AMMONNEWS - By Feras Werr - Our Earth is literally a magnificent and invaluable inheritance passed on to us as humans to keep and dwell in. Its eternal like existence is measured at approximately five billion and a half years. Very briefly explaining the scientific theory behind its origins, it began as a blazing ball, being ejected off from the flaming material of the sun. The massive flames that engulfed it raged for an extensive but unestimated period of time before gasses released from its scorching flames began creating a sphere that eventually gave birth to clouds. The clouds released massive rainfall that extinguished the flames on the surface of our Earth and through the course of time land began to surface. Surrounding the land were the oceans that were produced from the biblical like rainfall mentioned. Those events happened through the course of millions of years and thus following these events the elements that lead to life began taking focus: *land, water and a gaseous sphere that eventually would be saturated with oxygen and support life.

Our globe’s life activity rebounded between four major ice and four major water ages. Ice ages were periods of bitter cold where a part of our known world or at times all of it was covered with immense ice sheets. Those ice ages were interrupted by much warmer water ages where the presence of ice would be many times unfound. Many scientifical reasons were suggested for these shifts and among which are, the migration of the poles and continental drift, changing ocean currents, variation in sea level from Earth movements and fluctuation in Earth’s own heat. The earliest ice age is assumed by scientists to have taken place 2.7 to 2.3 billion years ago. However the earliest well documented one and which is believed to have been the harshest took place from 850 to 630 million years ago. Earth resembled a complete snow ball because of permanent ice conditions during this period which ended quickly as water vapor returned rapidly to the atmosphere. Our present ice age began 40 million years ago with the spur of the ice sheet in Antarctica. This intensified three million years ago with the spread of the ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere. Since then our world has witnessed different ice phases (periods within the ice age), each phase having time spans ranging from 40,000 to 100,000 years, with the ice sheets advancing and receding in the process. We are presently witnessing the retreat of an ice phase that ended some 10,000 years ago. The still iced up polar caps are only remnants to the piercing cold that ruled back then.

As Earth witnessed those profound changes within its natural balance, and according to scientific hypotheses, life managed its way in the form of very simple cell organisms believed to have begun at sea hundreds of millions of years ago. Thus believed to be the theory of evolution at work and through eonic periods of time those organisms gave birth to more complex sea life form and soon the oceans were vibrant with the first ancestors of life. Bustling with the usual but powerful zeal and will to flourish a lineage of the sea life witnessed a revolutionary change within its physiology and the characteristic to breathe and navigate on land was added to it. This change involved both an adaptation to its internal organs and a bodily modification, whereby providing it with the internal organs that support breathing fresh air, and bodily abilities to maneuver on land. Earth then witnessed its first amphibians treading along its golden sandy beaches.

Hundreds of thousands of plant and animal genera crowded our ecology before man kind or “Homo-Sapiens” developed on Earth. Some went extinct due to the reverberating atmospheric conditions on Earth while others, according to the theory of adaptation, were able to adjust defying the climate changes, and to reproduce successfully. While the Dinosaurs first appeared approximately 230 million years ago and ruled successfully the seas and lands for over 160 million years; the greater part of their groups became extinct due to a catastrophic event. One of the strongest hypotheses, that is yet still to be assured by modern science, states that a bulky meteor struck on land whereby arousing a huge amount of dust that spread densely in the Earth’s atmosphere. This event blocked the much valuable rays and heat of the sun causing the gradual extermination of the dinosaurs which are believed to have included more than two thousand known genera. It is worthy here to state that geologists have found alien dust residue within the Earth’s deep crust layers that is believed to coincide in age with the dinosaur’s extinction dates.

Nature’s behavioral patterns proved to our modern scientists that it is unstoppable. Despite this prehistoric catastrophe the sand eventually settled down and life regenerated its abundant species once again. The Earth thrived, its atmosphere freezing and defrosting continuously, its animals and plants adapting and changing as the ice and water battled for rule and domain. Everything remained naturally proceeding, calm and peaceful till the arrival of man; Homo sapiens

