A story in the Guardian reports on two new studies of the environment. The short version: it’s worse than imagined for humans.
The studies from the Australian National University and the Stockholm Resilience Centre have some stark conclusions. They looked at what makes life on earth possible and found that we’re in the red zone for 4 out of 9 of the core componets of life.
“Of nine worldwide processes that underpin life on Earth, four have exceeded “safe” levels – human-driven climate change, loss of biosphere integrity, land system change and the high level of phosphorus and nitrogen flowing into the oceans due to fertiliser use.”
Ahh, say the critics, but we’ve done this before. There have been periods of…
“They found that the changes of the last 60 years are unprecedented in the previous 10,000 years, a period in which the world has had a relatively stable climate and human civilisation has advanced significantly.”
Oh. Okay. Well, at least we are working hard to solve the problems, right?
“We are clearing land, we are degrading land, we introduce feral animals and take the top predators out, we change the marine ecosystem by overfishing – it’s a death by a thousand cuts…”
Death by a thousand cuts. That doesn’t sound good. At least we are smart, technological folks who can innovate and adapt, right?
“Some people say we can adapt due to technology, but that’s a belief system, it’s not based on fact. There is no convincing evidence that a large mammal, with a core body temperature of 37C, will be able to evolve that quickly. Insects can, but humans can’t and that’s a problem.”
Arrrgh! Okay, well, at least it is way in the future, so my kids won’t have to worry too much about this, right?
“It’s clear the economic system is driving us towards an unsustainable future and people of my daughter’s generation will find it increasingly hard to survive,” he said. “History has shown that civilisations have risen, stuck to their core values and then collapsed because they didn’t change. That’s where we are today.”
Ahh, the economic system. Keepitallism. Driving us toward an unsustainable future by ignoring life support systems.
The studies were published in Science and Anthropocene Review, and results will be presented to the World Economic Forum soon, where they will be acknowledged and ignored.
…
This background noise of the end of humans on earth has been growing for the last 15 years and the drastic changes we all need to commit to are being put off to a more convenient time in the future. We’re still driving. We’re still burning things to stay warm. We’re still globe-trotting in airplanes and launching rockets through the atmosphere. Business is booming and widgets remain popular.
It leads me again to think what information I should be carving into stone to leave as messages for the re-evolved humans 10,000 years from now. But what to write? The formula for fire, or the wheel? Drawings showing that greed and war caused our downfall? Lyrics to Beatles songs? A history of ourselves? A lie to the future? Nothing at all?
Stone carving has never been taught to me. I’ve learned printing, etching, drawing, and carpentry, but never carving into stone. It just might be a good hobby for many of us to begin.
The children of Genesis
One can engrave it in platinum if they want. If the children of Genesis are still around in 10,000 years, the won’t be much left to apologize to or for.
https://www.ibrattleboro.com/sections/oped/equipoise-nevermore-all-kings-horses-and-all-kings-men
“”It is no accident that there is an eerie parallel found in Genesis 1:26 where it is written, as the supercilious word of a god penned by men, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
With the damage done and the end of days at hand, can “All the kings horses and all the kings men put all the pieces back together again?” Who among you will be the first person to apologize to all living things “over all the earth” for the shame of our immeasurable unnatural decay of humanity‘s one and only shining moment?”” ~Vidda Crochetta
Carving
So you suggest that we should carve the Bible into stone? : )
It occurs to me that before we begin carving messages to the future, we should inventory what is already carved in stone. Seems like mostly names of dead people, and quotes from a few notable citizens, are the bulk of reading material available for the next stone age.
Priorities, and precedents
No need to re-invent the wheel. Here’s a pre-carved record that’s now traversing the cosmos, and about to leave the solar system. It’s aboard the Voyager missions, and documents all sorts of things; music, film, photo, geographies, mundane events…
It’s as likely that the intended recipients- an advanced species of co-habitants of our universe- will be the ones to decode what happened, as that there will be surviving homo sapiens to try to hit a reset button.
What’s flabbergasting on a small scale is that the time left to avoid catastrophe is the same as the interval in which the skatepark has been attempted in Brattleboro. Is it possible that the human experience will end before a park is built here?
Is it possible...
Yes.
…
Much has happened since that disc, though and I wasn’t able to contribute to it. I’m going to practice carving in stone this year anyway.
It's a bet
As down as I’m am on many of the godawful human’s, some human adaptibility would be nothing less than amazing.
If I bet the horses, I’d put my money on the bet that enough humans would squeeze through the hole and come out on the other side. The question is what comes out the ‘other side?’ I’m uncertain who today would know them (or like them).
Radio Holograms with sensory wrap around images
No- no bible anything for me.. 🙂
But humans will invent radio holograms as a means to continue out communitcation with the future. Currently we have already broadcasted airways transporting Johnny Carson to other worlds.
As the holograms get more programmed, those dead people will communicate with Radio Holograms with sensory wraparound images almost as if humans were visiting (or something like that…).
Fundamentally, we’re a terrestrial predator, until now...
Ocean Life Faces Mass Extinction, Broad Study Says (NYTimes)
Read full text: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/16/science/earth/study-raises-alarm-for-health-of-ocean-life.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-middle-span-region®ion=c-column-middle-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-middle-span-region&_r=0
“Until now, the seas largely have been spared the carnage visited on terrestrial species, the new analysis also found. The fossil record indicates that a number of large animal species became extinct as humans arrived on continents and islands.
“Fundamentally, we’re a terrestrial predator,” he said. “It’s hard for an ape to drive something in the ocean extinct.” “If by the end of the century we’re not off the business-as-usual curve we are now, I honestly feel there’s not much hope for normal ecosystems in the ocean,” he said.”
"Ahh, the economic system. Keepitallism..."
In a nutshell…
“Ahh, the economic system. Keepitallism. Driving us toward an unsustainable future by ignoring life support systems.” ~cgrotke
By ANDREW C. REVKIN JANUARY 15, 2015
“As many readers are aware, I’ve been writing since 1992 about the notion that we’ve left the Holocene behind — that’s the geological epoch since the end of the last ice age — and entered “a post-Holocene…geological age of our own making,” now best known as the Anthropocene.
We have to accept ourselves, flaws and all, in order to move beyond what has been something of an unconscious, species-scale pubescent growth spurt, enabled by fossil fuels in place of testosterone.
In “The World Without Us,” Alan Weisman created a haunting thought experiment – imagining a planet awakening after the vanishing of its human tormentor.
The challenge is that there is a real experiment well under way, and we’re all in the test tube.
In fact, in the broadest sense we have to embrace the characteristics, good and bad, that make humans such a rare thing — a species that has become a planet-scale force. Cyanobacteria also were a planet-scale force, oxygenating the atmosphere some two billion years ago. The difference is that cyanobacteria weren’taware of their potency, while we are at least starting to absorb that reality.”
READ FULL TEXT OF THIS AMAZING ARTICLE:
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/01/15/researchers-propose-earths-anthropocene-age-of-humans-began-with-fallout-and-plastics/?hpw&rref=science&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well&_r=0