@markmccaughrean if the 2.5⁰C or 3⁰C temperatures are realized then there will be no humans to study the historical record. That said you are quite right, humanity will leave behind a geological and fossil record that will not be kind when and if some sentient species does examine the record.
@ZillaMon Some humans will survive, albeit not many & certainly not in a good state. Humans survived the last ice age, after all.
My thought was that in 1,000 or perhaps even 10,000 years, if the climate resets itself without our CO2 excesses, then they may have the stability needed to build a new civilisation.
And they will doubtless see the remains of ours & wonder at quite how idiotic / careless we must have been to let it all slip away.
@mikewaghorne I get your point, but as I've replied a few times already, I was thinking 1,000-10,000 years from now, when perhaps the climate has reset & humans have started climbing towards civilisation again.
We will have left enough detritus around for people to wonder who we were & quite how we screwed up so badly.
And they'll discover that we were to blame for the long dark ages their ancestors endured.
@mikewaghorne Me neither & perhaps thankfully so, if only because we'll all be collectively looked back upon as idiots at best, genocidal evil-doers at worst.
@markmccaughrean@skynebula if civilisation survives to the 21st and 22nd century, history will probably judge the whole 1850-2030 period very harshly. We did not learn about what is happening 10 years ago.
But seing how bad we are doing, history will possibly not be a thing then. So don't worry too much about historians.. The children growing now will be our harshest judges.
@Julianoe@skynebula Very good points – when I wrote "our generation", I was searching for something that encompassed a wider range of time, but failed.
And I agree that our children will be harsh judges – that's already clear & they will suffer the brunt of the decline we have put in place.
But when I was talking about historians, I was thinking a thousand or even ten thousand years hence, when perhaps after the long dark of collapse & planetary recovery, civilisation may emerge again.
@MostlyTato While it feels almost certain to me that our civilisation will collapse, as many have done before, some humans will likely survive.
A thousand years from now, they may advance back to a state where their historians then look at the detritus of our lost age & try to figure out quite how we were so stupid.
Of course, if the inevitable global conflicts arising from the climate crisis spiral into nuclear war, then all bets may indeed be off.
@markmccaughrean
"Why didn't they even attempt to press the panic button and save themselves?", what remains of humanity, living on a scorched, dead Earth, will likely think of us living today.
Meanwhile, in the present we're all preoccupied with Drake's diss track
@black_flag The world as we know it will end, but it’s entirely plausible that some humans will survive.
With the same brain power, if not the codified knowledge & tools, but quite possibly for long enough to give the whole civilisation thing yet another shot.
We will be their Egyptians, thousands of years in the past, the ruins of our cities half buried & poorly understood. Those are the historians I mean.
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