Do you think referring to the Earth as a living entity is silly?  I challenge you to take the time to understand just a few basic and well established facts about your own origin and the origin of all life in the here and now.  Every chemical (atomic element) in every cell and fluid that came together to create you came from the Earth... which was born of the sun.  Long ago our sun was forming and in that process the thermonuclear, gravitational, and electrostatic dynamics generated multiple different and dynamic atomic particles originating from hydrogen and helium atoms.  From our evolving star uncountable tons of gas, plasma, electromagnetic energy and matter were spewed outward into the sun's neighborhood and beyond.  Huge chunks of star material were ejectected.  Some are still speeding outward far into the universe, some fell back into the sun to be changed even again, and some were ejected at just the precise velocity and direction to escape from the sun's gravitational hold that might have pulled them back into the solar furnace.  With a unique recipe of atomic ingredients these ejected discrete clouds of elements coalesced into what we humans call planets, asteroids, gasses and meteors that began to orbit the young sun.  They continue to be invisibly held gravitationally to our 4.5 billion year old sun.  Contemporary humans reside on the Earth, the 3rd planet of 9 (if you count distant, tiny Pluto a planet) from the sun.  Every one of us has truly been born of Earth's atomic elements which were born of a young evolving sun.    Photo: TJDunnPhotography.com
 

     A classic example of connectivity is the sad story of the now-banned use of DDT insecticide back in the 60's which was created to eliminate annoying insects along the Wisconsin River farmlands.  Several years after the start of DDT use local American Bald Eagle numbers were mysteriously in very serious decline.  Scientists eventually determined the eagle egg shells were excessively fragile. They were breaking open prior to eaglets hatching at a proper time.  DDT upset the intricate biochemistry responsible for healthy egg shell structure.  Who would have thought DDT sprayed far upstream to kill insects was causing weakened bird eggs and the resultant dangerous declines in the eagle population?  Yes, there was a connection!
     Swarms of humans inhabit areas around the world which are essentially unfavorable for large populations; these areas are sensitive due to an inherent incompatibility between human populations' impact on wildlife, eco-sensitive vegetation, ground stability and water availability.
     The unsuitability of location of human habitation  does not stop profit drivendevelopment.  Imagine all the farms, roads, homes,  multi-resident housing and the required dump sites for human driven waste materials.  To name a few human wastes:  Rotting garbage,  plastics, cardboard, building materials, nuisance  vegetation, pharmaceuticals, fertilizers for green parkways and lawns, insecticide applications to "keep the bugs away,"  herbicides to suppress "undesirable weeds,"  underground passages for electrical cables and sewage disposal, and of course lighting to brighten the night darkness.   Healthy human habitat requires the removal of our waste products somewhere other than where we live.  Thus arise massive polluting garbage dumps.   Image credit:   Independent.co.uk/environment:   

       As I write this in January, 2020, there is a strong push from a major housing developer in SW Florida.  Their plan is to build a... aaahh... ummm...buckle up!...a small city east of sprawling Naples, Florida!    The plan, if approved, will create an all inclusive 1,000 acre village that could have 2,500 homes priced between 250,000 and 500,000 dollars. Of course there will be an 18 hole golf course, shops, restaurants gas stations and other necessities for a pleasant life. There are several other major housing developments planned for the eastern side of Naples adjacent to The Everglades: I wonder if the drinking water has been evaluated yet!

The earth is sick and she speaks to us in whispers of dispair and worry.

    A multitude of current scientific research unequivocally affirms major declines in the biomass (think of this as total tonnage) of insects.  They simply cannot survive the toxin laden atmosphere, water and soils.  Loss of required habitat and the applications of insecticides are the leading causes of diverse insect demise.  Do not fall into the black hole of blaming global warming for every ecological dysfunction!  The need to feed the billions of humanoids inhabiting the Earth prompts deforestation and plowing up millions of square miles of greenery in South America and other forested areas for the planting of food crops.  Indiginous people are being forced out of the villages they have inhabited for countless centuries.  Burning of cut trees and brush pollutes the air with carbon soot  modifies the local weather patterns.  All this so we can feed our increasing population.
 
