The earth has always been thought of as a blue gem floating in a black sky. In countless science-fiction stories, it is the envy of alien races that are looking for a better place to live. There is no doubt that it is a beautiful place and when you look at it from a vantage point out in space, such as the moon, it looks like an island of hope in a sea of despair. Did the earth always look this good? Will it always look this good in the future? These are tough questions to answer. It is very difficult to speak of the distant past with any kind of certainty. One has to remember that we puny humans only have a miniscule life span, compared to the age of the earth. Since there was no technology around in the distant past and no people either for that matter, we can only guess what the earth was like. These guesses are based on what we believe is available evidence. Science is not always right and that is one of the main problems that we face when we talk about matters that require scientific opinions. Let me just illustrate this point in a small way. The museum of natural history in New York City, is one of the most famous museums in the world. Because it is so famous, many of the top experts in different disciplines work there. Yet with all of these experts present, it turned out that many of the dinosaurs that were being featured had the wrong heads on them. This went on unnoticed for many years until the problem was finally corrected, or so they say. Look at it this way, a pit is uncovered that contains hundreds or maybe thousands of dinosaur bones and skulls. How can anyone be sure that these things were rebuilt exactly the way they should be, under those circumstances?

St. Augustine Volcano
Photo Source: US Fish And Wildlife Service

The thing about the earth is that it is constantly changing. Sometimes these changes are so gradual that the average human does not have a life span long enough to even notice them. At other times the changes become quite obvious. When I was a child living on the north east coast of the United States, I remember that it would be freezing by the time Thanksgiving came around. When I say freezing I mean it literally. Water would have all turned to ice by then, if it was exposed to outside temperatures. Lakes would have frozen over and people would be putting food outside in boxes, to use these temperatures in place of a home freezer, because home freezes were too expensive for most people to afford in those times. Today I sometimes go out in the middle of January in short sleeves to put out a bag of garbage or perform some chore that doesn't take too long. I am not saying that it is like summer outside, but it's certainly isn't freezing cold either, much of the time. This is a change in the earth that I have been able to see in my own short lifetime and I am sure that many other people in my age group have also noticed it. There is no doubt about it, the weather in the northeastern part of the United States is certainly much warmer than it was a mere 50 years ago. Notice I didn't say that the earth was getting warmer even though many scientists point to this fact, I only commented on what I knew from my own experience.

Temperature changes are not the only thing going on. We are at a time in the existence of the earth where mass extinctions of animals and plants is occurring. All the life on this planet, no matter how small, seems to be interconnected with all other life in some way. With the advent of modern man, came the decision to try and control nature by eliminating some of its pests .We have to remember that something we call a pest may be very important to some other life forms on this planet. Farmers want to get the most crop yields, because they usually make more money when they sell more bushels of a crop .There are exceptions to this rule when there is an overproduction in a certain crop which drives the price per bushel down, but the general rule is, more bushels equals more money. So what do the farmers do to ensure that they will get bigger yields? One of the first things they do is fertilize the ground, which in turn causes some fertilizer to run into streams and rivers polluting them and maybe even killing the life in those waters. The second thing they might do is spray chemicals on the crops to try and kill undesirable insects that eat these crops. Killing insects without first finding out what their connection is to our ecology is a big mistake. One must first find that position in the food chain and also try and find which creatures are dependent on them for food and anything else. The farmers are now using crops that have had their genes altered to make them more hardy. This practice has caused these crops to spread, because once they are growing on a farm, their seeds and spores are then carried by the wind. Many other countries and environmentalists are very upset that we have exposed these crops to the air. What will be the long time effect on our food supply, or on the human race is yet to be determined.

Another area where our earth is changing is our land and water masses. New land is constantly being created by volcanoes, which are creating islands and extending landmasses. Some of these volcanoes are under the ocean and some of them are on the land. The undersea volcanoes are responsible for new islands appearing in Hawaii and other places. Tourists can actually go to these places and watch the islands being formed, but of course they will need their scuba gear in some places since some of the islands have not reached the surface of the water yet. On land volcanoes are spewing out ash and lava, which is being incorporated into the landmass. This incorporation is raising the elevation of places and even extending the landmass further out into the ocean. The oceans are getting higher as the ice melts in the glaciers and polar caps. This has become all too evident lately as a group of islanders had to be evacuated since their island was becoming covered by the ocean. As the ocean gets higher, the chance of flooding in an area increases. Evidence has been found all over the world of communities that existed thousands of years ago, but are now submerged. This has to lead us to believe that this is not the first time that the ocean has risen, regardless of what we are being told by some people. .I am not saying that humans were not responsible for what is happening now, but I am saying that it might have happened anyway even without human intervention.

Even the very earth we are on is changing in size, due to the movement of the plates .NASA has acknowledged that an earthquake, which occurred when the Indian plate slid under part of the Burma plate has shortened our day by 2.68 micro seconds. The North Pole was actually moved 2.5 centimeters. This was all due to the violence of the event. If you push earth's plates close enough together, it will effect the size of the circumference of the earth. I am not a geologist, but I suspect that if the plates expanded, and in other words pushed away from each other, the size of the circumference of the earth might increase. The useful land mass of the Earth is shrinking in other ways too. The deserts seem to be expanding while the ocean seems to be covering more land, thus effectively squeezing an ever expanding world population into a smaller habitable area.

So let's look at the big picture. We are living on a beautiful planet that is changing in many ways. Some of these changes are definitely being caused by the human race, while others are being caused by nature. Some of the changes that are being blamed upon humans, may not be their fault. Other changes that are taking place definitely are our fault. For example we cannot blame nature for the changes that are taking place because we planted genetically altered crops. Global warming is probably our fault also, but might have happened even if we weren't here. There is just no way to tell right now. We know that we are dumping many millions of tons of carbon dioxide into our atmosphere and this is not a good thing, but is it causing global warming? The same goes for extinction of species. We know that we are probably responsible for some of these extinctions, but extinctions of different species of animals and plants have been going on since they first were put on this earth. If this wasn't true, dinosaurs would still be prowling around this planet. If we try and reverse some of these things, it could turn out to be a lot harder than we thought, if the events are caused naturally. The earth is an interesting place, but it is certainly not static and we all have to realize this fact. There will always be changes going on, some will take place so slowly that we will notice them and others might happen considerably faster, changes are part of our life on this planet.