81–90 of 295 posts
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.
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…
This implies two things:
- Insofar as we want to keep the Earth a good place for us to live, we can measure our success by the number of our evolutionary cohort of species that stick around;
- Insofar as we plan to live in space, terraform other worlds, etc., it's only animals of our evolutionary cohort that will be able to comfortably survive in the places we optimize for our own well-being. If we increase global CO2 levels here on Earth to such a point that species on Earth that like our current air mix begin dying off, and we see an evolution of replacement species that prefer higher CO2 levels (and we ourselves retreat to dome cities or something to avoid that fate); but then we later terraform Mars to have the environment of Earth ca 5000BCE; then the species that inhabit Earth by that point, won't be able to be transplanted to Mars. Only the species we had conserved — keeping them in the dome-cities with us — would be able to be transplanted.
(Another way to say that second one, is that if we screw up the Earth's environment, but later fix it, we'll lose biodiversity twice — we'll have killed off our evolutionary cohort with the screw-up, and we'll kill off the newer-evolved species with our "fix.")
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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 conspi…
Well this time it's a lot worse because not using CFCs had a comparatively small impact on the world economy, with a big payoff.
There is currently no realistic path to keep somewhat decent living standards for the number of people we have, while ramping down the world economy sufficiently to battle global warming.
Even if everybody turned vegan and stopped flying it wouldn't be enough.
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It’s saddening that a comment like this needs to disclaim that it’s not anti climate change. I get it, I’ve posted things in the past that were attacked as anti climate change and I was perplexed. My gut tells me there are just people that like to stir up trouble and will post “enraging” things on anything really. It’s unfortunately discouraging and makes me not want to engage in social media.
Don't worry, this is not social media; VC does the talk.
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…
I think you are somewhat strawmanning environmentalism and climate-change concerns here (not with malicious intention or anything) because I don't think that many argue that things are or should be static - though they mostly appear to be static from our short viewpoint.
Instead the concern is that the changes are too fast. It's more akin to consciously bringing a meteor down on the planet than it is to "the world is changing and always have and humans are a tiny blip in the existence of the world".
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…
And then after millions of years and all of the biological matter turning into oil we will eventually use it all up within ~300-400 years. The era that humans will utilize this kind of gasoline combustion is such a tiny blip of the whole human history, but today it seems like civilization can't possibly exist without it. I don't see how airplanes are even going to exist for mass transit and cargo 200 years from now o…
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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. What about the millennium or two prior to that, though? Hundreds of species have gone extinct since around 1900.
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And then after millions of years and all of the biological matter turning into oil we will eventually use it all up within ~300-400 years. The era that humans will utilize this kind of gasoline combustion is such a tiny blip of the whole human history, but today it seems like civilization can't possibly exist without it. I don't see how airplanes are even going to exist for mass transit and cargo 200 years from now o…
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…
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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?
No other species has had this great of an impact on that many species. If we were wise and thoughtful, collectively we could both advance ourselves and allow the diversity to continue. So it's a shame we aren't.