Cheery words from Laurie
In case some of you missed this, we’e2’80’99re (we being the earth) due a cycle of huge solar storms beginning perhaps the end of this year, certainly by the end of 2007, just to make our joys complete. The sunspot cycle is projected to peak in 2012, at which time airplanes will be diverted from the more exposed zones to keep their instruments from frying and to keep from exposing any pregnant women on board to fetus-scrambling radiation. Global communications could fry (and if we’e2’80’99re dependent on electronics now, multiply it times’e2’80’94what, ten?’e2’80’94in another six years) and satellites drop from the sky (remember Skylab in 1979? Solar storms then, too.) Power grids will fail, especially in the northeast (where the ground holds more electricity-conducting metals.)
Add this to the increasing ravages of global warming, with the melting of the south polar ice, and we’e2’80’99ll all be huddling together in half the land mass, with no lights, waiting for the next hurricane.
You get the feeling we’e2’80’99re being asked to leave?
If we’re being asked to leave, where do we go? Sigh. It makes me glad I know how to live on a pioneering level. Maybe we should all brush up on those skills. Your book about Caliafara (spelling?) might point the way. You have obviously thought about this before. Write us another book leading the way.
Interestingly, I posted about global warming on my own little blog today. After nursing my infant through a week-long fever, global warming seemed to me the Earth’s immune response to an invasive and harmful presence–humans and their machines. I hope we can become good guests before it is necessary to toss us out.
‘e2’80’a6You forgot to add in avian flu’e2’80’a6there could be only be half the people or less huddled on the hills staring at the sky, watching the most amazing displays of northern lights.
An interesting thing about my book club ‘e2’80’a6 when we have read too many ‘e2’80’9cchick’e2’80’9d books’e2’80’a6it tends to drive me off to read something more meaty ‘e2’80’a6 two really interesting diversions were ‘e2’80’9c1491’e2’80’9d Charles C. Mann about the original American cultures and the impacts of European diseases’e2’80’a6making the bird flu possibilities look frightening and ‘e2’80’9cCollapse’e2’80’9d by Jared Diamond bringing back thoughts from ‘e2’80’9cPopulation Biology’e2’80’9d classes of long ago and wondering what the Earth’e2’80’99s ‘e2’80’9ccarrying capacity’e2’80’9d for people really is’e2’80’a6both have truly affected my thinking’e2’80’a6
The earth has never been the peaceful place of all those bucolic county paintings’e2’80’a6it is and always has been a dynamic changing planet. The trouble is that we have reached the point that we are influencing the dynamics without knowledge of what the outcome will be. As an ‘e2’80’9cadvanced civilization’e2’80’9d where division of labor has gotten society to the point that most people don’e2’80’99t have the skills to survive independently of one another…with many performing tasks that would have little value a rudimentary society and no idea where their food comes from.
Our foolish idea of moving to a farm years ago may payoff in unexpected dividends. Yup,’e2’80’a6 I think its time for me to read something completely lunatic or escapist!!
What was the term they used in the first Star Trek movie? Oh, yes, CARBON-BASED INFESTATIONS. Seems about right on…we’re fast fouling our own nest & wonder why the weather is so wierd.
I think I’ll make a cup tea, grab a book, and open some chocolate. Some days all you can do is cope!
But before you leave, make sure to travel far to the north or south and watch the spectacular aurora …
Well, aren’t you the little ray of sunshine today? Of course Mother Earth is trying to shrug us off! I may not like it, but I understand why we are unwelcome on the planet. Maybe we should just follow the “W” plan, and hide our heads in the sand and pretend that none of it is happening. Surely owning all the oil in the world and paying off big business by raising emissions standards is more fun than dealing with a pesky environment. Isn’t the rule of the day: “What? Me worry?” Iris Lady
LOL, I’m not entirely sure we’re being asked to leave. We’re being pointed in the direction quite clearly. 🙂
I did climatology last year in one of my courses and one of our professors actually had quite an interesting view on things like global warming. Firstly, for interest sake – though, I’m probably repeating what everybody knows – is that the solar storms are part of a natural 11, to 12 year cycle. This one will reach its peak, die down (as all things do) and then start up again. My mind now just went blank at this very moment. (Thank you for letting me down you neuron infested parasite) But I think that he had said it was part of what was needed to radiate energy towards the earth and part of what gave rise to different weather phenomena. Anyway, I’m going to stop with the technical before I embarrass myself.
What he did have though, and what I remember quite clearly was say that he had a theory that the solar storm cycle was linked to global warming and that, although our polution affected the earth radically, it didn’t have that much to do with global warming. He said (though, i’m now just regurgetating what I heard, I have never read it up myself) with a single volcano erruption more polutants are blasted up into the air than we do in a decade.
Its… in a strange way a comforting thought. I don’t feel SO guilty when I get behind the wheel of my car.
It does not mean that the pollution is not a threat. An Anonymous person once said:
“We have forgotten how to be good guests.”
Very true.
We push nature to the limits, we try to console ourselves by signing treaties to limit pollution (though the biggest producer and depleter of the earth’s resources refuses to sign, but they don’t hesitate to make war…) we plant tiny trees to try and make up for the giants we brought down. We put animals in cages and call it concervation, yet cull them in the wild because WE as a population became too large and needed to invade their space…
It makes you think why this is all happening.
“Humans are the only animals who blush, or who need to.”
Remember how angry Holmes got at Russell when she said we were animals? He thought we were much more than animals.
There he is again, spamming. Stop it.
And according to my physiology professor, the bird flu will soon kill us all. =)