Adopt Your Own Piece of Our Planet
By James Donahue
April 22, 2017
Today, April 22, is Earth Day. And in recognition of this special day, NASA is inviting people to go on line and sign up to adopt a piece of our great planet.
No, you don’t get to own it. Just as NASA doesn't have the legal rights to give a piece of it to you. The adoption is all symbolic; although it apparently is going into a computer and if you sign up, your name will be attached to a parcel of Mother Earth that is about 55 miles square. There are 64,000 parcels to go around.
Adopting your piece of the Earth isn’t going to cost anything, and there is no commitment. But there is an interesting little reward. Everybody who adopts a square gets to visit their adopted parcel and learn a lot of interesting things about it. The NASA website will give you the temperature, the type of atmosphere, vegetation growing there and other interesting details about that single 55-mile square parcel. While on the site you also can explore other parts of the planet.
When we signed up we found our parcel lying at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. That should not be surprising since most of the planet is covered in water. And the adoption process is covering the total planet, not just the land masses.
Earth Day is an annual event that is supposed to help raise public awareness of environmental issues. School children are usually more aware of Earth Day events than most of us. Back when our children were in school the classes did such neat things as take an afternoon to plant trees or flowers around town.
Our planet is in big trouble now because too many people ignored the warnings researchers were sounding decades ago, and now the consequences are beginning to be noticed. The violent storms, excess rains and floods, droughts, extreme heat and heavy snow storms are all caused by the warming oceans that have been absorbing excess heat. The heating is being caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide and methane gasses being released from our automobiles, industrial plants and drilling for oil and gas. Methane deposits long held at the bottom of our seas are also being released because of the warming water temperatures.
Human commercial development, our slashing of the rain forests, and our failure to convert from fossil fuels to green energy systems has been largely responsible for the extreme changes that are bearing down on us. Failure to change our ways, and doing it soon, may be leading our world into runaway global warming. If that happens Earth may eventually become like Venus. It will be too hot to support life.
And you know what that means.
This is why NASA is inviting folks to sign up to become stewards of a personal parcel of this wonderful planet. It isn’t that anyone is expected to do much to turn things around. It will take leadership and commitment by a lot of people to accomplish that. But if we all do our part….who knows where it can lead.
At least take a moment Saturday, April 22, to remember the Mother Earth. She is the source of all life. If we allow her to die our future is extinction. And that is too terrible to ever imagine.
To adopt your own piece of the Earth go to the NASA Site Here.
By James Donahue
April 22, 2017
Today, April 22, is Earth Day. And in recognition of this special day, NASA is inviting people to go on line and sign up to adopt a piece of our great planet.
No, you don’t get to own it. Just as NASA doesn't have the legal rights to give a piece of it to you. The adoption is all symbolic; although it apparently is going into a computer and if you sign up, your name will be attached to a parcel of Mother Earth that is about 55 miles square. There are 64,000 parcels to go around.
Adopting your piece of the Earth isn’t going to cost anything, and there is no commitment. But there is an interesting little reward. Everybody who adopts a square gets to visit their adopted parcel and learn a lot of interesting things about it. The NASA website will give you the temperature, the type of atmosphere, vegetation growing there and other interesting details about that single 55-mile square parcel. While on the site you also can explore other parts of the planet.
When we signed up we found our parcel lying at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. That should not be surprising since most of the planet is covered in water. And the adoption process is covering the total planet, not just the land masses.
Earth Day is an annual event that is supposed to help raise public awareness of environmental issues. School children are usually more aware of Earth Day events than most of us. Back when our children were in school the classes did such neat things as take an afternoon to plant trees or flowers around town.
Our planet is in big trouble now because too many people ignored the warnings researchers were sounding decades ago, and now the consequences are beginning to be noticed. The violent storms, excess rains and floods, droughts, extreme heat and heavy snow storms are all caused by the warming oceans that have been absorbing excess heat. The heating is being caused by a buildup of carbon dioxide and methane gasses being released from our automobiles, industrial plants and drilling for oil and gas. Methane deposits long held at the bottom of our seas are also being released because of the warming water temperatures.
Human commercial development, our slashing of the rain forests, and our failure to convert from fossil fuels to green energy systems has been largely responsible for the extreme changes that are bearing down on us. Failure to change our ways, and doing it soon, may be leading our world into runaway global warming. If that happens Earth may eventually become like Venus. It will be too hot to support life.
And you know what that means.
This is why NASA is inviting folks to sign up to become stewards of a personal parcel of this wonderful planet. It isn’t that anyone is expected to do much to turn things around. It will take leadership and commitment by a lot of people to accomplish that. But if we all do our part….who knows where it can lead.
At least take a moment Saturday, April 22, to remember the Mother Earth. She is the source of all life. If we allow her to die our future is extinction. And that is too terrible to ever imagine.
To adopt your own piece of the Earth go to the NASA Site Here.