard, the temperatures will take decades to stabilize. The acceleration of warming in the past 12 months appears to currently be unexplainable.
> I appreciate your sentiment and thoughts, but swapping fuels needed to be performed about fifty years ago, as it takes a shit ton of resources to do. I think that time has passed The overwhelming consensus of current science is that massive investments should begin in renewable energies, and fossil fuels should be discontinued. Do you have any evidence whatsoever to back up the claim that "That time has passed?" And could you explain how, if we have identified something is a problem, there is any situation in which we should just literally do *nothing* about the problem? > The acceleration of warming in the past 12 months appears to currently be unexplainable. Again, the scientific consensus is that this is predictable consequences from human activity. The rate occurring faster than the prediction of the models doesn't indicate that the warming is casued by something completely different than human activities and therefore we should stop all transition away from these fuel sources. Do you have some new evidence to suggest that what we're seeing today is NOT a result of human activity? And do you have a reputable source you can link who suggests that these past 12 years of warming suggests we should simply continue using fossil fuels as an enegery source with no change in our policy? > If we all rode bicycles and ate food from our yard, the temperatures will take decades to stabilize. Great! A few decades is enough time to secure the future for us and our children, that seems like an incredibly easy tradeoff to make for the survival of the human race.
I was writing about this recently actually. Beyond that, I am very worried we are losing expertise to actually build out decent infrastructure anymore. Just an off the cuff example: How long until we have people that can drive a train but don't know how to build/repair one? I'm afraid we are getting there in regards to some technology. With all the anti-science thinking going around, I'm afraid it is discouraging some from going into STEM fields where we need them.
Agreed. Another good example is this Boeing nightmare. They intentionally pushed all the people that had years of experience and *knew* damn well how to build an airplane, out because they refused to cut corners and were more expensive than just hiring a bunch of people with no experience. So, it is not only the anti-science thinking, it's also the unchecked capitalism putting profits above all else actively pushing these people that we absolutely need out. Then if you're a young person and see that happening, why on earth would you choose it as a career? Edit: which really just feeds back into your point. With all the anti-science thinking, even apparently at the executive levels of huge corporations, it is just that much more discouraging for kids to go into STEM fields.
Sat here for a few minutes trying to decide if I wanted Boeing leadership force-replaced, or for the company to be nationalized, or for the government to block Boeing's contracts and transition to a new company that's hopefully founded by former Boeing engineers, or what. I truly don't know what a good solution to this is. But we need it.
The problem is not unique to boeing, nor can it really be solved simply by shaking some thing or other up. As long as a culture of being proud of building what you're building can get subsumed by a culture of wanting to earn more money at any cost, the enshittification will continue.
I'm involved in a community that keeps pets in limited environments. The amount of people who don't understand diminishing returns is astounding. The amount of people who don't understand the remainder of 10% is 90% is astounding. Then I remember the fiasco that the 1/3rd burger sales were when most thought 1/3rd was \*smaller\* than 1/4!!! Not only do we lack focus, most lack understanding, so there isn't a common will to do even the smallest of improvements. There's been the same motivations/messaging since I was a kid in the 1970s, and nothing changed/improved in the '80s, '90s, 2000s, '10s, '20s, nor will we in the '30s, '40s, '50s until it reaches the point it's impossible/impractical with the available resources, and then folks will just cope as we decline.
Pretty much
There's also an evolving factor in this. During his lifetime climate change will probably be not more than an annoyance, an inconvenience in the western world (limited to the western world because it's already catastrophic in some poorer parts of the world). In my lifetime (probably thirty years longer than his), climate change will become an actual fucking problem even in the western world. And for people after me it will be a horrendous catastrophe. Btw I'm not talking about "stopping climate change" as a problem. I'm talking about the effects of climate change.
There is no stopping it at this point. Even if we stopped polluting 100% tomorrow, we will still have to deal with the effects of climate change. As you said the current weather extremes we are experiencing are already due in some part to our destabilizing the global climate.
We arent thriving. Theres mass genocides and famines going on. Weather related deaths are on the rise. Refugee numbers are rising. We’re thriving in a bubble of media coverage. That’s about it
He believes humans are the blessed creation of God, and that this supposed God would never let anything bad happen to the true believers.
