The Use of Geosciences to a Safer, Healthier and Wealthier Planet Earth

Essay by lamda_core July 2006

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Nature is an incredibly complex, evolving system, and we usually are not certain how several phenomena take place. Those who say they are certain are demonstrating their personal belief, not the state of their knowledge. Our record in the past, for example managing national parks, is humiliating. Also efforts at forest-fire suppression are a well-intentioned disaster from which our forests will probably never recover. Boreal forests actually depend on forest fires for spreading seeds and cleansing the undergrowth.

What I want to make clear is that we usually act upon certain hypothesis and theories to conserve and protect our environment but what we need to do is have concrete verifiable results before we take action to save our beloved Earth. We need to be humble, deeply humble, in the face of what we are trying to accomplish. We need to be trying various methods of accomplishing things. We need to be open-minded about assessing results of our efforts, and we need to be flexible about balancing needs.

Now we don't have a great deal of knowledge, as we imagine we do about Earth. We have only ideas about what may lie at the depths of our oceans, as it is often said, "We know more about the moon that about our oceans." Also the only information we have about the interior of Earth is from studying seismic waves. Hence we need more information, we need to learn more about our home before we try and improve it or clean it up.

This is where geosciences come in. It is the research into the several mysteries presented by Earth that will allow us to fully understand the dynamic force that is nature. Geosciences or Earth science is an all-embracing term for sciences related to the planet Earth. Earth sciences include sciences like geology, geophysics, soil sciences, hydrology etc.

These sciences will help us explore our world more fully and catalogue the unexplored and untapped resources which essential for our civilization. We can develop alternate, cheaper, more efficient sources of energy as well as alternate resources for our various requirements. Exploration of our planet will also allow us to learn more about different organisms, some of which might be still unknown to us. A study of their habitat and lifecycle will allow us understand more about evolution and life on Earth.

Studies into such fields will allow us to fully comprehend Earth's working so that we won't do more damage than good when trying to resolve some of the genuine problems that our world faces today.