Mother Earth

I was not sure I wanted to tile this chapter Mother Earth. Too many people and groups that seem to worship the earth, rather than just respect it, use this term. Many of these people and groups are the ones that believe that we should go backward hundreds of years in the progress of mankind. They believe that the earth is sacred and any progress than mankind makes is detrimental to it. However, I could not think of a better term to use for this big ball on which we rush through space. After all, it is the basis for everything else it contains, so in that respect it is mother earth. This chapter will look basically at the air, water and all of the inorganic matter that comprises this globe. We will leave the animate objects to be discussed at much more length later.

One of the first things we have to look at is the age of the earth itself. As I mentioned in chapter one, there is a lot of difference of opinion on this matter. Creationists who take the Holy Bible as the literal word of God, consider the earth to be between seven and eight thousand years old. They base this belief on the seven days mentioned in Genesis as being seven twenty-four hour days. Using that as their basis and following the time lines in the bible they arrive at this number. On the other hand, scientists who believe in the big bang or other theories about how the universe was formed, believe that the earth is millions or even billions of years old. They come up with these numbers by various scientific methods of dating fossils and other things. The problem for this group is that many times, when a new discovery is made, it throws the theory they held all asunder. The third belief is the creationists who believe that the seven days mentioned in the bible were seven indeterminate time periods. If God had not yet created light, how could the measurement be made? God is timeless, so to Him time is unimportant. the people who believe this feel that the word day was used in the bible to give the people of old testament time an understanding. how else could you explain to the uneducated people of that time period the meaning of millions of years? I personally am a creationist and believe in the seven twenty-four hour days, but leave my mind open for the indeterminate time periods. As you read this you can decide for yourself which one is correct. I have tried not to be too inflexible and yet not go against my belief.

First we are going to take a trip back in time. For this example we are going to use the scientific way of looking at it and go back about a million years. In the evolutionist's theory most life other than mankind had appeared on the earth by this time. The order of appearance, according to evolutionists, went something like this: protozoa, metazoa, invertebrates, seaweed, fish, land plants, amphibians, reptiles, apes and monkeys and finally the precursor of mankind, the early hominids. I hope I have that in the right order because not having lived in that era I have to take other people's word for it. Actually, God said "Let there be" and there was. But getting back to evolutionist thinking, during the time, prior to one million B.C. vast changes were taking both on and within the earth. Layers of earth were being formed, mountains were being formed, eliminated and reformed. Continents were being formed, covered by oceans and reappearing in a different shape. Seas, lakes, rivers and oceans were being moved from one location to another. Land masses that were under the oceans became high and dry. Another thing that was happening during this time was that a lot of plants and animals were dying, decaying and being turned into various things such as topsoil. As the upheavals such as volcanoes, earth quakes and other earth changing occurrences continued, as oceans continued to shift locations, this decaying plant and animal life became embedded deeper and deeper in the earth. These are the things that, due to the earth's pressure and time, have become our fossil fuels. They became the coal, the oil, the natural gas and even the diamonds we have today.

Now let us take a look at how it might have been under the seven days of creation. After God created the earth and everything on it, we do not really know what it looked like. The continents may well have been different than they are now. After a few thousand years there was a flood over the entire earth. There are now many scientific signs pointing to the fact that there was in fact a worldwide flood. When the flood waters receded, that is when the continents became what they are today. After that there would only be minor changes due to earth quakes, volcanoes, etc. The oil and coal and other fossil fuels, as they are called, were part of the earth and are probably being replenished continually. We may be using them a little faster than they can replenish themselves. If they are not replenishing themselves, how come every time the scientists tell us we are going to run out of oil by a certain date, we never do?

Back to the starting time of one million B.C. During the past million years, according to many scientists, we find several glacial periods. The first glacier came at the beginning of this million year period. The second glacier came at about five hundred thousand B.C., the third at about two hundred thousand B.C. and the forth and final one at about one hundred thousand B.C. Between each of these glacial periods there was a warming period. The period between the second and third glaciers was so warm that Europe supposedly had what could be considered a tropical. All of this without humans being there to muck everything. No pcb's, no smog, no pollution, no man made carbon dioxide, just nature. Remember this when we get to the chapter on global warming. Just nature caused all of the warming then, "How can that be?"

