Riding The Train Essay -- essays research papers

Riding the Train (Description Essay ENC1101) Anytime a person experiences something for the first time, that experience can reside in their mind forever. Their first kiss, first love, and first look at the sunrise may permanently float among their cherished memories. My mind contains many of these memories. Although my first train ride occurred over 15 years ago, I still recall every wonderful detail from preparing for the trip to discovering the inside of the train and the beautiful five hour ride.   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  It was a breezy day in the summer of 1985 and after spending a week visiting my grandparent’s home in Sebring, Florida, I prepared for my first train ride home. Recalling many old movies I’ve watched with tearful lovers embracing on rain-soaked platforms, I carefully chose my train-riding outfit: a simple, tailored white dress, a pair of lace gloves reaching only to my wrists and a braided straw hat complete with a thick red sash tied neatly around the crown with an exploding bow draping down behind me. I settled into the back of my grandfathers Cadillac and my mind filled with visions of how my first train ride would be. Arriving at the station, I tearfully kissed my grandparents goodbye a bit more dramatically than necessary. As I strolled confidently towards the train platform, I felt like Audrey Hepburn or Ingrid Bergman and was quite certain many eyes rested upon my grace and followed me through the crowded terminal. Pushing open the heavy glas. ..

John Muir

John Muir, the founder of modern environmentalism, wrote many books on American environmentalism and was vocal in preserving America's natural landscape. He grew up studying the natural environment and fell in love with its beauty and interconnections. He devoted his life to protecting the landscape from industrialization and the â€Å"Manifest Destiny' mentality of the late 19th century and early 20th century.Railroads quickened the expansion westward, and desire for ultivating newly ready resources left the land scarred. Newly available land in the west was also a magnet for Americans eager to farm and tame the land. America was quickly expanding westward and the process was happening so fast that thoughts on the cost/benefits of this expansion hadn't surfaced. Muir befriended the likes of Teddy Roosevelt and the railroad executive E. H. Harriman to organize actions that benefitted all parties.Muir's efforts towards his vision were founding the environmental agency â€Å"The Sier ra Club† and writing articles for Century Magazine, hich prompted Congress to create Yosemite National Park. In the article Protecting Yosemite, Muir discusses the challenges and benefits involved in the process of creation and after effects of Yosemite Park. Certain groups strived to benefit economically from the resources of the park, while Muir and others persisted in protecting the parks best interest from the economically driven parties.There was also critiquing and revising the park system throughout the entire process. Muir kept focus on the beauty of the park throughout the article as a whole. As America was creating its new geographical and industrial image westward, most Americans focused on taming the landscape, while John Muir rebelled against this and fought to preserve the natural beauty of America. Protecting Yosemite was written in 1895 and published in The Sierra Club Bulletin in 1896. Muir wrote this to keep the members of the Sierra Club informed on the prog ress of the Yosemite National Park.The article starts with Muir recounting his previous visit to Yosemite as a disaster because the landscape was â€Å"broken and wasted. (Muir, America Firsthand, PG 97) He follows this observation with a Joyful proclamation that the park has been restored to its original luster, â€Å"Lilies now swing and ring their bells around the margins of the forest meadows. † (Muir, America Firsthand, PG 97) Muir celebrates the Job done by the soldiers who police the land and punish those who commit crimes upon the land.The main Job of the soldiers was to rid the park of Sheppards and their flocks of sheep that would leave the land mangled with hoof prints and erosion. Muir goes on to discuss the great efforts nvolved in getting Congress to pass the Yosemite Bill. Muir sparked the discussion of the bill with the publishing of Century Magazine articles. An unlikely adversary, Mr. Stow of the Southern Pacific R. R. Co. , helped lobby the bill through Co ngress in 1890.Soon after the creation, an offensive to cut the boundaries of the park in half was launched. The Sierra Club and other environmentally friendly groups halted this offensive. Muir discusses briefly his philosophy and drive for his environmental campaign, † †¦ (someone) should always be glad to find anything so surly good and he park; on one side he applauds the popularity of the park but is disappointed with the effects it has on the park, â€Å"destructive trampling and hacking becomes heavier from season to season. (Muir, America Firsthand, PG 99) Muir is also disappointed with the lack of security, with the exception of the soldiers, â€Å"The Guardian has no power to enforce the rules-has not a single policeman under his orders. † (Muir, America Firsthand, PG 99) Towards the end of the article, Muir believes the management of the park should be transferred to a government department that oesn't deal with drama related to changing political parti es. Finally, with the prevention of fires in the park, the landscape as a whole becomes more at risk for a devastating fire.Muir believes that forest management should implement a scientific basis to increase the health of Yosemite. America in the mid to late 19th century acted strongly upon the idea of â€Å"manifest destiny. † Two railroads met in Utah and connected the East and West coasts of America. The expanding America was now much easier to populate due to railroads, and land use exploded in the West. Americans started mining and exploiting these newly available resources like iron and timber. Land was taken from Native Americans and they were forced onto smaller and smaller reservations.America bought Alaska from Russia, and acquired The Caribbean and other islands in the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War of 1898. America was very greedy for land at this time and there was the mindset that more is better. John Muir and others rebelled against this idea and raised t he argument that more is not better and we should preserve the beautiful landscape that we have. Muir worked very hard to ush this rebuttal onto people and in 1890 he won an environmental battle that created the Yosemite National Park.This set the foundation for modern day environmentalism and helped people come to the realization that we should enjoy nature, and not try to always conquer it. As America was creating its new geographical and industrial image westward, most Americans focused on taming the landscape, while John Muir rebelled against this and fought to preserve the natural beauty of America. The message of John Muir is very relevant in contemporary society because we are going through lots of nvironmental problems due to industrialization.

