Month: February 2019

Back in high school, we had to do a lab in chemistry where we had to make smog. I did not even know what smog was. My teacher said that it was a type of air pollution. Some countries, such as China have a severe smog problem, which caused some concerns when China was getting ready for the 2008 Summer Olympics.

According to National Geographic, smog is air pollution that reduces visibility. In the atmosphere, it has a light brownish color. In the 19th century smog was a mixture of fog and smoke; the smoke comes from burning coal, which is why it was very common in industrial cities. It still remains pretty well known to cities today. Most of the smog we see today is known as photochemical smog: air pollution that is produced when sunlight reacts with nitrogen oxides and a volatile organic compound in the atmosphere. Car exhausts and powerplants can produce nitrogen oxides, while VOC’s are released from products, such as gasoline. Smog is also very hazardous to our health. Smog can be very dangerous if inhaled in large amounts. It contains a pollutant called ozone, which in large amounts can have severe impacts on your lungs. Smog usually appears in the summer in the US. However, in countries like England, they can experience smog even in the winter.

Image by Daniel Stein/Istock/Getty Images

Air quality was a major concern during the 2008 Olympic games in Beijing, China. The world’s most populated country is bound to have a lot of air pollution. It is just the nature of the beast. According to PBS, 60% of power that China uses is from burning coal. China also had an increase in auto traffic, which contribute to the poor air quality. The World Bank estimated in 2007 that 350,000 to 400,000 Chinese die prematurely due to air pollution. That is why there was a lot of concern about the impacts that the polluted air could have on the Olympic athletes. Some countries even made arrangements for their athletes to practice in neighboring countries. Beijing has tried to implement some restrictions to increase the quality of the air. Factories near Beijing were ordered to shut down before the games, restrictions on the use of private automobiles was implemented, technicians even practiced seeding clouds to bring rain. The poor quality of air is a norm in China. I visited China a few years back and many people wore surgical masks to protect themselves from the polluted air.

Image by the Wall Street Journal

China is not the only one that has problems with air quality. Recently, California’s air quality also has been poor. This is due to the smoke from the wildfires, which is a whole other environmental concern. As CBS reported, smoke from these fires are full of particles that can cause health problems, such as heart and lung diseases. This can be especially dangerous for people with asthma and pregnant women because smoke travels through the bloodstream, and it can get to almost any organ once it gets past the air blood barrier in the lungs. The air quality in California was so severe because of how long the fires lasted along with the winds that helped spread the smoke. Everything that had been burned by these fires was in the smoke, so there was a lot of chemicals in the air.  CNN reported that the amount of air pollution that the fires caused is equivalent to the amount of pollution produced from vehicles in a year from California.

Air pollution is a huge health hazard. That is why we need to work together to reduce it. Air is a necessity, we cannot just push the problem of air pollution aside. Don’t you want to live in a world where everyone has access to clean air? Every choice we make, such as driving and using air conditioning affects the environment. Now I am not saying you should never do any of those things, but we can limit how much we are doing those things. The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services has come up with a list of steps you can take to help reduce air pollution:

• Conserve energy – remember to turn off lights, computers, and electric appliances when not in use.
• Use energy efficient light bulbs and appliances.
• Participate in your local utility’s energy conservation programs.
• Limit driving by carpooling, using public transportation, biking and walking.
• Combine errands for fewer trips.
• Keep your automobile well tuned and maintained. Follow the manufacturer’s instructions on routine maintenance, such as changing the oil and filters, and checking tire pressure and wheel alignment.
• Avoid excessive idling of your automobile.
• Use electric or hand-powered lawn care equipment.
• Be careful not to spill gasoline when filling up your car or gasoline powered lawn and garden equipment.
• Run dishwashers and clothes washers only when full.
• Choose environmentally friendly cleaners.
• Use water-based or solvent free paints whenever possible and buy products that say “low VOC”.
• Seal containers of household cleaners, workshop chemicals and solvents, and garden chemicals to prevent volatile organic compounds from evaporating into the air.
• Purchase and use low-polluting outboard marine engines and personal watercraft (4-stroke and direct fuel injection 2-stroke outboard marine engines).
• Advocate for emission reductions from power plants and more stringent national vehicle emission standards.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back in high school, we had to watch Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth in English. While we were more focused on studying his use of rhetoric, the content of the documentary is something that the public should be educated about.

