Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Abstract (research paper)

The topic of this paper is Sea turtles endangered by Global warming. It argues that global warming has a bad effect on the environment and threatens some species in the world. Especially sea turtles, which is the oldest species alive in the world so we need to find solutions to protect this species. There are three ways to do this argument. The first is that we need to find solutions to decrease global warming. The second is that we need to decrease the pollution due to human. Finally, protect the sea turtle from humans and predators.

http://pecdroit.blogspot.com/2007/12/sea-turtles-threatened-with-extinction.html

Monday, December 3, 2007

Sea Turtles threatened with extinction (research paper)

I read in an article that a lot of species are endangered because of global warming, and more specifically the Sea turtle, which is the oldest species known in the world (Velaquez-Manoff 2007); it lived during the dinosaurs. Now the change of the climate threatens these species, and if we don’t do something in a hurry, this species will disappear. The increasing temperature (more than 2 degrees these last years) has an impact directly on the turtle’s eggs (Velaquez-Manoff 2007, Brahic 2007). The problem is that more females than males are born; that means the future will be difficult for reproduction. According to WWF (2007), it’s not only the future population which is in peril, because there is also habitat loss and degradation, pollution, disease because of human and marine pollution, and natural predators. As Bhattacharya (2007) said, we need to do something and we can already cut emissions of greenhouse gases, employ new energy efficient technology and use strategies to sequester carbon dioxide from atmosphere. These examples will decrease the effect of global warming, and that is good for the sea turtle.

In Bhattacharya’s article, she said that global warming is the change of climate, this is due to all the different activities due to human which increased pollution. Different causes are the origin of this change of climate, such as the increased pollution due to cars and factories, and too strong emission of gases and of different toxic products. These
increased the pollution in the air but also the water like sea where some waste is thrown by the factories. All of these have an impact directly or indirectly on the habitat and the life of the sea turtle, threatening them with extinction and different diseases which have been observed in them.

First, to save the sea turtle we need to start with global warming and to find a solution to decrease it. And the most important is carbon dioxide, which is in big part responsible for global warming. So we need to use strategies to sequester and to decrease CO2, to cut emission of greenhouse gases to protect ozone, and to find new technology and source of energy for our vehicles and factories to decrease all the different emission of gases and toxic products to decrease pollution on the air and on the sea. That is something that government needs to care about and use money to find and to try solutions to save our planet. It’s not only the problem of our planet, it’s also for the sea turtle because if we solve the problem of global warming, all of these solutions will affect our planet and save the sea turtle. The oldest species in the world can stay alive for a lot of years, if we do what we must do to solve this problem of global warming. This is because of global warming is the origin of all these threats on the health of humanity and of extinction for some species.

Second, if we want to decrease pollution due to human, it’s easy; we need to get all the population to participate and to teach them to care about pollution, because it’s their future which is in degradation. As for human activities and factories, we need to put in place laws to ban and to stop flow of pollutants into the sea, or to bury them in a different place, because it’s not a solution to do that, we just displace the problem. And displacing pollutants affects sea turtles and their environment. All these pollutions due to human affect global warming, and when global warming increase, the threats increase too and sea turtles become more endangered. And for the air, we need to decrease emissions of pollution due to factories and cars. So we should use our cars less and more transportation like bus or train which are electric so no pollution. Otherwise for the cars we need to look for or focus our search on the hybrid energy, we started it but it’s not enough. Petrol energy price has increased so finding a new energy with less pollution will be good for people, for the planet and also for species like sea turtle. And this can reduce global warming too. Now for the factories find news source of energy and technology to protect atmosphere and environment. Using other sources or technology is possible but for that we need to use more money to search and to advance in our technology. We need to find other energy sources because one day maybe there is not more energy that we use today, and it will be too late to find solutions. So we need to work and to progress in our research for the energy and the technology.

