Revised Essay #3: Save the Electricity, Save the World

Many lights are remaining on at midnight in Wickersham hall even when there is no one in the room; Many computers are remaining on in the studying room even when on one is using them; And Many phones are remaining plugged even when they are fully charged. Recently, the waste of electricity is a serious problem in Wickersham hall. Because the local electricity price in Fairbanks is just about 16 cent per Kilowatt-hour, many residents think that there is no big deal of wasting them. The waste actions might seem small apparently, but they will affect the local and global environment a lot. At this point, RA should post a power saving slogan above all the light switches in Wickersham Hall to remind residents to save power. Although the electricity is not very expensive, residents in Wickersham Hall should save the electricity because it can make the planet more sustainable, it can help reduce pollution, and it can reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Electricity is one of the most important energies in people’s daily life. Without electricity, life will be tough and boring. We could only use candles for illumination and firewood for cooking. There will not be any PCs, TVs, and radios. Electricity brings us a great life. There are many reasons for us to saving it in Wickersham Hall. The power saving slogans will make great efforts in making our planet more sustainable. The electricity we are using is mainly converted by other kinds of energies, especially fossil fuels. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), the most of the common fuel that used for electricity generation is coal sharing 45% of the U.S electricity energy, which is about 4 trillion Kilowatt-hours (EIA, 2011). Fossil fuels such as coal and petroleum are not renewable. Once they are used, the total resources are reduced. Our earth will run out of fossil fuel sooner or later. Saving energy could reduce the local electricity demand which means saving fossil fuels that used for generating electricity. Saving fossil fuels means slower the speed of running out of energy which in other word is to make our planet more sustainable. This could give us more time to change our energy resources from fossil fuels to renewable energies such as wind energy, tide waves, and geothermal energy, which are almost unlimited in amount. So by post a power saving slogan above the light switch, electricity will be saved and residents in Wickersham Hall is making our planet more sustainable.

As we know by now, electricity is mainly generated from burning coal. Coal is not a clean energy source. During the digging and converting progress, coal will cause many environmental problems such as toxic solid or water wastes and sulfuric or nitric gases emission. According to the department of the interior, vast damage to waterways can be attributed to the extraction of coal. Coal extraction may very well be the leading the source of water pollution today. Saving electricity could dramatically reduce the coal demand which could reduce the pollution caused by coal extraction as well. Saving power could also reduce the amount of coal that been burnt. Sulfuric or nitric gases that generated from the coal burning process are the most important contributors to acid rain. Acid rain is one of the most harmful pollutions to the local area, especially for agriculture and fishing and it will cause skin cancer for the local people. Saving electricity can help reducing these kinds of pollution. The posts will help us to achieve this.

As discussed before, wasting electricity means burning more coal. This will lead to another global environmental problem: The Greenhouse Effect. Fossil fuels such as coal that used for generating electricity are mainly consisting large amount of carbon and hydrogen. When converting fossil fuels into electricity, a greenhouse gas-carbon dioxide will be released. The greenhouse gas will contribute to greenhouse effect and will cause the global warming. Global warming is a serious environmental problem that could bring about ice cap melting, sea level rising, species extinction, and droughts. By saving power, we could help the world by reducing the greenhouse gas emission. This is the most important reason for posting power saving slogan as a reminder.

Saving electricity can make our lives better. It is easy. Just by turning off the light before you leaving the room; turning off computer when you are not using it; unplugging electronic devices after recharging and etc. Everyone in Wickersham hall can make it. By our friendly reminders, every resident in Wickersham hall will realize the importance of saving power and will be aware of it. Now it is the time for us to make our own effort to save our planet!

 

 

Reference

 

U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA). (2011), Electricity in the United States, Retrieved from: http://www.eia.gov/electricity/

Final Research Draft: The Plight of Our Oceans

The Plight of Our Oceans

Oceans cover two thirds of the Earth’s surface. Without them, the great diversity of plants and animals, including humans, could not survive on this planet. They consume carbon dioxide and produce a significant amount of the world’s oxygen. They impact the weather and the global climate. They are an essential ecosystem with a large, complex food chain, providing food on which humans depend. Oceans are a vital part of life on Earth, and it is crucially important that we preserve and protect them. Although people are becoming more aware of humankind’s impact on the earth and its ecosystems, human activity is still rapidly causing severe damage to the world’s oceans because of unsustainable fishing, bycatch, and pollution.

