Let me throw a few more terms at you.
• Biodiversity – usually defined as the variety of living organisms in a given area or in a particular habitat ecosystem. That area can be as small as a drop of water or as larger as the world.
• Habitat – the place where an organism lives. It can be described generally such as a forest or specifically such as a certain kind of a host cell or cell part such as the fatty coating of a nerve cell (myelin sheath).
•. Ecosystem – a biological community of organisms interacting with each other and their physical environment; again it can be very small such as a rotting log or leaf pack or large, for example, a lake.
Loss of biodiversity can be devastating. For example, in 2016 up to 50 percent of the northern portion of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia was killed by a heat wave, triggered by global warming. This, the world’s largest reef, is home to a myriad of species of plants and animals, many of them unique; a popular diving and tourist area which generates over $3 billion annually was threatened.
It is not unusual for organisms to become extinct. It happens all the time; check the geologic table in essay VI for examples of past extinctions. In fact, it is estimated that perhaps 99 percent of all species that have ever existed are now extinct. However, the current rate extinction is perhaps 1,000 times that of pre-human rates.
As suggested in earlier essays, the Earth depends upon a delicate balance of forces to remain a healthy place to live. We humans consume more resources than what the Earth can supply by a ratio of about 1.7:1.
How does climate change affect our health?
June of 2018 was the hottest month ever recorded throughout much of the Northern Hemisphere. According to J. Maichle Bacon a former Winnebago County (IL.) Health Department Administrator, “the evidence connecting greenhouse gas emissions with increasing extremes in global climate is overwhelming, threatening both current and future ecological systems’ sustainability upon which health and well-being depend.” According to Bacon, health consequences are classified into three categories by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). They are primary, secondary, and tertiary. Primary considerations include injuries, physical and psychological disabilities and loss of life from temperature extremes, increasing ultraviolet radiation, floods, (frequency and severity) high winds, hurricanes (again frequency of and severity), and increased wildfires. Consequences result from the trauma of separation from loved ones, disruption of health services, disease, dehydration, lack of proper nutrition, post-traumatic stress, depression, and adjustment disorders.
Secondary health consequences result from changing biological systems in a negative way upon which our health and wellbeing depend. Climate change influences the interaction of plant, animal, and microbial viability and geographic range. This in turn affects human activities such as commerce, land use, agricultural yields, air and water quality, etc.
In this country alone 40 percent of the counties report periods of poor air quality which adds up to 55,000 premature deaths, heart disease, cancer, and chronic respiratory diseases.
Tertiary health effects result from current climate trends affecting the sustainability of water systems, agricultural production, and biodiversity which all lead to famine, social disruption, displacement, increased violence, and increased global stability.
The good news is most or all of the consequences can be reduced if we (all human inhabitants) work to:
· Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by decreasing our reliance on gas, oil, and coal
· Increase energy conservation
· Decrease energy waste
· Increase renewable energy resources such as wind solar, and nuclear (Bacon, M. Rockford Register Star, 7/15/2018)
Eugene Johnson writes in a column recently that Hurricane Florence dumped more than 30 inches of rain, an all-time record on North Carolina. Last year Hurricane Harvey drenched Houston with more than 60 inches of rain. Climate scientists predict that global warming should make such storms wetter, slower and more intense. We know from direct evidence that:
· The concentration of carbon dioxide, {CO2} has increased by 40 percent since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution
· Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases trap heat
· Warmer water takes up more space than cooler water which is the main reason why ocean levels are rising
· Warmer water evaporates faster than cooler water thereby adding more moisture available to fuel storms The current administration has already proposed weakening restrictions on carbon emissions from automobiles and coal-fired power plants.
As a final anecdote, recently a cargo ship is currently making the journey from Vladivostok, Russia to Bremerhaven, Germany via the Arctic Ocean instead of the usual southern route through the Suez Canal and the Strait of Gibraltar. Until now the northern route has been impassible, a great savings, no doubt for the ship company but at what a price!
In the last essay I wrote about the death of algae during the bleaching of coral reefs. On the flip side of the coin, warmer waters can lead to bloom that results in so called “dead zones” which is caused by an explosion of algae and aided by pollution from human activities on land.
As I write this essay a friend who just returned from Florida told us that the “red tide “ is back with vengeance The Florida red tide is caused by Karenia brevis (division Dinoflagellata), a single celled alga with two flagella (long whip-like “hairs”, one of which encircles the cell horizontally and the other perpendicular to the first). They function like a gyroscope to spin the cell like a top (Curtis, Barnes 1989). Another division is Rhodophyta, (rhodo- meaning red and –phyta meaning plant) which is a throwback to an earlier time when algae were classified as plants (see essay XI)). The red color is due to the predominance of the pigment phycerythrin which absorbs blue light. This gets into the physics of light that my students never seemed to understand. For example, a blue wall appears blue because the paint absorbs all the other color frequencies of the visible spectrum and reflects blue back to your eyes. Sunlight (white light) is composed of all seven colors (now apparently divided into eight colors of the rainbow). And, of course, the absence of light results in black. Back to the red tide; the toxins they produce are ingested by algae eaters and pass through the food chain eventually reaching humans. Thus a severe red tide invasion can have serious economic consequences,
As the climate gets warmer, disease carrying species move into new places. Living organisms that carry infectious diseases include:
• Algae
• Mosquitoes
•. Tsetse flies
• Ticks
• Lice
• Fleas
• Snails
• Bats
• Rodents
This is certainly not an all-inclusive list.
Most people would agree that colder winter days and nights help to check the spread of disease. For example mosquitoes breed in warmer moist climates. Malaria, encephalitis, West Nile virus, and yellow fever are common diseases in which various species of mosquitoes are the vector. West Nile virus entered the United States in 1999 and within four years had covered the entire North American Continental (Gore, A. 2006).
Here is another consideration. Colder winters in western states previously slowed down the spread of pine beetles which bore into tree trunks to lay their eggs. With fewer days of frost, they are ramping up their destruction of pine trees. Other species are being threatened with extinction due to environmental change which may favor other new species that can adapt. This is a classic example of natural selection and survival of the fittest. Rain forest destruction, as one example destroys habitats and is a major player in species extinction. Even building roads, dams, bridges, etc. can separate species and cause geographic isolation. More on that and related phenomena will come in the next major topic. Stay tuned.
References
Rockford Register Star (July 15, 2018) “How climate change affects our health”
Curtis, H. N. Sue Barness, (1989). Biology. New York: Worth Publishers Inc.
Gore, A. (2006) an inconvenient truth Viking, Rodale New York, NYReport this
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Status is onlineLarry Baumer–Published • 7mo