permaculture

["John D'hondt" <dhondt@eircom.net>]

Unfortunately completely untrue and it never stops to amaze me that so 
called scientists can get away writing an article while knowing so little.

In 1885 King Oscar of Sweden and Norway offered a price of 2,500 kroner for 
anyone who could establish mathematically once and for all whether the solar 
system would continue turning like clockwork or whether it was possible that 
at some point in time Earth might spiral away from the sun and off into 
space.

A mathematician (one of the biggest) by the name of Henry Poincaré won the 
price by proving conclusively that even the smallest disturbance anywhere in 
the solar system but more likely with the planets closest to the sun 
(Mercury especially) would make the continuation of the clockwork completely 
unpredictable. For all anybody knows our solar system could fly apart 
tomorrow.

Poincaré's proof has since been completely confirmed by more modern chaos 
theory. A relatively small disturbance can have huge and completely 
unpredictable effects. It is like the butterfly flapping it's wings and 
being the cause of an huricane two years later.

These "scientists" are talking about a stable situation for billions of 
years. Anybody have an idea how long a billion years is and what could 
happen in that time span? We now have big meteorites flying close by Earth 
that were not detected more than a day beforehand. It is completely 
impossible to foresee what will happen next week or in the next year or the 
next century, let alone in a billion years. These "scientists" have never 
heard about Nassim Taleb's "Black Swan" idea even if that was on the best 
seller list?

For me the message is simple and in this I completely agree with many native 
American people : "don't do anything you would not do if you knew there was 
a chance you would die tomorrow". When Luther was asked that question he 
replied that he would plant as many apple trees as he still could today. I 
feel that only a bunch of evil lunatics would contemplate dropping millions 
of gallons of agent orange on some tropical jungle or contaminate forever a 
once fertile desert with tons of depleted uranium or continue dropping bombs 
on schools and hospitals and family homes on a daily basis.
And just maybe, if apple tree planters were more aware that the future is 
completely unpredictable they would be more willing to do more to stop dark 
evil? After all, if you knew there was a chance you might die tomorrow would 
you not be willing to take more of a chance today to do the right thing?

John in Ireland



> UEA scientists reveal Earth’s habitable lifetime and investigate potential
> for alien life - University of East Anglia (UEA)
> http://www.uea.ac.uk/mac/comm/media/press/2013/September/habitable-life-on-earth
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