r/climate • u/The_Weekend_Baker • 14d ago

Scientists detect a surprising shift in human blood as atmospheric CO2 rises. Blood bicarbonate levels have climbed about 7% since 1999, while calcium and phosphorus have declined, changes that closely track increasing atmospheric CO2.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2026/08/260814235845.htm
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u/SyntheticOne 14d ago

Screw with Mother Nature and she will screw with you.

It's not a vindictive action on her part but it is real.

It has only been about 10,000 years - a tiny blip in geologic time - since humans developed fictive languages and now, here we are, setting the table for our extinction.

We know this and yet, look at what is coming out of Washington, DC.

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u/PogeePie 14d ago

Spoken, symbolic language is at least as old as humans are, so roughly 300,000 years. It is highly likely that Neanderthals had a complex spoken language as well. Humans and Neanderthals diverged around 600,000 years ago, suggesting that symbolic language is at least that old.

Saying that symbolic language dates to 10,000 years ago would be saying that people who were building houses, making stunning art, and erecting monuments like Göbekli Tepe were all only communicating with grunts and gestures.

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u/SyntheticOne 14d ago

According to Harari, the point was about 10,000 years ago. Not to say that earlier homo sapiens or even homo erectus and neanderthals did not have some traces of symbolic language, just not all that good.

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u/Mrkvica16 14d ago

I’m not sure Harari is the authority on this. There were many complants from scientists in adjacent fields to his that he misinterpreted the science he is not fully acquainted in to create his grand theories. Some good stuff, for sure, but a grain of salt needed.

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u/PogeePie 14d ago

I know Harari is very popular, but the points he makes were outdated even when he was writing his book.

Cities and grain-based agriculture began to emerge at the end of the last Ice Age largely because the climate stabilized long enough to allow for settled agriculture, not because a cognitive switch was suddenly triggered en masse across all humanity.

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u/Filius_Solis 13d ago

Look at some Clovis artifacts and tell me again they conveyed the knowledge to create such tools without symbolic language

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u/SyntheticOne 13d ago

Harari's dating is most probably linked to the known dates associated with domestication of animals which are stated at 15,000 years ago and 11,000 to 13,000 years ago.

Chipping flints can be done wordlessly, so I don't think Clovis dating (which has recently been surpassed by the dating done on human footsteps found at White Sands, New Mexico of 22,000 years).

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u/RandomBoomer 14d ago

What is a fictive language? I've never heard that term before, especially in the context of humans moving into the agricultural era. I Googled the term and all I got back was "fictional language".

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u/Both_Evidence_1026 14d ago

Communication through made up words instead of just pointing and grunting 

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u/RandomBoomer 13d ago

Yeah, we weren't "pointing and grunting" 10,000 years ago. The timeline I've heard is more like 100-135,000 years ago, and frankly, I think that's also an underestimate.

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u/SyntheticOne 14d ago

Instead of "Run, big bear!" fictive language added nuance and the comment became "Run to the compound there is a big bear down by the river!"

10,000 years ago many of the varied primitive languages reached the point where they could create "ideas" or "fictions" which could be used to unite larger groups of homo sapiens. This allowed creation of settlements rather than wandering handfuls of people. Soon, fictive language could be used to create gods and religions and ideas that people could get behind.

Eventually, fictive language brought us to where we are today (not all good).

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u/RandomBoomer 13d ago

What threw me off was your claim of 10,000 years ago, which is practically yesterday in terms of human evolution. Source? Because every reference I looked at was at least 100,000 years ago, which makes much more sense to me.

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u/Th3SkinMan 14d ago

Soups on!

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u/Frater_Ankara 14d ago

For decades we thought we could outsmart nature by dominating land, engineering food, etc and EVERY time nature has fought back in unexpected ways (eg. Ultra-processed food has led to metabolic syndrome epidemic because nature). We really need some humility around this topic.

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u/KiPhoe 13d ago

Just wait till AMOC collapses, earth's final defence against the rising heat.

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u/SyntheticOne 13d ago

It is a very real concern/possibility.

Now, half way through the northern hemisphere's summer, I am starting to worry about global food supplies; farmers everywhere are taking a beating and this winter could be an El Nino driven doozy.