John Baez – Zooming Out In Time
October 16th, 02006 by Simone Davalos
Welcome to the Anthropocene
The graphs we see these days, John Baez began, all look vertical— carbon burning shooting up, CO2 in the air shooting up, global temperature shooting up, and population still shooting up. How can we understand what really going on? “It’s like trying to understand geology while you’re hanging by your fingernails on a cliff, scared to death. You think all geology is vertical.”
So, zoom out for some perspective. An Earth temperature graph for the last 18,000 years shows that we’ve built a false sense of security from 10,000 years of unusually stable climate. Even so, a “little dent” in the graph of a drop of only 1 degree Celsius put Europe in a what’s called “the little ice age” from 1555 to 1850. It ended just when industrial activity took off…
Read the rest of Stewart Brand’s Summary
This entry was posted on Monday, October 16th, 2006 at 1:56 pm and is filed under Seminars. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Posted on October 24th, 2007 at 1:53 am
Facinating podcast. How can I view the graphs?
Posted on October 24th, 2007 at 10:30 am
The video is available to all members at members.longnow.org or you can get the DVD on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/John-Baez-Zooming-Out-Time/dp/B000VSMUGI/ref=sr_1_5/102-7773207-6916907?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1193251715/thelongnowfounda
Posted on June 19th, 2008 at 10:05 am
my mom told me that 1934 was the hottest year on record not 1998.