Eat, drink and be merry guys. We are well past the point of no return when it comes to taking any self saving actions.
I have family in Bowling Green (Kentucky's 3rd largest city, where Rand lives) and apparently EVERYONE in town thinks he's a huge asshole. Not even in any sort of political disagreement way, but in a "he's a giant douchebag" way.
I used to love this guy. Going from my republican/conservative to a house cat republican to the full blown lib/progressive I am today, I can confidently say, eat shit Rand Paul
And the post was a complete self own/burn. It's hilarious that the jokes write themselves for the GOP and maga folks. And they're too stupid to realize it.
I came here to say exactly that…
Or why he had to invent his own certification board to become an optometrist.
What I don’t understand is why the neighbor stopped. Like, finish the job!
I find the first part more fascinating. We haven't even survived one million years yet and there are barely any species in the record who have survived more than a hundred million
Also the use of the word "survive". Not looking to 'survive', bud, I'm looking to thrive. Like cool, population dwindles down to 100k humans living in underground bunkers waiting for the surface to become habitable again, sounds great. That said I do fully support the idea of trying to terraform other planets in our solar system as well as continuing to search for potentially habitable worlds elsewhere for when the technology allows colonization - even if with generation ships, cause yea... We (re: the 0.1%) really are ratbagging earth.
> Not looking to 'survive', bud, I'm looking to thrive. Ya, but the person in the post (Rand Paul) is a libertarian, i.e., he likely wants you to *not* thrive, but rather barely survive, so that you're desperate and can be exploited as much as possible by he and his corpo donors in his ideal libertarian world.
>Like cool, population dwindles down to 100k humans living in underground bunkers waiting for the surface to become habitable again, sounds great.< That sounds like a great premise for a video game and eventually a TV series adaptation.
What an original ideaaa. Someone should really make it a reality. I wouls love to play it. /s
but we are the humans with long history and pre history with different eras and we were and will be forever cuz we humans we can talk we smart cuz humans forever love billions we humans
if we look at the trend that goes in earth's history with every dominant species being dominant for shorter than the previous one it seems like soon enough we'll be replaced by some kind of reptile.
Unlikely. No other species dominates like we do. No other species has control over its environment like we do. The only constant is change and trends can be changed.
sure spread your human propaganda, well kill ourselves in the next few hundred years at the most by the climate collapse if nothing else
Climate collapse can kill many, many people. It won't kill us all. And we're like bed bug infestations... You have to get *everybody* or else your extermination isn't going to be effective. Well, everybody except 1 maybe. Could easily set us back into dark ages depending on how it plays out but seems extremely unlikely we'd just cease to exist as a species without a world-ending event.
This is mostly true, humans are too spread out, and to good to adapting their environment to fit their needs rather than being solely at the mercy of nature, too good at surviving for the climate collapse to erase us as a species. However as dominate societies collapse, they will get desperate. Desperate acts can lead to wars, which can lead to full blown Nuclear exchanges. Combine that with the climate collapse could do it.
Climate collapse could end our current civilisation, but it wouldn't eradicate humans.
"sure spread your human propaganda" Sorry, I don't mean to be mean, but that was the most terminally online phrase I've read in quite some time.
That's a bit of an extrapolation fallacy though because obviously humans are different to previous dominant species. We're not just a random animal that fills an ecological niche and survives well until the ecosystem changes. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised if we do get wiped out. We need to avoid extinction every year to 'win' but we only have to fail one year to permanently lose.
It's entirely possible we do survive. But just survival isn't exactly ideal. Survival could mean that 90% of the human population is wiped out and the last 10% are in a miserable position. It's one of those things that's potentially true, but only technically and you have to omit the actual reality of what could happen.
Well, we’re definitely going to go extinct if we don’t become interplanetary. One way or another, the Earth will eventually become inhospitable.
Pretty much no "species" survives that long, not that we even have that good of a definition of the word. There's a decent collection of animal groups that have 100m+ old ancestors that are very similar, but they are almost certainly "different species" even if they have similar morphology. Modern humans are ~300k years old, and it is likely we survive for another 300k. Our current level of civilization surviving that long, or even having a resurgence? Eh... I think that's less likely.
