Time-Lapse Satellite Photos Show Grim Realities for Our Planet

[San Martin]

We're basically like Earth's cancer, harmless in small numbers. Nature tries to kill our growth with diseases, bacteria, and what not. But we keep resisting. And thus we slowly kill our host. We're selfish bastards, and honestly a new plague with no cure seems in order for us.

You don't honestly think that human beings can destroy the planet or kill nature do you? The planet will be absolutely fine, we're not doing anything that numerous previous extinction events haven't done more thoroughly. The only thing we stand to destroy is a few very specific types of animal including ourselves.

EDIT: for example in the Triassic period there were a far, far higher number of active volcanoes meaning that the planet was considerably hotter than it currently is. Additionally this meant that there were numerous chemical impurities in the air that are no longer common. This era saw the emergence of the dinosaurs. the the end of the Cretaceous period a meteorite plunged the earth into what was essentially a nuclear winter, killing off something like 99% of all animal and plant life. Then came the era of the retreating glaciers and the super-mammals like the large sabretooth tigers and the mammoths, all now dead and the planet's doing just fine.

EDIT: found that quote:

?You think man can destroy the planet? What intoxicating vanity.

Let me tell you about our planet. Earth is four-and-a-half-billion-years-old. There's been life on it for nearly that long, 3.8 billion years. Bacteria first; later the first multicellular life, then the first complex creatures in the sea, on the land. Then finally the great sweeping ages of animals, the amphibians, the dinosaurs, at last the mammals, each one enduring millions on millions of years, great dynasties of creatures rising, flourishing, dying away -- all this against a background of continuous and violent upheaval. Mountain ranges thrust up, eroded away, cometary impacts, volcano eruptions, oceans rising and falling, whole continents moving, an endless, constant, violent change, colliding, buckling to make mountains over millions of years.

Earth has survived everything in its time. It will certainly survive us. If all the nuclear weapons in the world went off at once and all the plants, all the animals died and the earth was sizzling hot for a hundred thousand years, life would survive, somewhere: under the soil, frozen in Arctic ice. Sooner or later, when the planet was no longer inhospitable, life would spread again. The evolutionary process would begin again. It might take a few billion years for life to regain its present variety. Of course, it would be very different from what it is now, but the earth would survive our folly, only we would not. If the ozone layer gets thinner, ultraviolet radiation sears the earth, so what? Ultraviolet radiation is good for life. It's powerful energy. It promotes mutation, change. Many forms of life will thrive with more UV radiation. Many others will die out. Do you think this is the first time that's happened? Think about oxygen. Necessary for life now, but oxygen is actually a metabolic poison, a corrosive gas, like fluorine. When oxygen was first produced as a waste product by certain plant cells some three billion years ago, it created a crisis for all other life on earth. Those plants were polluting the environment, exhaling a lethal gas. Earth eventually had an atmosphere incompatible with life. Nevertheless, life on earth took care of itself.

In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.?

Is that from 'Jurassic Park' (the book)? I remember there's a bit where Jeff Goldblum (obviously, Dr Malcolm must be played by Jeff Goldblum in the book as well) makes a speech something like what you quoted.

 

[ForumSafari]

Is that from 'Jurassic Park' (the book)? I remember there's a bit where Jeff Goldblum (obviously, Dr Malcolm must be played by Jeff Goldblum in the book as well) makes a speech something like what you quoted.

Yeah it is, it's one of my favourite quotes for when people start talking about us killing the planet.

 

[Rowan93]

We're basically like Earth's cancer, harmless in small numbers. Nature tries to kill our growth with diseases, bacteria, and what not. But we keep resisting. And thus we slowly kill our host. We're selfish bastards, and honestly a new plague with no cure seems in order for us.

The world will outlive us, no matter what. We're not capable of actually destroying it, only ourselves. After we're gone, something else will start up. That's how it works.

We don't have the power to kill the planet yet. Planets are an incredibly inefficient design for a space habitat, and if technological advance keeps up, we'll pluck out the heart of the Earth, climb out of this gravity well, and spend the rest of eternity on, I don't know, a billion O'neill cylinders? That's assuming we're still living in bags of meat by then.

But even if civilization doesn't make it that far and it's ended in some disaster... do you really think we currently have the power to end humanity? Are you expecting that a nuclear winter will somehow do to educated billions what an actual ice age couldn't do to tens of thousands who couldn't read and write?

-SNIP-


In the thinking of the human being a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago we didn't have cars, airplanes, computers or vaccines. It was a whole different world, but to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We've been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us.

Generally when one being can go from crawling around naked in the dirt to flying to the moon and back faster than another being can blink, that's not an indicator in favour of the slow being. I mean, if, say, an AI running on a supercomputer, made that kind of amount of progress in the time it takes me to blink, I would be thinking more in terms of "silicon-instantiated God-Mind that hopefully won't take my atoms apart just because it can think of a better use for them" than "puny insignificant silicon chip, I live and breathe on vaster scales that you don't have the humility to try to imagine".

(Building one of these is one way we could get "kill the Earth" powerful, but just keeping going at the normal pace for another few centuries/millenia would work too)

 

[gridsleep]

You talk about urban growth as if it is an inherently good thing. Not necessarily. Dubai's growth is built mainly on virtual slave labor of Hindu migrant workers who are not allowed to leave, and many of whom have died building up the palaces of the moguls. Las Vegas is a criminal empire that is drinking Southern California dry and has already destroyed the Colorado River. Cities are not always good things, and neither is population growth. We need to get the human population of this planet back below a billion people or we are all doomed. There is no way around that. No options. This planet can only sustain about a billion people. We are all going to have to stop having children until at least six billion people die of old age. Only then does this species, and all other species, have a chance at survival.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

Man, that deforestation and the lake drying up were pretty sad.

