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Timeline of the Human Condition
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Re: Timeline of the Human Condition
#72These timelines are always amusing since there's a lot more entries in recent years than older periods. As if we knew what is going to be significant 1000 years from now. Hubris.
Re: Timeline of the Human Condition
#73Thank you, ancestors, for accomplishing all that you did. My life is so much easier due to your striving and sacrifices. Rest easy dear ones.
Re: Timeline of the Human Condition
#74I wrote a shorter version and enlisted scientific illustrators to draw some pictures: https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf Here are the sources used to craft the book: https://impacts.to/bibliography.pdf
> Choices Burning fossil fuels has put life on Earth in peril; our children face an immense carbon dioxide cleanup, devastating climate changes, or both. We can curtail the most catastrophic outcomes, but time to do so grows alarmingly brief. If we choose air conditioner and refrigerator coolants based on hydrocarbon refrigerants; if
we urge politicians to invest in on-shore wind turbines; if we reduce food waste; if we eat less meat; and if we support restoration of tropical forests... If we take these actions, there is hope.
You nicely avoided Nuclear Power which is the real game changer if you want to produce energy at scale with very little CO2.
Re: Timeline of the Human Condition
#75The note at the end puts this timeline into calendar years, which is mind-blowing: > Rescaled to a calendar year, starting with the big bang at 00:00:00 on 1 January ( ), the Sun forms on 1 September ( ), the Earth on 2 September ( ), earliest signs of life appear on 13 September ( ), earliest true mammals on 26 December ( ), and humans just 2 hours before year’s end ( ). > For a year that starts with the earliest tr…
Started reading Smil‘s „Energy and Civilization“ recently and the sense of acceleration as you enter the last two centuries is almost palpable, absolutely mind-boggling once you start noticing it. As an aside, IIRC there‘s a „timeline of the universe“ on the outside of a spiral ramp at NYC‘s museum of natural history that does a similarly good job at driving this home.
A very strong second on this recommendation.
Recognising the absolutely definitive role of energy on progress and history is a critically important advance in understanding mechanisms of history.
Re: Timeline of the Human Condition
#76These timelines are always amusing since there's a lot more entries in recent years than older periods. As if we knew what is going to be significant 1000 years from now. Hubris.
There is a recency bias.
But there's also an absolutely undeniable acceleration in physical and other quantifiable bases (knowledge, understanding, population, global impacts, energy utilisation, raw materials consumption, pollution) through time.
For Earth, the very rapid emergence of life (within the first few hundred million years), and then the lack of extensive complexity emerging for another 3 billion years, until the Cambrian explosion, is especially notable.
Looking from the present backwards, what strikes me isn't that "the singularity" hasn't happened, but that we've seen multiple singularities, building on one another (with occasional back-tracking).
Re: Timeline of the Human Condition
#77[dead]
Re: Timeline of the Human Condition
#78These tables and charts are filled with events, but remember that for almost all of history, nothing happened. Billions of years and effectively nada. Even if you lived during the Cambrian Explosion, I doubt you would notice anything happening. .... If you want an up-to-date, authoritative, useful guide to geological history, you want the International Chronostratigraphic Chart. I'm impressed that this is kept update…
"but remember that for almost all of history, nothing happened" This seems like a anthropocentric view of the world. Planets moved immense distances, there were generation after generation of bacteria, mountains rose up and crumbled, seas were made and disappeared again. A lot happened before we showed up. A lot will happen after we're gone, also.
We are talking about two different things. I don't mean that there weren't any football games and thus nothing interesting happened.
If you look at a timeline, you might see:
- 3.5 bya: First prokaryote
- 2.5 bya: FIrst eukaryote
- 0.6 bya: Cambrian explosion
- 0.44 bya: First terrestrial life
Re: Timeline of the Human Condition
#79The note at the end puts this timeline into calendar years, which is mind-blowing: > Rescaled to a calendar year, starting with the big bang at 00:00:00 on 1 January ( ), the Sun forms on 1 September ( ), the Earth on 2 September ( ), earliest signs of life appear on 13 September ( ), earliest true mammals on 26 December ( ), and humans just 2 hours before year’s end ( ). > For a year that starts with the earliest tr…
Started reading Smil‘s „Energy and Civilization“ recently and the sense of acceleration as you enter the last two centuries is almost palpable, absolutely mind-boggling once you start noticing it. As an aside, IIRC there‘s a „timeline of the universe“ on the outside of a spiral ramp at NYC‘s museum of natural history that does a similarly good job at driving this home.
Whoever made that NYC museum ramp really loved quasars. She probably wrote her doctorate thesis about quasars.
Re: Timeline of the Human Condition
#80I wrote a shorter version and enlisted scientific illustrators to draw some pictures: https://impacts.to/downloads/lowres/impacts.pdf Here are the sources used to craft the book: https://impacts.to/bibliography.pdf
That's super nice! Quick question - what does the "13,813 ± 58 Ma" mean below every title? Is that some kind of time measurement from the Big Bang?