    
     There exists much evidence in our current space-time that toxic pollutants and profit-motivated behaviors are damaging the well-being of our planetary home in the cosmos.  Earth speaks to us in whispers of dispair and worry.  And we semi-intelligent life forms have generated so much noise we are missing the connectedness of all the sick symptoms our mother Earth is showing.  Much like a virulent virus, we humans seem to be infecting Mother Earth with a deadly illness!  HUMAN organisms!!  WE...Homo sapiens, are the pathogens!
      If we don't soon pay attention to how diseased planet Earth is right now, if she becomes critically ill it may be too late to nurse her back to her beautiful state of fertility, complex beautyd, and aliveness.   We are obligated to nurse her back to what she used to be before we trampled on her, before we covered her skin with asphault and concrete,  before we poisoned her with forever chemicals,, before we bombed her, before we cut her open and drained her deep veins, before we carbonized and polluted her life sustaining air with billions of microplastic particles!  Go here for a well documented presentation about our planetary home's state of affairs.

 
     As a thought exercise... ponder the FACT that humans have recklessly created a vast field of space junk orbiting Mother Earth.  Truly amazing!  We humans are actually polluting the heretofore pristine outer space near Earth!   Near-earth's formerly empty space is now being (almost weekly) populated by man made satellites, rocket ans satellite parts, and nonfunctioning electronic transmitters. There are actually two debris fields present in geosynchronus Earth orbit (GEO). There is a main cloud of objects and another in low earth orbit.  Soon the inevitable ramifications of our earth orbiting metallic dump will have its vengeance.

      The number of particles larger than 1 millimeter  exceeds 100 million. The estimated population of particles between 1 and 10 centimeters in diameter is approximately 500,000.  More than 25,000 objects larger than 10 centimeters are known to exist!  As of January 2022, the amount of material orbiting the Earth exceeded 9,000 metric tons. (Image and text credited to the National Orbital Debris Program.)

Look at some very interesting analyses done by the NATIONAL ORBITAL DEBRIS PROGRAM

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     Adverse human impact on planet Earth has taken place gradually and insidiously since our worldwide human population reached about 1.7 billion in the early nineteen hundreds.  (Current numbers of us is 7.753 billion!)  Because all living organisms generate by products of being alive these metabolic waste products must be eliminated and transported away from the functioning organism.  So where do we put these waste products?  They must go somewhere.  Biological waste production from normal homeostatic biochemistry is essentially the same for a bacterium as it is for an earthworm as it is for a mammal. Disposal of the waste  material (ie. feces and urine) at a distance from the productionsource is essential for the organism's optimal health status. Consider also the uniquely human production of tons of discarded human manufactured, artificial by-products from  toys, tools, cars and trucks, appliances, and building construction materials.  Where do they go?  They are transported and discarded into landfills, open dumps, oceans and rivers. Plastics and their gradual breakdown into smaller and smaller particles and fibers recently have been found to be present in nearly all living creatures, in the food we eat, the water we drink, the snow that falls on mountaintops, in human breast milk and in human infants!

Are we too late to rescue our planet?

      Where are the Earth's doctors today...right now... when the patient is showing all sorts of signs and symptoms of degeneration and disease?

As a thought exercise...you be the Earthopedist and pretend the Earth is your patient.  What do you see during your exam?  Clean air, crystal clear waterways, viable and sustainable numbers of birds, bugs, bunnies and bees?  Is the patient vigorous, youthful, reactive and rejuvenating?  Or do you see degenerate grasslands paved with asphalt?  Do you see garbage dumps, rivers that are flammable due to petrochemical contaminants, fish that are safe to consume only if less than one serving a month is ingested, amphibian species with anatomic deformaties and genetic aberrations, no mesmerizing living clouds of millions of passenger pigeons, smoggy air in population centers such that the humans living there have to breathe through air filters.  As doctors to our Mother Earth, why are we in denial of the symptoms she is starkly displaying?  How long do we ignore the obvious?  When will we understand we have no right to poison the earth and air?