 

[Stupidity]

Hahahahaha ha
The earth has faced numerous events much worse than human pollution and its recovered. Life isnt going anywhere and even if we it did we wont need it much longer anyway.

Don't get me wrong, few people care more about the beauty of nature more than me but i'm detecting a lot of Disney influence in how you see the world.

We're basically like Earth's cancer, harmless in small numbers. Nature tries to kill our growth with diseases, bacteria, and what not. But we keep resisting. And thus we slowly kill our host. We're selfish bastards, and honestly a new plague with no cure seems in order for us.

Nature is trying to kill humanity, but that doesn't make us special, nature is trying to kill EVERYTHING. Every tree and blade of grass is in a never ending war for resources. Trees are not tall to look nice, they are tall to kill other plants. Most trees have more leaves than they need to provide energy through photosynthesis, why grow all those branches then? To create shade and kill smaller trees.

The natural order is all out war by any and every means available, the idea that human ingenuity is somehow different is just delusional arrogance not morality.

Nature is not a delicate peaceful thing, it is a tenacious killing machine endlessly creating, changing and consuming itself.
It will survive pollution, urban sprawl, nuclear winter and humanity.
Even if we do destroy all life on Earth, its not like it was going to last forever anyway.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

Is that from 'Jurassic Park' (the book)? I remember there's a bit where Jeff Goldblum (obviously, Dr Malcolm must be played by Jeff Goldblum in the book as well) makes a speech something like what you quoted.

Yeah it is, it's one of my favourite quotes for when people start talking about us killing the planet.

Anyone who talks about killing the planet is missing the point. Why would anyone worry about the planet qua planet? The planet is not in danger, we're in danger. We rely on an incredibly fragile *state* of an earth which is changing more than it ever has while we've been around. No doubt we'll survive for some time relying on technology, and that thought is no more comforting than a patient being allowed to "survive" on life support.

We're basically like Earth's cancer, harmless in small numbers. Nature tries to kill our growth with diseases, bacteria, and what not. But we keep resisting. And thus we slowly kill our host. We're selfish bastards, and honestly a new plague with no cure seems in order for us.

Nature is trying to kill humanity, but that doesn't make us special, nature is trying to kill EVERYTHING. Every tree and blade of grass is in a never ending war for resources. Trees are not tall to look nice, they are tall to kill other plants. Most trees have more leaves than they need to provide energy through photosynthesis, why grow all those branches then? To create shade and kill smaller trees.

The natural order is all out war by any and every means available, the idea that human ingenuity is somehow different is just delusional arrogance not morality.

Nature is not a delicate peaceful thing, it is a tenacious killing machine endlessly creating, changing and consuming itself.
It will survive pollution, urban sprawl, nuclear winter and humanity.
Even if we do destroy all life on Earth, its not like it was going to last forever anyway.

Mostly bollocks with a small amount of truth. Trees rely on other trees to reproduce, as well as a bioactive soil, worms, insects to carry pollen, etc. In a rainforest smaller trees rely on the shade of taller ones for themselves to grow. That's why we call it an ecosystem. But I don't mean to make is sound like an "everyone gets along nicely" environment - it's neither that nor "every thing for itself" but somewhere in between.

 

[Razorback0z]

"The world is a very different place now than it was in 1984"

LOL in 1984 it was a very different place to 1694.

What's this obsession with stopping time and development?

Its just as well there weren't people calling for "sustainability" when the atmosphere was raining molten sulphur.

 

[OneCatch]

actually we are technically capable of destroying it. but that would mean prety much all world superpowers cooperating on it precisely correctly and even then theres a lot left to chance. but in thiery we could "split" the earth.

What, as in actually break the planet into chunks?
No. Nononononono!

Have a look at this [https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/] if you want to get a rough idea of the orders of magnitude involved (the guy's a scientist and ex-NASA engineer who calculates strange and random physics scenarios upon request).

Note that the impactor moving at 3000km/s releases the energy of a few thousand nukes - a few of those would release roughly the same energy of the total global nuclear arsenals - and it's nowhere near enough to shatter the planet. You need to go multiple orders of magnitude higher to even expose the mantle, let alone get anywhere near 'planet splitting'.

There's simply no way for us to generate or harness that kind of energy - even redirecting asteroids in the solar system and thus borrowing their orbital energy would be inadequate for major planetary damage.

 

[Strazdas]

actually we are technically capable of destroying it. but that would mean prety much all world superpowers cooperating on it precisely correctly and even then theres a lot left to chance. but in thiery we could "split" the earth.

What, as in actually break the planet into chunks?
No. Nononononono!

Have a look at this [https://what-if.xkcd.com/20/] if you want to get a rough idea of the orders of magnitude involved (the guy's a scientist and ex-NASA engineer who calculates strange and random physics scenarios upon request).

Note that the impactor moving at 3000km/s releases the energy of a few thousand nukes - a few of those would release roughly the same energy of the total global nuclear arsenals - and it's nowhere near enough to shatter the planet. You need to go multiple orders of magnitude higher to even expose the mantle, let alone get anywhere near 'planet splitting'.

There's simply no way for us to generate or harness that kind of energy - even redirecting asteroids in the solar system and thus borrowing their orbital energy would be inadequate for major planetary damage.

not so much blow it into chunks but more split earths crust apart ( you know, kinda like how moving crust plates does but forced).