We live in a razor thin band of temperatures

Posted to Online Opinion (not by me) You don't have to be an Oxford Scholar. Try this little thought experiment. 1. The diameter of the Earth is 12,700 km. 2. 75% of the mass of the atmosphere is squeezed into a skin of gas only 11 km thick. 3. Stop and digest that for a minute. 4. Think of all the dense carbonaceous material we have gasified (fluffed up volumetrically) over the last 150 years. 5. Imagine all the forests, coal and oil burnt in the service of industry, economics and population increase over that time. 6. We have used our tiny gassy skin as a rubbish tip for 150 years. We "externalised" the costs (or so we thought, until now). 7. Because we couldn't see gas, we thought it didn't matter. Because we dumped our rubbish in the name of a false god (profit), we thought we were being awfully modern and clever. 8. It turns out that we were monkeys in suits all along (apologies if there are any actual monkeys reading this). No-one is denying that the pulse beat of the Sun and Earth brings about inexorable change. We can measure some of it's history in the rocks, ice and tree-rings. It is the SPEED of the present change which is alarming. It is the speed of the present change which is defeating the biosphere's ability to adapt in time. Posted by Chris Shaw, Carisbrook 3464, Sunday, 24 June 2007 2:40:22 AM Find out more about this user Recommend this comment for deletion Return to top of page Return to Forum Main Page Copy comment URL to clipboard The other thing to consider is the span of temperatures that range across the globe and encompass all living things. The difference between the cold of the poles and the heat of the Sahara seems extreme to us. Yet in fact, this is a very narrow band of temperatures indeed. The North Pole is an extremely warm place in the solar system. The Sahara is an extremely cool place in the solar system. We and our fellow life-forms live in a razor thin band of temperatures. We, together with our little blue planet, have enjoyed an almost impossibly improbable existence. What will it take to steer us off this narrow track? Just some jumped-up monkeys in suits? A dessicated coconut? A bat-eared galoot for a Treasurer? Is that all?