C’è una cosa che amo profondamente in Heike Langhans, la nuova cantante dei Draconian.
Ok, in realtà amo da morire anche il suo umorismo molto tagliente e dark, quindi facciamo due: il fatto che sia un’attenta osservatrice del mondo scientifico e i suoi status spingano sempre a riflettere. E voglio dire, riflettere talmente tanto che perfino io mi ritrovo in condizioni di scrivere, fra il nuovo singolo di Lady Gaga e l’apertura del nuovo negozio di Zara, cose significative e articolate che rasentano l’ambito scientifico.
Stasera parlavasi delle conseguenze dell’incidente di Fukushima sulla vita marina del Pacifico, delle balene che non cantino più, le sardine che stanno morendo in massa e le stelle marine che si stanno disintegrando. Heike ha commentato che questa non è evoluzione, è un abominio, e la cosa mi ha fatto riflettere molto. In inglese, perché sono troppo pigro per tradurre, per cui copiaincollo i miei commenti e tanti saluti.
I’ve read the radioactivity is due to reach America’s west cost sometimes next year, so the whole North Pacific is screwed.
Anyways I’m not sure if I agree with your statement about this not being evolution: I see the human race as part of “nature” itself (which I actually consider the biosphere), and the “damage”, or more appropriately “change” we are bringing upon is part of its process. And it won’t have a long-lasting effect in terms of “nature”’s time: even the global warming in its worst scenario won’t last for a geological age. What we are altering and damaging is the “nature” = environment in which we live. We are destroying and endangering species only if we consider them from a human perspective, ‘cause the biosphere doesn’t dive a shit about single species. Once we become extinct (which will happen) the biosphere will go on, new species will emerge as they always do and “our mark” will fade quickly. What we should be worried about is the environment which allows us to survive, because “nature” will carry on with or without whales, sardines, starfish and us.
On an afterthought: nature doesn’t even have a purpose, life in general doesn’t mean anything but the perpetuation of its cycle, which doesn’t require all the species we know to survive. The problem is, we try to apply our concept of time and continuity to something which is much bigger. As a human being, I can say I love what “nature” produces because it’s beautiful, it’s pleasant and interesting to behold and study. A species becoming extinct is sad because we will no longer see it around, our descendants will only know about its existence through our records, but that’s merely the human perspective on the phenomenon, which is meaningless in the general picture.
Also, the most accepted scenario claims our biosphere will last for another billion years before the atmosphere chemically alters due to the changes in the intensity of the Sun’s radiation along its stellar evolution which, combined with the Moon constantly slipping further away from the Earth’s gravitational grasp that will possibly result in a greater instability of the Earth’s axis tilt on which the seasons depend, will put an end to photosynthesis destroying the life cycle as we know it, and life will most likely carry on only as extremophile micro-organisms. This opens up for two considerations:
1) In this general picture, what such a human concept as biodiversity mean? Even a mass-extintion of the current dominant mammal species along with all the ones it will bring along in its self-destructive process means very little.
2) On the contrary, creating extreme conditions that forge organisms which can survive and proliferate in them (such as the mushrooms in the Cernobyl reactor) does contribute to the preservation of life once the precarious conditions that sustain our strong (in earthly terms) but fragile (in cosmic ones) biosphere are gone for good.
AND, all of this is even smaller if compared to the scale of space, time and energy of the whole galaxy, let alone the universe. I’m going to get vertigo if I try and think of the picture as a whole, it kind of transcends human understanding.
Stasera parlavasi delle conseguenze dell’incidente di Fukushima sulla vita marina del Pacifico, delle balene che non cantino più, le sardine che stanno morendo in massa e le stelle marine che si stanno disintegrando. Heike ha commentato che questa non è evoluzione, è un abominio, e la cosa mi ha fatto riflettere molto. In inglese, perché sono troppo pigro per tradurre, per cui copiaincollo i miei commenti e tanti saluti.
I’ve read the radioactivity is due to reach America’s west cost sometimes next year, so the whole North Pacific is screwed.
Anyways I’m not sure if I agree with your statement about this not being evolution: I see the human race as part of “nature” itself (which I actually consider the biosphere), and the “damage”, or more appropriately “change” we are bringing upon is part of its process. And it won’t have a long-lasting effect in terms of “nature”’s time: even the global warming in its worst scenario won’t last for a geological age. What we are altering and damaging is the “nature” = environment in which we live. We are destroying and endangering species only if we consider them from a human perspective, ‘cause the biosphere doesn’t dive a shit about single species. Once we become extinct (which will happen) the biosphere will go on, new species will emerge as they always do and “our mark” will fade quickly. What we should be worried about is the environment which allows us to survive, because “nature” will carry on with or without whales, sardines, starfish and us.
On an afterthought: nature doesn’t even have a purpose, life in general doesn’t mean anything but the perpetuation of its cycle, which doesn’t require all the species we know to survive. The problem is, we try to apply our concept of time and continuity to something which is much bigger. As a human being, I can say I love what “nature” produces because it’s beautiful, it’s pleasant and interesting to behold and study. A species becoming extinct is sad because we will no longer see it around, our descendants will only know about its existence through our records, but that’s merely the human perspective on the phenomenon, which is meaningless in the general picture.
Also, the most accepted scenario claims our biosphere will last for another billion years before the atmosphere chemically alters due to the changes in the intensity of the Sun’s radiation along its stellar evolution which, combined with the Moon constantly slipping further away from the Earth’s gravitational grasp that will possibly result in a greater instability of the Earth’s axis tilt on which the seasons depend, will put an end to photosynthesis destroying the life cycle as we know it, and life will most likely carry on only as extremophile micro-organisms. This opens up for two considerations:
1) In this general picture, what such a human concept as biodiversity mean? Even a mass-extintion of the current dominant mammal species along with all the ones it will bring along in its self-destructive process means very little.
2) On the contrary, creating extreme conditions that forge organisms which can survive and proliferate in them (such as the mushrooms in the Cernobyl reactor) does contribute to the preservation of life once the precarious conditions that sustain our strong (in earthly terms) but fragile (in cosmic ones) biosphere are gone for good.
AND, all of this is even smaller if compared to the scale of space, time and energy of the whole galaxy, let alone the universe. I’m going to get vertigo if I try and think of the picture as a whole, it kind of transcends human understanding.
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