The green man is a fake

António Pedro Marques · 16 Jan 2011, 22:35 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: entonio at gmail.com (=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Ant=F3nio_Pedro_Marques?=)
Date: Sun, 16 Jan 2011 22:35:29 +0000
Subject: (urth) The green man is a fake
In-Reply-To: <F62DE84A31734BAA9E76586471608470@jill>
References: <SNT123-W358B848CDF3BEC307BB043CFF50 at phx.gbl>
	<F62DE84A31734BAA9E76586471608470@jill>
Message-ID: <4D3372B1.1020001 at gmail.com>

Gerry Quinn wrote:
> From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>> The amount of sunlight hitting the area of human skin is not enough
>> energty to allow
>> homeothermy and movement. And we know that the Green Man is a walker
>> through the corridors
>> of time, which requires energy approaching full stellar output.
>> Something is not right with
>> this guy.
>
> Correct about homeothermy and movement. As has been noted before, Wolfe
> is not writing hard SF, for most authors of which this would be a slight
> stumbling block.

- Who says the green man lives only on photosynthesis
- Who says the green man only uses chlorophyll-based photosynthesis (other, 
parallel pigments can make use of other wavelengths)
- Who says more intense radiation can't lead to different photosynthetic 
strategies (heck, even our plants have 3 types)
- Who says photosynthesis is the only path to autotrophy
- Who says the green man isn't engineered to be more efficient in his 
storage of energy
- Who says the green man isn't engineered to be more efficient in his usage 
of energy

(Interestingly, one corollary of your idea is that a moving, talking plant 
is an evolutionary impossibility.)

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