                First, unsustainable fishing is a huge problem these days, with marine populations being harvested much faster than they can naturally replenish themselves. There are many nations that depend on wild fish stocks, each with many competitive fisheries, and all of them are constantly taking up as many fish as they possibly can. As a result of this rampant fishing, these wild stocks are being depleted at astonishing rates. In fact, according to the FAO in 2010, 53% of the world’s fisheries are fully exploited, and 32% are overexploited, depleted, or recovering from a collapse. Additionally, as many as 90% of the ocean’s large fish have been totally fished out (Myers, 2003). One of the reasons this is happening is due to industrial fishing, which is the largest factor contributing to population depletion in the oceans (Ainley, 2009). The goal of industrial fishing is to supply fish and seafood to meet the demand for human consumption, and to make a profit in doing so, so of course they all want to harvest as much fish and seafood as possible. In order to achieve this goal, industries send out large fleets of huge fishing vessels, all built with state-of-the-art equipment designed to catch huge amounts of fish. There is a limited number of fish in the ocean, and meeting the global demand for fish is a herculean task in and of itself, but trying to do so at a profit when there are so many fishermen after the same small stock breeds fierce competition among industries as well as between nations. Due to the unsustainable fishing practices of these competitive industries, there are constantly more and more people competing for less and less fish. To make matters worse, pirate fishing vessels are a chronic problem in global fisheries, and law enforcement is a complex and difficult thing to achieve on international waters. Pirate vessels fish illegally all over the world, effectively stealing from what is already a dwindling stock. This is known as illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, or IUU, and accounts for up to 30% of total catches globally (OECD, 2004). In other words, one-third of the fish being harvested worldwide is illegal and unaccounted for, while the two-thirds that is legal and acceptable is already far too much. Unless there is drastic improvement on a global scale in the sustainability of current fishing practices, stocks of all species currently harvested are expected to collapse by 2048 (Worm, 2006). If that happens, not only will the health of the oceans greatly suffer, but all the people and countries that depend on these wild fish for food and economic stability will be facing a terrible crisis.

                Another major crisis with the current global fishing industry is bycatch. Bycatch refers to unwanted marine species that are caught in fishing equipment while fishing for another species. Not only are industrial fishing practices grossly unsustainable, they are also very wasteful and destructive. Enormous fishing nets, traps, and other equipment are designed to catch massive amounts of fish and seafood, but often they also catch and kill whales, dolphins, porpoises, and other marine life all over the world (Willison, 2009). In addition, some of these fishing practices destroy habitats as well as inhabitants. For example, the “rockhopper” trawl, introduced in the 1980s, is designed to allow large fishing nets to pass easily over any rough surface. Thanks to this new technology, fishermen are now able to drag their nets and trawls cavalierly, destroying many habitats and leaving scars on the ocean floor. This has had devastating effects on habitats and ecosystems all over the world, such as in Australia, where 90% of surfaces where coral used to grow are now bare rock (WWF, 2011). To make matters worse, some bycatch is caught via “ghost fishing,” which is when fishing equipment has been lost or abandoned at sea, but continues to catch and entangle marine life long after the fishermen no longer operate or control it (Erzini, 2008). One of the worst problems with industrial scale fishing is entanglement, which is what happens  when dolphins, whales, turtles and other marine life is unintentionally killed by becoming entangled in fishing nets, traps, and other equipment. Entanglement is one of the main threats to many marine species. Over 300,000 small whales, dolphins, and porpoises die from entanglement every year, making it the single largest cause of mortality and pushing many marine species to the edge of extinction (WPF, 2010). Imagine all of those competing industries and all those pirates mentioned before. All of them are out extracting as many fish out of the ocean as they possibly can, and all of them are destroying habitats and killing huge amounts of other marine life in the process. That all adds up to an overwhelming amount of death and destruction, and it is increasing every day.

