We'll Meet Again, Don't Know Where, Don't Know When...C’mon, Everybody Sing!
by Jacob Gordon, Nashville, TN on 10.13.06
It being Friday the 13th and all, seems fitting to take a little haunted hay ride away from our typically eco-optimistic, solution-oriented tact to a darker place, a Twelve Monkeys, 28 Days Later kind of place. Not even totally sure what the context of this chart is, but the URL says it’s from the Times of London online (more info, anyone?). Morbid as this kind of food for thought may be, it’s still a little cool and fascinating to think of the world post human civilization (admit it, you’ve fantasized). Truth is, we have to go out sometime. Of course we’d prefer leave a considerably more biodegradable legacy than we would if plague knocked us out today. A couple million more years and we’ll be a little closer to ready. (click on the image to enlarge)
Here is a similar article http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/mg19225731.100
It was posted on Hugg too http://www.hugg.com/story/Imagine-Earth-without-people-1/
That's a really cool graphic. Thanks!
The image is Canary Wharf, London (if that's what you were asking in terms of context)
JG: Wow, had no idea. Actually I was just trying to see if anyone knows if this went with an article, etc.
Very cool graphic - thanks.
What happens to the Nuke plants if we disappear? Nukes? Chemical weapons? Science experiments? Satelites?
That time line is inaccurate on one major point: It says that within 10 years, atmospheric methane will be gone, but satelite spectral imagery shows that enormous plumes of Methane (about 20x more potent than Carbon Dioxide as a greenhouse gas) rise from the rainforests.
Plants naturally produce plenty of methane. (I suspect that in the olden days before our industries screwed everything up, this was to help keep the environment warm), and so does decaying animal dung (in India, some places capture this methane for use as fuel.)
Google it if you have doubts.
I did a little searching and here's the original article: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-2399972.html
Looks like the New Scientist article is the original. But the graphic is from the Times article. The New Scientist one mentions methane too. It says it would take 10 years to go back to preindustrial levels. But it's a wild card for the methane in permafrost and hydrates.
Wow. I want this as a poster on my wall!
Since this version turns out to be from a newspaper, wouldn't it be great to make a poster-quality creative commons version of this? I think I've just found my project for the weekend :)
Looks like the New Scientist article is the original. But the graphic is from the Times article. The New Scientist one mentions methane too. It says it would take 10 years to go back to preindustrial levels. But it's a wild card for the methane in permafrost and hydrates.
This is even more reason to pollute and waste. The faster we're all gone, the faster the world can get back to normal, and it won't even take Earth all that long. I'm totally justified in buying a Hummer now, thanks!
The Hummer will make a good crypt does it come with an IPod. Happy tunes for the afterlife!
This time line inexplicably leaves out the part where in 600 years, just after the corals regenerate, a meteor crashes through the Earths atmosphere and wipes out most (remaining) species... It's a pity too because if we'd still been around we could have diverted its course. Guess those endangered species really needn't have bothered recovering at all.
One purpose for us humans may be diverting astroids from hitting Earth. We are kind of like the eyes of Gaia looking out into space. But we do need to find a way to live sustainable.
The earth has survived other astroids, it will again.
There is a morbid fascination to this - like reading The Five Ages of the Universe, about the very very very very long-term fate of the Universe, based on current physics.
I am a little disturbed by the apparent fact that we love the idea of apocalypse as escape; when there is no more place to go to "start over," nowhere you can go to be "outside the system" the only solution seems to be to gouge the heart out of the system. Something which, rather terrifingly, the Far Right gray Deists and the Far Left green polytheists have in common.
In any case, if it makes you feel better: the four Voyager and Pioneer probes, now leaving the Solar System, will survive. 500 million years from now, and perhaps billions of years from now (depending on the dust environment of interstellar space) they'll still be drifting -- more or less intact -- through the Milky Way. Science rules.
Sounds like a plan to me. Who want's to go first?