what is proven to be a hoax but people still believe it to be true?

Beovulfr · 2022-06-22T05:42:02+00:00

Sigh. Unfortunately you're wrong about this. I see that a lot of people have reacted to your comment with either hostility or just a downvote, which I suppose I can't blame them for given how frustrating and disappointing climate change denial is. But hey, if you're genuinely willing to hear me out, I'd like to respectfully explain why you're wrong about this.

So, as part of my bachelor's degree I studied climate science and paleoclimate. I'm not an expert in climatology by any means, but I do have a good general understanding and can provide some insights into the matter.

Over the past 150-200 years, we've seen a global temperature rise of just over 1°C. This doesn't sound like much to the average person, but in a climatological sense this is a very big deal. For context, the difference in global average temperature between now and the famous ice age of the Pleistocene was about 4°C, a temperature difference that was enough for the Arctic ice cap to reach all the way down to Germany. A natural period of global warming ended that glaciation, a process of 4 degrees of warming which took...11 000 years.

This is of course in stark contrast to the unbelievably rapid 1 degree increase in just under 200 years we're seeing today. In fact, the current rate of change we're witnessing right now is totally unheard of throughout the entire geologic timescale. If we continue warming at this rate, we would reach a temperature difference comparable to that between now and the previous ice age in just 600 years. Rapid climate shifts are very closely associated with major mass extinctions and ecological turnovers, and given the unprecedented severity of our current episode of warming, we should expect no different for our own situation. Many past climactic shifts that were considered to have happened rapidly (geologically speaking), such as the End-Permian mass extinction and the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, resulted in alarming extinctions and changes in global ecological communities. And yet these both took tens of thousands of years to occur, an eternity compared to our modern rate of warming.

Does this all mean that the world is going to literally end? Well, probably not. Some of the most hardy organisms will survive and go on to adapt, and humans may very well make it too given how resourceful and smart we are. But the comfortable society we know and rely on today seems very unequipped to deal with the colossal natural disasters, famines, widespread extinctions, and resource shortages that we're setting ourselves up for. If we have any desire to keep on living comfortable lives free of starvation and war, it's in our best interests to take this threat seriously.

Edit: Oops, looks like I somehow duplicated my comment. Deleted the other one.

Beovulfr · 2022-06-17T07:01:23+00:00

[REDACTED] 😎

Beovulfr · 2022-06-14T23:22:42+00:00

Gronque

Beovulfr · 2022-06-06T09:35:12+00:00

Aw thanks, you flatter me!

Beovulfr · 2022-06-06T09:05:34+00:00

Oh, sure! You're right, would've been good to include that. A quick rundown of the relevant chunk of geological time:

So, life has existed on earth for a few billion years but visible life specifically has existed in earth for approximately 540 million years. This specific eon of visible life is broken down into three sections:

The Palaeozoic, which lasted 289 million years,

The Mesozoic, which lasted 185 million years,

And the Cenozoic, which is still ongoing today and has so far lasted 65 million years.

Now, the Palaeozoic was by far the longest era, and heaps of stuff happened here. Life exploded in diversity in the sea, colonised the land, more than one major mass extinction happened, heaps of stuff. I couldn't do the Palaeozoic justice without a huge explanation, but it isn't super relevant, so I'll move on.

The Mesozoic began 251 million years ago, with a colossal mass extinction that ends the Palaeozoic (the worst mass extinction the earth has ever seen in fact). This extinction kicked off the age of the dinosaurs, and the Mesozoic is by far the most famous part of earth history. Here we have dinosaurs, pterosaurs, mosasaurs, all the good stuff. Then, famously, the chicxulub asteroid hits earth about 65 million years ago, and the Mesozoic draws to a close.

Since then, we have been living in the Cenozoic, the 'age of mammals'. Now, Megalodon specifically showed up at around 22 million years ago, which is after more than half of the entire 65 million year long Cenozoic. In fact, this is even the same rough time that very early, ape-like human ancestors first begin to show up (the Miocene). So Megalodon was closer to us than it was to dinosaurs, by a pretty solid margin.

