Try As We Might....

by steve patterson
(barrie, ontario, canada)

Face the big stuff with curiosity and courage - Sometimes we stumble into a conversation that makes the world seem huge and mysterious again. Their honesty might pull you deeper than you think when they talk about life, nature, loss, and the strange hope that still flickers when we talk about the future.

Steve says: Every day, at least one living organism becomes endangered or extinct. These, and their predecessors on the list of endangered and extinct species, did not become so overnight. There was obviously a build-up to this event, be it a fast or slow process, in the case of each individual species.

As science has proven, there has been an unstoppable cycle of change within, on and around the planet Earth; changes so drastic that all life on the planet has ceased to exist for millions of years at a time.

Absolute annihilation of man-kind, as well as all other life forms on Earth, is inevitable. The disappearance of the species that have ceased to exist so far in our lifetime, is just the beginning of the process of elimination that will once again render the Earth lifeless.

There is nothing that can be done to stop this, or even delay the natural process that has been taking place since life began. Everything that lives, dies. Indeed, we can all grasp desperately to what is left of our time, as Earth's most proficient species, but the only thing that will truly be accomplished, is the mental comfort we may provide for ourselves along our journeys.

We can stand millions-strong for the sake of benevolence, but 'man' can not stop nature. We can not stop change.

Barry's Response - Hey Steve. This is like a really bad hangover. But worse. Thanks for your input.

Search this site for more evolutionary information now.

We'll try...

Your message hits like a thunderhead over an empty prairie. Nature swings between calm and catastrophe like a bored teenager flipping through radio stations. Rocks remember hotter times, colder times, wetter, drier, wilder times. Yes, species come and go. It's even in the air we breathe. Change is baked into the system, you're right.

But here's the twist: the atmosphere never stops renegotiating its own future. Every second, it rearranges heat, water, dust, and sunlight. It tries stuff, fails, resets. Weather is the planet's way of making up its mind. We can't stop nature from shifting. But we don't have to act like cardboard cutouts.

There's a funny lesson in meteorology

...such as "small changes make a big difference."

When you give a butterfly enough time and a hot tropical boundary, it can shift a storm track. A two-percent uncertainty in emissions can flip an entire regulatory conclusion. As the old saying goes, a mustard seed has potential that can move a mountain. We don't realize how much nature respects small inputs.

Yeah, the Earth has wiped itself clean before. Life keeps coming back like that kid in class who won't stop raising their hand. The life pushes back. We push back too. We've always done it.

Here's what makes people yell at dinner tables: Don't assume every shift in climate is our fault or that panic is the only moral response. Solar variations, ocean flips like ENSO (El Niño Southern Oscillation), volcanic curtains, orbital wiggles (i.e., Milankovitch Cycles) and other things make up the climate record.

Today's popular stories oversimplify that mess

It's just habit, not malice. We love simple villains. But that's not how nature works.

That doesn't mean we should shrug. Science isn't the only thing that's old.

It doesn't matter if you want responsible resource use or environmental justice or both: we just want a world that keeps working. Air-quality science is one of the places where we make real progress, believe it or not. Better dispersion models, smarter regulations, local actions that actually improve health-these things work. There's no need for an apocalypse.

What about modern meteorology? From it, we get these superpowers:
- Hurricanes are spotted before they form.
- We map smoke before it hits the city.
- A century ago, cold snaps would've wiped out crops but we can now forewarn.
- Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we don't.

Even when we try... nature will win in the end. Meanwhile, we get to play, experiment, protect, question, improve, and sometimes even laugh at ourselves. It's not futility. Just participation, playing the game.

I hear the weight in your message, Steve. It's true. I also hear a hint of surrender I'm not ready for.

Our planet breathes, shifts, cracks, rebuilds... We're here to witness it somehow, We're measuring it, We're arguing about it, joking about it and that's not nothing.

Leave a comment if you have thoughts of your own

Or if you want to throw another curveball from the philosophical bleachers. I promise I'll bring both science and sass. Maybe even a weather chart.