All Species Inventory

So I am re-reading Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything. This is a really good book for a non-science person who is interested in science, but not that much.

Anyway, as I listen to the book, I am amazed at how little we actually know about Earth. We probably as a species know more about the planet Vulcan or Klingons than we do about millions of species and many parts of our own planet. To me that is amazing.

Here are some of my mid-read reactions. I think that eventually we are all going to die from something awful - Old Faithful the super volcano (a la 2012), some super virus/bacteria, or from an asteroid clobbering the planet. In the book, each is described with frightening detail. The most frightening thing is that basically we wouldn't even see it coming. We'd just be dead - and in the case of the asteroid/meteorite - it would be in 1 second or less if you were within the blast zone. Ouch.

Here's another point. The best current science can say is that there are between 2 million and 200 million species on earth right now. RIGHT NOW! This is not a total count of ever - but currently on earth with us. We are talking a 10x spread here. That's a bit of a problem for all of us. We, as a species, should know more about what is on this planet with us.

In particular, this could be incredibly relevant to my sister's current dilemma associated with shampoo. If she could find the correct species of bacterium, mite ore microbe - perhaps she could grow a shampoo based ecosystem with productive and lucrative newly discovered organisms. Mary - get on that.