                Finally, probably the worst effect that humankind has on land or sea is pollution. There are many different types of pollution, and the ocean is a victim of virtually all of them. One of the most visible and well known forms of ocean pollution is oil pollution. Oil spills get a heavy amount of media attention, such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989 or the recent BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Images of sickly, blackened ducks and other wildlife rile up the general public and incite rage and disgust toward oil companies and the governments that support them. These tragic events are extremely devastating; water is blackened deep below the surface, wildlife is killed in huge quantities, ecosystems are destroyed. Even worse, it takes decades or even longer to clean up and restore vital ecosystems after tragedies like these. The damage is incredibly severe and persistent, and more spills are occurring every day. Because of these catastrophic effects, oil spills are becoming a political fuel as another major reason to reduce dependence on oil and commit to alternative, sustainable energy sources.  For example, Nigeria is the fifth largest supplier of oil to the United States. With over 6,800 oil spills, the Niger Delta experiences roughly 300 spills a year, which amounts to almost one a day. This delta is the third largest wetland on the entire planet, and its rivers and wildlife are being perpetually devastated by oil spills (Fenig, 2010). That is a heinous tragedy all by itself, and that is just a fraction of the damage being caused by oil spills all over the world. In addition to all the damage caused by oil spills alone, the ocean is further polluted by a countless other sources: domestic sewage, industrial discharges, urban and industrial run-off, explosions, sea dumping practices, mining, radioactive waste, and infinite others. The ocean has become the largest garbage dump on Earth, being constantly filled with trash, chemicals, and all kinds of waste.  Research in the North Pacific is revealing just how exponentially this problem is growing. In 1991, research conducted in the North Pacific Gyre found that there was 6 times more plastic than plankton by weight in the water. Only a decade later, in the same area, it found 46 times more plastic than plankton (Greenberg, 2009). That means that in just ten short years, there was more than seven times as much garbage in the North Pacific as before. The sand of the world’s beaches, once made solely of coral, seashells, and natural, pristine rock, is now littered all throughout with little bits of plastic. Additionally, global warming is having adverse effects on both marine habitats and wildlife. The ocean is absorbing heat as the global temperature rises, and the water temperatures are increasing. Among other effects, this temperature rise is causing low-oxygen areas that cannot sustain marine life, known as “dead zones.” These dead zones last for thousands of years, and can become permanent fixtures in the oceans. As of now, they make up only about 2% of the world’s oceans, but scientific models predict that by the year 2100, these dead zones could grow by a factor of ten or more. This means that by 2100, one-fifth or more of the oceans could be empty, lifeless dead zones (Than, 2009).  Ocean life cannot adapt as quickly as the temperature is rising, and is dying as a result. Also, large areas of coral reefs are turning white and dying, an occurrence known as “bleaching” (Edwards, 2011). Overall, human presence on the earth and the carelessness with which we pollute it is having unfathomable consequences on our oceans.

                The first step in combatting this disaster is education: until people know what the problem is and what is causing it, they cannot do anything about it. Fortunately, public awareness about the environment is already increasing, and more and more people are learning about the global environmental crisis, making it a hot social and political issue. People all over the world are changing their lifestyles, unplugging computers, flipping off light switches, riding bikes to work, recycling, and much more in their efforts to “go green.” There has also been a rise in the popularity of nature documentaries on television and even in movie theatres, and these programs are not only fascinating and emotionally riveting, but they also raise awareness about the environment and persuade audiences to care about and protect our shared physical world (Hughes, 2011). Federal organizations and offices are being established to create a national vision and strategy for increasing ocean education and awareness for both school children and the general public (Trotter, 2004). There are efforts being made to educate the public and increase awareness, and the people are responding. As long as this trend continues to grow, there is a ray of hope amidst this bleak situation. The bad news is that we are going to need significantly more than a ray of hope to beat this crisis, and there is not nearly the amount of awareness there needs to be on a global scale to fight it (Boyle, 2008). Furthermore, not enough of this awareness is turning into action. We can learn all the facts and know all there is to know about the oceans and their current predicament, but until we act on that knowledge, the oceans will remain doomed. Thousands of activists and campaigns are under way all over the world to raise awareness about the oceans and to incite people to take action to save them (Helvarg, 2001). At this point, the deciding factor will be whether those of us who know about the oceans can spread the word in time, and whether those who hear it will care enough to act.

                Even with increasing environmental awareness, our oceans are clearly in a much more severe plight than we have yet realized. The downward spiral has begun: marine life is being depleted and habitat destroyed. Without these vital ecosystems, the oceans will not be able to withstand the severe pollution and rising temperatures that we are causing. In other words, not only are we the single largest cause of everything destroying the oceans, but we are also taking away and ruining all the vital parts it needs to fight and protect itself. The crisis is already at a critical point, and it is getting worse and worse by the minute. If drastic changes are not made very soon, it will be too late; we will not be able to save our oceans, and the consequences to all life on Earth will be devastating.

 

 

References

Ainley, D. G., & Blight, L. K. (2009). Ecological repercussions of historical fish

          extraction from the Southern Ocean. Fish & Fisheries, 10(1), 13-38. doi:1

          0.1111/j.1467-2979.2008.00293.x.

Boyle, P. (2008). Ocean awareness campaign. Wildlife Conservation, 101(4), 7.

Edwards, H. J., Elliott, I. A., Eakin, C., Irikawa, A., Madin, J. S., McField, M., & …

          Mumby, P. J. (2011). How much time can herbivore protection buy for coral

          reefs under realistic regimes of hurricanes and coral bleaching?. Global

          Change Biology, 17(6), 2033-2048. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2486.2010.02366.x.

Erzini, K. et al (2008) Catches in ghost-fishing octopus and fish traps in the

          northeastern Atlantic Ocean. FisheriesBulletin. http://findarticles.com

          /p/articles/mi_m0FDG/is_3_106/ai_n32175600/

FAO (2010) State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) –SOFIA 2010.

          FAO Fisheries Department.

Fenig, B. (2010) 9 of the most polluted places in the world. Huffington Post.

          http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/08/31/photos-most-polluted-

          plac_n_693008.html#s130983&title=Niger_Delta_Nigeria.

Greenberg, N. (2009). Captain Charles Moore. Earth Island Journal, 24(1),

          47-50.

Helvarg, D. (2001). On the Blue Frontier. (Cover story). E: The Environmental

          Magazine, 12(4), 26.

Hughes, H. (2011). Humans, sharks and the shared environment in the

          contemporary eco-doc. Environmental Education Research, 17(6),

          735-749. doi:10.1080/13504622.2011.620702.

Myers, R.A., and Worm, B. (2003) Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory

          fish communities. Nature, 423: 280-283.

OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) (2004)

          Workshop on Illegal, Unreported, Unregulated (IUU) Fishing Activity.

          http://www.oecd.org/document/5/0,3343,en_2649_33901_21007109

          _1_1_1_37401,00.html.

Than, K. (2009) Global warming to create “permanent” ocean dead zones?

          National Geographic. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009

          /01/090128-ocean-dead-zones.html

Trotter, A. (2004). Federal Panel Advocates Ocean Awareness in K-12. Education

          Week, 23(33), 29.

Willison, J., & Côté, R. P. (2009). Counting biodiversity waste in industrial eco-

          efficiency: fisheries case study. Journal Of Cleaner Production, 17(3), 348-

          353. doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2008.08.003.

Worm, B. et al (2006) Impacts of biodiversity loss on ocean ecosystem services.

          Science, 314: 787.

WPF (World Preservation Foundation) (2010) 250,000 endangered turtles die

          each year, and further examples of industrial fishing costs. http://www.

          worldpreservationfoundation.org/blog/extinction/250000-endangered

          -turtles-die-each-year-and-further-examples-of-industrial-fishing-          costs/

WWF (2011) Fishing problems: destructive fishing practices. http://wwf.panda.org

          /about_our_earth/blue_planet/problems/problems_fishing/.

 

Revision: Essay#2 Book Review:The truth behind fast food

When we are talking about what Americans eat, fast food always comes to mind. The hamburger, as the symbol of fast food, was first made in Germany. In 1850, some immigrants from Germany moved to America, and brought hamburger with them. After that, the fast food nation was born, and fast food has become the symbol of the American diet. Although fast food has become a part of our life, author Schlosser Eric’s book, Fast Food Nation, intelligently relates to the reader that we should stop eating fast food because eating fast food will make people become fat, there are many food additives in the fast food, and the conditions surrounding the slaughtering of the cattle and the production of the meat are squalid.

Although we can see how many calories are in fast food, there are still many people becoming fatter every year. According to “Super Size Me”, which is a 2004 American documentary film directed by and starring Morgan Spurlock, an American independent filmmaker. Spurlock’s film follows a 30-day period from February 1 to March 2, 2003 during which he eats only McDonald’s food. The film documents this lifestyle’s drastic effects on Spurlock’s physical and psychological well-being, and explores the fast food industry’s corporate influence, including how it encourages poor nutrition for its own profit.

Spurlock dined at McDonald’s restaurants three times per day, eating every item on the chain’s menu. Spurlock consumed an average of 20.92 megajoules or 5,000 kcal (the equivalent of 9.26 Big Macs) per day during the experiment. As a result, the then-32-year-old Spurlock gained 24½ lbs. (11.1 kg), a 13% body mass increase, a cholesterol level of 230, and experienced mood swings, sexual dysfunction, and fat accumulation in his liver. It took Spurlock fourteen months to lose the weight gained from his experiment using a vegan diet supervised by his future wife, who is a chef specialized in vegan dishes and gourmet.(Super size me, 2011)

This film adequately shows what how fast food makes people become fat. But that’s only one part of the harmful effect of fast food. Food additives can also cause a big problem. Many customers love fast food because it is tasty and cheap. But the truth behind fast food is that the chemical components that make the food taste so good are harmful. If all tastes can be made by chemical components, some customers will feel unsafe, because we don’t know whether those chemical components are harmful for our bodies. But some customers will think it is OK, because we can commonly see many chemical components around us. Even some vegetables’ genesis have been changed, so they don’t care about chemical components. But according to Schlosser’s survey, the fact is those chemical products are produced in the same area as cosmetics and pesticide. It means when we are eating a tasty hamburger, we are also eating some pesticide at the same time.

What about those meats? Or I should ask what’s in the meat? In 1997, approximately 35 million pounds of ground beef was recalled because a bacterium called E Coli was found in the food. However, after the beef was recalled, about 25 million pounds had already been eaten.

Why can we find E Coli in the meat? The answer is that the condition surrounding the slaughtering of the cattle and the production of the meat are squalid. In order to reduce the production cost, beef production factories’ conditions are dangerous. These employees have a low salary and they have lots of works to do. Many employees are Mexico and Latin American immigrants, and most of them even can’t speak English. But in order to live, they must engage in such work; Manufacturers can freely close plants and fire workers, because these jobs are very rare for those immigrants. So we can’t expect these factories and slaughter houses will have clean conditions to produce meat. Sometimes modern breeding and feeding also create larger ecological trouble: animal diseases such as mad cow disease, foot-and-mouth disease. Those diseases will also spread the virus and make people die.

The virus can lead to fatal accidents. For example, mad-cow disease is a fatal neurodegenerative disease in cattle that causes a spongy degeneration in the brain and spinal cord. By October 2009, it had killed 166 people in the United Kingdom. This virus also makes some countries loss money. For example,

Japan was the top importer of U.S. beef, buying 240,000 tons valued at $1.4 billion in 2003. After the discovery of the first case of BSE in the U.S. on December 23, 2003, Japan halted U.S. beef imports. In December 2005, Japan once again allowed imports of U.S. beef, but reinstated its ban in January 2006 after a technical violation of the U.S.-Japan beef import agreement: a vertebral column, which should have been removed prior to shipment, was included in a shipment of veal. (Wiki)

So we can’t ignore conditions surrounding the slaughtering of the cattle and the production of the meat. Seriously, it is not only about the health problem, because someone has been dead because of these diseased cows and those Manufacturers.

In conclusion, if we start eating fast food when we were young, we will treat fast food as the daily diet in the future. I used to eat fast food about few years ago, and I can’t stop eating it even if I know it is harmful after a few years. The fast food can’t bring health to us; on the other hand, it may bring many diseases such as high blood pressure, stroke, and heart disease to us. It sounds like a drug and we are druggies. So let’s stop eating fast food, as Schlosser Eric recommended.

Work cited

Super Size Me. (2011, October 12). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 23:11, October 28, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Super_Size_Me&oldid=455212304

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy. (2011, December 8). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 15:59, December 9, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy&oldid=464840655

Revision: Essay #3: There is no garbage in the world, only resource which is misplaced.

The modern life style decides we are producing trash every day. Think about the rubbish in the kitchen. After cooking dinner, the dustbin will be full and we need to take out the trash every day. It is hard for us to calculate how much trash we are making. If we do not recycle the trash, our energy and resource will become less and less. We must recycle those “waste” resources and we also need to care about garbage classification, because most rubbish can be recycled. As the most common trash, we should care more about recycling bottles. Although we have already done well in garbage classification, we should set a unique dustbin to recycle all bottles in Wickersham hall, because bottles are the most common form of trash in everyday life, as most of the bottles can be recycled, it can improve our recycling efficiency.

We need drink water, coffee or juice every day, especially in the summer. When we are walking on the street or shopping in the market, it is easy to find someone holding a bottle around us. The bottle may come from the vending machine, the Starbucks or some fast food restaurant. This also happens in Wickersham hall. The Wood Center and vending machines on the first floor offer a good environment to produce those bottled trashes. On the other hand, soft drinks are very cheap in the market and they are often sold by a case. It means there are many potential bottle trashes in the life. In Wickersham hall, only a few people will cook by themselves but everyone has some amount of bottled trash. So the best way is to manage those trashes and do well in garbage classification, especially for those bottles.

Why do I focus on the bottle? It is because most bottles can be recycled. It is easy for us to throw all of the rubbish together. If all the rubbish can be recycled, there will be no classification. So if we throw those unrecyclable trashes and recyclable trashes together, it is hard for us to separate them and it is also a waste. Most of the companies have realized it and they decided to use recycled materials to make most bottles. For example, coke can be seen as one of the most common soft drinks in the world. The Coca-Cola Company always uses tin cans or plastic bottles. Both of them can be recycled easily. Another material is paper. It is common to see paper cups or paper bottles in most restaurants. Paper is light and can be recycled easily. Only a few drinks use glass bottles, and glass bottle is hard to recycle. For example, Starbucks uses glass bottles. It is easy for the glass to smash to pieces. In Wickersham hall, we often buy some drinks from the wood center or the Lola Tilly, and all of cups are made out of paper and most of the bottles are made out of plastic. So all of these bottles and cups can be recycled, if we set up a unique recycling bins in Wickersham to help with for garbage classification.