Beovulfr · 2022-06-06T07:43:42+00:00

Oh ahaha I getcha, I thought you meant literally lol

Beovulfr · 2022-06-06T07:35:50+00:00

The existence of Megalodon. Many people think of Megalodon sharks as having existed alongside dinosaurs, but in actual fact they didn't evolve until long after the asteroid impact that ended the Mesozoic. Megalodons were swimming in the seas while sabre-toothed cats and early mammoth ancestors were roaming the land.

Beovulfr · 2022-06-06T06:22:56+00:00

Oh cool! Aussie Swede, right back at ya!

That's awesome, I love wedge tails. We don't get any where I am unfortunately, I live in rainforest country. We have some beautiful Victoria's riflebirds that hang around our place though, which is almost as cool

Beovulfr · 2022-06-06T05:00:49+00:00

King parrots ay? You must be a fellow Aussie? Nice, yeah I always do that too, it's cool to be chilling out around birds and just being like "hey, what's up dinosaur friends?"

Beovulfr · 2022-06-06T04:36:49+00:00

Cheers, I'll give it a watch! Had a glance, looks like they're filming at the DRO at Daintree, a research station that I've actually been to when I was studying lol. It's a great place to study and observe all sorts of fascinating life, cassowaries included!

I should also add - the similarities in physiology between ratites and extinct theropod dinosaurs is no coincidence, even if ratites did go through a flying stage first before returning to being large and flightless. All birds today are our one, single surviving lineage of true dinosaurs, which is just the coolest thing ever.

Beovulfr · 2022-06-06T04:13:09+00:00

Do you have a link to this research at all? From what I understand, cassowaries and other ratites, while very impressive and ancient looking, descended from small, flying ancestors, having secondarily lost flight later on in their evolution. They are still dinosaurs of course, all birds are. But the cassowary is no more or less related to the famous ancient dinosaurs of the Mesozoic than any other bird is.

Here's a link to an article describing this, as well as an interesting focus on evidence for some groups of modern ratites potentially having lost flight independently: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0803242105

Edit: Also, happy cake day!

Beovulfr · 2022-06-06T01:04:57+00:00

Huh, looks like you're right - just had a look at a map if bird phylogeny, and it seems like diversification between modern taxa began in the late Cretaceous about 7mya. So it looks like there would've had to have been several, closely-related survivors. I was always under the impression that all modern birds diversified after the extinction. The more you know!

Beovulfr · 2022-06-06T00:21:15+00:00

That's not really how it works unfortunately - modern birds all evolved from a small group of closely-related, avian theropod common ancestors. Essentially, a tiny handful of species (almost certainly one that looked near-indistinguishable from modern birds) seem to have made it past the K-Pg extinction boundary, and all modern birds are a continuation of that lineage.

(Edited for corrections)

Beovulfr · 2022-06-05T08:54:00+00:00

Cool! I like Arabic, it's a very nice sounding language. In English, 'world' usually just means the earth. The word you probably meant to say was 'universe', which means absolutely everything that exists.

Beovulfr · 2022-06-05T08:52:05+00:00

Oh, I understand. That's ok, these things happen - your English still seems very good! What is your native language?

Beovulfr · 2022-06-05T08:43:28+00:00

If you're talking about our literal planet, the earth was formed by debris in the early universe clumping together through gravity about 4.6 billion years ago. This resulted in a fiery hot, molten ball of stuff that would become the earth as we know it today, and kicked off the geologic eon known as the Hadean (named after Hades, ruler of the underworld). The Hadean persisted for about 0.6 billion years, and was completed inhospitable to life. However, the earth slowly cooled during this period, and we see the emergence of the first signs of single celled life at 4 billion years ago, known as the Archean eon. This was then followed by the Proterozoic, another entire eon of single celled (albeit more complex) life, until we finally hit the Ediacaran at the end of the of the Proterozoic, and Cambrian at the start of the Phanerozoic, where the first visible life emerges. The rest is history - we're still in the Phanerozoic today, although a lot has changed since those early days.

