"Wind soughed cold through the heat which had brooded earlier, like a sword through flesh..." (p. 129)
I have become hypersensitive to references to wind, expecting metaphors and pathetic fallacies, but maybe this time it is just a physical description. However, the deteriorating environment is like an attacking enemy and in fact signals organized military assaults by barbarians displaced from their usual habitats.
Trees toss and brawl. Air whines and booms. Lightnings torrent. Natural violence surpasses that of the inhabitants.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Earth getting smashed by a really big asteroid, as we see in Pournelle and Niven's LUCIFER'S HAMMER, would certainly outdo the puny efforts of men!
Ad astra! Sean
The dinosaur-killer wiped out about 75% of terrestrial species -- from giant dinosaurs down to plankton. Photosynthesis shut down for over a year, possibly several.
And 99.9%+ of individual life-forms died. For millions of years, the dominant vegetation was ferns -- because their spores survived better.
That one came fairly close to extinguishing all multicellular life.
The Permian-Triassic extinction event came even closer to extinguishing as multicellular life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event
The hypothesis with the best evidence for the cause of the extinction is, the flood basalt eruptions in Siberia over large coal beds releasing large amounts of CO2 & SO2, disrupting the climate. This interupted ocean circulation so the bottom waters became anoxic, resulting in sulfate getting reduced to H2S, poisoning much life.
This recent podcast discusses all the major mass extinctions
https://www.decouplemedia.org/podcast/episode/1a8b0dbc/climate-change-and-mass-extinctions-a-deep-time-perspective
or on YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMo3taRLrLI&t=1s
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Jim!
Both: Terrifyingly bad, all these extinction level "events"! I've heard of the dino killer event, but not the Permian/Triassic "incident." All this strengthens yet more my absolute conviction the human race needs to get off this rock simply to assure survival.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment