familyman

I’ve been wondering a lot about the environment lately. I’ve read a lot about global warming, shifts in weather trends and environmental catastrophes (natural and man-made). I’m concerned about my environmental impact as well as that of my company. I do what I can to help; our city just started a curb-side recycling program in December of 07 and I make sure as much recyclable stuff as possible gets sorted. Before that, I took what was practical to the recycling bin at my office. But I’ve also been thinking about the much larger picture a lot as well.

Man-kind has made a huge mess of the oceans. We’ve made a huge mess of any land mass on which we have existed. Nature seems to be crumbling under the weight of all the crap we put on top of it. Yet… I can’t help but wonder… in the MUCH larger picture, if it makes a difference. Global warming, supposedly, is a fact… a DETECTABLE fact. Yet, how long have we really been tracking this stuff? Man-kind’s ability to register and interpret atmospheric data is a very recent development… in the grand scheme of things.

Think about it; the Earth is BILLIONS of years old. Man has existed for a minute fraction of that time. If you were to take the entire lifetime of the planet and map it out, the existence of Man would be so small that it could be ignored when making any calculations based on Earth’s lifespan. Scientists take relatively small chunks of data and ignore them as inconsequential all the time. They develop entire theories while ignoring data more significant than Man’s affect on Earth would be.

Which makes me wonder about so many other things. What if global warming is just a stage in Earth’s life? What if Earth is a teenager and we are simply seeing an awkward stage? What if Man has nothing to do with these obvious climate changes? Are we trying to stop a process that would have eventually occurred naturally anyway? Something killed the dinosaurs. Was it caused by their blatant disregard for where they stored their waste or how much plant life they consumed

We allow hunters to thin the herds of certain wildlife every year for the BENEFIT of those herds and the area in which they live. We (man-kind) have seen the ravaging effects that certain species can have on a habitat when all they do is what comes naturally to them. Does that mean those actions have an affect on the entire global system? Maybe?

Suppose Man never existed. Would the world go through a cycle where it would be over run by white tail deer that ate every plant in sight and mated until the population was so great they all starved to death? Would whales have become so populous that they squeezed other animals out of their habitats and caused massive changes in the ocean’s delicate cycles? Man kind has had a huge affect on how those animals eventually affected their environments.

So does that mean that we are the cause for global warming? Or does it mean that we are simply seeing a natural progression and are trying to stop it before it wipes us out? I’m not a scientist. I’m probably not all that smart (even though I hope I’m at least modestly intelligent). But it seems like the Earth is too big and set in her ways for us to change it much or make an impact for very long. I mean… BILLIONS of years… how do you compete with that? Methane has had an amazing impact on the life of this planet. Nitrogen and carbon have had amazing impact; but they have been here the whole time.

How many serious environmental/atmospheric changes has this planet been through? How many will it go through in the future? It just seems like this global warming thing is not something we can stop. Sure we could clean up our act (literally) and stave it off for a few thousand years. But if Earth wants to heat up and kill us off, she’s going to.