The last reason is this unique classification system can improve the recycling efficiency in the Wickersham. The first floor can be seen as the playroom in Wickersham, and the vending machines are also in the first floor. Most people will buy soft drinks from vending machines, and they will throw those empty bottles into the trash can. Although the dustbin on the first floor is always full of bottles, there is also a little bit of unrecyclable trash in the dustbin. This makes garbage classification become harder. By putting a unique dustbin on the first floor, we will improve the efficiency of recycling. At the same time, it is hard for us to separate trash in our dorms. It is hard for us to throw all recycled trash in one dustbin, and the other trash in another dustbin. But we can throw all bottles into one dustbin. There is no public dustbin in Wickersham, so a unique dustbin can help us classify the trash.

In essence, the best way to classify the trash and recycle the trash is to make everybody pay attention to the garbage classification. This will be a huge amount of work to separate the different trashes. This recycling bin would make us realize how much trash we make every day and how important garbage classification is. After all, there is no garbage in the world, only resources which are misplaced.

Work cited

Coca-Cola. (2011, November 24). In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 09:45, November 27, 2011, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Coca-Cola&oldid=462319051

 

Revised Essay #3: Too Hot

Zhenzihao Zhang

Maureen

ENGL213X 

12/09/2011

 

Too Hot

Sometimes we just waste our energy. I live In Wickersham Hall in campus. When it comes to winter, the heating is provided, which is pretty beneficial for us. Although the temperature in campus is rather low, the utilities services in the campus community working on supplying heating in winter should decrease the heating they supply because the heating has been more than enough to keep us warm in the community, it helps decelerate the trend of global warming by reducing heating supply, and we can also reduce the exhaust heating plants emit into the air.

Winter here is extremely cold, especially in this year. The date at which the outside temperature dropped to -40 degree Fahrenheit is earlier than that in previous years. It even makes me doubt the existence of global warming. This phenomenon may lead to an increase in utilities service’s anxiety on the warmth of us residents in campus, they, however very generously, are providing more heating than we need. I feel it too hot, even under the condition that I wear T-shirts and shorts. The people providing heats should really care about this issue. Ether high temperature or low temperature, are not good for our health. In high temperature, the metabolism in our bodies is running faster so that we need more water to compensate the water we lose due to exhalation and sweating according to high school biology. Also, high temperature can lead to low humidity in rooms, which can further lead to discomfort and diseases. The temperature should be approximately 20 degree Celsius, which is the best according to scientists’ research.

Global warming is a serious issue nowadays. The average temperature on earth has increased by about 0.8 degree Celsius within last century. After the industrial revolution, the rate of temperature increase accelerated tremendously due to people’s increasing impact on the environment. Generally, the earth is able to balance itself through emitting the extra heat into the universe. However, people are generating too much heat by burning too much fossil fuel. According to research, the majority of fossil fuel is used to generate heat across human history, especially in cold places such as Alaska. Global warming has many negative impacts on the environment, and hurricanes are one of them. The sea water is getting more and more warmer due to global warming, and it greatly contribute to the intensity of tropical storms by providing them more energy. According to scientists’ research, future hurricanes can get more disastrous due to more heat provided in the formation of storms. Drought and wildfire can also happen more frequently as the earth get warmer, and they are more intense too. Drought happens due to stronger evaporation and less rainfall. An increase in the possibility can also happen due to the decrease in humidity and higher temperature. The sea level is increasing around the world due to global warming, and a lot of beautiful islands have been submerged. A significant factor contributing to global warming is generating too much heat by human beings. We are always generating more heat than we need, and I deeply feel the waste of energy in the case of providing too much heat. Those people really should think about the optimum heat they should provide to contribute to global warming.

Due to providing too much heat, the workers are burning too much fossil fuel, which lead to emissions of too much exhaust gas, which is quite hazardous to the environment. These exhaust gases are mainly greenhouse gases. These gases can trap heat in the atmosphere, thus exacerbating global warming. One of them is carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is generated in the process of burning fossil fuel, and it is the major product of burning fossil fuel. Fossil fuel is developed by dead body of large carbon based life forms, or by deposition of algae in deep sea under high pressure and high temperature. Those dead bodies of lives are mainly composed of carbon that forms carbon dioxide through burning. Another hazardous gas is hydrogen sulfide, which is dangerous to the environment. It is the origin of acid rain that erodes surface architecture and metal. A lot of ancient architecture is eroded by acid rain in those areas where large amount of fossil fuel is burned. People are generating too much hazardous gases by supplying too much heat!

In a nutshell, supplying too much heat is not beneficial at all, and it even bring to the earth a lot of damage. People supplying heating should really care about this issue and decrease the heating they provided.

