Philosophy Is a Public Service

Several years ago, I climbed Mt. Washington in Nevada to see the oldest complex life forms on Earth. Typically found at elevations higher than 3,000 meters, bristlecone pine trees can live for as long as five millennia. They do so by growing very slowly in arid environments that are too harsh for most other life forms.

In current climate conditions, a bristlecone pine tree might expand in thickness by one millimeter each year. But the thickness of tree rings will vary based on climate conditions: the amount of rainfall and the level of carbon dioxide in the air.

Dendrochronology is a branch of science dedicated to interpreting the paleoclimate by reading the rings. Using this technique, science has monitored climate variability—and even cataclysmic events—going all the way back to the last Ice Age.

I climbed Mt. Washington to see these trees first-hand, in one of the world’s largest bristlecone forests. It was a six-hour drive from Reno. After the first few hours, I seldom passed another car or truck. My travel companions on this lonely trip were members of the Long Now Foundation, a San Francisco-based organization that has spent the past decade building a monumental clock in a mountain on West Texas property owned by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. The clock is designed to keep accurate time for the next 10,000 years.