Thoughts 18

Thoughts 18

Last Friday was a national holiday and Saturday was one of my great-granddaughters' birthdays. I was out of state or traveling when I normally would have been writing. My apologies for being a day late with the post.

Hopefully, I have set up standards in the last post that show how the Earth can have accidents like humans. Still looking at the Earth as a single unit like a human, this week I will see if the Earth can have a disease like humans.

I know that the Mississippi River alluvial plain has been stripped of its' tree so that men can farm the land to make money. With the farming we have been able to better keep the human population increasing. With a continuing increase of numbers and expansion of people, economies grow. Growing economies helps, not universally, evenly or completely, to sate our natural instinct of survival. Having children helps us fulfill another natural instinct; that of reproduction, the passing of our genes. The more people there are the easier it is to indulge our need for fellowship with others, which I understand is a third natural instinct. ( since writing this I have come to see where gregariousness is a by product of survival ) So by changing the Earths surface, we can have more people, more material wealth, more gregarious and antagonistic interaction.

What are the results of one organ of the Earth doing what genetically it is programmed to do? I live in the United States of America so my knowledge is mainly from this area of the world. Hundreds of thousands of square miles of land have had trees removed clearing the land for farming in the Mississippi River alluvial plain. It is my understanding that the same process is taking place in other parts of the world. Haiti has been cleared of trees. Areas of South America are being cleared for farming like the Mississippi alluvial plain, but the ecology in South America is different. When agribusiness changed their crops to take advantage of government subsidies for produce to manufacture ethanol, there was more clear cutting of trees in the tropical far east to fill the market for the crops no longer grown by agribusiness in the USA.

Support for the growing population and affluence also demands more and more energy. Strip mining and possibly the hydraulic fracturing are making dramatic changes in the Earth. There probably are many more examples that could be used but I am not familiar with others.

Earth's population is growing at an enormous rate. Notice on the chart from 1800 through 2010.

Estimated world and regional populations at various dates (in millions)

Year	World	Africa	Asia	Europe	Latin America	Northern America	Oceania
70,000 BC	< 0.015
10,000 BC	1
9000 BC	3
8000 BC	5
7000 BC	7
6000 BC	10
5000 BC	15
4000 BC	20
3000 BC	25
2000 BC	35
1000 BC	50
500 BC	100
AD 1	200
1000	310
1750	791	106	502	163	16	2	2
1800	978	107	635	203	24	7	2
1850	1,262	111	809	276	38	26	2
1900	1,650	133	947	408	74	82	6
1950	2,519	221	1,398	547	167	172	12.8
1955	2,756	247	1,542	575	191	187	14.3
1960	2,982	277	1,674	601	209	204	15.9
1965	3,335	314	1,899	634	250	219	17.6
1970	3,692	357	2,143	656	285	232	19.4
1975	4,068	408	2,397	675	322	243	21.5
1980	4,435	470	2,632	692	361	256	22.8
1985	4,831	542	2,887	706	401	269	24.7
1990	5,263	622	3,168	721	441	283	26.7
1995	5,674	707	3,430	727	481	299	28.9
2000	6,070	796	3,680	728	520	316	31.0
2005	6,454	888	3,917	725	558	332	32.9
2010	6,972	1,022	4,252	732	580	351	35.6

1. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e Northern America comprises the northern-most countries and territories of North America: Canada, the United States, Greenland, Bermuda, and St. Pierre and Miquelon. Latin America comprises Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean and South America. *

What I have said so far in this post is enough to show that not only can Earth have sores like humans, it can also have diseases. What is cancer:

World English Dictionary

cancer  (ˈkænsə)
— n
1.	any type of malignant growth or tumour,  caused by abnormal and uncontrolled cell division:  it mayspread through the lymphatic system or blood stream to other parts  of the body
2.	the condition resulting from this
3.	an evil influence that spreads dangerously

Are humans a cancer on this Earth? Could we be making this whole world uninhabitable; one big sore.

*World population chart from:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population


All photographs in this post are from google.