Hothouse Flowers

"Die Heuernte" by Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1526/1530–1569) - Christian Vöhringer – Pieter Bruegel, 1525/30–1569. Tandem Verlag (h.f.ullmann imprint) S. 96 ISBN 978-3-8331-3852-2. Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons - http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Die_Heuernte.jpg#/media/File:Die_Heuernte.jpg

So, Ugo Bardi (who seems to be a great guy, one of these days I would love to toss back a couple with him) is writing interesting things again.  Like last time, I don't exactly agree with him, but his thoughts did provoke me enough to allow me to sit down and respond.

Since it was (and is) a leisurely Sunday morning, I thought that I would wander through his article and make certain that I had the background down.  It was interesting.  First a blast from the past and a creepy reminder of work done other than Dune written by Frank Herbert.  Then, over to the Doomstead Diner for some light reading and a brief survey.  

When I clicked on the link about "Near-Term-Extinction" I was promptly shuttled over to the site maintained by that dickhead Guy McPherson and that kinda pissed me off, but I persevered.   I read the stuff and decided that McPherson is still a dickhead and kinda moved on.

Ugo amused me with the phrase "A lot of things can happen in several tens of thousands of years".  As I had just finished Neal Stephenson's new EOTW book "Seveneves", it struck be even funnier as one of the sections heading in this book is "THE HABITAT RING CIRCA A + 5000".

I wonder is Ugo was reading Seveneves when he wandered into possible future speciation.   As this is one of the cores of Neal's work, I wonder if the Hugo and the folks he linked to have the same Neal Stephenson habit that I have.

But overall the article is a pretty broad overview of what everyone already knows;  Shit changes, that shit is changing, and it looks to be getting ready to change even faster in the none too distant future.