Scientist can make translucent mouse now. I'm sure the mice hate it. I mean seriously how would like to watch your food process as you ate it?
Just think how it would change the way we interacted with one another. Instead of asking your friend if he/she wants to go to the bathroom with you, you can say, "You're bladder is topped, let's go to the bathroom."
And when you are sitting beside a jerk at the bar and you excuse yourself to go to the bathroom to get away from him...now he'll be a super jerk and call you on it.
That does assume the alien race that dropped down and made us translucent like we did the poor mouse took away our clothes as well. But why make something translucent if you allow it to wear clothes. Kinda of defeats the purpose.
It doesn't sound like a very fun life being translucent and naked. So let's leave the mouse alone. We have bigger problems.
Let's discuss the poor little flying squirrel of San Bernardino.
Now that is a cute little fellow. He's got skin flaps between his body and legs that allow him to hang-glide from one very tall tree to another.
Sadly, climate change is reducing the truffles he likes to eat. People are encroaching on his habitat and trimming the trees.
I would like you for a moment put yourself in the squirrel's situation for a moment. You wake up, discover there's no coffee in the house, and stumble out the front door only to fall on your face because someone has removed the steps to your house. I dare say you would be a bit miffed. Especially if you have a great deal of steps and now you can't get back into your house.
Well, now you know how the little squirrel feels.
Some people are trying to get them classified as Endangered. But I don't expect it to happen. The squirrels are poorly documented. (They'll probably be deported to Mexico.)
Upon hearing about a volcano explosion in Japan
(to go with those in Iceland)
and that scientists now think the reversal of the poles could happen anytime, it made me realize we should probably declare humans an endangered species as well.
Yes, there are billions of us...right now. But between our propensity to slaughter others of our species, the upcoming pole reversal, and our climate change, triggering volcanoes, earthquakes, deadly storms, floods, intense heat and freezing colds, and the warmed ocean releasing sufficient methane gas to finish off anyone who didn't go in the prior incidents, I believe our billions will whittle down to a few thousand who will hide deep under the ground in hopes of surviving. I don't think they'll succeed. The deep freeze that follows is long lived.
It does make me wonder if Martians destroyed their planet, much like we are doing with this one, but had sufficient time to build a ship and landed on Earth, only to be wiped out in this planet's cleansing cycle.
People keep saying we caused this with our bad management of the planet. We've certainly abused our home, but I remain unconvinced that we are the major cause behind the climate change. Before homo-sapiens ever evolved from the apes, this planet has repeatedly had a global warming followed by a freeze. During the global warming the planet had massive volcanic eruptions, earth plates shifting, methane gas poisoning.
But please, let's stop saying global climate change isn't happening. It's happened too many times to doubt it happening again. This should be our number one focus because it doesn't matter if we caused it or not. The hard and ugly fact is we won't survive it. So our only choice is to stop fighting each other and spend all our efforts on stopping it. That is what we should focus on: The survival of the Human Race.
We have to become better managers of the world, because we are just years away from being fired. That's right YEARS, not decades, not millenniums. The closer we get to the tipping point, the faster matters escalate.
For example, it was previously believed our magnetic force around the earth was decreasing 5% a century. Recent studies indicate it is now decreasing at 5% a decade.
I can only wonder what it will show next year...
The weakening magnetic force is believed to indicate the arrival of our magnetic pole flip. What happens to Earth and our electrical infrastructure when that happens? Does anyone know? If our data gets fried along with our grids, we are as good as dead, except for some tribes in Africa.
We've never faced a situation this serious before. Just as we've never faced Global Warming and then Freezing before. But that should be the focus of our attention. Sadly, our future survival doesn't make the top ten of our daily concerns.
Here's an interesting survey recently taken. People who believe in science are more likely NOT to be worried about Global Warming. Possibly because they have confidence scientists will solve the problem. Unfortunately, scientists aren't supermen. They can explain the problem, but by the time any politician is going to listen, it will be too late.
The 2nd group who isn't concerned about global warming is Parents. The guess as to why is that they NEED to believe there will be a good place for their children to live when they grow up, thus they block dangers they cannot personally protect them against from their minds.
If only that worked...
But it does explain why people are working so hard to save the adorable little flying squirrel. A) it's really cute and B) saving it seems possible. Saving Earth...way too hard.
I should rephrase that. We aren't actually trying to save Earth. Earth will go on as a planet without us, and in a million years there may be little proof we ever existed. Then it will warm and new, life will evolve.
Earth doesn't need saved. We do!
Seriously, I don't want to reincarnate into an amoeba a million years from now. It's hard to spell and I won't be able to write novels.
Liza O'Connor is an author who reads way too much Scientific American.
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