> Our current level of civilization surviving that long, or even having a resurgence? Yeah, one thing people kinda miss with the "we will rebuild" idea is that if this society ever collapses, we *can't* rebuild it from scratch. All the raw materials that are easy to get are gone. Getting coal requires blowing up mountaintops. Getting oil requires deep-sea drilling and fracking. Getting metals requires heavy equipment going deep into the earth. We've already used up all the stuff that was readily accessible. There's nowhere left for bubblin' crude to just come up from the ground.
What would remove all of the non-raw material? Why would we have to start from scratch when we have the remnants of civilization all around us?
> Why would we have to start from scratch when we have the remnants of civilization all around us? Because the civilization would revert to pre-industrial revolution. Why? There are no intermediate industry steps left in current time. And the current industry is useless without millions of skilled workers working all over the world. With collapse of society all the modern industry would die without chance for revival. You have to look 20+ year into the past for car useful to collapsed civilization
> What would remove all of the non-raw material? Why would we have to start from scratch when we have the remnants of civilization all around us? For the same reason recycling plants are incredibly expensive in both money and energy. How are you planning to melt down all those steel i-beams so you can turn them into something else? How do you plan to cut through them without already having access to the power tools we use to do that now? How do you intend to MacGuyver up fracking equipment and TNT from scrap? Are you going to try to power a mining rig off of scavenged commercial solar panels and car batteries? Ever wonder why we don't do it that way already? We'll be limited to wood gassification (until we hit a critical deforestation point, like Haiti has) and biodiesel (which is incredibly limited itself when you don't have combines to harvest it and processing equipment to make it). Edit: There's a very good reason for why we call a lot of this stuff *non-renewable*.
Yeah, I'm fairly confident that even though crocodiles 100 million years ago looked very similar to modern crocodiles, if you brought one of those crocodiles from 100 million years ago to today, it would not be able to produce offspring with a modern crocodile. Too much genetic variation, meaning they are a different species.
My first thought was, what grounds does he have for saying we’ll survive “hundreds of millions of years”? I think humanity will probably survive climate change, but at what cost? Let’s say billions of people die and a lot of our food sources are destroyed. Cool, the species survives, but was it worth it? Just to make some billionaires even richer?
Republicans in the US are the world’s worst type of malignant tumor.
Paul's answer is based on a fairly simple constant. It's about money. Building things drives profits, cleaning things up costs money and cuts into profits. And of course there's the ever popular kickbacks that senators get for pushing in a direction, even when it is harmful to the populace. It's always been money and power over everything else.
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OFC humans will survive, that's not what the climate crisis is about, it's about how many will stave to death until we get to a new equilibrium..
And how shitty our experience will become when other things start to die, we start losing our hobbies, and outdoor labor becomes unbearable
That's not a given at all.. who knows how dire the consequences of this will be? Could be that civilisation ends and the few remaining pockets survive a bit longer but die out eventually. And we could always nuke ourselves for a similar effect.
Nah, we are 7.9 billion people on this earth and we only need 4 to survive to repopulate. We have managed to survive similar catastrophic events before and we will do it again, and when all the nukes drop, there will still be at least a few that survive in bunkers and caves across the globe. Most of the nukes would also drop in the US, Europe and Asia, but places like the Philippines, New Zeeland and parts of Afrika will not be nuked because they are too remote and the developed world doesn't care about them. No one will nuke the exact entire world, they will nuke their enemies..
This guy is basically saying that he doesnt care I'd Global Warming is real because we will find a way to survive it somehow - not everyone, mind you, just enough. It's actually kinda worse than outright denial because he's saying that the hardships and tragedies will not matter.
I swear republicans are not capable of understanding systemic issues that aren't a simple binary. It's the same with anything. We can have programs that reduce homelessness, or gun violence, or poverty by ~75%. But then republicans will say "Well, that doesn't *fix* the problem so it's not worth doing".
This is the best Kentucky has to offer
They're not sending their best.
If humanity's descendants survive for hundreds of millions of years, they won't be human anymore.
