Strange Days on Planet Earth
Around the globe, experts are racing to solve a series of mysteries: how could a one-degree rise in average temperature have profound effects around the globe? How could crumbling houses in New Orleans be linked to voracious creatures from southern China? Hosted by actor-writer-director Edward Norton, this award-winning series uses state-of-the-art graphics and globe-spanning investigations to understand how our environment is changing and why?
More and more plants and animals are turning up where they don’t belong. The global system of transportation is carrying them around the world. Alarmingly alien species have the potential to cause damage to the health and wellbeing of our communities and need to be kept in check. At the end of World War II, American soldiers in the Pacific used wooden crates to ship equipment back to the United States. Little did they know that they were also transporting an aggressive breed of termite. They might be small but in large numbers they are destructive, bringing down the timber homes that dominate New Orleans.
In Uganda it took only a few years for water hyacinth, not native to the area, to rapidly spread around Lake Victoria, choking the banks. Diseases such as malaria and dysentery have been on the rise, and the prevalence of the plant has made it harder for fishermen to make a living. Can a small insect, the weevil, bring the water hyacinth under control? In the forests of Hawaii, a plant introduced in the 1960s, has become a new source of erosion. The invasive plant with its destabilising root system has caused an increasing number of landslides. Not only devastating to species in the forests, soils being dumped in the oceans are also damaging sea-life.
Part One – Invaders
Part Two – The One Degree Factor
Part Three – Predators
Part Four – Troubled Waters
Oh, my god!
Vlatko, you are my global hero, mate.
Thank you so much for posting knowledge to the world.
From a Brazilian student living in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
PR
Great documentary. Thanks, Vlatko
It took me some time to see all parts, but it was worth it.
It’s also sad to find out how dramatic some of those changes are, especially considering the irreversibility of the continuing negative effects.
“With the arrival of every new species it’s very much like russian roulette. We spin a new species into the environment and the potential for catastrophic impact to society, to the economy, to the environment is always there”.
prof. J. Carlton
Thank you both Paulo and Thece.
Program 1. Disagree on one major point.
We can all agree that species differentiation and cannibalization has occurred at rapid rates throughout time, and that the issue today is the speed at which it is happening. It is a never ending process essential to, and defined as, the continuation of life. But just because we have the mental capacity to comprehend this, does not make it wrong, or even unsustainable. Indeed, this planet is 14 billion years old. We pretend that we are the first civilization anywhere. That is so wrong, and very arrogant. That is very much our species. If there is anything we can learn from history, it is that we don’t learn very much, and that the generation 200 years previously knew nothing at all. That is our true perception of reality.
Just think on this. Of all the human beings that have ever lived, ever, in time, then 10% + are still alive today. ??????????? Really. Just think about that for a moment, and what that means. Go look at the laws of exponentiality, go look at our population today, and go do the maths. It is a scientific fact, that 10% are still alive. Today. In 2020, that will be 20%.
Species can grow so quickly, just like ours, and yet we consider any form of animal civilization with conscious thought, capable of comprehending the concept of a God, as just a measly 30,000 years old max. From our 30,000 year old existence bubble we convince ourselves that “No-one, or nothing, could have ever had the amazing technological world that we have” That is 30,000 out of at least 7 billion possible years.
Not much survives 350 million years.
There are technologies yet unavailable to us, due to a lack of our own personal knowledge. And yet, these same technologies have no reason to not have been available to previous species of animal. In the same light, I am sure there is much we have today that was not utilized before.
Why no life before 350 million plus years? Why could those millions of years not have produced a civilization, or even many. Ours is going crazy right now, dominating the planet, and from just 30,000 years ago.
Then think of the stars. Anyone who reads, and has a curious nature for knowledge, will know that there are so many stars and universes, that we can barely find the computer to calculate it, or write it’s number out. It is so big, it will have to be written as “to the power of ……….. some really big number”. So, what are the chances of there being life out there? Not necessarily humans (and the whole “parallel universe” nonsense), but just organic life, capable of interacting with the stimulus around it, at a conscious level? The chances are really really very high. As a species like ourselves, who can only experience a small amount of time, then for sure, it is going to be impossible for us to find out (probably). Indeed, if a species like ourself could find life in outer space, it would be so freaky as to suggest the universe is stuffed full jam packed with life everywhere and anywhere. The chances of it not are just too outrageous to contemplate.
My point is this. Why can’t there have been other civilizations that have been as great as ours, living on this earth, that we have no knowledge of. The world has suffered what we would consider, turbulent times before, through natural catastrophe and shear existence. Surely it has been through thousands of other catastrophes initiated by an animal species, progressing its way thought life. This is surely not new to the history of species .
Finally – of all the humans that have ever lived, we can expect 8, yes, just eight, to be found as fossils, in some shape or form, in just 150 million years from now. You’re not going to be able to write our great history from that. But that is what we do to others. Our existence is defined by an air of invincibility, and a refusal to look at the competing possibilities, and threatening probabilities.
Who is to say that we have not had animals or life that has not been able to spread itself around the world so quickly as we do today? As the documentary suggests. Who?
Life just continues. That we can be certain. It will happen in some area, in some universe. How it continues, we have no knowledge of at all. But what we think we know today, will be what we were wrong about tomorrow.
Thanks Vlatko. Great site. I do very much pass it along.
very nice to see Ed norton outside of a movie…. first rule of global warming is you do not talk about global warming!!!
excellent info!!!!