Forgiveness
As we have explored and discussed in
class, human behavior has negatively impacted our planet. Is it too late for the Earth to forgive us
for the ways we have treated it? In one paragraph:
●
share
textual evidence from an online article of your careful choice that proves how
human behavior has negatively impacted our planet,
●
discuss
how the damages caused by the human behavior you share can be reversed, or why
you think it's too late, and
● at the end, paste the url of the
website from which you gathered
evidence.
Humans impact the environment and wildlife in unbelievable ways. It is the result of doing before thinking that leads to this issue. Deforestation, one of the top 10 ways humans have destroyed the environment, has had a massive impact on our environment. The 3 most common types of deforestation are illegal logging, forest fires, and fuelwood harvesting. Illegal logging is the production and trade of timber products. People often, inconsiderately, take the wood from preserves and protected areas. Others harvest more wood than permitted or endangered species of wood. Fires, while sometimes helpful to the environment, can be quite detrimental when occurring at the wrong place at the wrong time. The level of damage will depend on the frequency and severity of the fire. This is the most damaging and greatly threatens biodiversity. Finally, fuelwood harvesting is when people take advantage of the amounts of wood they use for cooking and heating their home. Deforestation cannot be undone, but it can be further prevented. It can take a tree over 30 years to grow, and when vast amounts are being cut down at once, there is nothing we can do to immediately replace them. By growing new trees, protecting endangered ones, and being conscientious of how much wood you are using, we can help to prevent such damage from deforestation and take the first step to rebuild our environment.
ReplyDeletesource: https://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation
DeleteThere are many things human society has done to negatively impacted our planet. The one I specifically chose was deforestation. According to the University of Maryland, "In 2016, global tree cover loss reached a record of 73.4 million acres (29.7 million hectares)..." All this lost land was given away for housing, paper, furniture, oil, and cattle ranching. Moreover, according to National Geographic," If current deforestation levels proceed, the world's rainforests may completely vanish in as little as 100 years..." This portrays how much deforestation is happening right now. If we continue, forget about breathing! I think it is too late to reverse this, but I don't think it's too late to stop it. We can't take back land we already built lives upon, but we can stop deforestation progressively. If we bring an effort upon this, we can solve the problem and stop it before it's too late.
ReplyDeleteURL:
Deletehttps://www.livescience.com/27692-deforestation.html
One of the things that is negatively impacted our planet is deforestation. Trees act as a carbon sink and help get rid of greenhouse gasses, which contribute to global warming. In the past 50 years, 17% of the Amazon Rainforest has been lost because of forest conversion for cattle farming. The Amazon houses a lot of the world's biodiversity. By cutting down trees, we are taking away the homes of many animals. I think that it is possible to reverse deforestation, but we won't be able to get enough people to help. The reason that people cut down trees is so that they can expand their businesses, they don't care about how it will influence the environment. There are too many people in the world who are blinded by their greed for us to stop them.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.worldwildlife.org/threats/deforestation-and-forest-degradation
DeleteA negative impact on the planet is climate change. A large reason climate change is happening is humans are emitting greenhouse gases. Greenhouse gases are causing temperatures to rise. Scientists at the IPCC are predicting a rise of 2.5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit over the next century. Other effects of climate change are more frequent and stronger heat waves and hurricanes. Scientists are also predicting of sea level rise of 1-4 feet by 2100. It has already risen eight inches since record-keeping started in 1880. Sea levels are rising because land ice is melting and seawater expands when it warms. We are at a point where climate change can’t be effectively reversed. If we stopped emitting greenhouse gases it would not help because there is already too much CO2 already in the atmosphere, and this will cause sea levels to keep on rising. Temperatures will also continue to rise which means land ice will melt even faster.
ReplyDeletehttps://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
Humans have negatively impacted society in many ways. One way in particular is poaching, 30 to 50% of african lions have been killed in the last 20 years. Only 32,000 lions remain in Africa. Hunters pay a lot of money to kill lions, 650 lion carcass’ were exported from Africa a year. Poachers have even released invasive species in areas to make the animal they are hunting come out. On another note the rhino poachers have increased 7,700% in South Africa. Also China now allows hospitals to use tiger bones and rhino horns. If the world continues to constantly kill endangered animals chances are they could die off.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.worldwildlife.org/stories/in-a-blow-to-wildlife-china-lifts-a-ban-on-the-use-of-tiger-and-rhino-parts
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-33699347
Many sea animals are affected from humans throwing plastic into oceans. We throw so much plastic in the ocean it could lead to sea animals death. Some sea animals can’t tell the difference between plastic and food, so it will lead to many sea animals death. In a few years it is predicted there will be one pound of plastic for every three pounds of fish which is insane for knowing how much sea life is in the ocean. The damage we have caused on sea animals is not to late. We simply just have to stop littering and throwing plastic into oceans. Yes we may have affected many sea animals already by littering, but if we would stop the sea animals would be safer.