Third, we should protect the sea turtle from human and predators. To begin we need to save some place for sea turtle without human activities, so stop building buildings and roads too close to the beach, because these increase the temperature near the beach by all the emission of gases due to cars and all the activities due to humans. All of these affect the birth of sea turtle; to have equal births of male and female, sea turtles need a specific temperature during the nesting on the beach. If it’s too hot, like in this time, there are only females which are born and that threatens sea turtle with extinction, because no male means no reproduction. So we need to do something for that. We should stop building or we should find a project to push the turtle to migrate to the North, where the temperature is colder and better for the birth of sea turtles. And when we have found these places, at the beginning some scientists need to be here during the birth of the young turtle to protect them from predators, like human predators or animals, like birds which eat the sea turtle which try to go to the sea. I think, it’s important to do that to save turtle and for the restocking of these species. When the species are not anymore in threatened with extinction, we only need to protect and save a place for them, and the cycle of the life can be restarted.

But some people who don’t really care about endangered species or the future of our planet and global warming, can say that it’s a cycle of nature, species disappear and we can’t go against nature, like dinosaurs. And global warming is not an effect of human; they don’t really believe in global warming; for them it’s a cycle like before during the ice age, and now temperature and climate change because it’s something normal it’s the cycle of the earth. It’s not human activities which did that it must happen again like before, we can’t do something to prevent this. Some scientists believe in this theory like global warming is a lie and humans are not a cause of this change of climate. For some of them the only fact is that the planet follow a cycle and we can do everything, nothing will change this cycle. So if sea turtle is threatened with extinction it’s because we don’t need them for the future. And some of scientists said that our pollution is not the origin of global warming, natural pollution is the cause, or that we can try to reduce our pollution but there is always natural pollution. We could stop volcanos or the change of climate. So the pollution is natural, and that affects global warming which is a natural process of our planet, like the ice age many years before, now is the heat age. For the predator, we could protect a species because it’s the oldest in the planet, if we prevent birds from eating the young sea turtle, maybe we threaten these species of birds, by preventing them from feeding. We can’t intervene in the process of the life. Species die and are replaced by others species, it’s the cycle of the life and the evolution of the world. Maybe this species will disappear but others appear and replace this species and can be stronger than this one and can survive with these living conditions.

In conclusion, sea turtles are endangered because of global warming and this is an effect of human activities, so to save this species we need to protect our planet from the pollution, like this we can decrease global warming with new technology and source of energy, we can find a solution to decreasing pollution due to human activities and this has an effect on global warming and sea turtles, and we can protect sea turtle from human and predator. We are the key of the solution, as humans, we are at the origin so we need to solve it, and we can do something to protect and save this species and this will have not only an impact on the sea turtle but on global warming and our future life.

References

Bhattacharya, S. (2004, January 07). Global warming threatens millions of species. New Scientist. Retrieved October 16, 2007 from:http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn4545&print=true

Brahic, C. (2007, February 21). Male turtle populations crashing in the heat. NewScientist Environment. Retrieved October 29, 2007 from:http://environment.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn1227

Holtcamp, W. (2007) Surf’s up for these sea turtles. Defenders of Wildlife. Retrieved November 1, 2007 from:http://www.defenders.org/newsroom/defenders_magazine/winter_2007/surfs_up_for_these_sea_turtles.php

University of Exeter (2007, February 22). Scientists warn of climate change risk to marine turtle. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 1, 2007 from:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/02/070220003809.htm

Velasquez-Manoff, M. (2007, June 21). Climate turns up heat on sea turtles The Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved October 23, 2007 from:http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0621/p25s03-sten.htm

WWF (World Wildlife Fund). (2007, February 16). Under threat before they even hatch World Wildlife Fund. Retrieved November 1, 2007 from:http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/species/about_species/species_factsheets/marine_turtles/marine_turtles_threats/index.cfm

Chat and Text messaging (fluency exercise 7)

For me, I use both. It’s a fast and easy manner to communicate. With chat, I can speak with my family and my friends in France by msn messenger. Text messaging, it’s something I can use when I want to tell or ask something to someone faster than with chat, because it’s with a phone, and everybody has a phone.

I know that in France when we chat, there are a lot of expressions or words which are changed into new words or just a letter, so I think it’s the same with English chat. I start to chat in English with some of my friends who are in the SIU swim team. I think chat makes it easier to meet people or to exchange documents like for SIU students. Text messaging, it’s more useful when we are already friends, because we need to have the phone number to send text messaging.

I don’t know if I will need to use chat or text messaging in the future, probably with my work colleague if we need to exchange some information chat and text messaging are good. But I think, I will use it more just for friends and for fun in general. In business, it’s easier to speak directly face to face or by mail, to explain all the criteria for a contract for example.