Are humans doomed to cause their own extinction?

[SeekerOfTruth007]

Smoking has been known to be the leading cause of Lung, throat, and mouth cancer for over 65 years, longer than I've even been alive, and yet it's still legal to sell cigarettes.

Humans have been known to be the leading cause of global warming for ever since the Internal Combustion Engine was invented, and yet we keep cranking out those automobiles and cranking out babies, with some nations still producing 8 children per woman. Antarctica is now 8.5C above the pre-industrial temperature there and rising fast. I know you deniers, paid by the oil companies to spread lies, are going to... deny... this, but hopefully someone in this generation or the next will take their heads out of the sand.

[Anonymous]

When you consider the morality rate in the past smoking is not really a big deal, what is a big deal is obesity. Obesity related deaths ard higher than smoking related cancers and seriously doubles, triples, quadruples a person's carbon footprint.

Climate change is a constant thing, the climate doesn't stay at a constant. For instance there's was a medieval warming period. There has also been volcanic winters which basically block the sun for decades sometimes cooling the earth and causing crops to fail.

What may cause human extinction is the chemicals we ingest into our bodies making us infertile or damaging ourselves on the genetic level.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

We now know that the Medieval warm period never happened The little Ice age was caused by several VEI 7 level eruptions, most notably Tambora. We are way past anything a mere VEI 7 eruption can fix. AGW is so bad it would taek at least a VEI 8 eruption to slow it down, and it would need to be a sulfur-rich eruption to matter. Tonga was a SIX, but it was actually a net warming event, releasing huge amounts of CO2 and water vapor.

[Opinion Owner]

By denying the Medieval warm period you are saying that climate change isn't real.
Instead of dismissing anything from the past you fear may contradict climate change being real you should acknowledge it and use it as example of how vulnerable the climate is to change and how humans are affecting climate change.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

There is no evidence of a Medieval warm period anywhere except in Europe, and Europe was in th e middle of the Medieval period for God's sake. They still burned scientists at the stake accusing them of "witchcraft".

[Opinion Owner]

The fact that the vikings had to abandon Greenland which is in the Americas after the MVP says otherwise

[Opinion Owner]

North America
In Chesapeake Bay (now in Maryland and Virginia, United States), researchers found large temperature excursions (changes from the mean temperature of that time) during the MWP (about 950–1250) and the Little Ice Age (about 1400–1700, with cold periods persisting into the early 20th century), which are possibly related to changes in the strength of North Atlantic thermohaline circulation. Sediments in Piermont Marsh of the lower Hudson Valley show a dry MWP from 800 to 1300. In the Hammock River marsh in Connecticut, salt marshes extended 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) farther westward than they do in the present due to higher sea levels.

Prolonged droughts affected many parts of what is now the Western United States, especially eastern California and the west of Great Basin. Alaska experienced three intervals of comparable warmth: 1–300, 850–1200, and since 1800. Knowledge of the MWP in North America has been useful in dating occupancy periods of certain Native American habitation sites, especially in arid parts of the Western United States. Aridity was more prevalent in the southeastern United States during the MWP than the following LIA, but only slightly; this difference may be statistically insignificant. Droughts in the MWP may have impacted Native American settlements also in the Eastern United States, such as at Cahokia. Review of more recent archaeological research shows that as the search for signs of unusual cultural changes has broadened, some of the early patterns (such as violence and health problems) have been found to be more complicated and regionally varied than had been previously thought. Other patterns, such as settlement disruption, deterioration of long-distance trade, and population movements, have been further corroborated

[Opinion Owner]

Africa
The climate in equatorial eastern Africa has alternated between being drier than today and relatively wet. The climate was drier during the MWP (1000–1270). Off the coast of Africa, Isotopic analysis of bones from the Canary Islands' inhabitants during the MWP to LIA transition reveal the region experienced a 5 °C (9.0 °F) decrease in air temperature. Over this period, the diet of inhabitants did not appreciably change, which suggests they were remarkably resilient to climate change.

[Opinion Owner]

Antarctica
The onset of the MWP in the Southern Ocean lagged the MWP's onset in the North Atlantic by approximately 150 years. A sediment core from the eastern Bransfield Basin, in the Antarctic Peninsula, preserves climatic events from both the LIA and the MWP. The authors noted, "The late Holocene records clearly identify Neoglacial events of the LIA and Medieval Warm Period (MWP)." Some Antarctic regions were atypically cold, but others were atypically warm between 1000 and 1200

[Opinion Owner]

Pacific Ocean
Corals in the tropical Pacific Ocean suggest that relatively cool and dry conditions may have persisted early in the millennium, which is consistent with a La Niña-like configuration of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation patterns.

In 2013, a study from three US universities was published in Science magazine and showed that the water temperature in the Pacific Ocean was 0.9 °C (1.6 °F) warmer during the MWP than during the LIA and 0.65 °C (1.2 °F) warmer than the decades before the study.

