Importance of Biodiversity

Biodiversity is a necessary part of life. The diverseness of species is what makes an ecosystem thrives. Millions of species all related to each other, their roles intertwined to help maintain the environment that they're living in. The more intertwined they are to others, the more resilient the environment is to change. However, we are, in many ways, destroying the diversity in ecosystems all around the world. So for today, I'm going to talk about the importance of biodiversity and why we should protect it. (For anyone who's too lazy to read, there's a video at the bottom which pretty much covers all that we're going to talk about.)

First of all, watch the video above so you'll have a basic understanding of what biodiversity is. Don't worry, I'll wait.

A little treat for male readers out there. ;)

Why is biodiversity important? If you google that question, you'll find that biodiversity is not only important to environment but to mankind as well. If you've finished watching the video, then you should have an understanding of how biodiversity helps shape an ecosystem. Therefore, I'm only going to focus about what role biodiversity take part in our life.

First of all, we all know that biodiversity helps create strong, resilient, healthy ecosystems. So how does a healthy ecosystem benefit us? Here's a list of just a few things that ecosystems can offer to us:

• Protecting areas from soil erosion, floods, and other harmful weather conditions

• Reducing risk of local and global climate change

• Recycling nutrients

• Pollination and biological control

• Controlling pollutants

• Monitoring the health of the environment

(Green-Schools Ireland)

So biodiversity helps create environment where life can thrive, therefore it is keeping us alive. Pretty important, right? But it's hard to imagine that something so vague is keeping us alive. Therefore, let's talk about the economic value that biodiversity brings (because money is easier to imagine than the how nitrogen get recycled by nature).

It's kinda hard to imagine something like this, isn't it?

What does biodiversity bring that is economically-benefited to us? Well food is one thing. Biodiversity offers us a whole range of different kinds of food (like a gigantic buffet), each has its own nutrients that are beneficial to human being. Also, it makes eating more enjoyable. Imagine how suck it would be if the gigantic buffet only has one dish. 

Can't decide which image to use, so I use all of them. :)

Secondly, biodiversity offers us medicines. For thousands of years, human have been using herbs, plants, and even animal parts as medicines to cure a wide range of different diseases. Not to mention, it also provide herbs that is enjoyed by many teenagers nowadays (ehem, weed, ehem). I'm not saying that it's good or not (however there's a ton of articles saying that it is), but it's certainly is interesting to know that biodiversity provide teenager an addicted pastime.  

Were you expecting a picture of weed?

Thirdly, biodiversity provide materials for commercial uses. Plants provide trees, wool, syrup, oil, dye, seasonings, etc. while animals provide meat, fur, eggs, etc. In an earlier blog that I wrote about ocean ecology, I've mention that the ocean ecosystem provides about 1.2 million jobs, 38 million dollar worth of income, and 140 million dollar worth of sales in 2014 for the U.S. Now that's a lot of money.

And what have humans do to the thing that have given us so much? We're destroying it, little by little, every day. Watch the video below to know about the threats that biodiversity is facing, thanks to us. 8-|

So what can we do to stop people from damaging biodiversity? You can encourage your local community to protect and diversify biodiversity by planting trees and gardens, and consume goods moderately. If your local community uses pesticide, encourage them to stop using pesticides and instead invest in animals that can help kill pests. You can also spread information about the importance of biodiversity to others (like this blog, for instance), or create events that help promote biodiversity protection.

There are many ways in which you can help protect biodiversity. No one way is better than other. As long as you can remember the importance of biodiversity to nature and human life, and work toward protecting it from being destroy, any way you choose is a good way.

Too lazy to read? Watch this video instead!

Source + extra links for people who are interested in this topic:

Learning to protect biodiversity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHhspf5IfdE

Why is biodiversity important?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GK_vRtHJZu4
http://www.greenschoolsireland.org/biodiversity/why-is-biodiversity-important.364.html
http://www.globalissues.org/article/170/why-is-biodiversity-important-who-cares
Threats to biodiversity:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhRBqeuG1Jc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RC3Hsk90t8

Nuclear Energy - Good or Bad?

