This is a brief post on a very big topic and my frustration with current events.
Working in other countries gave me an appreciation what a gigantic and complex system we live in and on and how little we know and what affects one continent will affect another eventually. Can't be American or euro centric here.
Europe has just been through an incredible heatwave that shouldn't happen at all in June (not even in Spain) and especially not for an entire month.
My friend vacations in Croatia every year and told me that two years ago the ocean was cold on top and warm on the bottom and continues the opposite of what it should be doing.
The reason why I'm not fond of ancient or prehistoric geology/history is because we can only guess what truly happened and there is too much opposing research.
The Sahara was an ocean 30 million years ago. A quick search did not reveal what turned an ocean into a desert and hiw long it took.
What were dealing with now is a combination of tectonic plate movement, ocean currents, weather patterns, heliophysics (how the sun influences us) and little to no idea how all these systems interact and are connected.
If we don't know that, we don't know how we can fix it.
This is a simplified map of ocean currents.
These are just ocean currents. The AMOC an Atlantic current has slowed down. How significant that is is unknown.
There is no question that the speed of current climate change is anthropogenic, but cataclysm have happened in the past. The ancient Egyptians are the perfect example. The verdant nile was no more, a successful civilization disappeared. Many theories abound.
This time we are focused too much on Fossil fuels. I don't think thy are the sole reason and the only solution.
What concerns me is Chernobyl. There is an ecosystem again because nature fills a void. The animals aren't thriving they are suffering short lifespans, illness mutations. The fact that green frogs are now black to adapt to radiation means that this has happened before. Not man made radioactivity but radiation has triggered some gene to produce melanin. Amphibians have been around for millions of years. Did they deal with a cloudless sky and radiation from the sun?
There is a reason that genetic contingencies exist on a hostile planet.
Food for thought and science.
If the current climate change was not triggered by the industrial revolution spewing all that carbon in the air there's no way we humans, no matter how smart we think we are, can 'fix' it. Climate change may have been in the cards but I do believe we helped kick it into overdrive. Supposed to get 103˚ here today and it's not even August. And hurricane season is on the doorstep and the storms are getting more and more monstrous. The planet changes, has and will continue to. Sahara was an ocean, so was the western part of this continent. I have found fossil shells in the Rockies and Big Bend. The question is not will th climate change but will humans survive. I read recently that the human population 70,000 years ago was down to 5,000 - 10,000 individuals (down from how many I wonder) with maybe only about 1, 200 breeders. Apparently that's enough as long as we can adapt.
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ReplyDeleteComing across articles that claim 1 million years ago. Human population was never that low. It's the science equivalent of clickbait. Genomics "research". Effing mess.
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ReplyDeleteMore in a moment. But 1200 breeding pairs; insufficient. Inbreeding would have been extreme.
So many mysteries, so few answers really. It does bother me the amount of damage Humans are doing tho'. Around Metro Phoenix they're building so many Data Centers in a drought prone environment... what are they thinking? Some small Towns they've built them near have already run out of Water due to them. I see short term greed creating long term disastrous results. But, Nature itself is always changing, evolving, we just never know what would happen anyway.
ReplyDeleteBo. The only advantage is getting investors to build the structures. It'll turn into Detroit car industry in no time.
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ReplyDelete@ellen and bo
There may.be a 20000 year cycle. If we're in one (astronomy is not my field) then we have what we did on top of it. 200 years no one can adapt.
Codex: Milankovitch cycle is an interesting theory and that's just the tilt. Traveling around the galaxy? Who knows.
ReplyDeleteCodex 225 million years around galaxy. 22 rotations so far.
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