The Moral Imperative (Assignment)

We are in a state of emergency.

For, far, too long, the human race has been neglectful in its responsibility to preserve Earth's natural resources, to protect its only environment.

Only now has the full extent of the damage to this planet, our greed has caused, come into wider recognition.

Since 1850, during the post-Industrial Revolutionary period, man's usage of energy has grown exponentially, and thus so has the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas).

For over a century, this trend of mass consumption has continued, unabated.

As a result, the composition of Earth's atmosphere has become drastically altered, and the respective climates and geological features of many regions have undergone, alarming, transformations.

How has this happened?

The scientific phenomenon known as global warming has radically increased the average temperature of our planet's air and oceans.

This is due to an imbalance in the process that we've come to know as the greenhouse effect.

The greenhouse effect is a phrase used to describe the process by which heat, generated from the infrared rays of the Sun, is stored within the Earth's atmosphere by greenhouse gases.

There are several greenhouse gases: water vapor, carbon dioxide (CO2), ozone, methane, nitrous oxide, and chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs).

These gases are essential, as they serve to regulate the Earth's temperature, and without them our planet would become frozen, and thus uninhabitable.

Unfortunately, due to the effects of global warming, the equilibrium of this process has been disrupted.

Instead of trapping the required amount of heat necessary to provide us with the warmth we need to survive, increased levels of greenhouse gases have enabled an excessive spike to this planet's temperature; one that has resulted in the rapid worsening of geological conditions, worldwide.

How do we know this?

For, approximately, the last fifty years, scientists have studied how the increased levels of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere correlate with the rise of its average temperature. Their findings, which have been well documented, are beyond compelling.

Through a number of methods (i.e. experimentation, observation, etc.), scientists have determined that these changes have had a profound, and terribly dangerous, ecological impact on our environment, and its natural processes.

These discoveries have been made available to the public in a number of ways; not the least of which has been through the release of former U.S. Vice-President, Al Gore's, critically-acclaimed documentary film, An Inconvenient Truth

My Composition I class and I screened the film a couple of weeks ago, and as a follow-up to that viewing, we went on a field trip to the American Museum of Natural History, to tour the Gottesman Hall of Planet Earth.

There, we examined recorded evidence of global warming in the forms of an ice core sample, tree rings, ocean sediments, and wind deposits. All of those exhibits served to add even further credibility to the argument that global warming is, indeed, factual; heightening our need to make, equally, radical changes to the ways and means by which we live, before we doom ourselves to extinction.

Ice core samples are obtained through the use of high-powered drills, which burrow (or, core) deep below the icy surfaces of Earth's most frigid regions. These samples are then extracted and stored safely for preservation, so that they can be, later, examined.

Through careful observation, they reveal tiny particles of dust that were contained inside of air bubbles that became trapped by snowfall during a particular year.

The two different layers, dark and light, of the dust particles within a sample, reflect certain seasonal variations in the Earth's atmosphere: changes in humidity, temperature, atmospheric circulation, volcanic activity, extent of sea-ice, and levels of pollution.

Tree rings are obtained by cutting horizontal cross sections of a tree's trunk. By examining the levels of thickness in a single trunk's rings, we can determine (once again) the seasonal variations of the Earth's climate.

The thicker the bands of a tree's trunk, then the warmer and wetter the climate was, in the region the sample was obtained, during that year.

The thinner the bands, then the cooler and drier the climate was, in the region the sample was obtained, during that year.

The greater the diversity of the samples are, then the greater the approximation of a region's climate.

Ocean sediments, which include the shells of dead marine organisms, contain certain chemicals which aid in the determination of the water's composition and temperature. Such findings are accentuated by the chemical makeup (also known as, bleaching) of coral skeletons that lie beneath the surface.

There are other examples of global warming's impact on the Earth's geological features; such as, wind deposits (loess) from 23,000 years ago that were swept across the globe by the Earth's natural winds, and the striations of rocks (gneiss) caused by small pebbles and other coarse particles that scratch the surface of glaciers.

While at the Planet Earth exhibit, my group and I conducted an experiment, using an interactive computer device, on the effects caused by the extensive burning of fossil fuels.

We discovered that with the rapid rise in population the consumption of non-renewable energy resources maximizes, and subsequently so does the level of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere, making the planet less and less habitable.

The dangers we face, as a people, if we do not put an end to the use of fossil fuels are grave.

Already, we have suffered from some of the hottest, and most deadly, temperatures on record across the globe, within the last fourteen years.

Infectious diseases spread by living organisms, once controlled by geographic climates, have now spread to areas where such conditions had never existed, previously.

Hurricanes and typhoons, created by specific atmospheric and water conditions, have grown in both strength and number, causing unspeakable levels of death and destruction in cities around the world.

Perhaps, the greatest danger of all is the rapid melting of Earth's glacial land masses. If they continue to dissipate at their current rate, the levels of our oceans will rise, and floods of epic proportions will ensue.

We must work diligently to put an end to this, ongoing, crisis. The U.S. government must work in concert with the other government's of the world that have, already, pledged to take decisive action to stem this impending calamity. Only through the use of renewable resources of energy (i.e. solar, wind, water, etc.), and the reduced usage of fossil fuels, can we hope to reverse this menacing trend which threatens to destroy all that we cherish.

If we fail to heed the call to end global warming, then we will have only ourselves to blame for our planet's destruction, and there will be no return.

I leave you with another quote I noticed hanging from the walls of the American Museum of Natural History's, Theodore Roosevelt Rotunda.

"The nation behaves well if it treats the natural resources as assets which it must turn over to the next generation increased; and not impaired in value."