Man with his advanced mental capacities and fully erect body was the capable being to fully invest and exploit the compete splendors of Earth’s material and natural resources. Pre-industrial revolution man found the means to camelflouge and blend perfectly with Mother Nature. He had neither misdemeanors nor sins to fear from. It was industrial revolution man with his metropolitan cities, his interests in the odor-full black gold, his profit-loss economical philosophy and greed that made impacting changes on his life and the future of his children. Over five thousand years of primitive plant growing, hunting and tribal life abruptly ended when he immediately began harvesting the produces that took nature 5.5 billion years to yield. In less than one hundred years he turned the rough plain undisturbed grounds of Earth into massive nations and bustling cities. The steam engine that he developed opened huge horizons for industry and manufacture. Quicker travel was made possible when trains were manufactured and cars were commercially sold. Oil by products were used as combustion elements in many industrialized plants, vehicles and ships. By the mid twentieth century airliners were a very normal way of travel and traveling from one continent to another was becoming less time consuming. Pre-industrial revolution man sailed the seas for land conquest while twentieth century man tore through the sphere’s of Earth with supersonic spaceships, traveling at 30 thousand kilometers per hour, wanting to explore and announce supremacy in space and its’ planets. Although retired from service presently, the Concorde was a state of the art invention in the seventies that ferried air passengers at a super speed of 1400 M/P/H (2253 Km/P/H).

Hear ye Hear ye! The tax for living in easy street turned out to be colossal. The ozonosphere is an area in the stratosphere where rich concentrations of ozone are found. Ozone is an allotrope of Oxygen. An Ozone molecule is made up of three Oxygen atoms. This layer that wraps our Earth absorbs lethal quantities of ultraviolet rays that come from the sun, whereby making life possible on Earth. Ultraviolet rays are very harmful to living organisms because they damage the genetic structure of living cells. During the 1970’s scientists began to worry that the CFCs, which are man made chemicals, are damaging the ozonosphere. Upon their invention these chemicals were considered a blessing to industry. They were nonflammable, nonpoisonous and didn’t corrode metal. These characteristics made them very proper to use in coolants in refrigerators and air conditioners; as propellants in plastic foams, spray cans such as deodorants, insecticides, and paint. These things were usable everyday around the world by billions and for a full two decades the merciless sprays used on a daily basis were spreading titanic amounts of deadly gas in our atmosphere, rising head way into the stratosphere and killing the ozone layer. Intensive research proved that the chlorofluorocarbons brutality against the ozone unleashes when it gets subjected to the sun’s rays in the stratosphere precisely. Ultraviolet light breaks down its’ molecular composition and 1 to 4 chlorine atoms, present in its compounds, get released. A single chlorine atom can destroy up to 100,000 ozone molecules. This is because their deadly effects don’t stop from only one reaction with the ozone. They continue to rotate and reshuffle themselves within the stratosphere damaging more ozone molecules.

Significant news of ozone thinning in Antarctica’s South Pole was published in an article in “Nature” in 1985, which is a scientific journal in the US. Scientist’s research showed ozone thinning from 50 - 98 percent in spring time when it is usually detectable. The fact that Ozone is especially concentrated over the North and South Poles and is less abundant near the equator played a major role as to why the thinning on the South Pole was easily noticed. It is generally highly concentrated in the spring time and less in the summer and fall. Accordingly NASA reviewed information sent by the Nimbus 7 weather satellite since its launch in 1978. It showed the thinning had actually commenced ever since 1979! Although ozone concentrations fluctuate naturally during the year and are present in different percentages from area to area in the stratosphere, the thinning was very obvious. Further thinning commencing over Canada was detected. In 1997 the ozone read a decrease of 45 percent! Physical thinning of ice in northern Canada was noted also.

World efforts to combat the usage of CFCs were fruitful although a little bit too late. By 1995 there was a drastic in the manufacture and usage of CFC products by all nations of the world. The US pledged to ban all substances that posed a threat to the Ozone Layer by the year 2000. However the CFCs active in the ozonosphere will not be neutralized very easily. The chlorofluorocarbon’s molecules will remain active in the stratosphere from 60 – 120 years into the future! CFC molecules released one or two decades ago are still slaughtering the ozone up till today, thus making the ozonosphere’s complete recovery time consuming. The ozonosphere is repairable. It is produced by lightning discharges and by ultraviolet rays form the Sun. However its destruction was faster than any natural repair possible. Ozone has to be created naturally and precisely in the stratosphere for it to be an effective sunscreen for Earth. Ozone produced in the troposphere or Earth’s atmosphere is ineffective. It is a highly reactive element easily breaking down or combining with any surrounding elements long before it reaches the stratosphere to substitute damage there.

