Sean Kim's List: English 11

• • Balaguer, Alejandro. "Climate Checkup." Americas (Vol. 60, No. 2). Mar/Apr 2008: 44. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 12 Feb 2012.
• • This shows how human's bad habits(irresponsible actions) are devastating the environments, and this also  demonstrates the global warming and the climate changes are all caused by the humans. 
•  "Data on the ecological disaster caused by humans' bad habits are endless and becoming more extreme all the time....Ricardo Sanchez, who heads [the United Nations Environment Programme's] Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, talked about the report's findings during the presentation late last year of the GEO-4 report in Panama. ‘Unfortunately, in our region a series of extreme events, occurring in a highly vulnerable environment, have produced natural disasters of extraordinary impact,' he said.... As consumption increases and greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced, global warming worsens; as a result, areas where ice has disappeared are on the rise. Andean and Antarctic glaciers are going through a massive, accelerated retreat that was unforeseen by the scientific community." (Americas) This article discusses the encroaching effects of global warming on Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean. Details of "savannization" in the Amazon basin, flooding, and changed rainfall patterns are reported on, and the United Nations' efforts to halt the damages of human-induced climate change are provided.

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• • Corwin, Jeff. "Our Extinction." Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA). 30 Nov 2009: A.25. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 12 Feb 2012
• • This shows how humans affect the nature, and how human's irresponsible actions cause animals to extinct. This can be an example to show how humans only take from the nature, and don't give back to the nature. 

• There is a holocaust happening. Right now. And it's not confined to one nation or even one region. It is a global crisis.

   

  Species are going extinct en masse.

   

  Every 20 minutes we lose an animal species. If this rate continues, by century's end, 50% of all living species will be gone. It is a phenomenon known as the sixth extinction. The fifth extinction took place 65 million years ago when a meteor smashed into the Earth, killing off the dinosaurs and many other species and opening the door for the rise of mammals. Currently, the sixth extinction is on track to dwarf the fifth.

   

  What--or more correctly--who is to blame this time? As Pogo said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

   

  The causes of this mass die-off are many: overpopulation, loss of habitat, global warming, species exploitation (the black market for rare animal parts is the third-largest illegal trade in the world, outranked only by weapons and drugs). The list goes on, but it all points to us.

   
• • This is the warning sign of the humanity. To stop acting like the they own the nature, and earth is their planet. Because they are driving our every other species from the earth. And this article emphasis that the actions against this issue are so infinitesimal and the majorities of people are still destroying the nature. 
• • Corwin, Jeff. "Our Extinction." Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, CA). 30 Nov 2009: A.25. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 14 Feb 2012.

• Here in the United States, Chris Lucash of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is working to reintroduce the red wolf, now found only in captivity, to the woods of North Carolina. They are just a few of the many who are trying to reverse the species holocaust that threatens the future of our natural world.

   

  These committed scientists bring great generosity and devotion to their respective efforts to stop the sixth extinction. But if we don't all rise to the cause and join them in action, they cannot succeed. The hour is near, but it's not too late.

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• • This well explains humans' relationship with the nature. Humans usually take from the nature. And when they do that, they try to take as much as they could. And result of that the limit of the resources available on earth is being unveiled. And soon there would be no resources left on earth for the next generations. So humans should not take the resources thinking as if there are infinite amount of resources. Instead they should start giving back to the nature. They should take some actions against this problem that whole humanity is facing; they could start from plant trees, and clean up their waste to keep the nature and resources for the future. 
• • Leahy, Stephen. "Humanity Hitting the Resource Ceiling." Global Information Network. 13 May 2011: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 14 Feb 2012.
• • This article shows how human endlessly and limitlessly take from the nature, because of human's greedy nature. And result of that, there wont be any resources left by 2050 which is only a near future. This message warns the humans that they should stop wasting their resources and increase the efficiency of resources. 
• • Leahy, Stephen. "Humanity Hitting the Resource Ceiling." Global Information Network. 13 May 2011: n.p. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 14 Feb 2012.
• Better living through using far fewer material resources is the only possible future, experts agree. Humanity is pressing up against the limits of a finite planet to provide resources like water, oil, metals and food, according to a new report released Thursday.
• During the 20th century, the rate of resource use has increased twice as fast as the increase in global population. Now, resources are being consumed at an even greater rate and are on pace to triple by 2050, the report calculates. Except there simply aren't enough resources left on the planet to manage that.

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• • Dean, Cornelia. "Research Ties Human Acts to Harmful Rates of Species Evolution." New York Times (New York, NY). Jan. 13 2009: D.3. SIRS Issues Researcher. Web. 12 Feb 2012.
• • This article shows how humans affect in the nature in such harmful ways. Humans actions for their own goods change natural rate of evolutions in the nature. And humans disturb the nature through cutting down trees, and destructively hunting and fishing.  
•  "Human actions are increasing the rate of evolutionary change in plants and animals in ways that may hurt their long-term prospects for survival, scientists are reporting.  Hunting, commercial fishing and some conservation regulations, like minimum size limits on fish, may all work against species health. The idea that target species evolve in response to predation is not new. For example, researchers reported several years ago that after decades of heavy fishing, Atlantic cod had evolved to reproduce at younger ages and smaller sizes....Based on an analysis of earlier studies of 29 species--mostly fish, but also a few animals and plants like bighorn sheep and ginseng--researchers from several Canadian and American universities found that rates of evolutionary change were three times higher in species subject to 'harvest selection' than in other species."  (New York Times) The author relays evidence of the evolutionary effects of hunting and fishing regulations on species that are heavliy targeted for human consumption.

