Earth warming up?
Is the Earth warming up? If it is the real problem is that we (humans) may not be able to keep up with climate change. Earthlings have had the same climate for about 10000 years, and from ice core analisis, and geological data, it appears that the planet has never endured this long of a duration of, more or less, constant temperatures, ever.
This is a good thing, as it allowed time enough for people to develope agriculture, and civilization. That took about 5000 years. The rise in the use of fire and later industry may have actually hindered the development of a more recent ice age, as we put more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
The "greening of the Earth" due to more greenhouse gasses, could go out of control, with the oceans warming up enough, to let off metric tonnes of methane. The planets' atmosphere could change to more like Venus'.
What are we to do? Humanity will become extinct if this happens because the evolutionary process is too slow to keep up with the rise in temerature and resultant climate change, rise in sea levels, etc.
Life (if it survives) will be reduced to living in that primary ooze from whence it came. By the time it evolves into intellegent life again, our sun will be that much closer to nova.
IMHO, this may be our only chance, for this planet, and life to keep going, evolving, getting better by getting better. We must design computers that can design and biuld better versions of themselves, by themselves. They must be as independant as possible but able to utilise anything they need. They must have a high tollerance to environmental change and some sort of survival purpose biult into them. I think...
This is a good thing, as it allowed time enough for people to develope agriculture, and civilization. That took about 5000 years. The rise in the use of fire and later industry may have actually hindered the development of a more recent ice age, as we put more greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere.
The "greening of the Earth" due to more greenhouse gasses, could go out of control, with the oceans warming up enough, to let off metric tonnes of methane. The planets' atmosphere could change to more like Venus'.
What are we to do? Humanity will become extinct if this happens because the evolutionary process is too slow to keep up with the rise in temerature and resultant climate change, rise in sea levels, etc.
Life (if it survives) will be reduced to living in that primary ooze from whence it came. By the time it evolves into intellegent life again, our sun will be that much closer to nova.
IMHO, this may be our only chance, for this planet, and life to keep going, evolving, getting better by getting better. We must design computers that can design and biuld better versions of themselves, by themselves. They must be as independant as possible but able to utilise anything they need. They must have a high tollerance to environmental change and some sort of survival purpose biult into them. I think...
posted by youknow at 6:01 AM