How Ocean Currents Create Trash Islands and Impact Wildlife

As our global population expands, so does the amount of trash we produce, and a large portion of that trash ends up in the worlds oceans. Due to oceanic currents, much of the trash is carried to areas where the currents meet, and these collections of trash have recently been referred to as marine trash islands. Contrary to common belief, most of these trash islands are almost invisible to the eye. There are a few patches around the world where trash accumulates into platforms of 15-300 feet large, often near certain coasts, but they are minuscule compared to the vast garbage patches located in the middle of oceans. These are predominantly composed of microscopic plastic particles and not easily spotted. In order to identify their actual size and density, a lot of research and testing needs to be done. The Great Pacific Garbage Patch The Great Pacific Garbage Patch—sometimes called the Eastern Garbage Patch or Eastern Pacific Trash Vortex—is an area with an intense concentration of marine trash located between Hawaii and California. The exact size of the patch is unknown, however, because it is constantly growing and moving. The patch developed in this area because of the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre—one of many oceanic gyres caused by a convergence of ocean currents and wind. As the currents meet, the earth’s Coriolis Effect (the deflection of moving objects caused by the Earth’s rotation) causes the water to slowly rotate, creating a funnel for anything in the water. Because this is a subtropical gyre in the northern hemisphere, it rotates clockwise. It’s also a high-pressure zone with hot equatorial air and comprises much of the area known as the horse latitudes (area with weak winds). Due to the tendency of items to collect in oceanic gyres, the existence of a garbage patch was predicted in 1988 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) after years of monitoring the amount of trash being dumped into the worlds oceans. The patch was not officially discovered until 1997, though, because of its remote location and harsh conditions for navigation. That year, Captain Charles Moore passed through the area after competing in a sailing race and discovered debris floating over the entire area he was crossing. Atlantic and Other Oceanic Trash Islands Though the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is the most widely publicized of the so-called trash islands, the Atlantic Ocean has one as well in the Sargasso Sea. The Sargasso Sea is located in the North Atlantic Ocean between 70 and 40 degrees west longitude and 25 and 35 degrees north latitude. It is bounded by the Gulf Stream, the North Atlantic Current, the Canary Current, and the North Atlantic Equatorial current. Like the currents carrying trash into the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, these four currents carry a portion of the worlds trash to the middle of the Sargasso Sea where it becomes trapped. In addition to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and the Sargasso Sea, there are three other major tropical oceanic gyres in the world—all with conditions similar to those found in these first two. Components of Trash Islands After studying the trash found in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, Moore learned that 90% of the trash found there was plastic. His research group, as well as NOAA, has studied the Sargasso Sea and other patches around the world and their studies in those locations have had the same findings. It is typically thought that 80% of the plastic in the ocean comes from land sources while 20% comes from ships at sea. A 2019 study contests that there is little evidence to support this assumption. Instead, it is more likely that most of the trash comes from merchant ships. The plastics in the patches consist of all sorts of plastic items—not only water bottles, cups, bottle caps, toothbrushes, or plastic bags, but also materials used on cargo ships and fishing fleets—nets, buoys, ropes, crates, barrels, or fish netting (which alone constitute up to 50% of the entire ocean plastic). Microplastic It’s not just  large plastic items that make up the trash islands, however. In his studies, Moore found that the majority of the plastic in the worlds oceans is made up of billions of pounds of microplastic—raw plastic pellets called nurdles. These pellets are a byproduct of plastics manufacturing