Ground Water Polution

 Pollution of Groundwater, by: William R. Mason 1995
http://www.waterencyclopedia.com/Oc-Po/Pollution-of-Groundwater.html#b

Summary:
Almost half of the Untied States rely on groundwater for their everyday water needs. These areas in which we obtain our water are currently being polluted by us humans. A ground water pollutant is a substance that makes the water unclean. Many people believe that the soil and sediment act as a filter, and they think that if they pour chemicals or some other pollutant into the ground it wont be harmful. During the 1970's scientists found out that people were pouring chemicals into the ground and it was contaminating our ground water. It caused much damage and cost the water purification plants a lot of money to filter it from the aquifers. Some pollutants that people were pouring out were, fertilizers, pesticides, petroleum based fuels, and chlorinated solvents. There are current laws preventing people from depositing their waste into the ground. Some methods of clean up that are being used are, groundwater extraction wells, bioremediation, and treating the water at its point of use. They all serve the same purpose of removing the pollutants.

Opinion: 
I believe that its terrible that people are to lazy to safely remove there waste safely, but instead choose to dump it into the ground. Its selfish because those people are contaminating the water we use and drink. If you think about it people in third world countries don't have any water to drink and here in the U.S. people are ruining perfectly good water, just because their to lazy to remove it safely. In addition the chemicals are not just bad for the groundwater, but there bad for the soil and organisms which are near the pollutants. Its also harming our government. Their spending so much of our tax- payers money to remove the chemicals, that we have no money left for our specific needs. This can all be prevented by removing, and not using bad chemicals safely. 

Questions:

1. Do you think more should be done to prevent people form depositing these chemicals into the ground?

2. How do you think these pollutants are affecting the water in which we drink?

3. Do you believe there should be ban's on dangerous chemicals such as pesticides, and chlorinated solvents? 

4. Who should be responsible for cleaning our groundwater?

5. Who should pay for the removal of the pollutants in our groundwater?

Benjamin Kron, November 1st, 2012

Worldwide Water Crisis

 
Link to article - http://www.worldwatercouncil.org/index.php?id=25


Summary:

This article is about the shortage of water that is starting to affect some countries. Throughout the world there is a greater amount of water being used and taken from the supply, and not enough water being replaced.  With the great decrease of water resources, there is an increase of tension between countries.  Many countries are now pulling from the same water sources.  This problem has led to an increased awareness of the limited resources in the world.  Many plans were put in place to try and equally divide what water we have left.

Picture – This picture shows the level of stress because of water.  In this picture the world has been broken down by how much stress there is due to the limited water.  The majority of well off countries feel little or no stress.  As can be seen that is not the case for everybody, even the US is feeling the effects.

Opinion – My opinion on this topic is that we (the world) should work together to overcome this problem.  Since the water supply is running out everybody should use just what they need.  If there are people using way more water then they need, other countries will feel the effects much more.

 

Questions –

1)    What could we do to help the problem of limited water?

2)    In your opinion should we have a limit on how much water we can use? Explain.

3)    Even in the US, parts of the west coast are feeling the effects, if the population keeps increasing at the rate it is, what could happen?   

 

Ice in the Arctic

Link to article: http://www.macroevolution.net/sea-ice-2.html#.UGuIZE37KXE

Ice in the Arctic

Summary: Over the past years the frozen cap of the Arctic Ocean has been starting to melt away very slowly. On September 16th there was an all time record low for the frozen cap.This is not a good thing at all and the NASA satellite shows that the sea ice extent has melted down to 1.32 million sq miles! But the NSIDS says wind overtime can  change and compact the ice floes to help reduce the sea extent. During the winter the ice grows back but on a thin layer and in the summer it all gets melted away plus some ice that wasn't built up in the winter so it slowly shrinks overtime. The thickness of the ice is also declining which is going to make the ice melt even faster. Also there was a cyclone recently which took off a chunk of the ice and contributed to the all time record low on September 16th.

Picture: The picture just shows  an older picture of the arctic on the top and a more recent one on the bottom. It shows that the ice has melted away over the years.

Opinion/Reflection: I was surprised that the arctic has been shrinking this much. Also that there was an all time record low just a couple days ago. This is definitely effecting many species of animals that live there which probably is messing up the food webs too. Soon those animals wont have a home and will become extinct species. I have heard about this in the news and I have heard about global warming too in my personal life and i think people should be more concerned about this issue.

Questions: 1) Do you think there is anything that we can do to help stop this?
                 2) What do you think will happen after the all ice melts away?
                 3)Do you think we will ever find a way to stop the ice shrinkage later in the future?