     A classic reminder that something is wrong with the environment is easily recalled through by the elderly humans who witnessed the changes.  60 years ago whenever out family arrived home from our 2 hour ride out into the countryside on Sunday afternoons my brothers and sister would ask Dad to open the hood of his 1949 Oldsmobile so we could look at the auto's radiator.  Excited about what we were to discover we scrambled for position to see and count the multitude of colorful butterflies, moths, bugs and bees that were stuck fast to the radiator screen.  There would be dozens of beautiful and diverse insect life we would collect and study.  Flash forward to today.  Take a peek at your car's radiator screen and see if any dead insects populate the area.  There is a difference isn't there... a big difference between then and now.  That simple observation of scant numbers of insects stuck on the automobile radiator surface is a symptom of environmental disease just as plain and stark as rectal bleeding is a symptom of disease in a human.
     When I first spent time in Naples, Florida, back in the late 1980's I witnessed the joyful, flirty flocks of wild parakeets peeping and chirping gaily as they went about their day.  Today, no pretty parakeets fly the treetops of Naples, Florida.  Nor are there any flies or bees. And Everglades National Park is only 10 miles away!  I can leave windows open all day long and nary an insect finds it's way into my apartment.  No mosquitoes!  Something is wrong!  I do hear planes flying low and slow at 2 a.m. as insecticide fog is released into the neighborhood while we slept unbothered by the annoying buzzing of a few mosquitoes. Did you know that the EPA has approved over 800 pesticides for application to the terrain in Florida?  Getting that data required a determined effort to obtain because I was deflected in less than subtle ways by the mosquito (read "insect") abatement facility in Collier County,FL. When I sought information regarding what was being sprayed on and about the county greenery I was made to feel intrusive and annoying.           A symptom of many people's avoidance of drinking tap water in SW Florida is obvious to the Earthopedists.  They recognize something is amiss by observing truckload after truckload of bottled water (disposable plastic bottles!) entering the city.  I wondered where all those empty plastic water bottles end up.  There must be a mountain of plastic somewhere.  I told you everything's connected.  Do something here and it will create an equivalent effect over there. If we refuse to acknowledge the danger signs Mother Earth is displaying and we continue down this easy path of consume and discard, the petri dish we call Earth will soon be a barren waste of lifeless detritus and poison.  Earth's landscape will be moon-like and sterile.  Humanoids must accept and respect the FACT that all things are connected.  Impacts to the harmonics of the environment here always has impact (for better or worse, noticeable or unseen) some place on the planet over there.  Too often in humanity's evolution "over there" meant out of our sight.  In truth, "over there" actually means in someone else' neighborhood!   If we continue to ignore the fact of connectedness of everything, eventually life on planet Earth will no longer support humanoid survival.