Revised Essay #2:A Book Telling the Truth

Zhenzihao Zhang

Maureen

ENGL213X 

12/09/2011

A Book Telling the Truth

         We can live without food, but we can live without food industry. I have read the book: “Food Inc”. Although industrial food is cheap and convenient, in Food Inc., Karl Weber reveals that industrial food is making us sicker, fatter, and poorer because food corporations’ deliberately keep information from consumers, apply biotechnology without long-term justification, and misuse antibiotics.

The book presents us a whole new aspect of our food and our world that may be totally different from what we perceived before. Food incorporations tell lies all the time. The packaging of the foods we see in markets like Walmart today conveys the idea that foods are grown naturally in old-time farms, while the truth of industrial food production is that the whole procedure for producing foods can’t be less wholesome.  Take farms raising chickens for example, thousands of chickens are confined in a small field, where no space between the chickens can be seen, and the stink spreads for several miles, greatly polluting air nearby, of which residents nearby suffer the most. How come consumers have no idea of their situation? The industry uses legislation, marketing and intimidation to keep Americans completely in the dark about the process to produce the foods and where their foods are from.

At the present, the food on shelves in supermarket is not real food, though they may look like real one. To be more specific, the food we see now is different food with a similar appearance as past food. However, we see them in the same notion of past food. If we compare food today with food parents cooked several decades ago, we’ll find significant difference. Today most of the food has been genetically engineered, altering the way they grew it in the past. What is genetic e engineering? Genetic engineering is also called genetic modification, which means scientists directly manipulate an organism’s genome taking advantage of modern DNA technology. Foreign DNA is introduced into the organism of interest.  The potential benefits of genetically engineered food are heart-stirring because it does bring us more production without losing the quality. However, concerns on biodiversity, the ecosystem and people’s safety exists because such food may not be tested properly and guaranteed to be safe. Unexpected dangerous substances may be present in GE (genetically engineered) food because the procedure for assessing the safety of GE foods is not designed to detect them. Even top researchers identify that the impacts of genetic engineering are unpredictable, and these scientists are being harassed and suppressed by food giants.

As far as we know, the cost of raising livestocks is about ten times as much as the same amount of plants. This fact makes it nearly impossible that the price of meat products get close to that of vegetables. However, it does happen in America through industrial production in large scale, which, in terms of quantity, is a miracle, but not in terms of quality. The book shows us the dirtiness of factory farms where livestock are raised and slaughtered, which couldn’t be worse. In an industrial farm producing pigs, substantial amount of pigs are confined to a limited field. The field is never cleaned, and animals live on feces from birth to death. This action has a side effect that animals have a high possibility  of getting infected with certain viruses because of the dirtiness and soon it will develop into a plague for animals, coming along with tremendous loss. To prevent this disaster from happening, farmers feed those pigs with all kinds of antibiotics. The high-tech movement isn’t safe as well, and it could lead to the emergence of super germs that are resistant to all kinds of antibiotics. Ironically, this action compensating for the former action is also flawed, but it’s not compensated. Super germs are extremely hard to kill, which means they can kill anyone without any trouble. People infected with super germs dies quickly, even with treatment. Several cases have happened around US.

The process of slaughtering animals is also dirty and unsafe. According to the book, animals are killed without their guts completely cleaned, which means feces may still be there. And the body surely was stained with feces in fields before the animal is brought to the slaughter room. To make things worse, complete sterilization can never be achieved for industrial production. At the end, consumers buy meat products they take for granted as safe and clean, while the products are actually not. Eating meat products stained by feces can lead to severe diseases, which has been prove.

The darkness of industrial production of foods gives rise to the rapid development of organic food industry. Organic foods are produced without involving any pesticide and any antibiotics, and chemical treatment can’t be made to food.  Some people question the production efficiency of organic foods. This worry is nonsensical. According to an interview in the book, a farmer producing chicken in a distinctive organic way produce nearly the same amount as in industrial way. This method can be the same efficient with double workers according to the interview.

The book should be applauded with flowers and choruses because it throws light on the dark secrets and hidden facts of the food incorporations, makes American people aware of what exactly they are eating, and supports the revolution of food industry and people’s transferring to eating organic foods with solid evidence. With a book like this telling the truth, consumers will mediate over the contradiction between profiting and ethics, which is the innate contradiction lies in capitalism.

