Science

Fairytales often contain significant element of danger, and with the label "Goldilocks zone", the danger is the concept can be dangerously misleading. Stars change from a faint young sun through their lifespan until they explode and die as a "nova", and this continual change means the temperature at any distance from a star will change dramatically over time, and it who or what it must be not too hot and not too cold for can also be very misleading.

This page is more under the heading of 'fun facts'. The first 'fun fact' is that while everyone knows how the length of daytime and nigh time vary throughout the year, it may come as a surprise to realise the length of the entire day, also varies. Partly because, second fun fact, the a day is a longer than one rotation of the Earth, which lead to the third fun fact: we just had the shortest total day ever recorded.

While part of the problem is like with the boy who cried wolf people are not listening, the recent revelation that the planet will most likely reach +1.5°C by 2026-2027 makes it seem very likely climate scientists are also being very guarded with how much of the truth they are prepared to reveal. It is not that climate scientists are lying, but what is being said tends to be so heavily qualified that people are able to read whatever they want into what is being said. The lack of clarity allows "religious environmentalists" to hear that we must all suffer for the planet, the politicians to be able to say: "we are on-track with our climate commitments" and those reliant on profits and taxes from the oil and gas industry to believe "we have until 2050". What is needed to get a clear enough picture of where things stand for action to be appropriate to the risk?

"A giant meteorite wiped out the dinosaurs" is the catch phrase.  The first twist is that we now know "only the non-avian dinosaurs". Birds evolved from surviving types of dinosaurs. It was the biggest most spectacular dinosaurs that died, and in fact many of the largest were already extinct. But have you ever wondered "why the dinosaurs, when so many other animals survived?"  Alligators survived, fish survived, mammals survived, even dinosaurs that became birds and other reptiles survived, and even frog species that seem so sensitive to any change in environment survived that meteorite. The common factor was that the biggest ones died and did not reappear either. So why the largest dinosaurs?  And what is the lesson? These answers after first some background and myth-busting. While I do literally mean the actual dinosaurs, there is also a lesson in the answer for the metaphoric dinosaurs that big companies can become, and in the knowledge that if all is left to nature, humans will soon follow and suffer the same fate as the bigger dinosaurs.