14. February 2010 by student.

SAVE THE BABIES!!! SAVE THE BABIES!!! Is what every anti-abortionist chants outside the correctional hospitals or busy intersections on their days off, while holding huge colorful signs. These people try to impact the lives of others who don’t look at abortions as death. According to dictionary.com the definition of abortion “is the removal of an embryo or fetus from the uterus in order to end a pregnancy” (Abortions).  Do you think abortions should be provided to people who make mistakes and want a second chance? Or should it be prohibited?

According to the Center for Ethical-Bio Reform,” there are approximately forty two million abortions per year. This means there is approximately one hundred and fifteen thousand a day” (Cunningham). That’s an extremely huge number of deaths that needs to be lowered. Before abortions were known there was only five to ten thousand per year (Joseph). Nowadays doctors provide a pill that will kill the baby before it reaches a certain stage in the women’s stomach. You would think we wouldn’t be coming up with easier ways to do such horrible things. The question is, what would you do if you had to decide the life or death of another?

Many people become hypocrites when it comes to abortions because they don’t understand what an impact it puts on your life. While I was in high school, I had a really close friend who was strongly against abortions. She would become incredibly upset when the subject was brought up, and in some occasions she would shed tears. Eventually she became sexually involved and didn’t use a condom. After finding out she was pregnant a week or two later, she had the biggest decision of her life to make. At first she decided to keep the baby and embark on a life time journey. But after coming to the realization of how much it would change her whole life, she leaned more toward the easy way out, which is what a lot of people tend to do. The point is that women have the choice to decide whether they want to conceive the baby or not. It’s their bodies and technically their choice.

If I were the federal chairman of some big organization that decides whether abortions should be legal or not, I would forbid them. Killing unborn babies is just as bad as killing any other human being. In the bible one of the commandments reads, “Thou shalt not kill”, which if you’re a religious person means it’s a sin to kill another. Since when does “Thou shalt not kill” not include a baby, which is human, thus being a human being (Joseph). A baby in the womb is the start of everybody’s life whether it’s planned or not, that baby has a right to live. The mother’s womb used to be one of the safest places for a baby, protected with love. Since abortions were invented or introduced it has become the most dangerous place for an infant. One third of all babies are now killed from abortions (Joseph). If you ask me, I think that’s absurd.

Another valuable point is made in our Declaration of Independence, which is what our whole country lives by. It states that  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” (Quoted in Joseph). This quote doesn’t say that all men are born equal; it says that all men are “CREATED” equal. It clearly proves that we shouldn’t make the decision to kill unborn babies, for it is already decided by our creator that he/she shall live. We are disregarding the Declaration of Independence which our forefathers carefully chose the right terminology to avoid any misinterpretations.

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14. February 2010 by student.

Crude oil has become a mandatory resource to this world since the industrial revolution in the 1700’s, it expanded past coal’s uses in 1950. Petroleum accounts for an average of 40% of the world’s commercial energy. It’s importance rose over other power producing resources because of its combustion characteristics and it’s capability to be concentrated into an energy source for powering vehicles. In the United States, issues in price have risen because of bans on off shore drilling in the United States, which forces the United States to import 66% of its crude oil.

Recently, John McCain is attempting to solve the energy issues by requesting Congress lifts a 27-year-old legally authorized postponement of coastal energy exploration. He still plans to stay away from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, but tap into the other oil reserves in the United States.

Offshore drilling alone would produce 86 billion barrels of oil, but under United States soil, Geologists have estimated there to be over 2.3 trillion barrels. That’s enough to meet 300 years of demand! Those untapped oil reserves, however, are under protected environmental areas.  

Obtaining foreign oil coasts about 100 dollars a barrel, and the United States imports almost 14 million barrels a day. Petroleum supplies 40% of the United States power, 70% of that petroleum goes to transportation fuels. Being we are importing petroleum from other countries which may runs the United States around a little over a billion dollars a day, and being we have a shorter supply when depending on import, the price of gas runs as high as 4 dollars in the United States.

