(Seven-minute read)

Earth will survive Global Warming because it couldn’t care less.

We will be recorded as a minor perturbation in the Earth system.

The Earth will go on.

The question is: Will we?

This is a tricky question because even starting the conversation is a point of

no return.

No matter how high humans cause the mercury to rise and how much damage we do to the planet, Earth and life will survive but not us.

Humans are the most common large animal to ever walk the planet but the notion that human activity, or the activity of an organism, can affect Earth on a planetary scale is still a hard one for many people to swallow.

However, the idea that biology can alter the planet in broad and dramatic ways is now widely accepted. It just might no longer be in the form we prefer or the form that allows us to thrive.

So what will?

Though it might seem as if humans are mere fleas along for a ride on the back of an immense animal called Earth, our intelligence, technology and sheer numbers mean our species packs a punch that can shake the world in wild ways.

The highest populations aren’t strictly on Earth at all, but floating in its atmosphere. Tardigrades.

WHAT IS AN TARDIGRADE?

Micro-animals, so small that they can be visually observed only under a microscope.

They are able to survive temperatures of close to absolute zero (−273 °C (−459 °F)), temperatures as high as 151 °C (304 °F), and radiation that would kill other animals, including all humans.

They can go almost a decade without water. They have the ability to dry out until its body is less than 3 per cent water, and then come bounce back once they’re rehydrated.

Since 2007, tardigrades have also returned alive from studies in which they have been exposed to the vacuum of outer space in low Earth orbit.

There are around 1,000 species, all capable of outliving any of us.

They don’t have to eat for 30 years and if necessary can turn to cannibalism.

Tardigrade fossils have been found as far back as 520 million years ago evolving with their own unique genes over that protracted period of time.

They can clone themselves.

Tardigrades are nearly see-through but you can see them under the right light with the naked eye.

Their entire genome has been sequenced with roughly one-sixth of the tardigrade’s genome stolen from other species. 1.2 per cent of the tardigrade genome comes from other organisms, including plants, fungi, bacteria, and viruses. Another words “proprietary,” and not the result of horizontal gene transfer.

Their genomes contain more copies of an anti-oxidant enzyme and a DNA-repair gene than any other animal.

Instead of thinking of the tree of life, we should be thinking about the web of life.

Genetic material crossing from branch to branch.

Basically, they are nearly impossible to kill.

 

They oxygenated the Earth’s early atmosphere as they began to harness the power of sunlight through photosynthesis.

We don’t consider them as part of the Earth system right now in our calculation about what’s going on, and we don’t consider them in terms of how the Earth system will move forward into the future.

These microbes anchored soil to the ground; We owe them everything.

Earth might still be frozen today if not for the appearance of new life forms.

As organisms evolved, many developed the ability to breathe oxygen.

In the process, they exhaled another greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, which eventually thawed out the world.

They are capable of mobilizing things beyond there own biology.

They will inherit the earth that they made in the first place.

All human comments appreciated. All like clicks and abuse chucked in the bin.