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• • Hunt, Melody J. "Water pollution." World Book Advanced. World Book, 2012. Web.  14 Feb. 2012.
• • This demonstrates the effect of the water pollution that is caused due to humans. Because of human's excessive use of water, there is major shortage of water throughout the world. And this shortage affects not only humans but also every other species on the earth. And because of the shortage of water, water pollution is caused and as a chain reaction, there would be reduced amount of oxygen and food. 
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    Effects 

   Water pollution poses a serious public health problem. It also interferes with the use of natural resources and damages the environment.

  Print "Effects" subsection
  
    

  Human illness. Water polluted with human and animal wastes can spread many diseases, including typhoid fever, cholera, and dysentery. Many communities disinfect their water supplies with chlorine or other chemicals to kill disease-causing germs. However, disinfection does not remove harmful chemicals, such as polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB's) and chloroform, or harmful metals, such as arsenic, lead, and mercury (see Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)). The careless release of such toxic wastes, primarily into waste dumps, can lead to the contamination of ground water supplies. Scientists have found PCB's, chloroform, and pesticides in some public drinking water. Some experts think that drinking even small amounts of these substances over many years may have harmful effects.
• • Hunt, Melody J. "Water pollution." World Book Advanced. World Book, 2012. Web.  13 Feb. 2012.
• • This shows how the human-caused issues can effect on our selves and the nature. According to the world book, water pollution is caused by human activity that contaminates water through the dumping oils, chemicals and wastes in the sea or other kinds of waters. And this shows how the human destroy the nature, after taking clean water from the nature.
• Reduced use of natural resources. Pollution can prevent people and wildlife from enjoying the full use of natural waters. For example, odors and floating debris may make boating and swimming unpleasant, and the risk of disease can make them unsafe. Oil spilled from ships or offshore wells may float to shore, where it can kill water birds, shellfish, and other wildlife. Water pollution can harm or kill fish directly or by reducing the available food or oxygen. It can reduce fishing catches and make some fish unsafe to eat.

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• • Marsh is arguing that because of the human civilization's influence, organic world and inorganic world aggregated together. But they are not suppose to mix together, instead they should have harmony between the each other. But because of the human impact on earth, that harmony was broken and there are changes happing in the nature globally. And This is resulted because of humans' attitude towards the nature, since the humans think that they are the owner of the mother nature. 
• • "Man and Nature: Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action." Environmental Issues: Essential Primary Sources. Ed. Brenda Wilmoth Lerner and K. Lee Lerner. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 16-18. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 14 Feb. 2012.
• Apart from the hostile influence of man, the organic and the inorganic world are … bound together by such mutual relations and adaptations as secure, if not the absolute permanence and equilibrium of both, a long continuance of the established conditions of each at any given time and place, or at least, a very slow and gradual succession of changes in those conditions. But man is every-where a disturbing agent. Wherever he plants his foot, the harmonies of nature are turned to discords. The proportions and accommodations which insured the stability of existing arrangements are overthrown. Indigenous vegetable and animal species are extirpated, and supplanted by others of foreign origin, spontaneous production is forbidden or restricted, and the face of the earth is either laid bare or covered with a new and reluctant growth of vegetable forms, and with alien tribes of animal life. These intentional changes and substitutions constitute, indeed, great revolutions; but vast as is their magnitude and importance, they are, as we shall see, insignificant in comparison with the contingent and unsought results which have flowed from them.
• • The novel Man and Nature written by George Perkins Marsh in 1864 depicts Marsh's concern to the mankind. That people should not kill the animals carelessly and limitlessly. And even though animals tend to kill each others, they have compensations that go along with the death of other animals. But humans tend to destroy nature and brutally kill animals without any limit. So Marsh is warning that men should not cut the harmony between the human and the nature otherwise the result would be disastrous 
• • Man and Nature: Or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action." Environmental Issues: Essential Primary Sources. Ed. Brenda Wilmoth Lerner and K. Lee Lerner. Detroit: Gale, 2006. 16-18. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context. Web. 13 Feb. 2012.

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  Marsh's voice is both a warning and a voice of moderation. It is also particularly American. It is the voice of a man who saw firsthand that a seemingly inexhaustible wealth of nature lay limitlessly before his countrymen for their use and saw, too, how they were despoiling and destroying that wealth as mankind had characteristically done throughout the ages to its own great disadvantage.

   

  In Man and Nature, Marsh balanced a commitment to the authority of nature and to the intelligence and powers of mankind. He introduced the idea that people must be stewards of nature and must recognize that nature has a harmony of its own that it is disastrous to defy and, by defying, destroy. Marsh recognizes that human beings cannot live—and ought not to live—like brutes in nature and that we are not, like the rest of nature, entirely of nature. He accepts that, by our essence, human beings are a higher force able to transform and elevate other aspects of nature. Marsh himself sees some components of mankind's ability to transform as "lower" aspects, like producing crops through cultivation, domesticating animals, and engineering geography itself. But this power and authority, Marsh argued, gives people the responsibility of stewardship. It is essential that we know nature, understand its processes and work with nature as we transform it, rather than recklessly endangering ourselves by abusing it. With the advances that have been made in the magnitude and depth of

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