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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)

#191

Post by 1attice »

1attice wrote: post #173

The HN headline edit obscures the point of the article, which amounts to an argument that prototaxites were basically fungus. It's like taking an article that says "dinosaurs are related to birds" and changing it to read "the ancestors of birds are related to birds." It reduces a new, interesting claim to a tautology which is not, in any way, what the article concerns itself with.

Also, while I'm going off, this is a great example of how the clickbait-reduction policy at HN ends up selecting for titles which obfuscate or mislead.

Here, the descriptive, sensible word 'mushroom' is replaced with 'prototaxite', a word that is meaningless to (let's be honest) most casual visitors to this site.

Accessibility and meaningfulness are casualties in the war on interestingness.

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

#192

Post by RangerScience »

derefr wrote: post #82
tsunamifury wrote: post #2

I think it’s wild and deeply inspiring to imagine how the surface of the earth had radically different forms over billions of years. Huge landscapes of unrotted dead plants. Then massive landscapes of fungus and decomposing bacteria breaking that down into dirt. And on and on. I think it is wise to understand that earth has been through many eras and is not as homeostatic as our narrowly imagined “natural” state we s…

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…

> evolutionary cohort

This is a very cool idea; I haven't heard of it before, and I'm not finding much on this concept on the 'web.

Anything you can point me to? :)

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

#193

Post by MichaelZuo »

tsunamifury wrote: post #181
ask_b123 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If you're being serious, it's more that within time you begin to realize both your fragility and lack of power over yourself and nature. And on top of that you realize the narrow perspectives you held as a child that came for your culture, like owning things or believing you have control over them, are far less real than we think. Here she points out, look, you can say you own something, but that's a cultural concept…

Your account profile appears to claim " This account is no longer active in protest of Hacker News censorship."

Did you forget to update it?

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

#194

Post by throwway120385 »

gizmo686 wrote: post #125
yummypaint wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have been agressively terraforming the earth into a form less accomodating of current complex life for some time now, and we show no signs of slowing. That's the whole problem

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…

That 1-2 degree C change is enough to cause mature trees all over my US state to start dying of heat stress every year. So yes, it seems warranted. I've never seen anything like it in my 37 years on this earth.

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

#195

Post by jvm___ »

ask_b123 wrote: post #159
tsunamifury wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

"You" in a geological and time sense are almost nothing.

Fill the room your in with dead-body clones of yourself, it will probably take well over a hundred.

Collect all the humans on the surface of the Earth, they'd all fit inside Rohde Island (thanks XKCD). Humanity is a tiny fraction of the mass and surface area of the world.

You've been alive for less than 100 years and only seen, heard, touched or felt the smallest fraction of the surface of the Earth. Met a tiny fraction of the people.

Time wise you're limited to 80? years of cognizant thought. Maybe 90? Humans have been around for thousands of years, and earth has been around for billions.

Yet, we as humans claim parts of nature as our own. My land, my country, my trees, my pet rock. All those things aren't yours and never were.

The poem just imagines what would happen if nature suddenly decided to reclaim what was always hers.

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

#196

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

tsunamifury wrote: post #2

I think it’s wild and deeply inspiring to imagine how the surface of the earth had radically different forms over billions of years. Huge landscapes of unrotted dead plants. Then massive landscapes of fungus and decomposing bacteria breaking that down into dirt. And on and on. I think it is wise to understand that earth has been through many eras and is not as homeostatic as our narrowly imagined “natural” state we s…

A similarly wild thing to think about is that Pangaea was just the most recent supercontinent. The landmass on earth has split and merged several times.

Time. It's deep.

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

#197

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

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…

Responding to a + change with another + change is a positive feedback loop.

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

#198

Post by api »

tsunamifury wrote: post #2

I think it’s wild and deeply inspiring to imagine how the surface of the earth had radically different forms over billions of years. Huge landscapes of unrotted dead plants. Then massive landscapes of fungus and decomposing bacteria breaking that down into dirt. And on and on. I think it is wise to understand that earth has been through many eras and is not as homeostatic as our narrowly imagined “natural” state we s…

Concern about climate change is about its effects on us. Most of our great cities are coastal. We thrive in a temperate climate. We are dependent on fisheries and a whole food chain of other Holocene organisms. Having all that change would be incredibly disruptive to us. We’d survive (as a species) all but the most extreme scenarios but our quality of life could take a huge dive and many people could die.

Obviously life will just keep evolving. There have been times in the geological record when there has been little to no polar ice and times of “snowball Earth.” Life existed during all these times but both these extremes would be more hostile to humans than the current epoch.

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

#199

Post by __MatrixMan__ »

eastof wrote: post #167
sclarisse wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is such a dangerous perspective. Why would we want to make the temperature on Mars like the one on Earth!?! We already have 7 Billion people here to take care of and we're already witnessing mass heat, flooding, and famine deaths from climate change. People focusing on colonizing Mars when we have such an immediate problem to address TODAY are delusional and actively endangering the most vulnerable people in the…

I agree with you for the most part, but I don't get on their case so much because the kinds of advancement (e.g. re: recycling) that you'd need to settle on Mars are also the kinds of advancement you'd need to fix things here on Earth.

We live in an environment that's we're so conveniently adapted for us that it's easy to take for granted. You can spend your whole life doing damage to this precious thing we all got for free and die before the consequences of your actions catch up with you. It's all too easy to just miss ecological thinking altogether.

On a spacecraft though, or a Martian colony, the f-around-find-out cycle is gonna be deadly short. You're gonna need everyone in board with doing what they need to to stay alive.

Again, something we desperately need on Earth.

So let them fail to colonize Mars. Let them fail 100 times. Because what we learn from those failures just might save us at home.

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