After decades of using coal as an energy source, most people have finally acknowledge its harmful side effects. Many countries are slowly moving away from coal in favor of more environmentally friendly energy source, clean energy, as they call it. This new and emergent trend is becoming more and more popular in developed countries, who wish to protect the environment and not follow the footsteps of China. However, a question arises, "Which one should we use?" Well, you can probably guess which one I'm going to talk about based on the title. Yes, I'm going to talk about nuclear energy, arguably one of the most promising alternative for coal. However, is nuclear energy a good source of energy to use, or are the cons completely overwhelm the pros? (Video at the bottom for people who are too lazy to read)

First, you should watch the video above to have a basic understanding of what nuclear energy is. It's ok, I'll wait. :-w Done? Ok, let's talk.

What are the benefits of using nuclear energy? First of all, it's much cleaner than coal. It's CO2 emission is relatively low. Unlike coal, where huge amounts of CO2 is released into the air when energy is produce, energy production in nuclear power plants release zero CO2 gases, as well as other greenhouse gases such as SO2 and NO. The process of recovering uranium from the Earth's crust, transportation of uranium and wastes, construction of power plants, etc. do release a certain amount of greenhouse gases into the air. This amount of gases, however, is insignificant when compare to the 1,562 million metric tons of CO2 released by coal power plants in the U.S last year. Because of this, nuclear energy has been proposed as "the" method to mitigate the effects of climate change.

No more

Secondly, nuclear energy is more proficient than fossil fuels. Here is an interesting fact for you: the amount of energy nuclear fission produced is about 10 million times greater than burning 1 atom of fossil fuel. Also, 1 gram of uranium can produce the same amount of energy as that of 3 tonnes of coal. Nuclear energy is renewable, contrary to popular belief, through the use of breeder reactors and fusion reactors. This plus the fact that if we can learn to control atomic fusion, the same reactions as those that fueled the sun, we'll have access to almost unlimited energy.

But no type of energy is perfect. Even though the whole "unlimited energy" sounds awesome, nuclear energy does possess threats that makes countries and investors hesitate to use it (everything has a catch, I guess).

The first con of nuclear energy is radiation. Radioactive waste is a product of nuclear fission. These waste can't be get rid of and instead being stored in storage ponds under tight security so it won't leak out to the environment. After a certain time, the radiation level of the waste will drop below the harmful level. However, that will take hundreds of years for radioactive waste to completely decay into harmless material. And with nuclear power plants producing more and more waste everyday, we're running out of place to safely store them.

Accident is another problem that many people fear. Example of famous nuclear power plant accidents including the Three Mile Island accident, the Chernobyl disaster, and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. In reality, these kind of accidents rarely happen. But when they do, they devastated the entire area, making it inhabitable. The Fukishima accident, for example, create a 30-km evacuation zone where no one is allowed to come in unless under government supervision. The Chernobyl disaster killed 31 workers when it happened, and need a total cost of 18 billion rubles (350 million dollars) to contain the contamination. When such an event happened, it not only devastated the economy of a country, but also intoxicated the surrounding environment and harm people. If you want to know more about how radiation affect a person and what are its effect to human health, click here.

Another con of nuclear energy is the amount of money needed to built a nuclear power plant. Even though when compare to coal power plant, nuclear power plant doesn't cost as much to operate, the cost to build one is just too high for some investors. This is because nuclear power plant have to follow a lot of regulations to make sure that accidents don't happen or radioactive material don't escape to the outside world. Not only that, the cost to store radioactive waste are also high, too. With so much rules and regulations to follow, many investors decide to stick with coal instead. But hey, rules are rules. /nobigdeal

The last con of nuclear energy is that they are hot target for terrorist. Imagine a group of terrorists have control of a ship transferring radioactive waste container to another country for storage. All that radioactive material is now in the hand of people who are willing to release them into the world for their own purposes. How danger does that sound? Nuclear power plant can also be used by countries to make nuclear weapons. Imagine something like the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings happen again right now. The effects would be catastrophic.

