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Date
I’m a fan of the television series NOVA. I think it’s one of the better produced TV programs, containing great value and educational content, perhaps second only to Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
A recent episode of NOVA was entitled “Life’s Rocky Start” and it covered the ‘co-evolution’ of minerals and life on our planet, spanning back a few years – say 4.5 billion or so. I’ve also been a rockhound (a person interested in rocks and minerals), so this show was perfect for me. In and of itself, it’s a worthwhile investment of 50 minutes of your time – and since it’s produced by the USA’s Public Broadcasting System, it is available streaming, free, here. Please do have a look.
While I watched this program and appreciated the insight of professor Robert Hazen, author of “The Story of Earth”,
a book which divides Earth’s history into six distinct stages (more on this later), I noticed a theme that got me wondering about climate change. The theme was that the planet’s minerals contributed to the evolution of life (that’s logical) and that the opposite was also quite true – life on the planet, not necessarily humans, but life in general – had an immense impact on the planet’s development. A great example is the Stromatolites, a microbial form of life which themselves form mineral, coral-like structures (see photo below) which expelled massive amounts of oxygen into the atmosphere, which at that time had almost none. The arrival of oxygen meant that the Earth’s atmosphere – at the time consisting mainly of carbon dioxide and nitrogen was increasingly corrosive and also increasingly supportive of life on land. Not only this, Hazen has determined that 2/3 of the minerals that now exist on the planet are only there thanks to this introduction of oxygen by the Stromatolites.
So in this case, life significantly transformed the planet, moving it from what Haze calls “Blue Earth” to “Red Earth”.
I’ll fast forward to the stage we’re in now: “Green Earth”.
At the end of the show, Hazen talks about humans. Are we the new Stromatolites? He doesn’t ask that per se, but this was my takeaway. He does say note the “power of life to transform a planet” and does say this: “humans are transforming the planet, we change the composition of the atmosphere, we change the composition of the oceans”. Well, that’s what the Stromatolites did.
Whatever your view on climate change, this show is a very good take for a project manager, if for no other reason than to expand your ‘timeline’ back a ways, having you look back at our planet’s formation, perhaps allowing you to put your own project in more of a long-term perspective. Looking back that far backwards can only help you look forward, as well, to the product of your project, and its long-term effects, looking past the traditional 'end' of your project.
Speaking of endings, here’s how the show ends: “there are going to be global changes, changes whose consequences are now beginning to unfold. This is the latest chapter in Earth’s epic story. A story that began 4.5 billion years ago…with a rock.”
Below: Stromatolites at Shark Bay, Western Australia.
Posted
by
Richard Maltzman
on: January 16, 2016 12:11 PM |
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