Environmental Science

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What is Environmental Science?

Honestly I couldn’t have told you until after I took Dr. Huff’s class. Environmental Science is an interdisciplinary study of how the earth works, how humans interact with the earth and the solution to environmental problems.

For my last and final blog assignment in Dr. Huff’s class I am to discuss the most important environmental issue in my opinion. There are plenty of important environmental issues. But one that I never considered an issue and now realize how important of an issue it is would be population growth. There is definitely a problem with overpopulation and over consumption! I will focus on the overpopulation for this assignment. 

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Overpopulation by the human species, our continuing exponential birth rate and our lack of a biocentrism worldview are having far-reaching and overwhelmingly destructive impacts.

Human overpopulation is having a destructive impact on the environment.  As the population grows, so does its need for resources. Because the Earth has limited resources, when the human population exceeds the Earth's carrying capacity—the maximum number any vessel can carry—environmental degradation is inevitable. The estimated world population is 7,000,000,000 and growing. The human growth rate is 1.2 percent per year. It may not seem like a very high rate. However, even at such a low rate, we are doubling the world's population in less than 50 years. There are 84 million more people on this planet every year—230,000 more every day. This is not the number of births. This is the actual amount of increase—almost 10,000 more people every hour. There were 2,819 deaths reported as a result of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. In fewer than 20 minutes, the world population had recovered. The tsunami that hit Asia in December 2004, killing 230,000 people, only impacted the world's population for a day before the numbers were once again the same. Such events are little more than speed bumps on our race to overpopulate.

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What can I do to help this over-population...start working on my over consumption. If the world would work on their over-consumption then our footprint on the earth would decrease! That is the real issue!

So what can the world do about over population, first of all everyone can stop having so many kids but most importantly stop with over-consumption! We use too much stuff! Everyone needs to use less stuff! Especially us American! My God we consume a lot of stuff!

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The Human Footprint

As the population grows the amount of resources we must take from the Earth grows as well. Most arable land is now occupied. Humanity has to go farther and farther afield to find the resources it craves. It wasn't that long ago that the thought of drilling for oil in an arctic environment would have been dismissed as an absurdity. The ever-increasing need for natural resources to support an out-of-control population is driving the development of more extreme measures to secure those once out-of-reach fragments left over from the first wave of extractions.

How many people can the Earth support in a sustainable manner? No one knows. The estimates range from a few million to more than 40 billion people. One thing is certain: As we expand, we are actively destroying the Earth's biodiversity. As the first people migrated across the landscape, they left extinctions behind them. As soon as humanity reached the North American continent some 10,000 years ago, we see in the fossil record evidence of the extinction of all mega fauna on the continent. Is this nothing more than a coincidence? Not according to a growing number of anthropologists, who attribute the missing mammals to humans overhunting them. The entire history of humanity is one of environmental destruction and the eradication of other species. This was true when the entire world's population of hominids was only a few million. What else can we expect from a population of several billion?

The Environment's Carrying Capacity

If a population overshoots the carrying capacity of its environment, then the population will crash until it is realigned with the carrying capacity. In the process of overshooting, environmental degradation takes place, the new carrying capacity will be greatly reduced, if not gone altogether disappeared entirely. Eventually the Earth will no longer support a growing population, and what if society subsequently disappeared because of it.

Humanity is now at the point where civilizations are no longer isolated. We are a global species with one global society and, more and more, one global culture. Our destruction is no longer limited to one region or one continent. Everything we do has global ramifications, the likes of which have never been seen before. There is a very real chance that we have already overshot the carrying capacity of the Earth. Only time will tell. There is little chance of us actually physically destroying the Earth, but we seem to be doing our best to destroy our ability (and the ability of countless other species) to live on it. The most important question may not be how we as a species can survive but rather what we can do about our overconsumption! 

Now to consider the most interesting thing I have learned this semester. I haven’t taken a science class in over 25 years, and it was chemistry. 

So the things I learned in this Environmental Science class were very interesting to me. If I had to pick one – well it would be the Earth’s Geologic Process. I find it so interesting that I am going to take Geology in the Fall. God hoping I can get into a night class.

So what is the Earth’s Geologic Process?

Geological processes are dynamic processes at work in the earth's landforms and surfaces. The mechanisms involved, weathering, erosion, and plate tectonics, combine processes that are in some respects destructive and in others constructive.  

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This map shows the major tectonic plates that make up the Earth's crust and the directions in which they are moving. Map adapted from NOAA.

Earth’s Major Tectonic Plates

Simply defined, the term plate tectonics refers to how the Earth's surface is made up of plates. In geology, a plate is a large slab of rock, while tectonics is a word of Greek origin meaning "to build."

The theory of plate tectonics became widely accepted by scientists in the 1960s and 1970s. It revolutionized our understanding of the Earth and unified the Earth sciences, from the study of fossils (paleontology) to the study of earthquakes (seismology).

According to this theory, the Earth's crust is made up of about a dozen plates on which the continents and oceans rest. These plates are continually shifting because the surface beneath them - the hot, soft mantle - is moving slowly like a conveyor belt, driven by heat and other forces at work in the Earth's core. The plates are moving about a centimeter (0.5 in) to 15 centimeters (6 in) per year in different directions.

Vents, Volcanoes & Quakes

The Earth's tectonic plates can move apart, collide, or slide past each other. The Mid-Ocean Ridge system - the Earth's underwater mountain range - arises where the plates are moving apart. As the plates part, the seafloor cracks. Cold seawater seeps down into these cracks, becomes super-heated by magma, and then bursts back out into the ocean, forming hydrothermal vents.

As the plates move farther apart, magma from the Earth's interior percolates up to fill the gap, sometimes leading to the eruption of undersea volcanoes. This process, called seafloor spreading, is how new seafloor is formed.

Conversely, when tectonic plates meet, the force causes mountains to rise and deep trenches to form. When the edge of one plate is forced under another - a process called subduction - it causes intense vibrations in the Earth's crust, producing an earthquake. One of the most violent earthquakes related to plate tectonics struck northeast China in 1976. The disastrous Tangshan quake, registering 7.8 on the Richter scale, killed more than 240,000 people.

Undersea earthquakes and volcanic eruptions can generate catastrophic ocean waves called tsunamis (meaning "harbor wave" in Japanese). During a major quake, the seafloor can move several meters, setting into motion a huge amount of water. The resulting waves may race across the ocean at speeds up to 500 miles per hour. This was the coolest thing I learned!