CO2 vs. VOC’s

Climate change is often touted as the greatest threat to our world’s biodiversity and ecological balance. VOC’s, Refrigerants, Pesticides, PIP’s, and a myriad of other anthropogenic chemicals from city runoff not only contribute directly to the greenhouse effect; notably in a more destructive and persistent manner than CO2, but they also acidify the oceans; which indirectly reduces the ability to trap CO2 within deep sea dead organisms (calcium carbonate), hence furthering the rate at which the atmosphere accumulates CO2 and inducing a positive feedback loop as it does so. The ocean holds CO2 in vast amounts within corals and other animals which sink to the seafloor as sediment, trapping it for ever. Organic matter from decomposing ecosystems which is carried deep beneath the earth through plate subduction is also a long-term storage of carbon. Humans have been extracting the resultant organic material from deep below the surface through fracking and other means, and releasing this long-trapped carbon back into the atmosphere. This and various other human activities are depleting the ozone layer, which adds to the positive feedback induced through the chronic heating and acidifying of the oceans. This all results in the melting and collapsing of subsidence of glaciers, which hold most of the world’s fresh water, and upon entering the ocean, they rise the sea level and disrupt the earth’s hydrological and thermal convection cycles which puts further stress on pelagic and benthic ecosystems, further damaging the earth’s natural cycles and homeostatic life-support systems. Storms are becoming more vigorous and seasonal temperature fluctuations are becoming more pronounced. Arctic ecosystems are experiencing a decline in snow and ice, which is a lifeline to many species which rely on the frost for camouflage, habitation, and subsistence. Ozone depletion is driving humans to pursue geo-engineering as a means to lower the UV index in areas that are now particularly exposed, which could pose unforeseen consequences on all life forms due to the nature of the free-radicals (metallic ions) involved. This and other mitigation strategies fail to remediate the issue while creating the premise for a dependency on these practices, which again creates a positive-feedback loop much in the same way that nitrogen-excessive fertilization and toxic pesticides disrupt soil microbiota and consequently renders plant unable to properly extract nutrients from the soil, requiring more synthetic fertilizers to grow, and being physiologically weaker and more susceptible and attractive to pests, which were designed by nature to selectively get rid of plants with a weaker genome so to enhance ecological stability and hardiness of species. Despite all these offenses, many organisms are being forced towards new ecological niches and opportunism is becoming a necessity for some species to avoid extinction. Non-native sources of E.M.R., including non-ionizing radiation have been shown to be harmful to all magnetoreceptive pollinators which utilize cryptochromes for navigation and geo-location. This is disrupting flora in suburban and urban environments and inducing harmful effects in ecosystems which are essential for proper water-drainage, carbon fixation, and other natural cycles. Let alone human activities, but the effects of our infrastructure development in general; such as black roads, bare rooftops, and other forms of buildings which more readily absorb solar radiation instead of reflecting it back upwards into the heavens are also contributing to the depletion of the ozone layer and consequently the disarray of natural geological and thermodynamic cycles, such as earth’s convection jet-stream and oceanic currents. Deforestation for growing grain fed to CAFO-raised animals is another considerable threat to the earth’s capacity to absorb CO2 through primary productivity. Phytoplankton and other ocean primary producers absorb half of CO2, while the tundra, which is warming and losing its ecosystemic stability, along with the rest of all the world’s forests and jungles, are responsible for the other half. Thus losing rainforests is arguably just as harmful to the atmosphere and the greenhouse effect as ocean acidification and sea-level rise. The Amazon rainforest is the net center for primary productivity and it is being rampantly cut down to grow soy and corn in unsustainable, highly toxic conventional methods. Animal agriculture as a whole has been demonized, despite the fact that the most effective way to regenerate dead soils and turn grasslands back into forests is through the natural fertilization by animal manure, which can build up soil ecology so that it may again support shrubs, which ex-foliate to create deeper topsoil and more compost, so that eventually large trees can be supported, and consequently a full environment from canopy to sub canopy to ground. We must cease activities which are directly and indirectly harmful to the earth’s systems, as well as put forward remediation strategies in order to coax them back into balance; a process which they are naturally inclined to, if we are to avoid the next major repercussion of a tragedy of the commons. 

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