Thursday, April 23, 2009
Biodiversity vs. "Global Warming"
There has been much talk on these two topics in class. I believe that as long as humans are here and we are using technology that force us to destroy the world's natural resources the issue of climate change is not going to go away no matter how much time we dedicate to trying to fix it. This is especially true because climate change isn't entirely our fault. Scientists who support and recognize the issue of of global warming as real base their support in rising carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere. While deforestation does decrease the amount of oxygen going into the atmosphere, 80% of our world's oxygen supply comes from the algae in the oceans. Because the oceans are growing due to "global warming" or better called climate change there will be more room for this algae to grow. At the same time, carbon emission from our various fuels are having an effect, and thus we should still thrive to decrease the use of these products. Because climate change is largely a natural cycle of Earth, I believe we should place more emphasis on biodiversity. Due to our growing population of Earth, we are infringing on animal habitats and often killing the animals that live there. Thus thousands of species of life are dying and very few people are doing anything about it. Everyone is worried about climate change, because that directly affects humans. The thing is we have very little control over the climate. Our time would be better spent emphasizing the preservation of the various species of life that we luckily still have contributing to the biodiversity of this planet.
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I totally agree with this. I watched a documentary on a phenomenon called global dimming, which basically has proved that all the pollution we put into the air provides more particles in clouds for water droplets to form around, creating more reflective surfaces that reflect sunlight back into space when it hits them. As a result, sunlight reaching the surface of the earth has actually decreased. As we've developed technologies to curb air pollution and repair the hole in the ozone layer, there will be less pollution in the air and more sunlight will reach the earth, causing a greater rise in temperature than previously thought. This just goes to show that technological solutions don't always have the intended result, because the earth is a complex system that can never be fully "revealed"
ReplyDeleteI also agree with this. But I feel like this is just one situation in which technological solutions aren't ending or occuring the way they were intended to in the first place. Like when ever someone notices something that should be changed in the world or decides to invent a new technology to help the Earth they are only thinking about one or a couple espects of it which in the end makes it so that it doesn't really have an affect on the Earth at all. We can't just pick and choose things we want to help in the Earth because that wont solve anything and nothing will come from it.
ReplyDeleteI think that the primary reason people are more concerned with climate change is because most of us don't truly care about the innate value of ecology. What we care about is our habitat. We just want a nice place to live: not too hot, not too cold, just right. Sure, we'll naturally care about some animals because they're cute and cuddly or we find them to be interesting in some way, but it doesn't seem that there is much concern for the innate value of other animals.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I took an earth system class last semester and it's true that we haven't 'revealed' the majority of things to be known about it other than just recently becoming aware that it is an interconnected system. The professor did impress upon us though that there is overwhelming evidence and conviction among the scientific community that we've effected the current shift in climate to a greater degree than previously thought. At any rate, I don't see any reason why we can't focus on decreasing both our greenhouse gas emissions and our destruction of ecosystems.