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Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

smithsonianmag.com

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Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

#151

Post by friend_and_foe »

hinkley wrote: post #81

I think over time we will eventually set the beginning of “agriculture” to be in the age of fungi. The more we learn about trees the more they resemble an evolutionary step up from lichen. Lichen is a symbiosis between fungi and single celled chlorophyll owners. Forests are multicellular lichen. Like the cyanobacteria, trees can often function without their host, but they do better things with them.

Do you have any more information on what led you to this idea? I'm not an expert by any means, but when I look at trees I see 100% plant, with some fungus in the soil and roots and what not, somewhat akin to animals' gut bacteria.

Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

#152

Post by HPsquared »

nradov wrote: post #100
miroljub wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you believe that then I think you haven't spent much time out in nature. Some wild species populations boom and crash in chaotic ways even in areas that haven't been impacted much by humans. Nature is far from stable on any time scale longer than a year.

Doesn't it all average out over time though? I suppose things like erosion do cause permanent changes but other than that?

Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

#155

Post by ascar »

Ma8ee wrote: post #111
derefr wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rather than motivating environmental conservation out of some species-level nostalgia for "the biodiversity of our youth", there's another, forward-looking motivation for it: the species that evolved at the same time we did — our "evolutionary cohort" — are the species of our own Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness. While they may not share our ecological niche, they all share a dependency on the same air mix we…

The time scale for new species adapted to a completely new climate is many millions of years, not a few thousands. What we destroy today won’t be replaced while humans as a species as we know it today even exists. It will always be many orders of magnitude easier to terraform Earth, even after we screwed it up, than trying to terraform Mars.

> The time scale for new species adapted to a completely new climate is many millions of years, not a few thousands.

On what are you basing this statement? I would argue that entirely depends on the complexity of the species and the time per generation. Bacteria certainly can adapt to extremely different conditions within years, if not even quicker. And these "simple life forms" are arguably much more important for the ecosystem than more complex ones like mammals.

Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

#156

Post by _a_a_a_ »

dang wrote: post #147
_a_a_a_ wrote: post #105

The title is misleading, the article is more honest in admitting that it is thought that these things named prototaxites are a fungus, but we are not sure.

Ok, we've replaced giant mushrooms with prototaxites in the title above. Thanks! Related: I dreaded looking into this thread because titles like that (I mean the original one) almost always provoke shallow-sensational-reflexive responses. There are a few such subthreads here but for the most part the hivemind didn't derange itself this time. Well done hivemind!

That was just a mild heads-up to others, not anticipated a title change, thanks dude.

Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

#157

Post by sclarisse »

codersfocus wrote: post #148
gizmo686 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agressively? We increased CO2 concentration by about 200 parts-per-million (a factor of about 2x), and increased the average temperature by about 1-2°C. Rain patterns are slightly different. Ocean PH levels dropped by about 0.04 . Sure, given how delicate the biosphere is, these small changes have a significant effect. However, if we look at Earth on the same scale as any other object in the solar system, the environ…

Yes aggressively. Raising the average (I don't understand why you'd bring up noise when discussing average) temperature of the entire Earth by 1-2 degrees C in a period of 100 years, from 1 single organism is remarkable. Any why specify CO2 as if that's the only thing we're polluting with? What about methane? Remember when we disrupted the ozone layer? What about pollution with plastics, and industrial chemicals in l…

If we want to make the temperature on Mars like the one on Earth, it’s not going to take 2C and a feedback loop. It’s going to take like 75C.

Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

#158

Post by ask_b123 »

replygirl wrote: post #117
ke88y wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It will always be many orders of magnitude easier to terraform Earth, even after we screwed it up, than trying to terraform Mars. It's many orders of magnitude easier to afford a $100,000,000 home if you make $10,000 per year than if you only make $1 per year. But you're never going to afford that home either way.

We reversed the Chicago River 120 years ago, protected the Netherlands from flooding for centuries, blasted out the bed of the East River to make New York one of the most successful ports in history, laid at least one canal through every major ithsmus, and built dozens of reservoirs and irrigation systems into every hydrological ecosystem that touches a major population center. That's just water projects.

What is an isthmus? Do the Pyrenees count as one? Tehuantepec?

Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

#159

Post by ask_b123 »

tsunamifury wrote: post #80
jvm___ wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 so…

It’s taken me half a lifetime to even learn enough to start to appreciate her wisdom.

I might not have lived enough to appreciate it, how do I do so?

Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)

#160

Post by LordKano »

drewm1980 wrote: post #89
drewm1980 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Electric and hydrogen fueled airplanes are progressing. There are also futuristic ideas about powering the planes with ground or space based lasers powered by solar. Zeppelins still scale really well, and ships can use sails again. I believe a lot of this stuff would have already been resolved if we had stopped propping up the fossil fuel industry by funding wars to maintain supply and allowing the industry to extern…

We need a president to declare transitioning of fossil fuels to be a national emergency and also a matter of national defense, and set the military industrial complex to work actually building a sustainable supply chain for energy and materials.

Using such language is a guarantee that such an effort will not succeed.

Of course it's important and it's inevitable but calling it an "emergency" would by hyperbole and cause it to be taken less seriously.

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