TWO EXAMPLES OF WORLDWIDE ACCUMULATING and PERSISTING POLLUTANTS  Microplastic fragments and a chemical called Triclosan     Microplastics are small plastic pieces less than five millimeters long.  They are breakdown remnants of commercial macroscopic plastics. This debris from the degradation of plastic bottles, bags, toys, plastic wraps, tires, tiny plastic beads manufactured as abrasives, furniture, and other man-made products are recently being observed (via microscopic observation) worldwide.  Amazingly these unseen (without a microscope) solid plastic remnants can pass through all sorts of "filters" and have been discovered in the air we breathe, the food we eat, the water we drink, in the stool we pass, in the plants we grow... and in our own tissues.      The pathogenicity of world wide microplastic structures and fibers is just now becoming a priority for scientific study.  However, many studies have already proven that plastic microfibers and particles at or less than 5 millimeters in length or diameter, are being mistakenly eaten by aquatic plankton and insect larvae!  If these tiny fundamental life forms, which are absolutely vital as the foundation of the biological food pyramid, are degraded or go extinct due to microplastic ingestion the ultimate ramification to all the lifeforms on the planet is monumentally bad. Photo: TJDunnPhotography.com      Could microplastics be responsble in part for the 70%  decline in the  biomass of insects?  Could microplastic contaminants be partly responsible for the decline in animal species worldwide?      Could global warming be a convenient culpret responsible for a multitude of highly specific environmental energies?  Does obsessive acceptance of global warming for all sorts of environmental degradation divert attention away from many other man-made envirostressors?   Are we neglecting MANY other hazardous environmental aberrations?  Microplastic fibers are in the atmosphere all over the planet!  Who is paying attention to this infiltrating swarm?  Someday will a clear blue sky be replaced by a light-dimming pale gray dome overhead?  If that does occur it may well be a sudden and irreversible phase change in Earth's ability to sustain life.      Among all the other man-made contaminants we have spilled into Earth's air, water and refuse dumps, do microplastic particles and fibers deserve our immediate attention?  Should we be concerned about the effects of these tiny fragments of plastics being observed in our living organisms from the smallest to the largest?  They are in us, too, and our feline and canine pets. Scientific investigation reveals that some chemical envirotoxins are adhering to microplastics and are carried along wherever the microplastic particle goes.      Read on and YOU make the decisions.  As a guide to our discovery efforts it is beneficial to acknowledge that just because we cannot observe something via our macroscopic senses in no way does that validate our concluding something doesn't exist.      The studies and revelations of visionary astrophysicist Naseem Haramein inform us of how every local action creates an equivalent action (for better or ill) somewhere else.  His highly informative video on universal connectivity can be viewed here.       Read  this review highlighting the dreadful state of insect biodiversity in the world; almost half  the species are rapidly declining and a third are being threatened with extinction.  Read more about microplastic pollution  here. ______________________________________________________________________________ We were born of the Earth which was born of the sun. There is no life without sunlight and water. TJDunnPhotogrqaphy.com This site is provided as a public service.  There are no afilliations with any organizations, institutions, nor financial agencies.  I harbor no political motives.  The sick state of this human-weary planet requires immediate rescue.  The urgent need to provide planetary health care far exceeds any assumed self-serving importance of political hierarchy. We human family members are in this together as fragile, shortlived children of the Earth. We must shed myopic, self-serving demands and political mandates and learn to contribute, cooperate and compromise with each other.  Cooperatively we have to focus on rebuilding the health of our tiny, living planet as she spins through the infinite energy-filled darkness of space. I dedicate this website to my material mother ...  planet Earth. She deserves better! Microplastic Hazards                               Phase Change ______________________________________________ T J Dunn, DVM tjdunn2@gmail.com 2-10-2024

In 2014, an international team of biologists estimated that, in the previous 35 years, the abundance of invertebrates such as beetles and bees had decreased by 45 per cent, and a 2017 study showed a 76 per cent decrease in flying insects in the past few decades in German nature preserves. The researchers said when extrapolated globally, such findings “paint an apocalyptic picture for Earth’s insects.”  Credit:  Independent. .co.uk/environment _________ A  well-documented chemical called TRICLOSAN is wrecking havoc in various aquatic and marine ecosystems.  This ubiquitous tiny molecule has been banned in the USA from cosmetics.  Nevertheless, it continues to be produced and is accumulating  worldwide due to tons of it being produced for industrial uses!.  It is often recovered from rainwater and human breast milk. The Triclosan  topic needs our collective attention! Like PFAS and PFOS, TRICLOSAN is termed a Forever Contaminant.  ________ We humans are adding permanently active, unnatural, manmade substances into a naturally functioning planet environment .  Imagine adding a stone into a recipe of spaghetti and meatballs.  Imagine forever chemicals being added  to our 4.5 billion year old   beautifully functioning environment! Go HERE to get information about the awful impact microplastic particles and fibers are having on all Earth's systems...including us and our children!