Thursday, March 20, 2014

Annie Stevens Exp: 6

1) Havel makes a great point that humans need to preserve the earth. I like where he says, "Maybe we should start considering our sojourn on earth as a loan." "Nature is issuing warnings that we must not only stop the debt from growing but must pay it back."

 2) Crude oil or fossil fuel is drilled from Earth daily. Crude or petrolium is a black tary substance used to make gasoline, kerosene and other products. Oil comes from plants and animals that died 10-600million years ago heat and pressure over the years have created shale. Movement of the earth cause shifting, cracking and squeezing of the rock.
Survey ships are used to locate oil deep in the oceans or earths layers. Once a spot has been determined surveys are done to determine the amount of oil and how drilling will impact the environment.  Land needs to be cleared and roads built for trucks and diggers to come in and drill down to the oil. In the ocean rigs are used to create islands where the rigs can be built.
Holes are drilled and cement is pumped into plug the area. Fluid and acid are pumped in the well once found to extract the oil. A pump is installed over the well to extract. Sometimes a second hole must be drilled to push steam into the well for the oil to move.Massive amounts of equipment are needed at each sight to extract the oil.
More the half the natural gas in the US is under protected land. Thousands of these acres are leased to oil companies for drilling. In past years frogs and other small animals have been found to be deformed from oil waste.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/environmental/green-science/federal-land-oil-drilling1.htm

The problem is destroying the earths surface to create much needed power.It affects everyone in the world.

Possible solutions are very expensive and may deplete the earth in other ways; through corn and chemical use. Hopefully there is a solution soon. It is predicted that there is enough oil for 95 years only.


 


An oil rig

Tadpole tail that never got absorbedDeformed frog

2 comments:

  1. It saddens me that we are not investing more into other forms of energy. The cost of crude oil is just so cheap that we are trying to reap as many benefits we can from it. This is in turn causing problems not only for our environment, but for the poor animals that live there. Just the way crude oil is removed sounds incredibly destructive and a perfect example of how we are destroying mother nature.

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  2. I agree that other means of energy need to be found or at least we need to be more responsible with the oil that we have. There are so many ill effects on both people and wildlife from using this dirty energy source and it only gets more apparent with each spill. Which we've just had another one just in time for prime bird migration and nesting...

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