So, the question still remains: "Should we use nuclear energy or not?" In my opinion, we should use nuclear energy because it can produce a huge amount of energy with low effects on the environment. But if we are going to use nuclear energy more frequently, there need to be better technologies to help increase the safety of power plants, storage of radioactive waste, and recycle radioactive waste. Development in the field of nuclear energy has been stagnant since the 1970s. A lot of nuclear power plant in the world are still using old technologies, which increase the risk of another disaster to happen. So, in order for nuclear energy to replace fossil fuel in the future, improvement in technology is a must.

Too lazy to read? Watch this video instead!

Sources:

Nuclear energy's pros and cons:
http://www.conserve-energy-future.com/pros-and-cons-of-nuclear-energy.php
http://energyinformative.org/nuclear-energy-pros-and-cons/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HEYbgyL5n1g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVbLlnmxIbY
Nuclear power plant CO2 emission:
http://timeforchange.org/co2-emission-nuclear-power-stations-electricity
http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-and-you/affect/air-emissions.html
Coal power plant CO2 emission:
http://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.cfm?id=77&t=11
Science of nuclear power:
http://nuclearinfo.net/Nuclearpower/TheScienceOfNuclearPower
Nuclear power explained:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7LO8lL4Ai4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcOFV4y5z8c
Health effects of radiation:
http://www.epa.gov/radiation/understand/health_effects.html
Chernobyl disaster:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
Fukishima Daiichi nuclear disaster:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_Daiichi_Nuclear_Power_Plant

Clean Water Crisis

"For many of us, clean water is so plentiful and readily available that we rarely, if ever, pause to consider what life would be like without it." - Marcus Samuelsson

What can we say about water than haven't been said before? "It's important to our lives" would be the most cliche answer there is. But it would be a correct one. Water is a crucial factor in almost every aspect of our lives, or rather, of the lives of every living things on Earth. From the largest of biome, to the smallest of living cell, water is always there, sustaining life as it always do. Therefore, it's only logical that something as useful as water should be conserve for long-time usage.

However, that's not the case with us humans. If you can stop just for a moment and have a look at the video above, you would see how have people wasted water on a daily basis and the consequences behind. Also, corporations releases thousands of gallons of industrial wastes in streams and river every day, turning perfectly good water source into toxic streams of death. Wasting water, polluting water, we are literally destroying the thing that's keeping us alive everyday. Why do people do it? What's the result of this course of action? Who does it affect? And how can we stop it? That's what I'm going to talk about today.

Why do people waste water? In my opinion, it has to do with how human reacts to abundance. Whenever we have a lot of something to use, we don't usually worry about how much is left or how effectively we use it until we run low on it. If someone have a lot of time to do HW, he might wasted his time surfing the Internet until the last minute. Likewise, we don't usually think about how much water we are wasting because we have so much of it, or at least that's what we thought. If you want some water, you can just turn the tap and there it is. So because water is so easy to get in our daily lives, we are caught in this illusion of abundance, thinking that since water is so accessible, there must be a lot of it, so it's ok if we wasted a little bit. It's this illogical thinking that puts California in the position it's in today. (click here to read about the California drought)

What's the result of wasting and polluting water? There are 769 million people in the world who don't have access to clean water right now. That's one tenth of the entire human population. And then there's people who use water as if they have access to an infinite amount of it. But soon, as Californians have experienced, their water resource runs out, and they suffered from it. Water is such an important factor in our life, but because it's so easy to access, we sometimes forgot just how precious they truly are. Only 21% of Earth's water is drinkable, and that amount of water have are used by almost every living things on Earth. What if one day, we wasted our last drop and pollute our last river, what would happen then? I'll tell you what happen: every living thing will die.

How can we stop it? One might think the answer is simple and straightforward: Stop wasting and polluting water. But just saying that means nothing. People aren't going to stop wasting water, factories aren't going to stop polluting rivers, and companies aren't going to pay for water cleaning systems just because we said so. We have to do something to convince people that shortage in clean water is a serious problem, that wasting water is a luxury we can't afford and polluting water is a sin we can't recover from. So, if you truly think that shortage in clean water is a serious world problem, go out there and do what you can to stop people from wasting and polluting it.