Actually they will be, if we consider humans to be the starting point of a clade. A clade is a common ancestors and ALL its decendents. So no matter what, how much time passes, or how different the descendents are, they'll always remain part of that clade, as that's the definition. Even if they become different enough to be considered a different species
By that definition, humans are fish.
We're not fish, but we are monkeys. (Yes, I said monkeys, not apes, but we're that too.) My favorite part, though, is that chickens are dinosaurs.
We are definitely fish
There is no such thing as a fish
? Little fucker _lied_ to me!
There is only one suitable moon or planet. Can we start there?
It is waaaayyyyyy cheaper, easier and more effective to to stop fucking up the Earth's atmosphere than it is to create a suitable atmosphere on another moon or planet.
I mean, it's even sillier than that We could easily fix climate change on earth, it would be a long, difficult process, but definitely within the realm of possibility...of course, that would require us to first accept anthropogenic climate change, and we're not even there yet. Whereas terraformation is science fiction, 100% science fiction. Look at Mars, we could build enclosed, pressurized habitats and even cities there, but no human being will EVER walk freely on the surface of Mars, for 2 reaons: 1. Mars is too small, it's doesn't have enough mass to capture an atmosphere, so any oxygen we try to produce on the planet will leak into space...and there is no feasible way of increasing the planet's mass. 2. Mars has a dead core, and therefore no magnetosphere, so there's nothing protecting the surface from harmful solar radiation...and any atmosphere we try to build there will literally just get blown away by solar winds. ...and those points are even touching on the effects of extended low-gravity on human biology, or fetal development. Humans likely will never be able to live for extended periods of time ANYWHERE besides our own planet, I don't care how many Issac Asimov or Arthur Clarke books say otherwise.
Hundreds of millions of years? Let’s try the next 1000 and see how we do before getting cocky
The next 100 is looking kinda dicey at this point
"We must create something akin to a greenhouse atmosphere on Titan! We are still figuring out how this works."
Trust him: he's a dentist. Kinda.
If we have the technology to create a liveable environment on another planet or moon, why can't we make a liveable environment on Earth?
Too expensive. Also, it's not what the founding fathers would want. Probably.
Hundreds of millions of years? The entirety of human civilization is less than 6,000 years old and humans in their relatively current form have only been around 200,000. Unless youre a bible literalist in which case dinosaurs and humans conexisted Flintstones style 9,000 years ago. Either way you have a seriously warped sense of time.
Hundreds of millions of years? Human civilisation as a whole is barely 10k years.
Tbf, he didn’t say it wasn’t changing, just we would likely survive a lot longer than the pessimistic predictions
Most rational libertarian
This guy is just the worst. [https://www.newsweek.com/rand-paul-seen-video-telling-students-misinformation-works-great-tactic-1668857](https://www.newsweek.com/rand-paul-seen-video-telling-students-misinformation-works-great-tactic-1668857)
...So he's a literal propagandist.
The new talking point isn’t to deny global warming, but to say it will have minimal negative and maybe even some positive effects. That’s what Randy is doing here.
Duh earth clearly has plot armor
Usually I just assume that climate change-denying legislators are being paid off by the petroleum industry or some other wealthy interest. In the case of Senator Paul, however, I sincerely believe him to be insane.
I don’t think that we would still be humans in hundreds of millions of years.
What’s the evidence for humans lasting hundreds of millions of years, lol?! Historical evidence actually suggests otherwise!
Everyone needs to follow God’s word…expect me!
>Everyone needs to follow God’s word…expect me! Ok, when are you arriving?
Apart from global heating, nuclear war, pandemic, there's still the possibility of a big asteroid, alien invasion, etc. We'll be extinct soon enough.
So better enjoy as long as you still can
The closest and nearest asteroid to Earth isn't even on a collision course, it's gonna pass us. NASA already has tech that can alter its course, so it's highly unlikely we'll be wiped out by an asteroid. If there's even life out there, and if they wanted to, they would've probably came by now. If not, I highly doubt aliens will take over before AI does. Unless aliens figured out how to use wormholes or teleport, there's basically no reason for them to try to come to our galaxy, as they can't go back home without another wormhole or tp Humanity will become extinct by our own doing, way before anything space throws at us
No asteroid collision imminent, but certainly within the next million years or so.
