In fact, in response to the ever-growing streams of doom-laden forecasts on environmental issues, a few even went so far as to accuse the environmentalists of exaggerating data to mislead people (Lomborg, 2001).
There are two prominent claims among all the others which the sceptics base their arguments on: the self-balance of the amount of water through global warming and clean water shortage; and the self-recovery in biodiversity and natural resources. This paper seeks to disprove these claims, in order to show that environmentalists are not overstating their case.
Self-balance in global water availability: global warming and water shortage Self-balance is defined as a state of equilibrium, in, which the amount lost is compensated enough that the system remains at its initial condition. Based on this concept, Bjorn Lomborg (2001) argues that it is unnecessary to worry about global warming and water shortage at the same time since the two are mutually exclusive. According to Lomborg (2001), ocean makes up 97. 2 percent and polar ice contains 2. 15 percent of earth water.
If global warming takes place with high world temperature, ice will begin melting at the poles, which naturally leads to more evaporation and precipitation. The amount of water per capita will then increased and water shortage is solved. However, it is unjust of Lomborg to judge the water’s quantity separately from quality. Eversince the industrial revolution up to this day factories have contributed enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, sulphur and nitrogen, etc. to the atmosphere from which steam condenses into rain (The Effect of Industrial Pollution, n. d. ).
The Essay on Global Warming 8
Humankind is conducting an ongoing experiment to see what will happen to our health and to the well being of the planet when changes in the earth's climate are made. This experiment is called global warming. Global warming is allegedly changing the world, as we know it. The concern of global warming is the increasing temperature of the earth's climate, which is expected to warm even further ...
Additionally, since the radioactivity struck Japan after the natural disaster on March 11th, 2011, the radioactive material has been released into the atmosphere. Thus, a huge threat is posed on the population through the damaged purity of the air (Jones, 14 March 2011).
To add more problems to water’s quality issue, there are water dams. These strutures are too overly credited with water management, electricity generation and water distribution (Lomborg, 2001).
In every river, there is organic matter that feeds all the life-forms in and along the river flow, which will ultimately feed into the ocean.
Damming a river often means changing its course, in effect trapping the organic matter behind the dams, making them rot and emit methane gases (Marks, cited in Starr 2008).
The polluted river water poisons not only the river water left, but also puts the health of local peasants in jeopardy. It is the consequence of changing in a short time what took thousands of millions of years to adapt and evolve that renders the Earth’s self-balancing ability useless (Marks, cited in Starr 2008).
In short, much of the water gained will either be polluted or unusable, the issue of cleanliness therefore makes Lomborg’s argument pointless. Self-recovering process of biodiversity and natural resource Self-recovery, most of the time, is used as a universal excuse for the exploitation of natural resources by persuading people that what is lost will return in the future. Biodiversity is a concern usually raised up by the sceptics when mentioning the ability to recover of nature.
Bjorn Lomborg (2001) specifically stresses again and again in his famous publication of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” that we are only losing 40,000 species each year, which is relatively slow, and that the rate of forest coverage loss on Earth surface is also very low. However, there is a major flaw in this logic. David Pimentel (2002) makes it straightforward that whether we are driving at the slow or fast speed on the way of losing it, we are still losing it, and in plain words, it is only the matter of time that such things will totally disappear.
The Essay on Tonnes Km 2 Year Sediment Huang River
'What happens to Sediment carried by Rivers?' 1. Describe the sediment budget of the River Start catchment in South Devon? The amount of sediment eroded from soil in the River Start is about 107 tonnes / km 2/year. As sediment is moved down the river 16 tonnes / km 2/year (15% of the sediment) is stored in hedgerows. 91 tonnes / km 2/year (85%) of sediment makes it to the lower Start Valley.62 ...
Beyond that, renowned environmentalist Claude Alvares (2010) even declares that foresters cannot re-make natural forests. They are actually only redefining afforestation as plantation while a plantation is not a forest but a planned environment, usually one crop strictly controlled such as a monoculture to provide certain resources but at the expense of biodiversity. Why? Because real forests, according to Vandana Shiva (1997), are filled with many thousands of plants, animals, insects, birds, and all other organisms fitting together into a diverse ecosystem. Forests therefore provide alternatives.
Plantation, on the other hand, only seems to outweigh forests in market ideology of productivity and also eradicates all other alternatives. The issue of biodiversity also ingrains itself deep in our daily life. Industrial interference has been playing a vital role in transforming renewable sources into non-renewable ones and imposing restraints on the natural development of biodiversity (Shiva, 2010, pp. 236).
Despite their harmful by-products, industrially produced fertilizer and scientifically engineered seed strains are always considered advanced substitutes for natural seeds and fertility.
Seedless fruits and vegetables are produced by fastidious cross-breeding, inevitably resulted in the vigour of hand-made plants fading away, increasing their likelihood of contracting diseases increases due to a complete lack of genetic variation (Seedless Fruits and Vegetables, n. d. ).
To further complicate the problem, once customers favour a particular commodity, the market trend is re-orientated, the traditional production will be halted to make room for industrialized one. Correspondingly, regardless of the much lower level of nutrients and overcrowding (Advantages and Disadvantages of Vegetative Propagation, n. . ), the reproduction of species barriers is now infringed by engineering of transgenic life-forms. Generally, modern agricultural practises have threatened biodiversity and hampered its recovery. As another aspects of recovery, time is all that seems to matter. The data speaks for itself: 2500 million years are what it takes for animal evolution (Strickberger, 2000), 650 million years for fossil fuels to revive back to their conditions since billions years of earth-forming (Darvill, 2011) and from 54 to 69 years for ozone hole to recovery itself without any more severe human-caused pollution (Masters, 2011).
The Essay on The Scafolding Vs The Forest
Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, a dark tale of sin and redemption, centers on the small Puritan community of Boston during the seventeenth century. In the center of this bustling community is the market place. With in it are all the central features of the town, the most symbolic of these is the scaffold. Many a soul is scarred upon this scaffold. It is a place of intense scrutiny and ...
These rough estimations reflect more or less the compulsory transfer of today’s environmental recovery efforts to our next of next generations. To put it simply, we now cannot risk our precious planet and totally rely on the natural cycle itself to save our environment any longer. Although there are always positive sides of everything including the existence of self-balance and self-recovery ability of the Earth, their serious aforementioned limitations cannot be denied. Hence, the ugly truths foreseen by environmentalists cannot be hidden behind the fences of optimism created by the sceptics.
