Escolar Documentos
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Cultura Documentos
Will Dean
Amy Lynch-Biniek
Eng 023
24 November 2015
Imagine this, you are sitting in your room relaxing, watching TV,
scrolling through twitter feed or doing homework on a nice beautiful day. You
walk downstairs to get a snack out of the fridge and when you reach for the
fridge door, you notice the glassware begins slightly vibrating. Its a slight
shaking but it slowly grows bigger and bigger, louder and louder. You look out
your window to see whats going on and as the shaking is so intense, you see
your neighbors house get eaten up and destroyed by some machine that
youve never seen before. As it destroys your neighbors house with no
hesitation and is headed directly to your house, you have two options: try to
fight the machine or run.
Now Im not going to speak for you but I would guess the majority of
people would run. These are the options some animals have to make daily.
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Animals are slowly pushed away and their habitats are destroyed. If they
dont run away, they go down with their homes. Even if an animal comes
back to its previously destroyed home, it is most likely there is a roadway,
shopping center or housing development.
When was the last time you went on a hike through the woods? On that
hike, did you see any animals? If you did, then I consider you a bit lucky. I
love seeing animals because I dont think I see enough; you see humans
almost everywhere you go and maybe a squirrel or bird. Especially walking to
class, I see hundreds of other people and one squirrel, sometimes not even
the squirrel. Humans have dominated the population on earth for the last
couple centurys and as that number goes up, so does the demand for land
and natural resources.
Anyway it has been a while for me but I used to go hiking with my dad
and brother often. We would go all over the place, for example, if we went to
my uncles in Maryland we would stop at trails that my dad would find out
about. There was this one trail we stopped at on the way home. We passed
over this huge dam and went down a couple roads and made it to the bottom
of the dam where there was a trail. I remember looking up at the dam and
just how big it was, it was astonishing. Also that day we saw a beautiful bald
eagle flying around its nest up on a tower and that was the first time I ever
saw an eagle. The water was very low and you could see all the rocks that
were recently submerged now getting dried by the sun. The lights started
flashing and that meant the gates were opening so we got to watch that as
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well. That was amazing seeing how much water and how fast the water
comes out of dams. We were right on the edge and saw this one guy
standing there watching the eagle and the water flow out, just like us. We
started talking to him and he pointed out that the birds would wait until the
gates opened and some fish would get sucked into the turbines, getting
chopped up, and it was easy pickings for the birds. As cool as this was, it still
wasnt good for the fish, bringing me to my first point of how humans affect
animals: dams.
Dams
Dams are a great revolutionary invention that helps get areas that
have dry, unfertile soil to healthy, farmable land. This spreads opportunity
for farming all over the place. Other pros of dams are recreational use
(meaning for skiing and boating facilities), help flood control during storms,
water usage for industrial, municipal and agricultural use, irrigation and
electric generation.
Although dams are very beneficial, they can be costly to the
environment. For a healthy ecosystem, there needs to be biodiversity,
productivity, species assemblage composition (from the bottom feeders up
on the food chain) and a food web. Dams can affect every single one of these
categories for a healthy ecosystems. An article by David Crook discusses
some of the negative effects that dams have on the environment and
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animals. For example, Dams stop all species on one side of the river from
making it downstream, which is crucial for many species lives. (David
Crook) Once a dam is built into a river, it stops everything except water from
getting to the other side. Stopping fish from migrating to places they
recently had gone to mate. Many fish and other organisms travel to areas
untouched by humans to breed, this migration is very important as they
bring energy and nutrients that are crucial to productivity.
When fish cant get through a dam, it causes stress on the animal.
Which can, in some cases cause local extinctions in a species. This alters
the patterns of ecological connectivity in the affected river ecosystems
(David Crook) When a species is cut off from one side of the river, where they
have previously thrived, it can be bad for the ecosystem of the river. Once a
species is cut off by a dam, their energy, nutrients, other plants and species
on the food chain might get cut away from the species that once depended
on all that. This can shatter the food web if species higher up rely solely on a
species lower on the food chain. This can lead to their food source getting
cut from there food web. Also when fish are trying to get to the other side, if
the dam opens the gates, the water gets pulled through the turbines and the
fish can get sucked in and chopped up by the turbines and intakes.
Oil Spills
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Another way we affect animals and the environment are oil spills.
Oil helps us fuel our cars, machines, heat our homes and advance in
technology. Without oil we would not have as good of transportation, such as
cars and planes. Also we wouldnt be able to heat our homes with oil and
have to use coal which can be very expensive; and we wouldnt have been
able to go to the moon. Although having those benefits, they come with
negative effects on the environment.
We are human so we are not perfect, one of the mistakes we make are
oil spills. A website called rotary and workover rig counts keeps track of how
many rigs there are in the world and how much oil each rig produces weekly.
There are 3597 oil rigs in the world. (James Williams) That is a lot of
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In the Gulf of Alaska specifically, the water is very cold, and the lower
you go the colder it gets because less sunlight makes it through. When an oil
spill occurs, it lays a dark brown layer on top of the water and minimum
sunlight gets through (even less before). This drops the temperature of the
water the lower you go and some animals cant withstand the even colder
temperatures than before. Also when oil is leaked in large quantities into the
water, small organisms in the area, which are crucial for the food web, are
either killed by the oils or become toxic so if a larger species does eat the
organism, the species can become sick. The oil can also kill many fish or
birds the same way, if the species cant escape the oil, it is engulfed in the
oil and either suffocates or gets sick.
