Episode 179 – Randall Carlson – Human Origins, Asteroid Impacts, and Cosmic Patterns *repost*

Ideas worth returning to

Quotes

Five substantial excerpts from the published transcript, lightly edited for clarity without changing their meaning.

1. “An impact can eject billions of tons of sulfuric aerosols into the atmosphere and add to the chaos of its time. But an extinction-scale event is not necessarily the only thing we should worry about. Smaller events could still devastate a region—potentially taking out the East Coast of the United States—without causing the extinction of humanity.”

   From the conversation

2. “The Global Consciousness Project, led by Dr. Roger Nelson, suggests that humans may be linked through a global network of consciousness and may communicate in some way about what is going to happen. At the same time, reports such as the Greenland ice sheet facing a record single-day melt make the scale of climate change feel increasingly drastic.”

   From the conversation

3. “You cannot accurately assess climate or environmental change while ignoring natural factors that have operated across every timescale we can examine. Those forces will not stop influencing the climate or the environment. There will be periods of global warming and global cooling even if every human being disappeared from Earth.”

   From the conversation

4. “Habitat loss is a major contributor to species extinction, so setting aside reserves where species can thrive matters. We also have to remember that extinction is part of nature: some species will disappear regardless of what we do. Many extinctions during the last one or two centuries have occurred on islands, whose ecosystems lack the diversity that can make other systems more resilient.”

   From the conversation

5. “Our technological civilization can now investigate the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction, the Younger Dryas, and the Tunguska event in ways that were impossible a century ago. We also have the technology to understand that the Sun is a variable star. When it becomes unusually active, the consequences for our civilization could be profound.”

   From the conversation