5 ms·

> Human activity is limited to the upper parts of earth‘s crust, which is itself only a fraction of earth. Magnetism happens WAAAAAY deeper. But doesn't that a

> Human activity is limited to the upper parts of earth‘s crust, which is itself only a fraction of earth. Magnetism happens WAAAAAY deeper. But doesn't that assume that metal/mineral deposits closer to the surface, or at the surface, those that humanity has mostly exploited, do have no effect at all? What if surface deposits and those closer to it act as some kind of "coating" leading to slight changes in dynamics we still don't understand or might not even realize yet actually exist? When we are very much like ants: In the singular seemingly insignificant, a single ant would never be seen as capable as "harvesting" any bigger animal carcass. Yet the scale and endurance of these ants make it possible for them to slowly pick apart something that would normally consider them quite insignificant in their actions, very much like we've been doing for a very long time. In that context, I'm kinda skeptical about how often the impact of human activity is belittled as supposedly having an "insignificant" contribution to global-scale environmental changes. Reminds me way too much about how climate change is to this day still argued as something "natural", and many past human activities that were declared "safe and inconsequential" at the time, ended up still having very real lasting and global effects, like atmospheric nuclear weapon tests. It makes me wonder how much of that argument is connected to religious beliefs along the lines of "Humans could never seriously threaten or impact God's creation, and if we do, then God intended for it to do so", which sometimes manifests in weird ways like considering environmentalism as a form of "native evil" [0] [0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/may/05/evangelical-christian-environmentalism-green-dragon https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/may/05/eva...

oefnak 6y ago
How would that work? All metals we harvested, we moved maybe a few kilometres higher.
- freeflight 6y ago
  We also diluted their concentrations and refined them, so it's not only "just moving them a few km up", we spread it way out in way smaller concentrations than natural deposits tend to be, which prior existed in very different structures due to the way they get formed. And to note: I'm not saying that's actually a thing, what I'm taking issue with is these reflexive declarations of human activity supposedly being "too insignificant" as regularly being the go-to answer to many environmental changes and issues to categorically deny human activity as having any and all influence on them. Imho that's just short-sighted and belittles how often we have been absolutely wrong with that kind of approach, only to then later having to admit "We fucked up and now there's not really a way to fix it, our bad". Because contrary to popular belief, not even 21st-century humanity is without flaws, we are not omniscient, even when quite often pretend to be to justify that kind of false hubris of "insignificant human activity".
chmod775 6y ago
The difference to climate change is that the earth never experienced such a rapid change in climate short of cataclysmic events in the time periods we can indirectly observe, whereas the earth's magnetic field changing happened quite often and quite suddenly even before humans came around.
- freeflight 6y ago
  And the similarity is how for literally decades that possibility was either belittled or quite bluntly suppressed when the changes couldn't be as directly observed and didn't as directly impact us, as they are doing by now. That's what I take issue with, I'm not arguing that changes to the magnetic field are without a doubt the result of human activity, I'm merely taking issue with how quickly and nonchalantly such possibilities are hand-waved away with "human activity is just too insignificant". When by now it turns out human activity has been significant enough to kick-off a process that can be very much described as "terraforming", or rather "venusforming" terra.

oefnak 6y ago

How would that work? All metals we harvested, we moved maybe a few kilometres higher.

freeflight 6y ago
We also diluted their concentrations and refined them, so it's not only "just moving them a few km up", we spread it way out in way smaller concentrations than natural deposits tend to be, which prior existed in very different structures due to the way they get formed. And to note: I'm not saying that's actually a thing, what I'm taking issue with is these reflexive declarations of human activity supposedly being "too insignificant" as regularly being the go-to answer to many environmental changes and issues to categorically deny human activity as having any and all influence on them. Imho that's just short-sighted and belittles how often we have been absolutely wrong with that kind of approach, only to then later having to admit "We fucked up and now there's not really a way to fix it, our bad". Because contrary to popular belief, not even 21st-century humanity is without flaws, we are not omniscient, even when quite often pretend to be to justify that kind of false hubris of "insignificant human activity".

chmod775 6y ago

The difference to climate change is that the earth never experienced such a rapid change in climate short of cataclysmic events in the time periods we can indirectly observe, whereas the earth's magnetic field changing happened quite often and quite suddenly even before humans came around.

freeflight 6y ago
And the similarity is how for literally decades that possibility was either belittled or quite bluntly suppressed when the changes couldn't be as directly observed and didn't as directly impact us, as they are doing by now. That's what I take issue with, I'm not arguing that changes to the magnetic field are without a doubt the result of human activity, I'm merely taking issue with how quickly and nonchalantly such possibilities are hand-waved away with "human activity is just too insignificant". When by now it turns out human activity has been significant enough to kick-off a process that can be very much described as "terraforming", or rather "venusforming" terra.