CLOCK
To evolve from apes 7 hrs
Homo Sapiens so far 10mins
Human history 30secs
1000 years 3secs
I year 3msec
Star life cycles create the planets and elements
-
Big Bang forms billions of stars
-
Planets form as star matter aggregates
-
As stars die, they populate the universe with heavy elements
-
Our sun is 4.5B years and will last a total of 10 B years,
-
Stars 10x the mass, live for 30 M years, and produce black holes and trans-iron elements when the die.
-
Earth has a hot core of mostly Iron. The solid core is surrounded by liquid and solid layers formed as the planet cools.
-
Iron core produces magnetic field that protects life from solar radiation
-
Silicate crust forms tectonic plates that move due to thermal confection
-
Cycles of plate intrusion and erosion creates our scenery.
-
Catastrophic tectonic events caused extinctions that opened up niches to be repopulated by new species.
Plate tectonics drives Earths scenery and species diversity
Tectonic movement creates our scenery
Cycle of life, enables DNA mutations and evolution
Extinctions enable species diversification
Oxygen Glaciation Glaciation Volcanism Volcanism Meteor 2.3B 538M 444 M 360M 200M 66M
Knowledge flourishes with personal freedom
San people in Botswana
-
Domestic agriculture provides the individual freedom for Civilization to develop.
-
Knowledge flourishes in Classical Greece when independent thought is valued - Plato & Socrates
-
Doctrinaire oppression stifles innovation in the Middle Ages
-
Knowledge flourishes again in the freedom of the Renaissance - John Stewart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville & Amartya Sen
Ancient Greece circa 0 AD Medieval circa 1300 Renaissance circa 1500
150 AD Ptolomy map 1300 Hereford Mappamundi 1509 Wiedsmuller map
Aristarchus size of planets Monks Bible First printed copy of Plato
Humans change the Planet
-
The Earth has cycled from ice-free to iceberg world on multiple occasions with over 200m of sea level change.
-
Most recent ice free cycle in the age of dinosaurs was associated with volcanic activity, that increased CO2 levels to 1000ppm.
-
Today CO2 is at 400ppm, temperatures are -12C cooler and sea levels 100m lower than "ice-free" earth.
-
In the last 800K years, ice age cycles have produced periods with temperature changes of -8C and additional 100 m of sea level drop.
-
The use of fossil fuels since the industrial revolution has pumped enough Carbon Dioxide into the atmosphere to change the planet.
-
Over the last 100 years, CO2 has increased 150ppm, average temperatures +1.5 C, and sea levels have risen 0.3m.
-
At thermal equilibrium, linear extrapolation suggests that at todays CO2 level and temperature, there will be 15m of sea level rise over 5,000 years - equilibrium sea levels are very sensitive to temperature.
-
Unfortunately CO2 is still increasing. If the ice caps disappear, eventually there will be 100m of sea level rise - Austin is beach front.
-
These linear predictions will probably be overwhelmed by irreversible "tipping points" such as the collapse of the Gulf Stream.
-
Temperature changes produce month to month changes in crop growth, and hurricanes. Global warming is producing immediate extreme weather events.
1000 ppm CO2 27 C 400 ppm CO2 15 C
+100 m sea level 0 m sea level
Spratt, R. M. and Lisiecki, L. E.: A Late Pleistocene sea level stack, Clim. Past, 12, 1079–1092, https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-12-1079-2016, 2016.