View of a living Earth

Hat tip to Bill Elwell.

This video from NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio is a simulation of the development of a typhoon off the coast of China during seven days in 2005.

I could do without the corny musical score and sound effects, but I do agree with the video makers that the Earth, with its ecology of topsoil, waters, atmosphere and web of living organisms, is more like a living thing itself than it is like anything else.

The Gaia hypothesis is a metaphor, not a fact, but it is a good metaphor.   The Earth is more like a living thing than it is like an economic system subject to cost-benefit analysis, or a cybernetic feedback system that can be reprogrammed, or any of the other metaphors that blind us to our world’s inter-connectedness.

Tags: living earth, NASA, NASA Scientific Visualization Studio, Scientific Visualization Studio, typhoon, Weather