Today is Earth Day; a day set aside to review and speculate about our conservation efforts and to show support for those initiatives designed to preserve the natural functioning of our planet and promote activities to reduce our “footprint” on its ecological well being.
Anyone who has been reading my work knows that being ecologically conscious is important to me; I endorse reducing waste, support recycling to conserve resources and reduce landfill clutter. My articles often encourage everyone to find ways to re-use their cast-offs by selling or donating things they don’t want to those who do. I write regularly for the local chapter of Keep America Beautiful.
We designed our home to be as energy efficient as we could make it – within our means. We are growing a good portion of our food, and doing so without herbicides and pesticides. And I try to share what I learn about all this with you; my Dear Readers.
My article on Pocono raceway becoming the largest solar powered sports facility, and other Green initiatives within my favorite spectator sport was just published by Sportales eZine.
“Green living” is important to me. However there are some aspects of the modern ecology movement that I can not buy into; particularly Global Warming.
I will not launch into a diatribe on the issue; I am not a scientist and I can not prove anything one way or the other. But from studying the facts presented by others, I come away with an uneasy sense that some folks are screaming “the sky is falling, the sky is falling” because they got knocked on the noggin by an acorn. All of the empirical data being used to “prove” global warming has been mapped from the period from about 1900 to the present. On the basis of an increase in temperature over the past 100 or so years these folk project out a dire and unnatural escalation of global temperatures, and they *speculate* on what is causing it.
This movement is rapidly becoming more of a socio-political tool than a concern for ecology.
Other scientists have used geologic data to chart out global temperatures over the past 4,500 years, and they report global temperatures look like this:
Note that there is a regular and repeating cycle of up and down, hot and cold. This indicates that such fluctuations are perfectly normal. Maybe not comfortable, but normal. And by trying to force the entire planet to maintain an even temperature, we may be doing more harm than good.
Who is right? I can’t say for sure. But I do know that my own observations of the world over the course of my own life, indicates that the world runs in cycles. Expecting to maintain one, even temperature forever is unreasonable.
I am all for reducing the impact we have on the world around us. But, stirring up a panic over something that is so unprovable, and hotly debated as this seems rather pointless to me.
But that’s just my two cents worth. What do you think?
Or, as was recently stated on twitter by Montberte Steve Cushing by WWSharkbaitWW
If you think about it, the Earth is bi-polar.
This may explain a lot.
I absolutely agree with you. Every time I see a fossil of a seashell being dug up from a prairie excavation (2,000 miles from the closest sea) I have to wonder I f this changing landscape hasn’t been happening since the Earth evolved.
So True, Don: there is a ton of evidence to suggest that things have not always been as they are now, therefore we cannot expect them to stay this way forever either. It is we who must adapt. Trying to force the planet to conform to our whims seems pretty arrogant to me.