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September 15, 2010

I'd like to teach the world to sing...


The Earth Doesn’t Care
About what is done to or for it.

The cover of The American Scholar quarterly carries an impertinent assertion: “The Earth Doesn’t Care if You Drive a Hybrid.” The essay inside is titled “What the Earth Knows.” What it knows, according to Robert B. Laughlin, co-winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Physics, is this: What humans do to, and ostensibly for, the earth does not matter in the long run, and the long run is what matters to the earth. We must, Laughlin says, think about the earth’s past in terms of geologic time.

For example: The world’s total precipitation in a year is about one meter—“the height of a golden retriever.” About 200 meters—the height of the Hoover Dam—have fallen on earth since the Industrial Revolution. Since the Ice Age ended, enough rain has fallen to fill all the oceans four times; since the dinosaurs died, rainfall has been sufficient to fill the oceans 20,000 times. Yet the amount of water on earth probably hasn’t changed significantly over geologic time.

Damaging this old earth is, Laughlin says, “easier to imagine than it is to accomplish.” There have been mass volcanic explosions, meteor impacts, “and all manner of other abuses greater than anything people could inflict, and it’s still here. It’s a survivor.”

Laughlin acknowledges that “a lot of responsible people” are worried about atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels. This has, he says, “the potential” to modify the weather by raising average temperatures several degrees centigrade and that governments have taken “significant, although ineffective,” steps to slow the warming. “On the scales of time relevant to itself, the earth doesn’t care about any of these governments or their legislation.”

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14 comments:

Woodsterman (Odie) said...

Great piece discussing a calm scientist ... how refreshing.

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

Woody, that's the mission of Goomba News Network... refreshment.

Anonymous said...

Author, try again.

timJ said...

What is the point of that article? I know the Earth will survive whatever humans do to it, the question is will humans survive what we do to the Earth? Probably, but what kind of world will it be? I would prefer that my grandkids aren't going to war over oil or food or water resources. I would prefer they didn't have natural gas leaking out of their faucets or toxic chemicals in their drinking water. The Earth will even survive a nuclear war, that doesn't mean I want to live in that messed up post-holocaust world. Saying "the Earth will survive" is a pretty ridiculous way to justify being wasteful and selfish. The Earth will survive me littering all over a public park or your lawn, that doesn't make it smart.

LL said...

I'd like to buy the Earth a Coke.

And when you consider where those water molecules have been since they started being - it's really one heck of a drink.

Anonymous said...

Timmy... Yeah, that's what it's talking about. Littering on lawns.

Anonymous said...

LL... Enjoy that cold Coke while you can, what with the ice caps melting and lawns being littered.

sig94 said...

timj doesn't realize that much of the world does not give a rat fart about anything other than their next meal, their next piece of a*s and where they can find a virgin to screw so they can cure their HIV.

Anonymous said...

Siggie... You are a poet.

Kid said...

Sorry Nickie, but George Carlin Already Told Us About This

Anonymous said...

You nailed it, Kid. Well done!

Kid said...

Actually George nailed it but thank you. I listen to that thing about every 6 months. The ending is a little funky but the first part of that is gold.

Imagine the progress we could make as a society with a little critical thinking..
Not to be on this rock.

Doom said...

Some of us argue further, that our affect on the earth is even less than what the article supposes. Some of us, perhaps many of us, argue that CO2 levels are caused BY the warming, if such is even occurring, not by my Xterra (or more, Al 'Internet' Gores' travels).

Still, for him to get published, he has to kiss some "ultra-conservatives'" butts. That's gotta suck, and probably stinks. Unless, of course, he is a "moderate-conservative". What a gas, these "conservative" types!