ReplyDeletehttps://oceanconservancy.org/trash-free-seas/plastics-in-the-ocean/
One of the many negative impacts on our planet is littering and it needs to stop. People are seriously too lazy to get up and walk over to a garbage can, instead the garbage is going out the window of your car and into the street. An estimated 100,000 marine mammals and over 1 million birds are dying every day from all the plastics that’s laying around. Animals seem to think that plastic is a tasty treat and most of them end up getting the garbage stuck in their throats. Aside from littering killing animals it also looks disgusting and there are so many chemicals being leaked into our water supply. Making one simple change in your daily routine could fix this problem. For example you could tie a garbage bag to the seat of your car and that way trash doesn’t need to go out the window.
ReplyDeleteStop Littering - Water Resources, www.marc.org/Environment/Water-Resources/Improving-Water-Quality/STOP-LITTERING.
My topic is pollution; Pollution is the contribution of harmful materials in the environment, that is called pollutants. These can be natural such as volcanic ash and/or human activity such as garbage and factories. Cars give off carbon dioxide from the exhaust pipes. Coal, electricity, sewage, Pesticides, chemical poisons, etc., all lead to pollution. Chemicals such as Pesticides have been found in Antarctic ice sheets. When air becomes polluted it becomes very dangerous for a human or any animal. The pollutants are invisible meaning you can't actually see it but the pollutants make your eyes burn, makes it hard to breathe and increases the chance of lung cancer. In Bhopal, India, there was an accident with a pesticide plant and more than 8,000 people died within the next few days and at least hundreds of thousands were injured. Natural disasters can cause pollution, like volcanoes erupting cand throw ash and chemicals into the atmosphere which eats out the layer stopping the sun from burning us alive. Not all air pollution is natural though, it mostly is us burning coal, distributing oil, carbon monoxide, and carbon dioxide. Cars and factories produce nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide, and hydrocarbons. When nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide mix with moisture it creates an acid and makes acid rain which can kill many living things including plants, animals and burn humans. In conclusion there is many things we can do to stop the pollution of the only earth we’ll ever have. There are too many things we are doing to cause this destruction and little we are doing to stop it.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/pollution/
DeleteTo start, we should first know the topic of this discussion, which is water pollution. What is water pollution? Water pollution occurs when harmful substances (often chemicals or microorganisms contaminate a stream, lake or any body of water. There are many different categories of water pollution but today I'm focusing on agricultural pollution, not only is it the biggest consumer of global freshwater resources (using 70% of the earth’s surface water supplies), it is also a serious water polluter. Every time it rains, fertilizers and pesticides wash nutrients and pathogens into our waterways, which contaminate our water and make it unsafe to use, and it can also cause algal blooms, which then, in turn, kill ocean life. It is entirely too late for us humans to stop water pollution since it has come so far already and has helped in wiping out entire species of fish and animals around and has killed thousands of humans.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nrdc.org/stories/water-pollution-everything-you-need-know#effects
Over the years humans have been on planet Earth, we have drastically changed the environment for the worse. Evidence from NASA shows that right now our carbon dioxide level is at 400 parts per million. Back in the 1950s the carbon dioxide level was at 320 parts per million.The sudden influx of carbon dioxide levels is caused by the greenhouse effect. The greenhouse effect is where the atmosphere traps in heat that we produce; creating global warming. Now because of climate change, glaciers are shrinking, ice on rivers and lakes are breaking up earlier, there's a loss of sea ice, we have longer and more intense heat waves, and many more negative side effects. As of the moment, people are trying to help. The US government has many organizations that gather data and try to reduce global warming. Such as NASA, Data.gov, NOAA, and many more. But the damage we've already done to the planet may be irreversible. Following this trend, climate change will only get worse. Humanity is trying it's best, but it might be too little too late. Only time will tell...
