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Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
51–60 of 295 posts
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Changes are static or not depending on the scale of time you consider. In a time span of billions (even millions) of years, our planet indeed went through different eras. For a duration of one human life, the state of nature is expected to remain quite static. The problem with climate change is that we started to witness the planet entering in a new era in such a small time frame - roughly 200 years.
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What a weird comment. The ozone hole WAS a huge problem… and then the world banned CFCs and we fixed it. But it took years of lawsuits, journalism, and scientists speaking up.
Similarly, global warming is a huge problem today and threatens our future. We will fix it just like we did the ozone hole, but again it will take decades of lawsuits, science, public outcry.
The problem this time is twofold: the rise of conspiracy theorists in the Republican Party, who refuse to even acknowledge the problem, and the stranglehold that globalist neoliberal corporations have on the economy.
The second being what you meant in your last paragraph. It’s hard to actually address waste, overconsumption, and pollution when our economy and government is controlled by a handful of corps, who are getting better and better at greenwashing.
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really like this comment & it has a lot going for it. At the same time I think it's also worth pointing out that earth has likely never had as diverse an ecosystem as it has this millennium. The tree of life has become incredibly wide & complex. The naturalist tendency doesn't have to be as static as portrayed here. Nature itself is such a dynamic & changing system death & population booms chasing each other around…
Adam Curtis’ “All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace” theorized that that emerging chaotic state mixed with our recent technological emergence has lead us to believe we can “contain the chaos” of this highly sophisticated system. He quite amazingly illustrates over 3 hours that we falsely believe that earth is an unchanging systematic snow globe rather than a chaotic system. And the more we try to control it, t…
Maybe I am misinterpreting the tone, but this is an incongruous belief. Nothing about a chaotic system precludes a *trend* in that system. I think it is quite objectively clear that while extremely chaotic, the trend of recent human impact on the earth is an equally extreme destruction of natural habitats.
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
Adam Curtis’ “All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace” theorized that that emerging chaotic state mixed with our recent technological emergence has lead us to believe we can “contain the chaos” of this highly sophisticated system. He quite amazingly illustrates over 3 hours that we falsely believe that earth is an unchanging systematic snow globe rather than a chaotic system. And the more we try to control it, t…
Maybe I am misinterpreting the tone, but this is an incongruous belief. Nothing about a chaotic system precludes a *trend* in that system. I think it is quite objectively clear that while extremely chaotic, the trend of recent human impact on the earth is an equally extreme destruction of natural habitats.
Yeah chaotic systems are merely characterized by their extreme sensitivity to initial conditions for a particular long term outcome. All systems trend when modeled mathematically. It’s just difficult to know where a chaotic system will be at any point in time because of how hard it is to establish initial conditions.
One way you can play with a real chaotic system is to build one of the circuits in jc sprott’s papers and vary the control variable. You’ll see at some values of your control an “orderly” progression of the response variables, and at others a difficult to predict progression.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?view_op=view_citation&h...
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Adam Curtis’ “All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace” theorized that that emerging chaotic state mixed with our recent technological emergence has lead us to believe we can “contain the chaos” of this highly sophisticated system. He quite amazingly illustrates over 3 hours that we falsely believe that earth is an unchanging systematic snow globe rather than a chaotic system. And the more we try to control it, t…
Maybe I am misinterpreting the tone, but this is an incongruous belief. Nothing about a chaotic system precludes a *trend* in that system. I think it is quite objectively clear that while extremely chaotic, the trend of recent human impact on the earth is an equally extreme destruction of natural habitats.
Trends are chaotic too and hit inflection points that are hard to predict. He goes deep on the pred/prey model from Isle Royal where trends go for a bit then inflect. Tons of wolves then tons of elk then low populations of both then high of both. There are trends but no hyper static state or relationship even.
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
It feels this part is what they are asking citation for: "Aspens are weird enough that they may be thought of more like a fungus with tree-like fruiting bodies rather than trees per se". At least the second sentence of their comment seems to suggest that. I read the page you kindly linked but I'm not seeing anything about Aspens being considered a fungus with tree-like fruiting bodies..
Not literally, but in style. They are clearly trees. But they exist in a large underground network of roots, and spawn trunks upwards over that large area, not unlike how many funguses do. Convergent evolution of an approach to life.
Thanks.
I'm definitely a layman here, but I lived in Utah about 10 years ago and did some reading on Aspens, which is when I came across that comparison. I was hoping to find a direct citation to post here but haven't managed to do so yet.
A fire (or clear cut) can take down the entire overstory of trees, but that living root system will survive & send up more "suckers" that become new trees. It's this "the real life is underground" vibe that makes them particularly fungi-like to me. I wonder if any other trees are like Aspens in this regard...
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#57So, Vvardenfell from Morrowind?
Yes I thought of Sadrith Mora. Top tier surreal video game landscape
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Adam Curtis’ “All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace” theorized that that emerging chaotic state mixed with our recent technological emergence has lead us to believe we can “contain the chaos” of this highly sophisticated system. He quite amazingly illustrates over 3 hours that we falsely believe that earth is an unchanging systematic snow globe rather than a chaotic system. And the more we try to control it, t…
Maybe I am misinterpreting the tone, but this is an incongruous belief. Nothing about a chaotic system precludes a *trend* in that system. I think it is quite objectively clear that while extremely chaotic, the trend of recent human impact on the earth is an equally extreme destruction of natural habitats.
Our planet is both chaotic and stable, depending on the timescale we are looking at.
Chaotic on the long timescale, but pretty stable given the much shorter timescale of known human history.
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#59[flagged]
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
I really like this comment & it has a lot going for it. At the same time I think it's also worth pointing out that earth has likely never had as diverse an ecosystem as it has this millennium. The tree of life has become incredibly wide & complex. The naturalist tendency doesn't have to be as static as portrayed here. Nature itself is such a dynamic & changing system death & population booms chasing each other around…
Adam Curtis’ “All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace” theorized that that emerging chaotic state mixed with our recent technological emergence has lead us to believe we can “contain the chaos” of this highly sophisticated system. He quite amazingly illustrates over 3 hours that we falsely believe that earth is an unchanging systematic snow globe rather than a chaotic system. And the more we try to control it, t…
"There is no natural state as defined by hyper static equilibrium. Only brief moments where we purport to control it — building up a chaotic momentum beneath it."
The moment when, after many years of hard work and a long voyage
you stand in the centre of your room,
house, half-acre, square mile, island, country,
knowing at last how you got there,
and say, I own this,
is the same moment when the trees unloose
their soft arms from around you,
the birds take back their language,
the cliffs fissure and collapse,
the air moves back from you like a wave
and you can't breathe.
No, they whisper. You own nothing.
You were a visitor, time after time
climbing the hill, planting the flag, proclaiming.
We never belonged to you.
You never found us.
It was always the other way round.
Margaret Atwood