408 What is the greatest misconception concerning Mankind and the Earth? Mankind can only be considered a bane on the planet's, other lifeforms.

     When I was in school, I read much of what Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote. One idea that he wrote about was destiny, he wondered who fulfilled their destiny better, mankind or the great apes of the forest? What is destiny, is it the total sum of a species' progress. or the single individual's purpose? Or only a concept that mankind wants or needs to believe in? Every species of life alive today is only here, because of past life that came and went, changing the very atmosphere or soil so that other adaptions were required for another type of life to continue.

    The eternal question, of why we (mankind) are here, has been studied, debated, religions formed, and wars fought, all in an attempt to answer a question that may have no answer or one that we are simply not ready for yet! For us to suddenly find a reason for mankind to show up at just the right time, to save all carbon-based life is a staggering prospect, that was in truth a million years or more in the making! 

    Magicians have been fooling people into believing what they "think" they see going back thousands of years. Science has been around now for a while, but in its beginning, they were no better than someone who misleads others for their own gain. So there should be no surprise that we can be easily fooled by a good sleight of hands artist, or someone with the appearance of an honest individual when they are only out to benefit from others, not help others. Most of us are taught very young in life not to trust strangers, yet most times it is "friends and family" that we need to watch out for. So the concept that much of mankind is not to be trusted with either our children or our money, has a basis in some form of reality. It is not any great leap to start believing that yes mankind is or can be a "bane" to the planet. But then you have to start dealing with facts, not opinions!

   Then there are the facts that we have never understood because the blind spot that mankind has from almost every religion is that "Mankind is to have dominion over the Earth and all of its Creatures!" Of course, we are going to put ourselves at the top of the ladder with only "the Gods as our betters." With those of us who could interpret what the "Gods" wanted, to have a divine right to rule the rest! Once mankind went from a "hunter-gatherer" society, to an "agricultural-based society, necessary for increased populations to be sustainable this is when mankind started "Saving the Planet" at least for the foreseeable future. Did we have even a tiny idea of what we were doing was in some way benefiting all carbon-based life on the planet? No, we did not even know that we were living on a planet that circled the sun let alone how we were changing the next 10-15,000 years, to where we were now!

    Exactly where are we at? We all live on the only habitable planet within the solar system, not some desert world, (well only 25% desert) but a beautiful planet with everything that is necessary for all life to be in abundance. But we are not doing so because we also live in a money-oriented society that cares only a little about the rest of life, only once our own comfort begins to be at stake do we start looking at how the planet is responding to the "new every changing normal". Why did everyone jump to the (Obvious) conclusion, that it had to be mankind who is behind it all? Well, I could give a hundred examples of mankind causing wildlife on the planet to either die off, be killed off, or being chased out of their habitat due to us! So of course we start looking for how it is all our fault! But looking at the big picture of why the planet is not 3,500 years into another ice age when mankind was at a population of between 10 - 20 million on the whole planet! That is just what happened, why do we need to understand more? Because why it happened was not without a reason, and mankind's new way of living in one spot and growing and herding was the new normal that was also the reason! Think of it, only a 1000th or so of our population was able to stop the next ice age from starting when they were still in the stone age! In those last 3-5 thousand years our planet has still been sequestrating on average 7 gigatonnes of carbon every year meaning that between 21,000 and 35,000 gigatonnes of carbon have been removed from being available for life to use! Scientists now calculate the remaining available carbon (even including all of the known fossil fuels reserves) at less than 50,000 gigatonnes of carbon! 

    Only in the last 150 years has mankind been using fossil fuels as a consistent energy source, not to sound like a broken record but we are 3,000 to 5,000 years beyond where we should be in regards to the next ice age, (again broken record, next, last and neverending ice age.) We can no longer afford to remain ignorant about carbon sequestration being the driving force behind almost all of the planet's carbon-based life's needs for adaptation to ever-slowly changing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere!

    Most people on the planet want to leave a world for the next generation that is better than what we inherited from the generation before. Looking farther ahead than that is not on most people's agenda. How to fix what is broken now is the driving force behind everyday life, (in America it is more like the need to buy the new and improved, not repair the old) so people have little need to see beyond the now! 

    For someone, anywhere who would like to talk, read more or exchange ideas, these are the ways to do so, in the USA 402-890-7946,     daniel.kadavy212@gmail.com      hppts://lifecycleofaplanet.blogspot.com Thank you, Dan

     Do we think that apex predators are bad for the planet or simply necessary? Do we see mosquitoes, leeches, ticks, and such, as bad for the planet, or simply necessary? Do we see poisonous snakes, spiders, and marine animals, as bad for the planet or simply necessary? There are so many interconnections between species that understanding the necessity for their continuation as viable species on the planet is complex, and many people would perhaps put mankind in that same category without realizing that without mankind on the planet as the only species that can maintain enough carbon dioxide in the atmosphere by releasing just enough long-termed stored carbon, to both keep carbon-based life far into the future, and repair the temperature regulating abilities of the planet, thereby reducing extreme weather caused by extreme temperatures! (that was one long sentence) If we have not even realized our own importance on this planet, how can we judge others?