ReplyDeletehttps://climate.nasa.gov/
Yes, for one singular big reason. Invasive/introduced species. Introduced species are when humans accidentally or intentionally bring a species to a new habitat. Invasive species are when these introduced species start killing off other species that had been in the habitat before. 49% of animals in the US alone are at least somewhat endangered by invasive species. One example of an invasive species is the Australian Paperbark Tree. It was introduced into the US in Florida. It eliminated many native plants, made fires much more common, and caused many animals to have to adapt. Another example is the Brown Tree Snake. It was introduced from loose cargo in Peru, and has caused ten bird species to go extinct. While it is somewhat preventable through expensive methods like ecosystem management (where the ecosystem is subject to normal treatment as if the invasive species was not there), it's not being put into full effect. I think some things like pollution and overpopulation is bad, but when we toy with nature and move things around, that's crossing the line. That is when it is too late for earth to forgive us.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.actionbioscience.org/biodiversity/simberloff.html
Land pollution is getting out of hand. We can stop it, but a lot of damage has already been done. Land pollution is caused by harmful waste. In 2014, only 34% of what could have been recycled actually was, and it takes thousands of years to fully get rid of that waste. Our factories generate other harmful wastes through chemical production (all of which can be prevented). We can't fully revert all of the pollution, but we can certainly help out. If we recycle 100% of what we can, disband our chemical production, and reuse our non-biodegradable items, we can slow down the pollution, and diminish our landfills.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.livescience.com/22728-pollution-facts.html
Humans are destroying the environment at an unbelievable rate. CO2 emissions alone are destroying the ozone layer, contributing to global warming and climate change. Overpopulation is increasing demand for resources and food, accelerating the rates of things like deforestation or pollution. Deforestation is increasing soil erosion, decreasing the amount of oxygen in the atmosphere and increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, bringing us back to the CO2 emissions. Pollution is causing dangerous toxic gases to become commonplace everywhere from beautiful lakes to busy cities. It isn't too late to stop this however. If humans can switch to reusable materials and energy sources, slow habitat destruction and increase habitat rebuilding; then we may be able to reverse the destruction we have caused.
ReplyDeletehttps://onlinedegrees.kent.edu/geography/geographic-information-science/community/human-impact-on-the-environment
ReplyDeleteThe ocean covers 2/3 of the Earth, yet with all the damage we do to it, I wonder how much of it is covered in waste ?Humans have impacted the Earth in a lot of negative ways, one of those being ocean waste and pollution. The kind of pollution that can have serious economic and health impacts by killing marine life and damaging habitats/ ecosystems. The dumping of even industrial and nuclear waste was legal until 1970 (though many still do it illegally). About 80 % of all waste is dumped into the ocean, which adds up to several million tons dumped each year. But can all this damage be reversed ? Even though we can clean and prevent a lot of the waste in the ocean, a lot of the waste has already done it's damage. Animals like manatees, turtles, and shrimp have been killed because of loss of habitats and pollution. Lots of nuclear waste has been dumped into oceans and can't be scooped out. The only thing we can do now is put more environment laws into place and try to prevent any more damage from being done.
https://marinebio.org/conservation/ocean-dumping/
I think that our behavior, and not being careful with what we throw away is really damaging the oceans and the sea creatures that live there. This plastic kills about 100,000 sea turtles and birds a year. Since the plastic doesn't biodegrade it stays in the oceans in little pieces, so the fish eat it. Besides the animals dying and becoming intoxicated with plastic, the toxic plastics are affecting our health too. Did you know that the average person produces half a pound of plastic each day? What can we do to fix this, or is it to late? To fix this problem we need to use paper or reusable bags at the store,not plastic bags. Also we need to use a reusable water bottle and don't litter. Lastly the government can help by putting regulations on plastic so that we use it less and less. This might be to late because in the most polluted areas, the mass of plastic is more than the number of plankton six times over. Let's try to make these changes before some animals are gone and our oceans are too polluted.
