So the Nintendo movie is true! ([0] image)
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Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
21–30 of 295 posts
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#22Earlier 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…
> earth has likely never had as diverse an ecosystem as it has this millennium Don't worry, we can fix that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_extinction
I think your flippant response here robs us of a conversation as to why we do this — what larger purpose does it serve in the macro scale mentioned earlier. Is earth a set of short term
optimized life leading to different eras or are humans the first sentient life that must take responsibility for it. If so how and with what goals. For our own preservation? To freeze all life as it is today?
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#23> The largest organism on Earth, says ABC, is still a huge fungal mat, a single organism spread over 2,200 acres of forest in eastern Oregon. Largest by area. By mass you need to go a bit south, to the faint grove of Aspens in Utah known as "Pando". ofc, Aspens are weird enough that they may be thought of more like a fungus with tree-like fruiting bodies rather than trees per se.
Citation needed! The Aspen page on Wikipedia doesn't mention fungi at all.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/pano-one-worlds-la...
>Weighing 13 million pounds, Pando is the world’s largest organism by mass (Oregon’s “humungous fungus” spans a greater distance). Quaking aspens can reproduce by disseminating seeds, but more frequently, they send up sprouts from their roots and form a mass of trees aptly known as a “clone.”
and I was able to find
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/strange-but-true-...
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#24I 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…
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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Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#25I 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…
I read that book and watched the later documentary about what happens when the earth takes over, about how nature just over-runs human endeavors ... it was pretty depressing (though the writing was sophomoric)
but I am always amazed at how much 'nature' has been interrupted by humans laying concrete (streets and buildings etc)
Manhatten Island was once a sanctuary and now is a concrete cemetary.
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Citation needed! The Aspen page on Wikipedia doesn't mention fungi at all.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/pano-one-worlds-la... >Weighing 13 million pounds, Pando is the world’s largest organism by mass (Oregon’s “humungous fungus” spans a greater distance). Quaking aspens can reproduce by disseminating seeds, but more frequently, they send up sprouts from their roots and form a mass of trees aptly known as a “clone.” and I was able to find https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti…
Thank you! Odd that it's not mentioned in the main article.
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Citation needed! The Aspen page on Wikipedia doesn't mention fungi at all.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/pano-one-worlds-la... >Weighing 13 million pounds, Pando is the world’s largest organism by mass (Oregon’s “humungous fungus” spans a greater distance). Quaking aspens can reproduce by disseminating seeds, but more frequently, they send up sprouts from their roots and form a mass of trees aptly known as a “clone.” and I was able to find https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti…
When I was growing up in Lake Tahoe in the 1980s, I would leave the house in the morning to return at dusk, and I often went on a hike up Ward Creek from my house to the backside of Alpine Meadows.
Quaking Aspens were my Spirit Tree and I loved being around them.
I didnt know at the time that the groves of Aspen were acually all the same tree.
But they had a profound effect on me as I hiked and built stuff from them.
I used to chop them down and build tee-pees with pine bows as walls... I was like 13 or so. If you got caught in any of my booby-traps, I am sorry...
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#28I 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…
It's somewhat odd that one has to explicitly say they're not "anti-climate change" when presenting any kind of perspective that could be perceived as such. As if they're afraid of the somebody punishing them for daring to think such "problematic" and "destructive" thoughts...
The real effect of cancel culture is the chilling effect it has even on relatively anonymous conversation.
Humans are social beings and the spectre that someone could be outcast for sounding like they are from the wrong clan is an innate phobia.
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#29I 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…
It's something George Carlin has touched on as well. Paraphrasing a bit: We're not really trying to save the planet. The planet has been here for billions of years, it'll be here for billions of years after we're all dead and gone. The planet will be fine. The people? The people are fucked. That's what we're trying to save. We're trying to keep the planet hospitable to us.
Re: Long before trees overtook the land, Earth was covered by prototaxites (2013)
#30Relevant twitter discussion (before Elno ruined it)
https://twitter.com/LauraSeesPlants/status/13105563532498984...