Let’s Weigh up our Time Scales
Guest post by Green Christian member, Edward Gildea
The sudden and dramatic changes in the balance of Earth are sometimes attributed to the vast natural cycles of our planet. In order to distinguish them, we need a sense of scale.
If we turn years into inches:
- Humanity started using fire in the ‘Old Stone Age’ 1.6 million years or roughly 25 miles ago
- The Neolithic Era or New Stone Age, when we became farmers, started just 333 yards ago (12,000 years)
- The Bronze Age started 147 yards ago and the Iron Age 89 yards ago
- Jesus lived about 55 yards ago
- The Industrial Revolution started 7 yards ago
- The Machine Age of internal combustion and electrical engines started just 3.8 yards ago
- The Atomic Age began 2.16 yards ago and
- The Internet Age started a mere 33 inches ago.
This gives us a sense of the astonishing acceleration of our technology following an incredibly long period as cavemen! At school I assumed that the Old and New Stone Ages were roughly equal. They never told me that the whole of human history since the start of the New Stone Age adds up to less than 1% of the Palaeolithic era!
More astounding still is the fact that half of all the greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere were put there since Boris Becker won Wimbledon in 1985, just 38 inches ago!
This breakneck acceleration of our fossil fuelled lifestyles is what places the problem in a different order of magnitude to the natural cycles of the planet, such as the Ice Ages.
- The first Ice, the Huronian, was 2.3 billion years; roughly 35,000 miles ago
- The fourth, Late Palaeozoic Ice age, when the continents started to drift, was 360-250 million years ago; roughly 5,000 miles ago
- The most recent, Pleistocene Ice Age started 2.6 million years, approximately 40 miles ago and is notionally still with us.
These cycles of the planet are on a totally different scale to the 38 inches in which have so radically altered the balance of the planet. As a species have enjoyed a largely benign and balanced climate. We have learned how to adapt to snow and ice as well as desert. But never has one generation brought about such sudden changes which so profoundly affect the life chances of the following generations.
There are other theories that the accelerated melting of the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets are due to volcanic activity. There were indeed an amazing 85,000 earthquakes in Antarctica in 2020 due to the activity of the previously dormant Orca Seamount volcano. But while a NASA-led study helped explain why the ice sheet collapsed rapidly in an earlier era of rapid climate change and why its so unstable today, the researchers emphasised that the heat source isn’t a new or increasing threat to the West Antarctic ice sheet, but rather has been going on over geologic timescales, and therefore represents “a background contribution to the melting of the ice sheet”. The Marie Byrd Land geothermal plume, which melts ice and creates lakes under the ice, was formed 50-110 million years ago, 790 – 1,700 miles ago. Far longer than Boris Becker’s 38 inches!
These vast, natural events in their massive timescales are way beyond humankind’s control, but we should not use them as excuses to continue our business-as-usual lifestyles. As with everything in life, we should take responsibility for those actions that are within our control, and, if we have faith, pray to God for those that are not.
Edward Gildea
Edward Gildea writes magazine articles for his local church, St Mary’s, Saffron Walden in north west Essex, each month. He has kindly given permission to anyone to re-edit for your own parish newsletters. Please credit him and his church website.
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Comments on "Let’s Weigh up our Time Scales"
Judith Russenberger:
I read recently about a labyrinth which marked the span of time from perhaps (can’t remember exactly) the ice age to the present day. Thus article gives the practical info to recreate such a labyrinth- thank you
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