An Inconvenient Truth is a documentary where Al Gore tries to inform the public on environmental issues, such as global warming and climate change. He tries to convey how significant of an issue climate change and global warming is using a slide show format. Al Gore provides lots of graphs, charts, and other visuals to show the changes in Earth due to global warming.  He uses a lot of personal experiences and ties them with the environmental issues he talks about. He also tries to use humor to explain the greenhouse effect, which was effective because it makes people more willing to listen to his argument about the subject. While discussing the effects of global warming, Al Gore also stresses that it is a moral issue. He believes that significant consequences will be produced from global warming if humans continue to generate large amount of greenhouse gases. He reports how carbon dioxide levels are already higher now than ever before. While there are many critics to global warming, Al Gore brings up how severe flooding can result and how different types of animals would be more vulnerable. Gore concludes by arguing how if we take action soon and plant more vegetation to consume the carbon dioxide, then the effects of global warming can be reversed. In the film, Al Gore said “each one of us is a cause of global warming, but each one of us can make choices to change that with the things we buy, the electricity we use, the cars we drive; we can make choices to bring our individual carbon emissions to zero. The solutions are in our hands, we just have to have the determination to make it happen. We have everything that we need to reduce carbon emissions, everything but political will. But in America, the will to act is a renewable resource.” This really sums up what we as society needs to do. While, there are many people that are skeptical of global warming, wouldn’t you think it is better to be safe than sorry. It is not that hard to reduce your carbon footprint. It is as easy as driving less or planting a garden. Do not let that be an inconvenience to you. It is easier to prevent something that you know can happen then, trying to fix it after the fact.

Image by Eric Lee/Paramount Classics

Fast forward 12 years. The environment is changing faster than ever. There are more fires, intenser hurricanes, droughts, changes in precipitation patterns, and more. You may have heard of the recent wildfires in California. They were so severe because of climate change. The wildfires in California were one of the most severe and deadliest wildfire in state history. California faced a very dry summer and fall. Combined with the timber-dry forests, howling winds, and high temperatures, a disaster is just waiting to occur. Something as little as a tossed cigarette bud is all you need for a wildfire to start. This spark combined with the current conditions California had was the perfect combination for a deadly wildfire. As Inside Climate News reported, the fire so far chased 200,000 people out of their homes in LA, killed 86 people, and destroyed 14,000 homes. “If the global gas emissions continued at such a high rate, the frequency of wildfire would increase by nearly 50 percent. The average area burned by wildfires would increase 77% by 2100.”

 

Image by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The are also have been more hurricanes with greater intensities. While, there is not much evidence that there is a correlation between climate change and hurricane frequency, there is a link between climate change and hurricane intensity. Hurricanes gain energy from warm water, so it is not a surprise that higher sea surface temperatures have resulted in intense hurricanes. Rising sea levels due to global warming also made flooding more likely. In 2012, Hurricane Sandy came to be. It was a category 3 storm. CNN reported that Hurricane Sandy affected 24 states and cost $71 billion in damages. Sandy was the tenth hurricane in the Atlantic hurricane season. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey hit. Hurricane Harvey was a category 4 hurricane that hit Texas. 13 million people were affected from Texas through Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Kentucky. Hurricane Irma also occurred in 2017. It was also a category 5 storm when it hit Barbuda. Hurricane Irma was the strongest Atlantic basin hurricane outside the Gulf Coast of Mexico and the Caribbean Coast. What set Irma apart from other hurricanes is that it was able to stay so powerful for so long. It was a category 5 storm for three days. It sustained 185 mile per hour winds. The majority of destruction and deaths occurred in the Caribbean, also affecting Cuba and the Florida Keys. 