and of photodegradation—process during which materials (in this case plastic) break apart into smaller pieces due to sunlight and air (but dont disappear). It is significant that most of the trash is plastic because plastic does not break down easily—especially in water. When plastic is on land, it is more easily heated and breaks down faster. In the ocean, the plastic is cooled by the water and becomes coated with algae which shield it from sunlight. Because of these factors, the plastic in the world’s oceans will last well into the future. For example, the oldest plastic container found during the 2019 expedition turned out to be from 1971—48 years old. What is also significant is the microscopic size of the majority of the plastic in the waters. Because of its invisibility to the naked eye, it is very complicated to measure the actual amount of plastic in the oceans, and it is even more difficult to find non-invasive ways of cleaning it up. This is why the most frequent strategies of caring for our oceans involve prevention. Another major issue with the ocean trash being mainly microscopic is the effect it has on wildlife and consequently on humans. Garbage Islands Impact on Wildlife and Humans The presence of the plastic in the garbage patches is having a significant impact on wildlife in a number of ways. Whales, seabirds, and other animals can easily be snared in the nylon  nets and six-pack rings prevalent in the garbage patches. They are also in danger of choking on things like balloons, straws, and sandwich wrap. Additionally, fish, seabirds, jellyfish, and oceanic filter feeders easily mistake brightly colored plastic pellets for fish eggs and krill. Research has shown that over time, the plastic pellets can concentrate toxins which are passed on to sea animals when they eat them. This could poison them or cause genetic problems. Once the toxins are concentrated in the tissue of one animal, they can magnify across the food chain similar to the pesticide DDT and eventually reach humans as well. It is likely that shellfish and dried fish will be the first major carriers of microplastics (and the toxins associated with them) into humans. Finally, the floating trash can also aid in the spread of species to new habitats. Take, for instance, a type of barnacle. It can attach to a floating plastic bottle, grow, and move to an area where it is not naturally found. The arrival of the new barnacle could then possibly cause problems for the areas native species. The Future for the Trash Islands Research conducted by Moore, NOAA, and other agencies show that  trash islands are continuing to grow. Attempts have been made to clean them up but there is simply too much material over too large of an area to make any significant impact. Ocean cleanup is similar to invasive surgery, as microplastic blends so easily with marine life. Even if thorough cleanup was possible, many species and their habitats would be deeply affected, and this is highly controversial. Therefore, some of the best ways to aid in the cleanup of these islands are to suppress their growth by changing our relationship with plastic. It means enacting stronger recycling and disposal policies, cleaning up the worlds beaches, and reducing the amount of trash going into the worlds oceans. Algalita, the organization founded by Captain Charles Moore, strives to make the change through vast educational programs all over the world. Their motto is: Refuse, Reduce, Reuse, Repurpose, Recycle. In that order! Sources Ocean Garbage Patches, NOAA Ocean Pdocast. US Department of Commerce, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. 22 Mar. 2018.â€Å"Plastic Pollution–Preventing an Incurable Disease.†Ã‚  Algalita, 1 Oct. 2018.â€Å"Plastic Waste Inputs from Land into the Ocean.†Ã‚  Jambeck Research Group.â€Å"2019 Return to ‘The Patch.’†Ã‚  Captain Charles Moore.Eriksen, Marcus, et al. â€Å"Plastic Pollution in the Worlds Oceans: More than 5 Trillion Plastic Pieces Weighing over 250,000 Tons Afloat at Sea.†Ã‚  PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, 10 Dec. 2014.Ryan, Peter G, et al. â€Å"Rapid Increase in Asian Bottles in the South Atlantic Ocean Indicates Major Debris Inputs from Ships.†Ã‚  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, National Academy of Sciences, 15 Oct. 2019.Karami, Ali, et al. â€Å"Microplastics in Eviscerated Flesh and Excised Organs of Dried Fish.†Ã‚  Scientific Reports , Nature Publishing Group UK, 14 July 2017.