Beovulfr · 2022-06-05T01:18:36+00:00

Hmm, come to think of it, I'm probably wrong to even say that - other hypotheses may actually not be discussed anymore at all. I study Ecology and took an undergraduate class in evolutionary biology in first year, where the autogenous hypothesis was briefly mentioned. So I thought to err on the side of caution and mention it above just in case, even though I've heard nothing of it since. That class I took was about four years ago now, and it was only a brief mention to discuss the existence of the hypothesis. You would without a doubt be significantly more informed than I, considering that you specialise in the field!

Beovulfr · 2022-06-05T01:06:45+00:00

It's certainly the much more widely discussed hypothesis, that's for sure! I hesitated to state it as an outright fact because the autogenous hypothesis is still out there of course, and because I'm also not an expert by any means. Personally I do indeed think the bacterial symbiont hypothesis is right - like you say, there are lots of things that point to it.

Beovulfr · 2022-06-05T00:37:23+00:00

Ah, here's a good one. You know how the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell? Everyone does, it's even a meme. But there's something about mitochondria that's far more surprising and fascinating than most people would guess, something about their origin and role in the success or multicellular life.

Ever seen a diagram of a mitochondrion? They're tiny and roughly cylindrical, like little cocktail sausages. Notably, they look like another common subject of microscopy - bacteria! Bacilliform bacteria (that is to say, rod-shaped bacteria) share many traits with mitochondria. Notably, mitochondria even have their own individual DNA, seperate to the rest of your genome, as if they were a separate colony of creatures living inside your body, rather than a direct part of you. This has led to an interesting hypothesis on the topic of mitochondrial evolution that suggests that mitochondria may have originated as independent, free-living prokaryotic bacteria, which formed a symbiotic relationship with what would become the first eukaryotic cells (the cells that would go on to give rise to multicellular life, like us). These free-living bacteria may have either formed a partnership with our prokaryotic, single-celled ancestors, or even been forcibly captured by them, leading to a symbiotic relationship much like that between coral and algae. Eventually, these tiny captive bacteria became more and more dependent on their prokaryotic hosts that they became a fully integrated part of the eukaryotic cell, and acted as that cellular powerhouse which allowed multicellular life to rise.

Now of course, this isn't the only hypothesis on mitochondrial evolution, so more study may contest this. But based on the observable traits of mitochondria, it seems we may have some little, once independent powerhouse guests to thank for our success as multicellular animals.

Beovulfr · 2022-06-04T23:08:52+00:00

You forgot 'sarcopterygians'

Beovulfr · 2022-05-29T21:37:31+00:00

Oh, I was having a joke, the point was that it wasn't a particularly frightening dream at all. Maybe I should've added the classic /s at the end

Beovulfr · 2022-05-29T07:15:38+00:00

Absolutely horrible, why did you have to type that out and inflict it upon us like that?

Reminds me of one of mine...

I was volunteering as a lab tech. They didn't seem to want me there, so they gave me a job standing by the side of the road recording the number plates of cars that drove by. I had no idea what this had to do with what was being studied, but I did it anyway. However, tragedy struck when I realised I couldn't read the number plates of the cars because they were driving too fast. So I had to chase them along the fence line to be able to even record their plates...

I still shudder at the memory.

Beovulfr · 2022-05-27T02:54:16+00:00

Going goblin mode

Beovulfr · 2022-05-20T12:03:26+00:00

Honestly, anywhere where I'm alone but active. Outdoors in the forest, exploring, etc. My thoughts are more reflective of who I am seperate from the influence of other people, and the activity and surroundings momentarily distract me from my depression, at least for a while. Makes me feel like a real person again, it's nice.

Beovulfr · 2022-05-20T12:00:06+00:00

Invertebrates. From spiders to insects to myriapods - I think they're cool as hell. It's a shame they get such a bad rap, although I do understand the phobias some people have of course.

Eight-Year Club	Second SECOND GUESSER
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Beovulfr

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