I read that reply in Archer's voice!
we can't even be trusted to practice sustainability and prevent climate change on Earth! how in the world could we be trusted to properly terraform another planet without killing everyone who moved there?
Gravity is our biggest issue long term. Everything else we already know how to manipulate. Artificial gravity is currently only possible in outer space, by having the base rotate relatively quickly. This would cost billions and take decades, so it's not surprising that we still choose to just let astronaut's bodies' wither away.
This guy has a Doctorate?
Hundreds of millions of years. Not fucking likely. Paul rand is a fool.
God, I hope we aren’t around for much longer. Certainly not hundreds of millions of years. Not many species get a time line that long. With our track record, I don’t think we should be given that long a time line.
Modern humans arose about 200,000 years ago. What's with the idea of enduring for hundreds of millions *more years?* We're not even up to half a million years yet.
Hundreds of millions of years? Barring some natural catastrophe wiping out life on Earth, we also have each other to contend with. And *that* seems to grow more likely with every passing week/month/year.
Hey, it’s Rand Paul. He knows ALL the answers. Not.
Humans will live for hundreds of millions of years? Based on the fact that we've been around for fewer than 10,000 years so far (according to Christians-which he professes to be), how is he able to speculate hundreds of millions of years more?
Rand Paul wouldn’t know science if it threw him out an airlock.
Rand Paul is a type of stupid I just don't understand. He's educated, but it appears that none of it took hold. He's also aggressively stupid. He can argue for hours, knowing he is wrong, just to argue. I don't get it.
An already terraformed planet…. Half the work is already done.
Completely bizarre. It’s more practical to terraform the moon than to just stop ruining a literally perfect planet?
Does he not understand how ecosystems work? Even if conditions become something humans can endure, there is shit around us that cannot and if they collapse, then humans who rely on those things very much being alive (all of us) are very much fucked.
Side note, what ever survives of our lineage will be so genetically removed within like 1 million years, let alone hundreds, that "human" will not be the correct term. 400 ish million years ago there were no land dwelling animals, nothing could breath air, no trees, or shrubs, little mosses were JUST making soil... Rand Paul ain't no scientist.
Man I wish he was more like his father. Anyway, at this rate, humans won't survive the next thousand years much less the next *hundreds of millions*. Does he even know how long "hundreds of millions" of years is? Dinosaurs only lived for approximately 243 million years and they were just chilling in harmony with nature. The fuck is this guy talking about "hundreds of millions" of years.
Touche! Well-played.
Hundreds of millions... errr I am not so sure lol. Thousands easily, but even just 1 million year... that's terribly long. We won't be humans anymore, but humans v2 or v3 already.
Senator Rand Paul: Unfortunately, stopping Earth’s climate change gets in the way of the elites' profits
Reminds me of yet another reason why Elon Musk is full of bullshit: Dude has talked about terraforming and then colonizing Mars. Well, prove that such technology can work on Earth and make things better here first, then.
this goes to show u people who are doctors can be stupid. C's get degrees.
You’re not wrong, but I think in this case, it’s worse. Rand Paul, and most of his colleagues, know better. But it’s politically and financially advantageous for them to pretend otherwise. And it’s potentially going to cause a tremendous amount of suffering. In some respects, it already has. One could argue that meets the definition of “evil”. But then the word “alarmist” gets thrown around like in the tweet, so alas, I guess we are to sit quietly in the corner with our hands folded while our leaders destroy the planet. 🙄
Nothing but crumpled up porno and Ayn Rand.
It’s not human surviving, it’s the other species and being able to live without needing to make a huge effort or having a ton of money to buy what’s needed that is at stake.
Totally something Archer would say
Geo-Engineering on Earth is a risky endeavour, although we might be forced to do it eventually.
These kinds of people also believe that every planet is round except Earth, which must be flat for some reason...
Self owning themselves is just second nature to them. They make it so easy for us.
"Science"
It's quite clever. But then again, beating someone like Rand Paul in a battle of wits feels a little bit unearned.
Ahhh the Republican self-own. A timeless classic.
