Taking A Look At Our Planet

Buckminster Fuller the famous builder once stated, “It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry.” This is so true, the world could turn into a paradise if suddenly we diverted the money we spend on weapons to creating better living standards for those living in our countries. One has to wonder why we embrace war so much. We know there are those who make a lot of money from war, but you would think there was enough of us to say no to war and make it stick. Maybe one of the reasons we can’t get our message across is the way power is set up. We are supposed to be one of the most democratic countries in the world and yet we don’t even vote directly for our president, we do it as a suggestion as to how a group of people in the Electoral College should vote. Note I said suggestion, because they are not bound to accept that suggestion.

The Earth is messed up, there is no doubt about that, but sometimes we get a pleasant surprise. Parts of the oceans on the planet are getting very acidic. Scientists believed this would destroy the fragile reefs. Surprisingly when they checked the coral reef around Palau they found it was resistant to the acidic ocean and thriving. They tested the reef in nine different places and found the closer they got to the land the more acidic the water was. The scientists testing the reef said, “When we first plotted those data, we were shocked, we had no idea the level of acidification we would find. We're looking at reefs today that have levels that we expect for the open ocean in that region by the end of the century." Isn’t that sad, we are expecting the oceans to become much more acidic and yet nothing is being done? One has to wonder what will happen to the ocean life as this acidic level increases.

There is more bad news concerning the Earth. Over 70,000 years ago a volcano called the Toba supervolcano erupted. It caused the biggest eruption ever to take place on earth in the last 2.5 million years. The volcano is located in North Sumatra in Indonesia and people in a village named Sitoluma who live near the volcano are getting very worried. Their homes are becoming hot because the ground under them is heating up. The air is full of steam and the smell of sulfur and gas. Lake Toba is a lake which fills the Toba volcano’s caldera and it is beginning to rumble. Some experts believe the last eruption caused a volcanic winter and lowered the temperature by 3-5 degrees centigrade and caused the last ice age. Many also believe the human race was reduced to only a few thousand people due to this. Indonesia has many active volcanoes and earthquakes seem to be on the rise worldwide.

Scientists have just completed a study and they have found California has more to worry about than just the San Andreas Fault. They found California is at risk for tsunamis and there are other faults along the US West coast which can cause significant earthquakes. Tsunamis are hard to defend against and a few years ago killed hundreds of thousands of people. The area of the Pacific Ocean where California is located is part of the ring of fire. The zone stretches from around the east coast of Australia, the east coast of Asia including Russia, goes around Alaska, the west coast of Canada, the United States, Mexico, Central and South America. A large number of volcanic eruptions occur in this area along with earthquakes. Tsunamis are giant waves which move at hundreds of miles per hour across the ocean. Experts believe a wall could not be built high enough or even strong enough to withstand a large, fast moving tsunami and the best protection is evacuation. The problem is there is usually not enough time to do this once one is detected and areas with large populations make things even more impossible.

A new type of farm is being designed. It is quite amazing and points to new thinking in this area. The farm is solar powered and floats. It is said to be able to produce 20 tons or more of vegetables every day. The farm would be modular, use the sun as its energy source and be able to desalinate seawater for its needs. It is believed the design could be used to grow thousands of tons of crops every year. The construction would be relatively simple. The farm would float and have three levels. The bottom floor is where agriculture and water desalination takes place. The floor above is the hydroponic crop cultivation and the roof or top floor contains the solar panels, rain water collectors and skylights. Not only would crops be cultivated at the rate of 8,152 tons a year, but the farm would also be able to bring in 1,703 tons of fish a year. I can’t wait to see this become a reality.

I don’t know about you, but there are certain things which repulse me and some of this has to do with GMO food. WorldTruth.TV ran a story about GMO rice and it should give most of us second thoughts about eating this stuff. Unfortunately the manufacturers of the GMO grains do not have to tell us the grain is GMO so when you are eating something with this in it, you wouldn’t know until the laws are changed. In case you don’t know, GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism and there doesn’t seem to be a limit on how these crops can be modified. Unfortunately for our food source WorldTruth.TV is telling us there is now GMO rice which has had human genes added to it. It is said it is being grown in Kansas. This rice has human liver genes and will be used for medicines. Here is the problem, we are not supposed to eat this rice, but it is being grown outdoors so what is to stop it from being spread to other plants or other rice? This is exactly what happened with corn when a modified strain was allowed to grow outside. “This is not a product that everyone would want to consume,” said Jane Rissler from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) to the Washington Post back in 2007. “It is unwise to produce drugs in plants outdoors.” “These genetically engineered drugs could exacerbate certain infections, or cause dangerous allergic or immune system reactions,” said Bill Freese, Science Policy Analyst at the Center for Food Safety (CFS), who published a report back in 2007 about this rice.

Uruguay’s former President, JosΓ© "Pepe" Mujica had this to say about global consumption in 2013, “We can almost recycle everything now. If we lived within our means, by being prudent, the 7 billion people in the world could have everything they needed. Global politics should be moving in that direction. But we think as people and countries, not as a species."