Has man triggered a warm water period by his poison and debris that he infested the natural healthy environment with? Is man’s selfishness and ignorance going to cost him a balanced future? The so much valuable black gold by-products that our air, sea and land vehicles use; the infamous oil that nations have battled and slaughtered each other for, upon motor combustion releases lethal Carbon Dioxide (CO2). This poisonous gas is a main feed for the greenhouse effect that is a catalyst in global surface temperature increases. Solar radiation passes through the atmosphere naturally warming the Earth’s surface. Energy from the sun is absorbed by the Earth’s surface as well and then radiated into the atmosphere as heat. Some of this heat escapes into space; some is absorbed by the green house gases and radiated back towards the lower atmosphere and Earth’s surface. This is helping to double heat our environment. The immense amount of this gas that is being released on a daily basis by land and air vehicles combined with its present level within our atmosphere is fatally increasing this heating process. The greenhouse gases are water vapor, carbon dioxide, chlorofluorocarbons (CFC), methane and nitrous oxide.

Let’s rest the scientific influx of information and start processing the data on an Earthly consequential scale. A forceful intervention from the side-effects of human civilization that possibly changed the natural course of Earth from a cool period to a warm weather phase; the unceasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the air and the depletion of the ozonosphere; what is the bitter reality expected? The IPCC reports are shedding light on this constantly. The IPCC is a network made up of 2500 of the world’s leading climatologists from 70 countries. Their TAR report contains full and up to date information and future evaluations about our global climate system. Some of their alarming findings were their assurance that global warming is reality and happening, a rise in the surface temperatures of our globe by 0.6 degrees Celsius so far and the melting of snow and ice that is leading to a rise in average global sea-levels. They assure that during the past century a sea level rise has occurred already. Paralleling with their reports were expectations of a number of scientists which were published in an article by Andrea Thompson and Ker Than on the Yahoo website on April 22, 2007 under the name “Timeline: The Frightening Future of Earth.” The article stated that by 2020 flash floods will increase across Europe and less rainfall could affect the agricultural yields by up to 50 percent in some parts of the world. In thirteen years we are already talking about an expected imbalance that is going to alter the present precipitation map drastically. The article added that by 2030 the temperate glaciers on equatorial mountains in Africa is expected to disappear, that by 2040 the arctic sea could be ice free in the summer times, and by 2080 the average global sea levels will have risen by approximately one meter. At that point numerous coastal lines and people living near river basins will experience flooding. As we tread down towards the mid years of our present century and as the weather becomes warmer drought will strike different parts of the world and fresh water will become hard to acquire. Heat related diseases will begin to surface by as early as 2030. Among the most astonishing mentioned in the article was that the Earth’s rotation rate could witness a slight increase along with other alterations as these natural misfits take focus. By the year 2100, if human civilization is able to out live these exhausting global hazards, and by then the IPCC expects many ecosystems to have been pushed to their top limits whereby endangering their abilities to adapt to climate change; atmospheric Carbon Dioxide will have reached a peak unseen within the past 650 thousand years; thawing permafrost and other associating factors will make land a main discharge channel for carbon dioxide and this will happen faster than its natural absorption by land; roughly 20 to 30 percent of species assessed as of 2007 could be extinct by 2100 if global mean temperatures exceed 2-3 degrees of pre-industrial levels; new climate zones may appear and affect up to 39 percent of the world’s land surface radically transforming the planet; and last but definitely not least a quarter of all species of plants and animals (a million in total) could be driven to extinction.

What is to be done? Today our community can do a lot to repair our ecology for our growing up children and the generations after! We no longer can choose what is inviting for us. We have to choose what should be done for the welfare of our globe and before our race can be threatened by the danger of extinction. We can do a lot to start controlling CO2’s fatal concentration in our atmosphere. More effort has to be maintained by all countries with forestry potentials and actual forestry hosting, to better maintain and increase their vegetation. Countries should initiate budgets to grow more trees and plant life. The vegetation literally absorbs CO2 from the Atmosphere and replaces it with Oxygen in the daytime. The global community should have penalties inflicted on nations that do not abide by such and similar plans. Vegetation is a global possession and not a country possession. On a global scale of course, families should be better aware that cars are a major propellant of CO2 in the air. I think that self motivation and our conscience should play a role in better utilizing our cars for necessary errands and regulating any over leisurely outings. Owning more than one car was once a luxury. However these days it is a major threat as it means our atmosphere will be more infested with greenhouse gases. We invite our global community to have better incite and to plan their vehicle usage more. More money, effort and industrial awareness should be focused in alternative safer fuel than oil. Do it for the sake of our Earth today. Tomorrow there will be only land, water and a gaseous sphere...just like the beginnings