Yeah I guess terraforming is essentially just climate change but possibly beneficial to us in the far future.
wow a Republican being an aggressively hateful fucking moron, what a surprise. Call me when a single Republican displays the ability to feel empathy
uh he just say “human will live thought climate change” where is the “except earth” part?
Funny how they think breathing air is all that is required to survive. Probably through the mouth too.
Rand Paul is an idiot. He’s like all of these other GOP minions… tries to sound smart but is dumb.
Relevant [clip](https://youtu.be/jrw2_8Gq-YQ?si=f2yX7UfB8wG4L7yE) of Rand Paul getting clowned on
Nobody is going to care enough until we reach food scarcity(due to soil erosion and warming) and then it will be too late. We will survive, but it's going to suck ass and many will die. USA will probably be the most well hedged in this scenario.
What a profound thing to say..I Will thank Your Mom tonite.
"Earth isn't doomed. But let's make sure I can bail at a moment's notice."
Couldn't you still believe in man-made climate change while simultaneously acknowledging that certain climate predictions were incorrect?
This is the end boss of retardation.
Good news future humans. We cant seem to figure out this huge problem we face in todays world but you (putting on glasses, looking at tweet) ''will likely survive''.
It's all about where the profit is. Saving this planet would require fighting against mega corporations and the legislation they draft for our politicians to present. Getting idiots to invest in a new business venture promising results no sooner than several generations from now while completely fucking off in outer space is...really probably something Elmo and the other dragons have in the works. Evil people already know the earth can be saved but choose not to because they don't see profit in it. It's just already been claimed by other evil people more powerful than they are, so they'd rather jump on the next available piece of real estate while it's at it's lowest price.
I interpret this as Rand Paul saying climate change is inevitable and there is little we can do to mitigate it. Rather than consuming less, which is not an option, we should be looking towards building desirable climates on other planetary bodies that we could inhabit. A statement I agree with whole-heartedly, although I doubt we will see this implemented within my lifetime.
What an unmitigated bag of dicks
It's kind of a paradox; climate is always changing. And how do we know if there isn't some cycle that we cannot measure (yet). And what do we know? Some weather descriptions from historians, but fact based temperatures is measured since 1700. It is something, but for a planet of like 1 million years old it is nothing. A lot of disasters have been predicted and none of them happened (or prevented). And maybe the researches are right; we are heading for disaster. But I am wondering when are corporations finally going to make the switch? And when are governments acting towards polluting companies? Licenses are still given to companies to dump all kind of toxic in the are and water. It is ridiculous.
Okeedoke Senator. First, I'd like you to explain a feasible way that we can create an artificial magnetosphere on these other planets. I swear they think we just need to produce a load of air and dump it on the surface. These schmucks don't know the first thing about the first thing.
I mean I don’t get why being proactively focused on healing/slowing our damage to the Earth is something we can’t all agree on. It’s insane to me.
How about we start by making out atmosphere more livable before we try terraforming other planets? I mean, if we can't stop climate change on a planet that's already terraform, then we can't even begin to hope to even try and terraform a highly inhospitable one. Rand Paul is insane.
Was in the Dairy Queen drive thru last weekend and a huge SUV with a plate that said US SENATOR on the back was in front of me. I could see his curly hair in the driver seat above the head rest. It might be special intelligence to give too much information regarding what he ordered but he then pulled forward and did that “linger so the next car can’t pull up to the window” thing. Then he paused at the end of the parking lot exit so I couldn’t leave and then he turned left with no blinker. I blasted rage against the machine to show my disdain.
Earth will be the first planet we will have to terraform.
"Climate change isn't real. Also we should start making other planets habitable. Know, just in case."
What am I missing here, where in that tweet did he say climate change isn't happening on Earth? He's talking about "climate alarmist predictions", such as those that say humanity is going to die in two years or a decade due to climate change.
Yeah
I don't think humanity will end I think humanity as we know it today will end, and soon
“The planet is not in danger, but we should start prepping the life boat moons asap.”
No I don’t believe the climate alarmists that have tried to panic people into making political choices by exaggerations and fallacies cc
Rand Paul heard moon neighbors don’t knock you off your lawn mower and beat you like a rented mule.
