Earth is a pretty good place to live, especially if you compare it to other planets. I mean Mars is just full of red sand while Venus is just burning. Many climate models believe that Venus was very much like Earth. It had surface temperatures similar to Earth. It also had oceans, rain, maybe even snow, continents, tectonic plates, and quite possibly life at some point. So what happened? May be exactly what’s happening with the Earth right now.
A recent simulation of the Earth’s atmosphere just showed how things could change over the years. I never thought the atmosphere was something so complex. The simulation was run based on data from NASA’s Goddard Earth Observing System Model, Version 5 or GEOS-5. You can watch a video of the simulation from the link down below.
According to the description, the simulation “was run on a supercomputer, spanned 2 years of simulation time at 30-minute intervals, and produced petabytes of output”. The video showed Earth as if it was a living being, constantly changing. GeoSpy captured snapshots of the atmosphere every 30 minutes and even managed to capture a category 4 typhoon in the Western Pacific Ocean.
It’s sad to think that we may be ruining the Earth. Too much carbon emissions are increasing global warming, which is melting more ice caps and affecting our ecosystem. However, a change in the ecosystem doesn’t really mean that we could end up like Venus and just die off. But there is a slight possibility that could happen.
The video alone shows that while the Earth may just be a big ball of rock, everything inside it, every living being, comes together to give life to it. According to Microbiologist Lynn Margulis, from the University of Massachusetts, “The idea that we’re wrecking the Earth is wrong; but wrecking ourselves is another story”.
The Earth will likely be here even after the human race dies off. By saving the climate, we’re not saving the Earth, we’re actually saving ourselves.