Petroleum also raises the issues of being a limited resource and releasing greenhouse gases. Pessimists believe the amount of petroleum on this earth could only last the world 40 more years, but geologists argue there are plenty of untapped reserves in the United States, as mentioned above, in the former soviet union regions in Russia and below sea level off the Gulf of Mexico, Brazil and West Africa. It is possible to recovery oils from existing reservoirs being only 30 to 35 percent of the oil reservoir s are brought to the surface. They do this by injecting the reservoirs with water or oil to force out the remaining oil.

To give an idea of the pollution caused by petroleum usage, every gallon of gas burned by a car is 13 pounds of Carbon dioxide, most cars only get 26 miles to the gallon. 70% of petroleum consumption in the United States goes to transportation, 2% to electricity consumption, about 4% to residential and commercial uses and 24% to industry. Alternate energy sources have been established, and some are expanding, such as wind power which has been a source of energy before fossil fuels. Wind power is being expanded off shore lines where wind potential to turn the turbines is more reliable, but currently accounts for 1.5% of the worlds power. Hydro power is the second highest utilized renewable energy next to wood, hydro power is not widely utilized in America, but produces 90% of Oregon and Washington’s power. As a whole, hydropower provides about 44% of the world’s electricity. Other options include solar, and geothermal power. All of these alternate sources are renewable, but are less reliable and not as flexible as a resource as petroleum. 

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14. February 2010 by student.

The scare of global warming’s existence took off when politician and former vice president Al Gore presented a film on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth”, in 2005. The film focuses on proving global warming, primarily by pointing out the glaciers melting. There are skeptics to the belief of global warming being a threat, while there are extreme environmentalists shunning the use of the world’s top power producer for the sake of the environment.

Whether we are or are not doomed by global warming, there has been obvious climate change in recent years. The proper term for this effect is coined as “the green house effect”. The green house effect is essentially an insulating barrier of gases and dust that trap infrared radiation within the atmosphere that would otherwise be reflected back into space. Naturally occurring greenhouse effects include water vapor that has evaporated from the ocean, and carbon dioxide released from decaying plants and volcanoes, but in the last 150 years it is hard to deny that human activity has not attributed to the greenhouse effect, judging from how much Carbon Dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide people release into the environment via burning fossil fuels. This began with the industrial revolution in the 1700’s with large amounts of coal, crude oil and natural gases burned as a source of power.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) agrees global warming is on the rise and needs to be prevented. Their strong beliefs lie on the following trends realized in the last fifty years:

-The 20^th century was the warmest century of the past 600 years, the world’s average surface temperature rose .6 degrees Celsius in the 20^th century.

- Winter temperatures in the Arctic rose 4 degrees Celsius since 1950, making the Arctic as a whole lose its ice cap. (Between 1978 and 2000, the average thickness of the ice decreased by 42%.)

- Glaciers are thinning and retreating on every continent, and though glaciers have thinned and retreated for centuries, the rate of the glaciers melting has accelerated in the past few decades.  An example of this thinning would be glaciers on top of mount Kilimanjaro and Mount Kenya in Africa shrank 70% in the 20^th century, alone.

There is, of course, a counter balance to the beliefs of global warming. Critics of the IPCC have argued back with their own theories, such as clouds may cause global temperatures may be able to stabilize or even decrease as concentration of global gases increase. They also believe hotter atmosphere would increase evaporation sending more water vapor into the atmosphere which could condense into clouds and even a contradiction to the green house effects, that it could start another ice age. That temperature increase would probably warm upper latitudes to allow heavy snow fall to places like Greenland where snow rarely falls.

Regardless of arguments, many measures have been made to help reduce greenhouse gases. The Kyoto protocol, adapted on February 16^th of 2005, proposed a 5% decrease in green house gases emissions from 37 industrialized countries over a 5 year period of time, from 2008 – 2012. Funding towards the use of renewable resources has been suggested, it is reported that using renewable energy (solar radiation, wind, etc) as 20% of our needed energy supply which cuts CO2 emissions by 51%., this is more of a cut than proposed in the Kyoto protocol. Renewable resources, such as wind power, are currently being expanded upon. Wind power accounts for 1.5% of the world’s energy but there is planned expansion on off shore locations.

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