Be optimistic !

[HiFlyer 9,359]

Mother Earth takes a breather, while humanity is on hiatus.......

The Pandemic Is Turning the Natural World Upside Down

 

[Mallard 195]

🙂

 

 

Cheers

 

Mallard

[n4gix 4,947]

Brilliant! Thanks for sharing this Mallard...

I've never really been a fan of Queen, but at least I could understand these words!

[HiFlyer 9,359]

At least some of us are free(er) to wander during all of this....... 😁

 

 

[HiFlyer 9,359]

There is a theme to this: how quickly the earth immediately begins the work of recovery as the constant damage caused by man is reduced even for only a short time.......

Himalayas Visible for First Time in 30 Years From Some Parts of India as Lockdown Sees Drop in Pollution

[MaDDogz 242]

I was having this very conversation with my other half just hours ago.

Birdsong where birdsong was never heard...rivers and lakes becoming clear.

plants that has been extinct starting to grow back

...it’s an eye opener...

[Dominique_K 10,146]

Just now, MaDDogz said:

 

...it’s an eye opener...

An air so pure, birds singing, nature getting lovelier. Let's hurry to go back to older times !

When people where dying from hunger  or exposure to weather, when the average life was far below 50 yo, whe the daily food pittance was mainly bread and vegetable wit a veryoccasional meat, when in-house running water was not even an existing concept and so on and so forth

Pollution has its merits too 😋 !

PS The Mind Unleashed site has no what I would call a stellar reputation in presenting facts

Edited April 10, 2020 by domkle

[MaDDogz 242]

But whilst in the haze of pollution, we’ve lost sight of the beautiful world we once had, and it’s just reminding us. 
 

this new DX12 globe looks much better than the old DX9 one! 🙂

[Dominique_K 10,146]

Just now, MaDDogz said:

But whilst in the haze of pollution, we’ve lost sight of the beautiful world we once had, and it’s just reminding us. 
 

this new DX12 globe looks much better than the old DX9 one! 🙂

 I agree with  you. The world is still beautiful and a little less pollution haze would absolutely be great. I guess my slightly ironic response was not directed to you but influenced by a debate we have in my country where the Chucky lot tries to use the awful pandemic to convince the general public that it is a warning of our planet to us and that we should back to a green age which never existed.

[HiFlyer 9,359]

1 hour ago, domkle said:

 I agree with  you. The world is still beautiful and a little less pollution haze would absolutely be great. I guess my slightly ironic response was not directed to you but influenced by a debate we have in my country where the Chucky lot tries to use the awful pandemic to convince the general public that it is a warning of our planet to us and that we should back to a green age which never existed.

I do think its a warning.

I think even many scientists would agree. The crumbling environment, the burgeoning populations encroaching on animal habitats (and the resulting diseases) the overcrowding, coupled with ubiquitous worldwide travel, makes pandemics pretty much inevitable; and not naturally confined as previously, but worldwide in a flash.

Seeing dolphins return, skies and waters clear, whales begin to change their movements now that they can hear each other again without all the boat noise, is a reminder to some of how disconnected we've become in our relationships with the natural world, to the point that we seem to have forgotten that we still need an earth in balance and in working condition, and that our current population densities, not to mention our mishandling of our environment, are just as unhealthy for our continued wellbeing as they would be for any other destructive organism.

Meanwhile, the animals and sky and water are reminding us that we can't do without the earth, but the earth would eventually do just fine without us.

[Dominique_K 10,146]

Just now, HiFlyer said:

I do think its a warning.

I 

 There is a little doubt that pandemics have existed for a long time even when there were only few millions men on the whole Earth.  If I thought that Earth was an entity, I don't, I would say that it has been trying hard to kill us all along 😄.  We won a right to survive, as a specie, against the environment. The extraordinary rise  in sanitary security we have seen in two centuries is the fruit of the Industrial revolution.  Now, in all great epidemies, we see the same eschatological reflexes. Some are genuine fears before the incomprehensible, some are  just political snake oil. We see a lot of snake oil these days.  At least, in my country.