[Opinion Owner]

South America
The MWP has been noted in Chile in a 1500-year lake bed sediment core, as well as in the Eastern Cordillera of Ecuador.

A reconstruction, based on ice cores, found that the MWP could be distinguished in tropical South America from about 1050 to 1300 and was followed in the 15th century by the LIA. Peak temperatures did not rise as to the level of the late 20th century, which were unprecedented in the area during the study period of 1600 years

[Opinion Owner]

East Asia
Ge et al. studied temperatures in China for the past 2000 years and found high uncertainty prior to the 16th century but good consistency over the last 500 years highlighted by the two cold periods, 1620s–1710s and 1800s–1860s, and the 20th-century warming. They also found that the warming from the 10th to the 14th centuries in some regions might be comparable in magnitude to the warming of the last few decades of the 20th century, which was unprecedented within the past 500 years. Generally, a warming period was identified in China, coinciding with the MWP, using multi-proxy data for temperature. However, the warming was inconsistent across China. Significant temperature change, from the MWP to LIA, was found for northeast and central-east China but not for northwest China and the Tibetan Plateau. During the MWP, the East Asian Summer Monsoon (EASM) was the strongest it has been in the past millennium and was highly sensitive to the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). The Mu Us Desert witness increased moisture in the MWP. Peat cores from peatland in southeast China suggest changes in the EASM and ENSO are responsible for increased precipitation in the region during the MWP. However, other sites in southern China show aridification and not humidification during the MWP, showing that the MWP's influence was highly spatially heterogeneous. Modelling evidence suggests that EASM strength during the MWP was low in early summer but very high during late summer.

In far eastern Russia, continental regions experienced severe floods during the MWP while nearby islands experienced less precipitation leading to a decrease in peatland. Pollen data from this region indicates an expansion of warm climate vegetation with an increasing number of broadleaf and decreasing number of coniferous forests...

[Opinion Owner]

... Adhikari and Kumon (2001), investigating sediments in Lake Nakatsuna, in central Japan, found a warm period from 900 to 1200 that corresponded to the MWP and three cool phases, two of which could be related to the LIA. Other research in northeastern Japan showed that there was one warm and humid interval, from 750 to 1200, and two cold and dry intervals, from 1 to 750 and from 1200 to now.

[Opinion Owner]

South Asia
The Indian Summer Monsoon (ISM) was also enhanced during the MWP with a temperature driven change to the Atlantic Multi-decadal Oscillation (AMO), bringing more precipitation to India. Vegetation records in Lahaul in Himachal Pradesh confirm a warm and humid MWP from 1,158 to 647 BP. Pollen from Madhya Pradesh dated to the MWP provides further direct evidence for increased monsoonal precipitation. Multi-proxy records from Pookode Lake in Kerala also reflect the warmth of the MWP.

[Opinion Owner]

Middle East
Sea surface temperatures in the Arabian Sea increased during the MWP, owing to a strong monsoon. During the MWP, the Arabian Sea exhibited heightened biological productivity. The Arabian Peninsula, already extremely arid in the present day, was even drier during the MWP. Prolonged drought was a mainstay of the Arabian climate until around 660 BP, when this hyperarid interval was terminated

[Opinion Owner]

Oceania
There is an extreme scarcity of data from Australia for both the MWP and the LIA. However, evidence from wave-built shingle terraces for a permanently-full Lake Eyre during the 9th and the 10th centuries is consistent with a La Niña-like configuration, but the data are insufficient to show how lake levels varied from year to year or what climatic conditions elsewhere in Australia were like.

A 1979 study from the University of Waikato found,

Temperatures derived from an 18O/16O profile through a stalagmite found in a New Zealand cave (40.67°S 172.43°E) suggested the Medieval Warm Period to have occurred between [... about 1050–1400 CE] and to have been 0.75 °C [1.4 °F] warmer than the Current Warm Period.

More evidence in New Zealand is from an 1100-year tree-ring record

[SeekerOfTruth007]

Quoting out-dated papers doesn't make their claims true.

[Opinion Owner]

I'm sorry but I trust the science. You can deny climate change all you want but the climate does change.

[exitseven]

If people want to smoke it is their right.
Letting 20 million indigent, uneducated illegal aliens into the country is crazier than anything humans are doing.

[SeekerOfTruth007]

Second hand smoke kills too, plus everyone ese must pay your medical bills. It's BS.

[exitseven]

that is why I stay away from smokers.

[exitseven]

Thanks for the MHO

[jshm2]

LOL, don't be so dramatic.

The Earth has been through millions of years of extinction and recreation before us. It will continue after us.

[Anonymous]

Yeah and the next generation, there won't be one one the war in the middle east turns nuclear

[NathanDavis]

we are determined to...

[Anonymous]

More like nature eradicating us.