Until nest time remember I have two other blogs:
http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com
http://www.sasl.blogspot.com

What Environmentalism is Not - 4

Whether one is a creationist or an evolutionist, one has to agree that man is the dominant creature on earth. Whether you believe that God gave us dominion over the plants and animals or that we earned it through survival of the fittest, we still occupy the top rung of the ladder. Humans are the only logically thinking, (most of the time), tool using, upright walking, sentient creatures on earth. this kind of leaves it to us humans to care for the earth itself and the rest of the inhabitants, flora and fauna. Notice I said care for, not ruin, rape, plunder or any other detrimental thing. However, I also believe that we are allowed to use the earth and everything on and in it. Being a spectator to life and the world around us is not what life is about. Plants use nutrients from the soil and air. Animals use plants and other animals for their food. That is a gross over-simplification of the food chain, but it still leaves humans on the top. I believe that we can continue to use our natural resources and if we do so wisely, we can leave plenty for many generations beyond our grandchildren.

This blog and all of my writing is written for America. While I realize that many of our problems affect other countries and that their problems affect us, I believe we need to clean up our own back yard first. Trying to tell other countries how to handle their environmental problems while we have not handled our own seems a little disingenuous to me. Giving them money to help clean up their country while ours needs a much work as it does, does not seem to smart to me either. Therefore I have decided to concentrate on America. While I may mention other countries or other parts of earth from time to time for comparison, these areas are not the point of this book. We will go to look at the earth in general and then to a closer look at what I consider environmentalism.

We will get into that next time. Remember; check out my survival blog at http://www.sasl.blogspot.com and also my political blog at http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com.

What Environmentilism is Not - 3

Now that I have picked on what I consider non-environmentalists, let me go into what I see as true environmentalists. These people come from all walks of life, but you will probably never hear the names of most of them. Farmers: Having been born and raised on a farm and still living in a farming state, I am somewhat familiar with farmers and their beliefs. The average farmer would no more harm the environment than he would cut off one hand. The former makes a living from the environment. They are accused of using too many chemicals and many other things that supposedly harm the environment. I doubt whether any farmer would knowingly harm what he relies on for his living. Foresters and loggers are also good environmentalists most of the time. They, like the farmer, know that this is where they earn their living. Most people will no ruin something just for a quick buck, knowing that their future depends on what they do. There are always a few that will go for the short term profit, the future be damned, but you will find that in any business. People who hunt, fish and trap are usually excellent environmentalists. Here again we have our slobs, but that is to be expected. Human nature being what it is you will always have some bad apples. I will be doing complete chapters on these and others, so I will not go into this subject any deeper right now. I just wanted to make it clear at the outset that, yes there are environmentalists around. There are also good scientists out there that actually study the environment and use analytical thinking to make their judgements. Many doctors, lawyers, and Ph.D's and even some celebrities and media people do make rational decisions when it comes to the environment. The problem is, we almost never hear from this group.

We also have to take a quick look at politicians. These people are in a position to do much good or much harm with the laws they pass. They can pass environmentally friendly laws or they can pass knee jerk, do something, just anything legislation. we have both types of politicians in government, so we hope they at least cancel each other out. I have an entire chapter on politics and government but would like to say right here and now that politicians like Al Gore are only out for two things; money and fame. They use scare tactics to try to turn people to do certain things that they control the profit of.

As I stated earlier, I am not a scientist, therefore this book will not be a scientific document. I consider this book to be a work by a common person written for other common persons. Many of the thing I have written this book may be considered suspect. This is because I, like most other people, am drawing on my own experience and my own opinions. Take the argument of creation versus evolution, the big bang or six days. I do not believe that these things make a lot of difference. We all know that the earth has been here for a long time. there is no exact scientific way to determine exactly how long, only theories. Creationists will tell you that the earth was made in six days and those that interpret the bible literally will tell you exactly how old it is. There are also those creationists who believe that the six days mentioned in the bible are not really twenty-four hour days at all. They believe that God, being timeless, may have taken millions of years to do what is stated as a day in the bible. Neither can scientists agree on the exact age of the earth. New discoveries keep popping up that throw past theories out the window. While I definitely am a creationist, I am not going to get into that argument in this book. I am going to use commonly believed and used numbers. While some of those dates may not agree with the six days of creation, they make it easier for both schools of thought to understand.

Enough for today. Check out my other two blogs; http://www.therealamericanpolitics.blogspot.com & http://www.sasl.blogspot.com