Hey Lin,
Heh yew seepy haid?
Okai. Ah’m juzza dumb fahr-fahter, um... Sorry, I’ll rephrase and refrain from Suthrun fo da dew-ray-shun. :o)
Ok, I’m just a former firefighter with no training in the ancient classics (boy did you open the door there for a few shots about age or so how was your date with Plato? Was the cave comfy?). I am not a scientist. For a career, I dealt with what works and what didn’t. That rubs off on my observations so I recognize that my viewpoint is slanted as well as untrained.
Your third sentence gave away your entire argument. You ‘believe’ that etc. We have little to no experiences with inorganic life (though I did read recently that some was discovered, being researched now) and there is no scientific proof that the planet IS alive. If it can’t be proven, it is not. Conversely, what is unproven, might be, given time and understanding.
I maintain that with the amounts of life forms (discovered or not) on this rocky puddle, that it may be very difficult to filter out the ‘noise’ to see if Earth is alive (shades of Pandora?). (Although now I have to Google “Bucky Balls” to see if they’re boxer bound or tighty whitey.) Since it can’t be proven, it is not alive, but is simply a specimen jar; a galactic zoo.
As for a unified theory, I suspect it’s so massive and obvious a source that it is difficult to see, but it also moves into the realm of faith. I don’t believe the ‘just happened’ theories, matter doesn’t just ‘appear’; neither does life. It’s too organized, protective and nurturing to be random. I do understand cause and effect. The systems created are so far above our ability to understand that after centuries of research we’re just beginning to understand how little we really know. The true race is if we can discover enough to survive with the changes around us or will we breed ourselves to death, taking many species with us. (I suspect, by faith, that we’ll have some help).
Even as scientists learn, they have to ‘take leaps of faith’ (something not visible, proven or documentable) to reach a conclusion or test a result; that must in part because we’re human and that is out nature.
As for permanent irrevocable life ending human caused damage, nope, can’t do it, don’t buy it. We can make a permanent change but the swinging of that pendulum will undo it, given enough time. All we do is nudge the pendulum in a slightly different direction. True balance can’t exist, life isn’t static; balance is an illusion.
I also don’t buy that we’re the cause of any ozone hole. Our window of time (under a century) of observing such events is WAY too narrow a slice to know. Did we augment it? It’s possible, but cause it? Nope, we’re not that powerful a flea on this dog. Even a full blown, let’s everybody fire all our nukes at each other event won’t do permanent damage, it will (over time) simply replace humans as the dominant critter. In short, we can kill much of the life here, including ourselves, but the planet and something alive will be left.
What we HAVE done is poison the oceans (i.e. life strangling chemicals, floating islands of trash) and cut down the trees (both things which will make our air cleansing systems fail and kill off some of our foods). Then we use other poisons on the lands; fill the air with toxic poop while happily breeding more than the place can handle with little thought (our true downfall). For every finger pointing at the causes, we have three pointing back at us; but we’re only talking a few species we’re taking with us, not the entire life on the planet. And we’re too stupid to pay attention let alone change.
An external force (a darned big asteroid) has the kind of energy release large enough to rip off the atmosphere and boil away the oceans. That would be game over, but not human caused. [The obvious questions are then who sent it and why now?]
A major volcano blow (um, Pinatubo a couple decades ago?) can spew more caca in the air than a country over a many year effort (although burning coal is pretty nasty; hello
The saddest thing is that we’re jumping through hoops and scrambling to control something that we don’t comprehend in fullness by trying things that are unproven, untested and potentially detrimental so there is no hard evidence if it will help or make things worse. Use less; use more renewable; take only what you truly need and PAY ATTENTION are good places to start. But that’s also our nature, roll the dice and see what happens.
I suspect we’re basically agreeing on most points. We know what (little) we know and the rest, we take on faith. And we’re well past due on some accounts as managers (or renters, if that is your view) and the owner is gonna be more than peeved. ;-)
That and my career also taught me to look for the simple. Sometimes it is the most difficult thing to find since we expect the complicated. Simple is good; putting many simple things together makes a system, so find the simple and see where it leads you.
Rick
From Lin Kerns
And I'll take it one step further, friend Rick...
Your first paragraph addressed entropy and centrifugal force, but the second is where I have a slight problem. I do believe that there is a sentience of sort within the earth that may not be organic, and it is nothing we have ever fully known or can know. It's apples trying to define Bucky Balls. Totally beyond our ken, our vocabulary, and our awareness. There is too much smoke from the Gaia theory to totally dismiss it. I'm not even getting metaphysical here, unless you want to include God and this is NOT the forum for that discussion. What we discuss here is strictly based upon empirical knowledge. We're keeping Plato at home and embracing Aristotle, if you will. Even as scientists search for one unified theory (good luck, ya'll; you'll need it), to encompass the full body of knowledge, they dare not leave one corner without investigating it. That takes a lot of time, even for a possibly futile search.
The second thing is that yes, we are capable of causing very long term damage to ourselves and our planet that does not include a season of nukes. We've already put a hole in the Ozone. Global warming can result in too many blocks of frozen freshwater to dissolve in the ocean and then cause the ocean currents to slow or even to stop. Of course, the problem could disappear within say a few hundred million years, but then way back in the Archean, when Snowball Earth was a reality, most every form of life died. What lived gave us life. However, as a science person, I do not believe that we are the end result of evolution or that we're the species meant to be THE dominant species of the planet for all time. Continents will move into a new Pangaea, parts will be devoured by the mantle, and new land will rise from the divergent plates. There is a cycle that will continue until entropy ends the sun and subsequently our earth. Chances are that we'll be long gone from here. Anyway, by causing one thing, we could be giving rise to something altogether worse.
I suppose I'm borrowing a bit from Plato with his Allegory of the Cave, as I feel that what we know is so insignificant, compared to what there is to know, and what we see may not be exactly what we think it is. But given a course of movement, until interference alters the flow of that energy, then a new possibility will occur and create multiples of potential futures where only the laws of the universe will dictate which one will remain. This is NOT Plato's Theory of Forms and it is not science fiction.
Major extinctions happen, as there have been 3 where almost all life has ended, and the next one may get us all, but we do not have to dirty our own hands by helping it along. Balance never exists for long on this planet or anywhere else, for that matter. The norm of the universe is not the lulling bottom of a cradle (perpetual motion), but a swing in one direction or another.
Despite our efforts to save ourselves, the big one may come out of the sky one day and smack us across our arrogant heads. However, as a species, we'll out breed ourselves most probably before that happens. I'm just sayin'.
Lin
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