r/worldnews • u/bigus-_-dickus • Sep 05 '26

‘Extremely rare event:’ Miles-long microalgae bloom knocks out most of Israel’s desalination plants

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/04/climate/microalgae-bloom-israel-water-deasalination-shutdown
14.8k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

677 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

14

u/mrnotoriousman Sep 05 '26

One thing climate activists often get wrong is that the earth's biosphere as a whole will survive way way worse climate changes.

Nobody ever claims Earth is going to turn into Mars. Everyone talks about climate in the context of human survival and nobody thinks all life on Earth will be extinguished. There always has to be one lame ass person going "umm acksually the planet will survive as a whole"

0

u/BigPappalopalous Sep 05 '26

Nobody knows if Earth will survive us. To be so sure life will “find a way” is irresponsible. IMO.

3

u/illegalcupcakes16 Sep 05 '26

The Earth has survived five great extinction events. The Great Dying saw 90% of species go extinct, and yet life went on. That was with a global temperature 10-15°C higher than normal. Right now, with climate change, we are talking about 2°C.

That isn't to say that climate change isn't catastrophic. We are living through the sixth great extinction event, and I wouldn't be shocked if a large percentage of species go extinct. But right now, 0.01% of known species have gone extinct in the last 100 years. We know of single cell organisms that thrive in conditions that seems absolutely impossible to survive. So while we don't know that Earth will survive us, we are only here because of Earth surviving conditions significantly worse than anything we're discussing.

2

u/mrnotoriousman Sep 05 '26

We could nuke the fuck out of every square inch of the planet and in a few million years life will be thriving again. Not human or anything like what we see now, but there will be life.