Re: Life Duty Death
Beese Erik William (beese1@uwindsor.ca)
Sun, 17 Sep 1995 06:05:59 GMT
Yes but the world is in an equilibrium. Throw off that equilibrium by a
little bit (as man has done) and you must face consequences. Such as:
1) massive de forestation affecting earth's ability to cleanse atmoshere
It is true that the rain forest is NOT our major supplier of O2
but it IS our major cleanser for air. It is also true that the
amount of pollution thrown up by Mt. Pinatubo is about equal to
ALL of man's pollution efforts since the industrial revolution BUT
SINCE there is less cleansing of the atmosphere AND because MAN has added
to the natural pollution count THEREFORE there is a problem. That problem
is our lungs getting a lot of junk the and we as an organism don't need.
It is a problem of emergent properties. The whole is greater than the sum
of th parts
2) Man has created MANY chemicals that nature does not create THEREFORE
there is no balancing force or buffering layer that can help stop
destruction (Ozone by CFC for example) again emergent properties. SINCE
there is no defense/protection THEREFOR the problem is much greater than
may previously be expected.
get the picture?
Oh I'm not sure this was you but since this is going on the net I'm sure
the person who questioned acid rain as being a REAL problem and
questioned whether there ever fell rain acidic enough to irritate human
skin.
1) rain since it has been first measured has gotten 25 times more acidic
than normal in the Adirondacks (pH 4.2) and as a DIRECT result the pH of
lakes in the region has dropped to below pH 5 and fish have disappeared
from nearly all those lakes. (don't go packing a fishin' pole there you
WON'T catch a thing except a cold)
2) There have been recorded rainfalls over West Virginia with a pH of
1.5. Incase you're wondering Gastric juice (the stuff we digest the meat
and other food that we eat) is at Ph 1.6-1.8 making that rain 1 to 3
times more acidic. I'd say that rain caused a LOT of discomfort to human
skin.
3) if you want VISIBLE damage directly attributable to acid rain go to
Erzgebirge, Czech Republic and look at the forests
my source for this info was Biology 3rd edition published by The
Benjamin/Cummings Publishing company , Inc. (it's a first year text
interesting reading)
also for some of the geological data The blue Planet published by John
Wiley & sons Inc.
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