Horrible torture to the environment

by Rosa
(Indiana)

This is horrible. Stop Polluting the Environment!!!

This is horrible. Stop Polluting the Environment!!!

I can't even go for a walk down the road without witnessing trash and horrible things that people are to lazy to throw away themselves. Animals die because of certain things that are not meant to be eaten by them.

Barry's Response I know. I used to feature a picture of a littered stream with a dead pig in it on this site a few years ago, but pulled it because it was quite disgusting. It's back by popular demand now.

Read on for more about how oceans and climate interact...there's more to the global environment than just water.

Search this site for more information now.

👽 Why We Should Question the Sky: The Case of the Missing Heat 🔎

When you see that oil-soaked bird, that suffocating stream, your conscience demands action. Local, tangible pollution is a moral failing we need to fix. While our ethics govern that clean-up, there's a bigger mystery shrouding the global climate conversation, and we've got to don our skeptical detective hats.

Let's zoom out past the smokestacks and industrial runoff-past the visible crimes-to the vast, weird solar system. Current climate discourse focuses much on one greenhouse gas, CO2, and fundamentally misrepresents its role. It's easy to miss the colossal, mechanisms that really drive planetary temperature when we focus on a simple cause.

Ice scrolls from Antarctica reveal a profound secret: global temperature changes precede shifts in CO2 concentration over millennia. When the temperature changes, the carbon follows, sometimes by hundreds of years. According to this data, the gas is often a result of oceanic release caused by natural warming, not the initial, sole cause.

Earth's climate is controlled more by the Sun than by our tailpipes. The Sun's energy output is often treated like a boring, steady lamp in climate models. Solar activity fluctuates: magnetic fields shift, cosmic ray fluxes change, and these changes correlate with fluctuations in Earth's cloud formation, which are powerful cooling shields. Most of our climate story comes from non-anthropogenic, natural climate variations like solar forcing, orbital wobbles, and cloud physics. What's up with us dismissing the Sun's tantrums while worrying about ours?

This consistent focus on one human factor often accommodates political expediency and massive financial redistribution. It's fun to falsify existing theories, but challenging consensus can cause funding to disappear. Our ethical principle of integrity demands intellectual honesty: we must expose all variables, no matter how inconvenient, so everyone can make their own decisions.

We have to build tools that empower this freedom to revolutionize this field.

It's not just air we measure. Liberate your mind.

Imagine a Climate Falsification Laboratory: an interactive digital exhibit where you can manipulate historical climate drivers—just drag a slider to increase solar irradiance during the Little Ice Age or adjust the Earth's orbital tilt (Milankovitch cycles)—to see how natural forces explain major historical temperature shifts that haven't been explained by humans. This would be handy if it exists.

By turning climate data into a fun, creative investigation, this reimagines our engagement. It juxtaposes the visible horror of local waste (which we need to clean up!) with the cosmic indifference of the climate machine (which we need to figure out as it's more abstract).

Earth isn't fragile; it's resilient.

Unlike anything we engineer today, it's weathered a lot more dramatic, natural upheavals. In the name of human health and morality, we should prioritize local water and air quality, but not succumb to global alarmism based on models that don't take big drivers like the sun into proper account. Gather all the data, examine all the influences, and trust your brain. Let us know what you think.

Large Cells in Earth's atmosphereLarge convective cells in the air.

Comments for Horrible torture to the environment

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starstarstarstarstar 		What a powerful set of comments!
by: Barry

From existential despair to a sense of protective responsibility, the conversation has stirred deep feelings. Hope you enjoyed these first three detailed, and (hopefully) funny responses about meteorology and air quality.
Rating
starstarstarstarstar 		Horrible
by: Anonymous

I cannot understand the thinking of a human being and how he would survive in the polluted environment. I have learn that the world as we know would come to an end very soon and the entire human species will be eradicated from the face of the Earth. I believe that is not a bad idea and without human beings Nature can prosper again.

From Barry - Oh my gosh. That's a sentiment that lands like a Pb (Lead) isotope! It's understandable to feel that way when you look at humanity's messy track record; sometimes it seems we have the foresight of a Roomba stuck in mud. For a moment, let's put the brakes on existential self-deportation and examine the atmosphere's stubbornness.