 

 

We all have heard about the government shutdown. Recently there was a government shutdown as a result of a disagreement on border security between the Democrats and Republicans. Trump, backed up by Republicans wanted a bill funding the construction of a wall on the Mexican border. Democrats were opposed to such a bill. On December 22, 2018, the shutdown began when Democrats refused to support a continuing resolution that included $5 billion for a new border wall. The shutdown has impacted hundreds of thousands of federal employees and has had significant consequences.

Unfortunately, the parts of the government that face the shutdown includes the interior and environment. During the shutdown, many national parks had to be left ungated and unsupervised. The effects due to limited resources are horrifying. One of the differences between this shutdown and previous ones is that the parks were still open to the public, they were just extremely understaffed. Nothing was able to be maintained. They was garbage and human feces everywhere.

 

Image by Kevin N. Hume/Examiner

 

With some of these national parks, it can take hundreds of years to undo the damages that selfish humans have caused during the shutdown. The park that was most affected during the shutdown was the Joshua Tree National Park. Joshua trees live up to 150 years in the deserts of Southern California. There is even one that is believed to have lived up to 1000 years. It can take damaged trees up to 300 years to recover. The true nature of some people was apparent during the shutdown. According to Smithsonian, with little to none staff to enforce the rules and supervise the parks, “people used off-road vehicles in sensitive areas, camped illegally all over the park and even chopped down some Joshua Trees, which is currently considered for inclusion on the endangered species list.” It is horrible to see how reckless humans can be when rules aren’t being enforced, especially when their actions have a significantly negative impact. This should not be justified as ignorance. You can not just go out and destroy parts of the environment. Soon after, the Joshua Tree National Park announced that is would close completely to protect its natural resources. The park’s superintendent David Smith reported “we have two new roads that were created inside the park. We had destruction of government property with the cutting of chains and locks for people to access campgrounds. We’ve never seen this level of out-of-bounds camping. Every day use area was occupied every evening… Joshua trees were actually cut down in order to make new roads.” People are also graffitiing rocks and starting campfires in illegal areas. What are people doing? Just because no one is there to tell you no, does not mean it is alright to do this. Through some readjustments, the park decided not to close. There is still concern that this entire cycle will occur again once the government’s three week resolution is over. Even worse, these trees might not even get to recover due to climate change.

 

Image by Gina Ferazzi via Getty Images

 

There has been some criticism at the government for refusing to close the parks when they do not have the funds to pay employees and protect the natural habitat. This is not too surprising, since the current administration does not seem to care much about the environment: pulling out of the Paris Climate agreement.

Joshua Tree National Park is only one of many national parks who have suffered severe damages during the shutdown. Pacific Standard reports others who have been affected:

1. Trash accumulated in wildlife-rich parks like Yosemite and Yellowstone. This could ruin efforts to de-habituate bears from human food and result in a rise in bear attacks.
2. At Death Valley National Park, tire marks from off-road vehicles etched into the delicate landscape will take centuries to fade.
3. While 16,000 furloughed park service employees stayed home and missed paychecks, unsupervised park visitors put themselves at greater risk of harm. According to the National Parks Conservation Association, a hiker at Yosemite died from a fall after chasing his dog down a dangerous trail that park rangers would have typically prevented him from taking.
4. On top of the harm done to parks and visitors themselves, the NPCA estimated that the National Park Service lost $400,000 per day from entrance fee revenue.

That last point is especially important. National parks are already underfunded as it is to maintain the natural resources. On top of that they have to deal with all the revenue they lost and damages. It is such shame at both ends of the neglect towards nationals parks: from the government and from the public. Nationals park were designed as a conservation effort. The mission of the National Parks Conservation Association is “to protect and enhance America’s National Park System for present and future generations. At the rate we are going, this does not seem likely. These national parks consists of resources that are finite. Once they are gone, they are gone. More needs to be done to make maintaining this parks possible.