Friday 5 July 2013

Exhaled (2013)

Here we visit the inception of the Industrial Revolution (the Age of Soot) in the 18th centuty and the unlocking of the Carboniferous deposits through coal mining. 

Lyrically it's initially drawn from the phenomenon of Industrial Melanism which saw the Peppered Moth (Biston betularia) undergo a rapid evolution (through selection) due to soot depositing from nearby factories, blackening the white trunks of Birch (Betula sp.) trees in England. 


Pic 1 (left): Soot covered Birch trees lacking lichen colonies camouflaging the black morph while the white morph is starkly contrasted and Pic 2 (right): showing the opposite. (pics stolen from Encyclopaedia Britannica)

Black morphs who existed in smaller numbers within the population where selected for since they were camouflaged against the soot covered bark of the trees while those individuals who were white were selected against since they were now easy targets for predation due to their apparency.

Pic 3: ExtinctExist - Demo MMXIII artwork/logo by Santiago Armengod. Although inspired by the story of the Peppered Moth, the image is actually drawn from from the Death's-head Hawkmoth (Acherontia atropos).

We then fast forward to the present day where the consequences are already being felt with atmospheric carbon levels at a staggering 400 ppm which in Earth's history hasn't been the case for at least 800,000 years. We allude to phenomena attributing to greenhouse gas emissions such as the melting of Arctic ice which has for millennia held ancient methane deposits and is now unleashed to contribute to and exacerbate the global warming crisis. In a nutshell, support for an anthropological hypothesis to explain Global Warming at this stage outweighs the notion that we are merely experiencing natural phenomena alone. One mustn't discount that it too could be a contributing factor, however there is just too much support for a correlation between the inception of the Industrial Age and the rise in atmospheric carbon levels. There's no denying these sorts of climate events have happened in the past to which most skeptics will refer, its the rate at which it is happening that raises alarm bells and the responsibility is ours. There are those out there in the science community who feel we are the last generation to make a difference that will last.

Exhaled
At the turning of the Age of Soot,
The Beast pores seethed carbon pitch,
The melanised woods of Birch grew dark,
Till the Peppered Moth turned black.

Evolution,
Asphyxiation,
Primeval winds,
Industrialism,
Melanism,
Exhaled!

As the Carboniferous tomb is sacked,
And the Iron guts grind time held woods,
The Insidious Seed that is Anti-life,
Is nurtured by the Milk of Arcane Skies.

Evolution,
Asphyxiation,
Primeval winds,
Industrialism,
Melanism,
Exhaled!

As Ancient Breath is exhaled,
The Stories of the Stones speak louder still,
And Ice held secrets unsheathe the Eyes,
To a Snowflake’s fate in a new born HELL...



Evolution,
Asphyxiation,
Primeval winds,
Industrialism,
Melanism,

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