ReplyDeletehttps://serc.carleton.edu/NAGTWorkshops/health/case_studies/plastics.html
Excessive oil drilling has been a problem since day one, and oil drilling can have so many negative impacts on the environment. The noise caused by oil drilling can contribute significant effects on wildlife. When the noise of oil drilling can be heard by wildlife it causes short-term avoidance and disruption of bird communication during breeding and nesting season. It can also mess with the predator and prey system. Another major problem with oil drilling is that it can cause oil spills. One company La Plata Country, Colorado has claimed it has had 160 spills a year! One spill almost every other day. This has a significant impact on long-term environmental impacts and chronic health effects including cancer. Also after the explosion of the BP’s Deepwater Horizon Unit Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The toxic oil harmed much marine wildlife and cause major problems. Like damaging the animal organs, causing cancer, suppression immune system, reproductive failure, and long-term ecological changes. Oil drilling is a major problem but if start to cut down on drilling as much and thinking about the environment we will be fine in no time.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.wilderness.org/articles/article/7-ways-oil-and-gas-drilling-bad-environment
Our planet is slowly dying due to years of mistreatment. Humans don't always find the error in their ways. One of the main causes is pollution. Pollution is slowly destroying the earth in many different ways. It affects all living things, even humans. There are 3 types of pollution. Air, Water, and Land Pollution. I will be talking about Air Pollution. Air pollution is slowly destroying the ozone layer. If this happens we will be more exposed to the suns harmful UV rays. Experts say by 2020 17% of the ozone layer will have vanished. The gas that causes this are chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs). They can be found in aerosol cans and sometimes in ACs and refrigerators. CFCs can stay in the atmosphere for 20-100 years. In that much time, they can do a lot of damage. If we don't do something soon everything will be affected. I think that with A LOT of work in fixing our ways this can be reversed. If we stop using these gases we can try to spare the ozone layers. It will take a lot of work but the earth would be saved. We just need to turn it around. Stop emitting such hazardous gases into the atmosphere and then we can begin the healing process.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/pollution/
Pollution. It is defined as the process of making land, water, air, or the environment unsafe. Pollution a massive problem in our world today, and it usually goes without notice. There are several forms of pollution, and they all trace back to us. The seven most destructive forms of pollution are toxic, land, water, air, thermal, sound, and light. In an example, toxic pollution alone affects over 200 million people worldwide. One of the most known forms of pollution is land pollution. Hypothetically, imagine you are on a street near a trash can and a recycling bin. Also, imagine you just finished a bottle of water, then instead of throwing the plastic bottle in the bin, you throw it in the trash. Now, that bottle will be brought to a landfill and rot away for thousands of years. Now you just contributed to land pollution. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, in 2014, Americans produced approximately 258 million tons of solid waste. About 66% of that was gathered in landfills, while the other 34% was recycled. Mankind is gradually destroying the environment as we know it, which will lead to an extinction of all life. Everything we have done cannot be reversed, but we can stop any future destruction. Ideas to stop pollution could be as simple as recycling. The contribution of one cannot end environmental destruction, but the contribution of all can.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.livescience.com/22728-pollution-facts.html
DeleteGlobal Warming is a topic that everyone has heard about at some point in their life. It's basically the warming of the planet. There are greenhouse gases that make up our atmosphere which trap the heat radiated from the Sun into our planet. These gases are water vapor (H2O), nitrous oxides (N2O), carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and chlorofluorocarbons (CFC). Lately, we have been seeing an increase of these gases in the atmosphere, causing the Earth to warm up. I believe that in part, we are at fault. By burning fossil fuels, such as coal, we release CO2 into the atmosphere. It's said that there is an increase of CO2 from 280 parts per million to 400 parts per million in the past 150 years when we go through with our Industrial Activities. The fifth Assessment Report, made by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, states that there is more of a 95% chance that humans activities over the past 50 years have warmed our planet. There are also many consequences to Global Warming. As the temperature increases, oceans get warmer and ice melts. This causes the sea to expand and rise. There is also more evaporation occurring, causing certain parts of the Earth to dry up. How can we make this better? I do believe that it’s too late to make things better, but at the same time it doesn’t mean we must make things worst. Instead, we could do things better by inventing better technology and eliminating any mechanical object that emits an abundant amount of CO2. For example, cars. Hopefully, sometime in the future, we create an affordable electric car for all, getting rid of vehicles that run on gas. That isn’t the only way to help. You could help out your neighborhood by going around and picking up any trash you see on the street. By doing so, you are also doing your part.
