What Mother Nature Gives Us
Originally published on my blog.
Mother nature gives us everything we need to live. Fresh air, from the oxygen that trees produce. Clean air, that all of the plants give us by absorbing the carbon dioxide, thus eliminating pollution, and reducing the greenhouse gases. But what are greenhouse gases, and why do the man made greenhouse gases need to be eliminated, you wonder? Greenhouse gases are, “any of the gases whose absorption of solar radiation is responsible for the greenhouse effect, including carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, and the fluorocarbons,” (Dictionary.com). Therefore, they are bad. Greenhouse gases are responsible for the destruction of the protective barrier, known as the ozone layer, that keeps the earth’s atmosphere cool. With the destruction of rainforests, burning fossil fuel, and the natural occurrence of the release of greenhouse gases in nature, our ozone layer is opening up, thus warming up our planet, and causing climate change to accelerate.
This is not good news for anyone who lives and breaths on the planet. With sea levels rising, whole islands have already been completely submerged underwater. These islands are all from the Solomon Island chain. The first Island, the island of Sogomou, has been losing its surface area since 1947, and has lost 55% of its surface area by 2014 (Dewan, 2016). Another is Nuatambu island. Sirloin Sutaroti, 94 year old resident said this about his homeland, “The Sea is starting to come inland, it forced us to move up to the top of the hilltop and build our village there away from the sea,” (The Guardia, 2016). That’s not good, and that is proof of sea levels rising. More proof is that Greenland might actually turn green, or, rather, sink.
NASA has found a rift in a glacier in Greenland. Petermann glacier, one of Greenland’s largest glacier, and this is not its first one, “In 2012, an iceberg the size of Manhattan broke away from the glacier’s ice shelf. In 2010, another iceberg, this one four times the size of Manhattan, dropped, or calved, from Petermann. It was one of the largest recorded in Greenland, Live Science reported, “(Deamer, 2017). This scary dilemma is being caused by the great bounty of water heating up below it. The destruction of the rainforest, the burning of fossil fuels, and the natural release of greenhouse gases, is not only opening up the ozone layer, allowing in more harmful radiation, but warming up our oceans to deathly levels. Take the Great Barrier Reef, for example, one of the seven wonders of the natural world and has resulted in a, “50% decline in coral cover between 1985–2012,” and that cause is from, most notably, the rise in the acidity of the ocean water, (Great Barrier Reef Foundation). Therefore, this is something serious stuff, not only for our planet, but for the fish and ocean creatures as well.
If the Great Barrier Reef does complete its bleaching process, then many of the fish and marine life will have to move to survive, or they will die out and the ten major commercial fisheries of the fishing business, recreational scuba diving and fishing will all be affected in a negative way. The shrimp and salmon that we love to eat so much, plus many of the other fish species, will be, in turn, taken off of the menu. Unless you want to miss your shrimp, then more heed needs to be taken about all of the things that pollution, in the former of greenhouse gases, in the former of trash and, specifically, plastic, getting thrown into our oceans at record rates, and the chemical products we use to clean our homes and public places. Mother nature is capable of recovery, but we need to help her out. There are many things that we can do to help, as we will further explore in this blog. Be good to her, and she will be good to all of us.
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