Human activity introduces colossal amounts of contaminants, from visible oil slicks to invisible gases. Air quality-wise, the atmosphere is a chaotic, three-dimensional cleaner. For example, the very volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that evaporate from polluted water and contribute to smog are often broken down by hydroxyl radicals (OH), essentially the troposphere's detergent. Planet fights back!

Regarding the "end of the world soon" prediction: while the localized effects are dire and immediate (and morally unacceptable), the planet's massive scale and self-regulating systems resist simple eradication. Weather patterns and large-scale air movement—what meteorologists call the general circulation—distribute and dilute many pollutants over time, preventing permanent, localized environmental collapse everywhere at once. This is a powerful, if slow, detox for the planet.

See the diagram above.

While we have to drastically change our habits, it's like giving a massive ecosystem a bad haircut-it'll eventually grow back. Taking into account the planet's robustness, not just its fragility, gives us the ethical space and time to innovate.
Rating
starstarstarstarstar 		our thanks
by: Anonymous

The picture of that polluted water was not a pretty site. the picture shows what the world is turning into. Thank you for showing the picture to us and fellow students.....thank you.

From Barry - Thank you, but we wish the source of your gratitude wasn't so horrifying! You say the picture shows what the world turns into. It's like a still frame from a disaster movie, but it shows the local reality of bad stewardship.

This visual shock is exactly what drives the need for better air quality consulting-and it's not just about what you see. Students can explore atmospheric science by connecting that polluted water with the air they breathe.

Polluted water bodies aerosolize tiny water droplets when they get agitated (waves, currents, industrial outflow). Droplets carry fine particulate matter (PM2.5 and PM10) directly into the air. Meteorologists track air quality indexes (AQIs) based on the particulate burden in the atmosphere. The "ugly sight" of water pollution often translates into poor air quality. The organic content of these particles complicates it even further by spreading germs for instance.

Dry deposition is the key scientific understanding addressed here: Nature doesn't just spread the mess, it cleans it too. Gravity and atmospheric turbulence eventually settle back down the particles, re-polluting the land and water. It ain't great. Engineers and scientists (maybe future students like you!) need to intervene proactively at the source, preventing pollution from entering the water. I appreciate you engaging with this critical truth!
Rating
starstarstarstarstar 		Tragedy for our Children
by: Olivia Brooke

I agree with you. I have young children, and I wonder what will they see when they are older. We've got to take a stand against people trashing nature. It looks gross, it's killing animals and plants, and it makes me sick. I hate it. Can we not provide a cleaner environment for ourselves and for those who come after us.

From Barry - Olivia, your parental concern resonates powerfully with us -- it's what drives real change. Your "hatred" for environmental degradation is an ethical compass pointing toward responsible action, a stand we have to take. A cleaner environment is absolutely possible and must be provided.

To accomplish this goal, we have to master both local and global systems. Protecting your kids starts with local air quality. Think about ground-level ozone (smog). It's not directly emitted; it's formed in the atmosphere when nitrogen oxides (NOx) and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) cook together.

Smog is caused by chemical reactions accelerated by stagnant air masses, strong solar radiation, and high temperatures. A polluted day isn't just about the pollutants emitted—it's also about the weather conditions that prevent them from dispersing.

Providing a cleaner environment involves two steps:
- Controlling NOx and VOCs from industries and vehicles.
- Using sophisticated air quality models (which use meteorological data) to predict when dangerous pollution episodes will happen, so public health officials can warn kids and protect them.

We need intelligent, forward-looking design to replace lazy habits. You should give your kids not just a clean landscape, but the know-how and political will to keep it that way. Let's show them a world that works harder and thinks smarter.

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Thank you to my research and writing assistants, ChatGPT and WordTune, as well as Wombo and others for the images.

OpenAI's large-scale language generation model (and others provided by Google and Meta), helped generate this text.  As soon as draft language is generated, the author reviews, edits, and revises it to their own liking and is responsible for the content.