Revision: Essay #1 Cause/Effect: A problem from using groundwater

Qingquan Liu

Maureen Sullivan

ENGL F213X

Essay #1 Cause/Effect: A problem from using groundwater

Right now, groundwater makes up about twenty percent of the world’s fresh water supply. In everyday life, groundwater is used everywhere, such as drinking, agricultural, and industry. In some places, groundwater even stands for the main role in water supply. For example, ninety percent of Florida’s population relies on groundwater resources for their drinking water, so using groundwater has become an important way to solve the water-supply problem. Although using groundwater can ease water supplies, it will cause more environmental problems because using groundwater will destroy the ecosystem, it will make the earth’s surface sink, and drinking groundwater may make people sick.

From the literal meaning, groundwater exists underground. That water in the reservoir will be used not only by people, but also by the ecosystem. Groundwater sustains rivers, lakes, wetlands, and plants. If groundwater is over-used, the roost of plants may not be able to reach groundwater, and it will make plants wither and die in the end. On the other hand, some lakes are formed by groundwater. Groundwater will slowly move through the spaces and cracks between the soil particles. After years of water movement, ground water will discharge an area and it will form a lake or stream. When groundwater is over-used, the water level will decrease and the lake will disappear. Rivers and wetlands will also be influenced by the same reason. Plants rivers, wetlands and lakes are the part of the ecosystem, so using groundwater means breaking the ecosystem.

There is one more problem with using groundwater the effects of groundwater overuse may take decades or longer to manifest themselves.

In a classic study in 1982, Bredehoeft and colleagues modelled a situation where groundwater extraction in an intermontane basin withdrew the entire annual recharge, leaving ‘nothing’ for the natural groundwater-dependent vegetation community. Even when the borefield was situated close to the vegetation, 30% of the original vegetation demand could still be met by the lag inherent in the system after 100 years. By year 500 this had reduced to 0%. (wiki)

It also shows that once the ecosystem is broken, how hard the ecosystem wants to be recovered.

Using groundwater will also make the earth’s surface sink, which is also called land subsidence. It is easy to understand why the surface sinks. Once groundwater decreases in the reservoir, there is nothing that can refill those used groundwater holes, reservoirs. So part of the reservoir will become empty, and the surface will sink without having anything to sustain it. The subsidence will cause huge problems in the city, such as changes in elevation, damage to structures and increases in the frequency of flooding.

Obviously, if land subsidence happens, the elevation will decrease.

The city of New Orleans, Louisiana, is actually below sea level today, and its subsidence is partly caused by removal of groundwater from the aquifer systems beneath it. Another example of changing in elevation is the city of San Jose, California, dropped 13 feet from land subsidence caused by over pumping.( San JacintoRiverAuthority)

Most of the city has a large population, so if the subsidence happens on the road, it may cause an accident. But if it happens under a building, the building will collapse.

Winter Park, Florida, May 1981: This sinkhole formed over a few hours in a single day and caused at least $2 million in damages. During the day the sinkhole grew to 300 feet by 320 feet and 90 feet deep, swallowing a house, several cars, many trees, and a local swimming pool.

So the subsidence can make a huge damage to the structures, and it is very dangerous for people to live here.

The land subsidence will also influence the frequency of flooding. If the subsidence happens, it means the empty part in the reservoir will be filled by mud or rocks. Then, the flow rate of groundwater will decrease. It will influence those people who are using groundwater and the ecosystem to live without water.

For those people who are drinking groundwater or using groundwater, it is not safe because groundwater may contain  heavy metals or harmful pollutants. It is hard to say where those harmful things come from, but drinking groundwater, which contains these things, certainly makes people sick.

So it is dangerous for people to drink groundwater without testing it. For example, Arsenic contamination of groundwater is a natural occurring high concentration of arsenic in deeper levels of groundwater, which became a high-profile problem in recent years due to the use of deep tubewells for water supply in the Ganges Delta, causing serious arsenic poisoning to large numbers of people.

Sometimes there is no choice people can only use groundwater, but the result of using groundwater is serious. As we notice that stopping our using of fossil fuels could reduce the effect of global warming, why can’t we stop using groundwater?

Worksite

Wikipedia. (2011). Groundwater. Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groundwater

Author is Unknown. (2011).Groundwater and the Water Cycle. Retrieved from http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=zh-CN&newwindow=1&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=7525l8697l0l8901l8l8l0l7l0l0l158l158l0.1l1l0&q=cache:mEJB4k8LtkIJ:http://www.groundwater.org/kc/gwwatercycle.html+groundwater+cycle&ct=clnk

San JacintoRiverAuthority. (2011). What is land subsidence. Retrieved from http://www.sanjacintoriverauthority.com/facts/land-subsidence.html

Association of environmental & Engineering Geologists. (2011). Land subsidence. Retrieved from http://www.aegweb.org/i4a/pages/index.cfm?pageid=4076#history

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. (2011). Arsenic contamination of groundwater. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenic_contamination_of_groundwater