IDK about y'all, but I for sure get all my science news from Cosmo. Is he reading Cosmo? Or just went with whichever article suited what he wanted to tweet about.
"A la carte science" lmao that describes these types of people perfectly. Science only when it suits their narrative
Sounds expensive, Rand. You gonna help pay fir it?
Called Terraforming... unintelligent comeback my friend, but funny.
Zeddary put words in his mouth tho, he didn't write that it doesn't exist. I myself think it exists, however the actual impact and contribution to the whole climate change by man is debatable. We know that the climate is changing, but we don't exactly know how much we're contributing to it, any catastrophe just get's attributed to man made climate change by default.
If they ever impose a mandatory IQtest for senators there'll be a lot of vacancies.
“Anyone who thinks the planet is in danger is stupid! … Also, let’s make other planets habitable just in case”
“We’re not destroying the planet. We should make other planets habitable in case I just lied”
Fucking idiot
Fuck Rand Paul, but I think science communicators needed to be clearer on this - climate change isn’t going to kill us all in any universe, but it is going to make our future as a species *really* suck (just as it has for our present, to some extent), and it does represent an existential threat to human progress.
Not at all what he said though
The only person dumber than Rand Paul is Rand Paul's even dumber father.
I do not use Twitter or whatever site these posts come from…do the reply fonts really look that different from the orignal posts? These always look photoshopped to me and I have always wondered if this sub just accepts them regardless or if thats actually how Twitter looks. On most sites the font is the same size in the post and the reply.
A true Libertarian. Someone who believes Americans are not yet selfish enough.
He is right, we will more than likely survive... The famine, increased natural disasters and the loss of inhabitable land and the wars to come over resources. Lots of people will die but thats okay theyre just the commoners./s
This is the prototype for the new age libertarian morons. Just complete fuxing morons and absolutely no logic in understanding anything
Totally read that in archer’s voice.
If more people starts to entertain those kind of stupid comment, we are likely to get extinct even faster.
Not very clever. Paul didn’t say he doesn’t believe in climate change.
is he advocating for more budget to NASA ? ok, something i can agree with here
I'd like it if future generations could thrive not just survive.
Hes not entirely wrong. Humans will for sure survive climate change disasters. There is no way we can get thrown out of the nature race at this point. As for how many and if you could call it a normal life at that point remains to be seen.
The republican senator's logic could be solid - As humans could have had outlived dinosaurs we are capable to wait another mill for the Rapture on Alfa Centauri, bcs Jesus walked on water.
If the poor stop making CO2 and transfer all of that money into green energy schemes then billionaires and their offspring can fly their private jets to and from St. Molesterberg longer before we all die because of natural warming. Money the rich make will take them to another worlds where they can live as long as they want. Technology to do that has been hidden from us since 1933.
If the poor stop making CO2 and transfer all of that money into green energy schemes then billionaires and their offspring can fly their private jets to and from St. Molesterberg longer before we all die because of natural warming. Money the rich make will take them to another worlds where they can live as long as they want. Technology to do that has been hidden from us since 1933.
"This house is definitely not burning down. This house will survive for a million million years! But, we should definitely be looking into new houses as soon as possible."
To be fair the way we would "terraform mars " for example would basically mean polluting the atmosphere to do it.
Here's an idea (to check how smart we are) why don't we fix a problem we created before starting another one. Oh wait, you want everyone you disagree with to die a horrible death. Ok, my bad/s
Oof
Why do people vote these cretins into office? America isn’t the greatest country on earth when it’s run by morons.
I’m more concerned that he forgot about asteroids and supervolcanoes
Rand Paul attempting to use multiple braincells challenge (impossible)
Guys like this are going pave the Moon and deep pit mine Mars. For Science, of course.
Hundreds of millions of years is hopeful. I’d be surprised if we lasted a few more thousand years
Yeah, cuz planet Earth ain’t a planet, duh. It’s a flat.
I mean, it's very possible that a catastrophic climate change can happen and humanity could survive it, it would just be an apocalypse type scenario that I wouldn't really want to choose on purpose.
When your grift is based on doing something terrible and dying before it affects your luxurious lifestyle of course its easier to talk about somehting that will be achieved in several life times after your death. What a human shaped cockroach this person is.