Sunday, December 9, 2007

Our Fearless Earth

Okay, I just got done watching an episode of "Fearless Earth" on the Discovery Channel which showed the elaborate Great Barrier Reef system in Australia and how it has strengthened and repaired itself over the last several millions of years, despite ice ages, volcanic eruptions, and the like. It was a brilliantly done show and very interesting, especially the part where they showed how coral reefs that can only survive in shallow water survive in 150 foot waters off the walls of the reef.

When Earth's axis was knocked off course long ago, this caused a shifting in the plates and the continent of Australia moved northward from the Southern pole area. It is estimated that Australia moves 5 inches north per year, making it the fastest moving continent, according to the scientists on this show. Man had nothing to do with this.

They interviewed a geologist who demonstrated that there are freshwater lakes just off the northern coast floating above the sea water, and he explained that this was due to the ice age and the stream flowing back and forth over the continent. Man had nothing to do with this.

There's even a place off the reef where the current is so strong and fast that it can kill a diver if he isn't prepared to go with it. This current is responsible for the maintenance of the reef system. That's pretty amazing stuff, and humans have absolutely nothing to do with this. This is natural phenomenon.

They spent nearly the whole hour discussing how well the reef has repaired and maintained itself over millions of years despite all of these changes...and then...BINGO...here comes the global warming mantra in the last 5 minutes and how humans are going to just destroy it if we don't take caution to keep the water from raising 2 lousy degrees. This will destroy the reef system and kill off absolutely everything. Uh...okay...so what are they saying then after all this? That the reef is not really self-repairing? Are we to believe that humans can do more damage than an ice age or volcano THAT WE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH MILLIONS OF YEARS AGO? This is based on complete speculation and is really quite irresponsible of the Discovery Channel to promote this.

I guess the reef didn't really survive those things then. (In fact, they say it is getting bigger all the time.) So what gives? What's their real message? If it's to promote global warming, they've just wasted millions of dollars on production costs for this film. This message goes against the very title of the show, "Fearless Earth." Methinks the producers must have demanded that be edited in there post-production to make it more PC.

But I digress.

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