Project on Environmental Issues 7

Humans and Global Warming

Most people know the fact that humans are harming the earth, but the seriousness of the situation isn’t understood, and it’s underappreciated. The article had the evidence that humans have been causing all the global warming since 1950 by the gasses we release to the atmosphere. So by the numerical evidence we now know that we are the reason of global warming and the bad condition the earth is now in.

In the spring break I went to a CIP and two people gave us an education on ecology and earth. There was as discussion, which we discussed the reasons of earth’s pollution, and my a few people said that all the bad effects couldn’t be blamed on humans. But now this article proves that we actually can be blamed because of the pollution. In fact we are the reason of pollution. My friend’s argument was that even if humans do pollute the environment, animals and other living things pollute it as much as we do. Which is again proved wrong with this evidence. Even if there were arguments like these, I found that discussion quite enlightening because it made me look through the opposite perspective in order to make him understand the facts.

I think about all the bad effects of humans on the environment and I think that if we disappeared from earth, nothing would change and things would get better. There is even evidence of this improvement on environment. When humans got out of Chernobyl because of the radioactive supplements around, the nature got back to its old self, the forest got bigger and stronger, wolves started breeding, wild animals and population of animals got bigger. Long story short the nature regained its old power when humans left the environment even when there was so much radiation. It was proved that humans are much worse than radiation even. We need to start getting more careful in order to leave a place to live to our children.

Article:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2016/apr/19/study-humans-have-caused-all-the-global-warming-since-1950

Project on Environmental Issues 6

5 Simple Things to Do

The article I read was to spread more awareness on what could be done to save the earth a bit. The 5 things that are suggested are really easy o do and they will help save the earth even if it’s a small contribution.

The first thing to stop doing is buying paper towels and using cloth instead of them. This can prevent a lot of trees from getting cut.

The second thing to do is not using plastic bags as much and using reusable bags. Plastic bags cause a lot of animals’ death by strangling them.

Third thing is being meat and/or dairy free once a week. You will be healthier and reduce the death of animals. If you don’t consume animals they won’t be produced. There is an overproduction in animals and it is an unhealthy production that has a lot of genetic disorders in it.

Fourth thing is buying secondhand products as much as you can. If you buy things that can be bought from secondhand sellers, they won’t be produced, thus result in saving in needless use of products.

And the last, fifth, one is to carry your own water bottles. This will decrease the amount of pollution caused by the thrown water bottles and the bottle caps that are spread around in nature.

I really liked how this article showed what could be achieved in small changes of what we do everyday. If a thousand people do these, the world would be a lot less polluted. Usually the counter argument that these kinds of things get is that if they don’t do it someone else will, and them doing these useful things won’t change a lot. But it does. They become the 1 in the thousand that makes the world a less polluted place. I personally try to do these even when sometimes they are the hard way. Carrying a water bottle can be hard, and they get lost easily and buying a new one just because of the possibility that they get lost easily is the easy way. But if you try a bit harder not to lose your bottle, you will pollute less. These were one of the easiest 5 things a person can try to do to not pollute the environment and save the earth.

Article:
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/apr/19/earth-day-five-things-to-make-a-difference-plastic-paper-towels

Project on Environmental Issues 5

March Temperature Broke a Record

The article I read was about how this year had the hottest March since 100 years ago. It is a known fact that the Earth is getting warmer and warmer but it’s always shocking for me to see how the world is getting worse year by year. The article gave statistics of the previous years’ and this year’s temperature averages and there was a clear increase in the temperature of the earth.

When I was a kid and I was learning some Turkish idioms, I learnt an idiom that meant; “March is a trickster. It makes you burn shovels (which are used gadgets) in order to get warm.” Even when I was a kid, this idiom didn’t make so much sense to me. I couldn’t figure how March could be so cold that people would burn things they used in daily life. Even though when I was really small, and this idiom didn’t mean anything, as I grew up, I witnessed different temperature Marchs. There were some years were March was actually really cold. One year it even snowed, which was a surprise. As years passed and the human population got bigger and bigger, and the environmental issues with global warming increased, the balance of the seasons got corrupted.

I believe that the reason for all this global warming and environmental issues is the overpopulation of human kind and the love of money. Overpopulation means over consumption and use of the earthly supplies. Also we are responsible of the mess we create with our trash, and the pollution created by our factories and machines. By polluting the environment, consuming plethora of earthly products, and ruining the ecological cycle we are killing this planet that we are living in.

It is a fact that earth’s situation is getting worse every year and the reason is overpopulation and the love of money. When it would snow in March a few years ago, now we go outside with our t-shirts and sometimes with a jacket. Also the statistics support this situation with data. And if we don’t be more careful, we will ruin this planet and turn it into a place that we can no longer live in.

Article:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/apr/15/march-temperature-smashes-100-year-global-record

Project on Environmental Issues 4

Floating Solar Farm

The article I read was about world’s biggest floating solar farm in UK that will be opened soon. The solar farm will create a huge amount of energy just by using sunlight, which is unlimited. Also with the elegant design of the head engineer, it is planned to protect the ecology around the place where the solar panels will be floated. So the panels won’t have any bad effects on the ecology, and it will provide lots of energy to the country. It did cost a lot of money, but when the calculations are done properly, it is clear that this energy production will save a lot of money, thus improving the economy. Also it doesn’t end with improving the economy, it doesn’t harm the environment, nor create an ugly image.

When I read this article, all I thought was, “Why aren’t we funding this?” The idea of using solar panels to produce energy is one of the greatest ideas to protect environment and get advantage of the unlimited amount of energy the sun gives us. Most of the cons people tell to this argument are that they are way too expensive to fund, and they look ugly because they cover a lot of space. But when it’s thought deeply, it is visible that by spending a lot of money on this for a short amount of time makes you save a lot of money in the future. Plus it doesn’t use any limited energy supplies, so they money you save won’t have a time limit, and after some time you will gain money from this energy. About the bad-looks of these panels, all I can say is, we can put them in places where they will get sunlight, but won’t stick out, like rooftops. If we put a solar panel on every roof in Istanbul, we’d get a huge amount of space covered with solar panels, thus produce a lot of energy.

All I can say more to this topic is that we need to show and tell more people about the pros of solar panels, and increase the use of them immediately in order to save more energy and decrease the use of limited energies. Of course like most things, going to extremes with the use of solar panels might have a bad effect. So we should put solar panels, as much as our need to energy they produce, which is a lot. A regular solar panel creates enough energy to heat the water tank of a house just by a few hours of sunlight.

Article:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/29/worlds-biggest-floating-solar-farm-power-up-outside-london