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These so called “Thrill Vacations” or “Extreme Adventures,” like the submersible Titan which imploded while diving to the wreck of the Titanic, demonstrate how very fragile life is on Planet Earth.
Human life doesn’t do very well even a few yards underwater. It doesn’t do very well a few miles above it, either.
We exist in the troposphere, the layer of our atmosphere that runs six to nine miles above sea level.
There’s no chance of being crushed by tons of water in the troposphere, but approaching its upper levels becomes difficult for life at as little as three miles for some. Consider that another thrill seeker’s goal, Mount Everest, at 29,031 feet and just under 5 ½ miles into the troposphere, has claimed at least 322 lives over the years.
These weren’t casual strollers out for a short hike up House Mountains, 3,386 feet for Little and 3,645 feet for Big, and a mere nine-mile round trip. These people have to pack more than a lunch and water. Everest’s summit can have hurricane force winds and sub zero temperatures, before wind chill is factored in. They aren’t hiking in shorts and sandals!
The fact is human life gets very challenged at lower levels than the uppermost troposphere.
The following math is based on a 6.2 mile high troposphere, bypassing things that live below sea level and the troposphere, but are nonetheless critical to our environment. It does not consider the fact that some unmeasured life forms may exist above solid land.
Imagine Earth the size of a regulation men’s basketball, 9.5 inches in diameter. The Moon would be about the size of a baseball and would orbit about 25 feet away. This is based on the scale of the Earth’s diameter (7,926 miles) to the Moon’s diameter (2,159 miles). The Sun, the most important thing in our environment, at 109 times the Earth’s diameter would be 86.3 feet in diameter, just fitting inside a baseball diamond. It would be 1.83 miles from our basketball size Earth.
That most critical home to human life, the 6.2 mile troposphere, would be about 0.0048 of an inch thick on our basketball size Earth. That’s about the thickness of a thin dollar bill, 0.0043 of an inch.
Mount Everest would be the size of a small grain of sand, barely perceptive to touch.
Yet we seem willing to treat this paper thin layer of livable atmosphere on Earth like a vast, uncorruptible and inexhaustible resource.
If there is water and sunlight enough, the existence of life would be possible on that basketball. We might first observe mold and mildew. Algae would eventually stain it green. If we had a microscope that could see the microbes that might grow, we might see how they live off the plant life that sprouts.
Yet observing some of the “microbes” on our planet Earth, we would see that not all are capable of the basic human ability of prescience or are willing to embrace the forewarnings that tell us we need to guard and protect this paper thin environment. It will change faster than we can cope.
We’re already seeing those changes, whether they are manmade or natural. It doesn’t matter if we can control these changes for the first time in the history of life on our planet. It only matters if we could have and failed to act.
It’s a tough challenge to meet these problems with political “leaders” who have no solutions to them.
Since they have no ideas to provide the public, they seek support by downplaying threats. They offer alternative facts to deflect public concern. “Covid will disappear in the summer.” Alternative cures that have no basis in science. “Bleach in the bloodstream”? Really?
Coupled with no viable strategies is the tactic of changing the subject. Find something that is basically harmless yet misunderstood and incite the wavering public to fear it. Immigrants are always an easy target. Vilify them and accuse them, as a group, of frightening crimes. Even more harmless, yet a profound enigma to many, are the gay and transgender.
It doesn’t hurt if religious beliefs can be twisted into support.
These politicians are even wanting to rewrite history or at least to ban its teaching in our schools. What is the dangerous peril in learning our sad history of slavery and its offspring, racial discrimination? Does ignoring it happened make it disappear? Can it be airbrushed out of memory?
Of course not. But it can be a great source of arousing a divisive disconnect among the people who feel themselves victims of a degree of disenfranchisement.
And it is a perturbation that doesn’t need too deeply a scratch to bring to the surface of those who feel their suffering has been ignored.
Sadly, these politicians are not the solutions to these people’s problems. These people are the solutions to these politicians’ desires, anxious to appeal to their suspicions only for their vote.
These politicians have no answers to the pressing issues that confront us.
Only keeping their base fearful of a bogeyman.
Just another menace to our fragile environment.
