{"id":54181,"date":"2020-07-15T15:30:22","date_gmt":"2020-07-15T20:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54181"},"modified":"2020-07-15T15:30:25","modified_gmt":"2020-07-15T20:30:25","slug":"cogs-in-the-climate-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=54181","title":{"rendered":"Cogs in the climate machine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"021f\"><a href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/climate-conscious\/cogs-in-the-climate-machine-167cf16750dd\">Cogs in the climate machine<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>A short course in planetary time, for planetary survival<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is less of a blog post, and more of a howl.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The planetary climate clock, in human time<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Let\u2019s start by some human and planetary timescales. I don\u2019t know why we don\u2019t learn them in grade school (I never learned them at all). But they matter. And let\u2019s represent them visually, in a stark, plain way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/max\/686\/1*MFeSkNMtQaGLZKdvYa-XCQ.jpeg\" alt=\"Image for post\"\/><figcaption>King Canute and Queen Aelfgifu, date circa 1020, from the register of Hyde Abbey, courtesy of&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Canute_and_Aelfgifu.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>\u201c_\u201d : this is our unit of time, and it\u2019s 1000 years long.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>_ is 10 long human lifespans, 40 generations, the time separating us from the first millennium and the Middle Ages in European history, when Canute of Denmark ruled Britain, before Marco Polo traveled the Silk Road. It\u2019s a long time by any human account: twice the duration of the Roman Empire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>_____ is 5&#8217;000 years. It\u2019s the age of the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/List_of_oldest_trees\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">oldest known living tree<\/a>, Methuselah, in the Californian White Mountains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>____________ is 12&#8217;000 years. It\u2019s the time span separating us from the last ice age. This time is the time during which humans slowly selected plants, developed agriculture, cities, writing: anything we would call civilization. It is the time when humans thrived, cultures multiplied, our population grew. This clement and stable climate interval, which sheltered us and the plants we depend upon to live so well, is known as the Holocene. Gaze upon that interval fondly, for it is already in our past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/max\/1211\/1*0rR23L1_4TMdx6qN9yI2HA.png\" alt=\"Image for post\"\/><figcaption>Figure 1.2 from the&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ipcc.ch\/sr15\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">IPCC\u2019s Special Report on 1.5 degrees<\/a>, showing that we have already left the temperature range of the Holocene.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cogs in the climate machine A short course in planetary time, for planetary survival This is less of a blog post, and more of a howl. The planetary climate clock, in human time Let\u2019s start by some human and planetary timescales. I don\u2019t know why we don\u2019t learn them in grade school (I never learned [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[141,29554,14273,10333],"class_list":["post-54181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-julia-steinberger","tag-medium","tag-time"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=54181"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54181\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54182,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54181\/revisions\/54182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=54181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=54181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=54181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}