 

 

[HiFlyer 9,359]

57 minutes ago, domkle said:

There is a little doubt that pandemics have existed for a long time even when there were only few millions men on the whole Earth.  If I thought that Earth was an entity, I don't, I would say that it has been trying hard to kill us all along 😄. 

True, pandemics have always existed, but it's also true that in nature they tended to be localized, and certainly not species threatening. Or correction, they may be in that as we fight to protect ourselves, we threaten other species we see as vectors for disease, like the millions of both healthy and diseased (some rare) birds and other animals constantly culled to forstall human infection.

Which could lead to a whole other conversation about species diversity.

Yet in the end its our own actions, via our close quarters civilization and ubiquitous global travel that supercharges transmission in ways nature would ordinarily never allow. To the point that now humanity is pretty much in a constant pitched battle against emerging (and seasonal) hotspots held in check only by the technology that also helps enable the problem.

I was thinking about that a bit not too long ago as I had my annual vaccination against the various flu's and increasingly resistant illnesses of the month that now sweep through humanity continuously, only held in check by constant action on our part, a triumph of our civilization as you said, but also a symptom of it.

We're pretty complacent in our confidence about our so-far successful fight against nature. But as I wandered through the grocery with my niece yesterday in my trusty N95 (with my handy-dandy rubber gloves) and observed the skittish people scurrying to grab their groceries and get away, I was a bit pensive, reminded that to the universe we're just another disposable animal, and possibly a bit easier to wipe out eventually than our short history (measured against the lifespan of the earth, the sun and etc) might lead many of us to want to believe.

We pore over the ruins of collapsed civilizations and wonder exactly what happened, and in a very human fashion ignore dwelling on how fragile our own society might be, or the fact that many of the most serious ongoing threats against our species survival, possibly the majority of them, are now artifacts of our own choices as a civilization, the first capable of not only wiping itself out, but also of taking everything else with us.

Having said that, I also realize that I'm dragging the thread off-track, so I will shut up, now.

[Dominique_K 10,146]

Just now, HiFlyer said:

 Having said that, I also realize that I'm dragging the thread off-track, so I will shut up, now.s.

 

I hesitate to post again as I don't want you to think that I want to have the last word but I enjoy the conversation. And the thread is titled "be optimistic". This is exactly what we are discussing right now, you and me. I refuse to self-flagellate like penitents whipping their  back to blood, chanting 'it is our sins, our great sins'.  

 As a specie we are indeed extremely young and have survived against all odds, including predators. There are on this planet species different than ours, minuscule and terribly dangerous predators   : plague, cholera, typhus, typhoid, syphilis, small pox, flu etc. Some have almost wiped out the Western civilization at least twice, and that was long before the technological world arose.

Have the industrial revolution boosted their power of nuisance ? On the contrary,  since then the odds of a pandemics destroying our specie have diminished. We have eradicated some (small pox, polyomelitis) and more or less successfully contained others (measles, plague, cholera, typhus, flu etc.).

Travels. These critters from what we know have always  travelled along the trade or migration routes  (evidence of that date from 5000 years  plague traces).  We are one global specie, we like to move.

COVID-19 is not a warning of a mythical Earth or Mother Nature, like the writing on Belshazzar's wall  told in the Book of Daniel. It is another enemy in one of the countless  battles we have fought in the last few hundreds thousands years.

 I have already alluded to the political side of this issue, very clear in some countries  I won't come back to it not to cross Avsim ToS.  

 

 

 

Edited April 10, 2020 by domkle

[vgbaron 3,623]

13 minutes ago, domkle said:

 I have already alluded to the political side of this issue, very clear in some countries  I won't come back to it not to cross Avsim ToS.  

Thank you

 

Vic

[skully 1,045]

The Days the Earth Stood Still.