ReplyDeletehttps://climate.nasa.gov/causes/
There are many ways humans are negatively impacting the environment, but global warming is important to notice especially because it's happening now. If we don't figure out a solution our planet will continue heating up, damaging everything. We overload our atmosphere with carbon dioxide from the vehicles we drive, the fossil fuels like coal, natural gases, and oil that we burn, and deforestation. The carbon dioxide that was created traps heat and increases the planet's temperature. There are no ways to take back the damage done, but there are ways we can stop more damage in the future. Significantly reducing our personal carbon emissions can reduce the amount of heat trapping discharge in the atmosphere. Tropical deforestation also contributes about 10% of the world’s heat-trapping emissions, reducing deforestation can lower global warming discharge and act as a long term solution.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming
DeleteHuman negatively impacts our plant with pollution and they probably don't even know it. Pollution is a very serious problem and humans are the ones to cause it. For example gasoline that is burned for cars and trucks produces a gas carbon monoxide. When this happens the winds can spread around the world. Air pollution can cause lung cancer and even kill you. Air pollution is one of the most dangerous types of pollution for your health because of the bad chemicals. There are many different ways air pollution can affect. Like when air pollutants are mixed with moisture they then can change into acid rain which then they are able to take out all of the trees in the forest.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/pollution/
Plastic has made a large negative impact on the planet. While plastic was once revolutionary, people eventually began to realize the impact it has on the earth, especially in our oceans. There are 9.2 billion tons of plastic on earth, and 5.3- 14 million tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean each year. Many fish have ingested the plastic dumped into the ocean. The species Orchestra gamarellus eats plastic and once excreted it becomes microplastics. In the ocean near Plymouth, 1/3 of a sample size of fish there had plastic in them. However, the Earth may still be able to forgive us. If we just recycle and prevented any more plastic from getting in the ocean, our plastic problem may eventually be solved.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/06/plastic-planet-waste-pollution-trash-crisis/
Whenever you think of a shelter, you probably think they save every animal they see. You see, that isn't always the truth. There are animals that are saved, but there are also other animals they don't want which face death. When there is an animal they don't want, the animal dies a terrible death. Some examples are being dumped on roadsides left to die, starvation, and being hit by a car. There are stories of how people have found animals homeless, so they bring them to the shelter. But, the animals aren't always accepted. Even the animals that are accepted could be euthanized if the animal doesn't behave the right way. We could change this by sending the animals to other shelters, and animals that don't behave can learn the right way instead of being killed. Because killing animals doesn't help, it makes it worse.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.peta.org/issues/animal-companion-issues/animal-shelters/no-kill-policies-slowly-killing-animals/
The ozone layer protects us from the sun's radiation. But human behavior has been shown to deplete this protective barrier. Ozone depleting substances consist of compounds that contain chlorine, bromine, and other halogens. These directly affect the ozone layer. 1 chlorine atom destroys about 100,000 ozone molecules.Some halogens can be found in refrigeration, fire suppressors,foam insulation, and other applications.The after effects of ozone depletion are pretty bad. Humans can get skin cancer from the sun's radiation. We could help slow the depletion of the ozone layer by using less ODS. Though we could help slow it down, we've already started the depletion. We are so far in that it's easier to destroy the ozone layer than to build it back up again.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/basic-ozone-layer-science
https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/health-and-environmental-effects-ozone-layer-depletion
https://www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/ozone-depleting-substances
Fracking has been a negative impact on our planet. Fracking also know as Hydraulic fracturing is a relatively new way to extract oil and natural gas from the Earth. Fracking is when you pump high pressured water and chemicals in to the ground to fracture shale deposits and make oil and natural gas accessible. Although fracking helps obtain oil and natural gas it has many issues. Some issues that fracking has are the fact that the amount of water and other natural resources needed to make a single well operational is enormous and takes water away from nearby ponds and lakes. Fracking also pollutes the air around the site and the soil. Fracking releases methane (methane is one of the main chemicals used in fracking.) which pollutes the air around the site, and often harms people around the site. Fracking also cause earthquakes due to the high pressured water that is pumped into the ground. I think that the damage that fracking has caused can be reversed because fracking hasn't been around long enough to do major damage. We can reverse the damage by working toward shutting down fracking and converting to alternate sources of energy like solar and wind.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/011915/what-are-effects-fracking-environment.asp
Humans have been careless for thousands of years and it is negatively impacting the planet. For example, nuclear power plants are a powers source that is supposedly a lot safer than normal power plants, but this is simply not true. They do not emit carbon dioxide when it is functioning, but there is a lot of CO2 involved in the production. Also, nuclear power plants emit radiation which causes immeasurable amounts of damage to the environment. Although humans have caused tons of damage to habitats, it can be fixed. If we move power plants to areas of less harm, like a desert, and pass laws that will protect the environment.
ReplyDeletehttps://sciencing.com/nuclear-energy-affect-environment-4566966.html