August 05, 2009

First Comes Global Warming, Then An Evolutionary Explosion. "In a matter of years or decades, researchers believe, animals and plants already are adapting to life in a warmer world. Some species will be unable to change quickly enough and will go extinct, but others will evolve, as natural selection enables them to carry on in an altered environment."
posted by homunculus 15 years ago
  • Ummmmm, I'm still skeptical. Years? Decades? Maybe for r-strategist organisms, but not keystone species. Welcome to a world full of weeds and cockroaches.
  • In this world where absolutely everything is politicized, it surprises me not that this sort of spin is being pushed by Yale, the Establishment's training center. The subtext is, "Everything is going to be fine, we can do whatever we want!" Reprehensible.
  • Like GramMa sez, the simpler organisms and those with a rapid generational turnaround may be able to evolve in time to survive but the 'higher species', including we overheated apes, may not. On the bright side, we're slowly digging our own grave and, eventually, everything could be fine, as long as you're a bug or a jellyfish. Maybe they'll eventually evolve into something more sensible than us.
  • Right. It's a phylogenetic explosion for vermin, implosion for the higher organisms, even if there's a lot more weed for them to smoke. That was a bad joke. People might survive in hermetically sealed tanks. There was a cool sci-fi story about that. A few coarse nomads come upon a fenced in community of effete humans living in a sort of nutritious fluid inside bunches of grape-like spheres. In disgust, the barbarians rip open the grapes, expelling the weak, flopping humans onto the floor. In that harsh environment, they die.
  • Nah, most likely the story is going to be about a small group--15 cockroaches, 8 rats and 2 humans all sitting in a field of skeleton weed, cheatgrass and leafy spurge, eyeballing each other in a Mexican standoff. A spaceship lands, aliens emerge indicating peace and friendship, the earthlings look at each other, fall on the aliens, eat them and belch, then continue eyeballing each other. Story dedicated to my man, Dan.