Now to a little warmer and more tropical area, the Gulf of Mexico. In an
article written in April 2011 called Deadly Toll a group followed the BP
catastrophic oil spill that occurred in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. In the article
they reported that Nearly 205.8 million gallons of oil and 225,000 tons of
methane leaked into the Gulf of Mexico also that In total, we found that the
oil spill has likely harmed or killed approximately 82,000 birds of 102 species,
approximately 6,165 sea turtles, and up to 25,900 marine mammals,
including bottlenose Dolphins, spinner dolphins, melon-headed whales and
sperm whales. The spill also harmed an unknown number of fish. (Bobby
Jindal) Those are some devastating numbers, especially with some whales
and dolphins that are on the endangered species list. A spill as devastating
as that is not only possible for public extinction but total extinction in some
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species. If there is a high death toll in a species, it is hard to come back from
and can take years to get back to the steady population they were once at.
Fracking
Since the 20th century the modern technology of shale fracking has
become very popular. It is a new source of fuel that is more affordable, burns
cleaner than previous energy sources such as coal and oil and has the
potential to possibly keep us supplied with natural gas for around a hundred
years. Those are some good benefits and reasons to become popular but all
the popularity is not only because of the good benefits. It has grown negative
popularity with many of the people and families that live close to a shale
fracking site. The process also has many controversial hazards or side effects
on the environment and animals.
Hydraulic fracking is the process of getting shale gas. Shale gas is the
natural gas trapped in shale rock deposits scattered around the country.
Hydro-fracking used to be thought of as too expensive and dangerous to try
to extract. But ever since the demand has spiked for a new form of energy,
federal government agencies have tried to find ways to get down to the
shale rock deposits and how to crack them open.
In an article written by Alex Prudhomme, he discusses the process of
fracking, the benefits and the negatives of hydro fracking. He explains the
actual way fracking works better than I ever could. He explains it as
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Not only does fracking get us oil and gas for energy but it creates jobs,
which is another controversy in America right now. In the National Journal, an
article done by Clare Foran, discusses how many jobs were created in
Pennsylvania alone. Clare says that Tom Corbett lied in his governor debate,
where he said it created 200,000 jobs in PA, but that number was just a
guess She also adds Pennsylvania is at the center of the fracking boom,
and according to the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry it has
created roughly 30,000 jobs directly linked to natural gas production (Clare
Foran)
Although fracking has some very good benefits it has very negative
effects on the environment and animals, including us. When the chemicals
and water reach the well, the pressure cracks the shale rocks making long
narrow cracks in the rocks. This allows the natural gas to flow into the wells.
An article done by Linda Dong discusses the process and negative effects of
fracking. Linda says that During this process methane gas and toxic
chemicals leach out from the system and contaminate nearby groundwater.
Methane concentrations are 17x higher in drinking-water wells and rivers
near fracking sites than in normal wells. (Linda Dong) Contaminated water
is used for drinking by nearby cities and towns. This is very unhealthy as
animals or humans should not be consuming any type of chemical, especially
methane. There have been over 1,000 documented cases of water
contamination next to areas of gas drilling as well as cases of sensory,
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long as we are happy. This comes to me as bit selfish. Dont get me wrong; I
love heat and driving just as much as you. What Im saying is we need to
look for and try to find better alternatives that dont affect the environment
as much. Canada is helping keep ecosystems connected by building animal
crossroads over the highways so that animals can safely cross the highway.
This is an example of an alternative we can do to help keep animals safe.
Animals dont have a say for whether or not a mall gets put up somewhere.
We need to be there voice.
Works Cited
Bamberger, Michelle & Robert E. Oswald. "Long-term Impacts of
Unconventional Drilling
Operations on Human and Animal Health" Journal of Environmental
Science and Health. Online book. 2015. 18 Oct, 2015
Crook A, David. "Science of Total Environment." Science of the Total
Environment volume 534.
14, Nov 2014. Web. 18, Oct 2015
Dong, Linda What goes in and out of Hydraulic Fracturing. PDF File
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Foran, Clare How Many Jobs Does Fracking Really Create? National Journal.
14, April 2015.
Web. 1, Nov 2015
Jindal, Bobby A Deadly Tool Center for Biological Diversity. April 2011. 1,
Nov 2015
Prudhomme, Alex Producing Oil and Natural Gas from Shale. Nova science
publishers. 2015.
1, Nov 2015
Prince, Marcello and Tovar, A. Carlos How Much U.S. Oil and Gas Comes
From Fracking?
Corporate Intelligence. April 2015. Web. 1, Nov 2015
Williams L, James Rotary and Workover Rig Counts Weekly Rotary Rig
Count. March 2015.
Web. 28, Oct 2015
Cover Letter
I choose to write about /how humans effect the environment and
animals because I want to inform people that if we continue to go about how
we get oil, natural gas and electricity then animals will decrease in
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