The Extinction of Life, Susan M. Bowes [reading like a writer .TXT] 📗

The Extinction of Life

Many, many years ago our planet was covered with lush greenery and an ample supply of water that flowed unpolluted from snow covered mountain ranges and oceans that separated the continents. Life forms flourished on land and sea alike. We harvested food from the ocean’s depths and sustained ourselves through farming the vast expanses of rich soil that covered our great plains; waving golden grains of wheat that grew tall and gently bowed with the wind. Alas; life as we knew it became threatened by our own hands.

We were warned that polluting the atmosphere with the fossil fuels we used would bring our world to a fragile state, but we paid no heed and kept pumping out the poisons that flowed from smokestacks that would eventually eliminate all beings on our home planet. Smog eventually covered our cities with a heavy mist so thick you couldn’t see a hundred yards. Transportation by vehicles we’d used that added to this severe problem became almost non-existent by this time and most commuted by electric vehicles or by bicycle.

This didn’t stop our governments from continuing to spew the toxic chemicals into our atmosphere. Humanities’ comfort seemed to be more important so we ignored the harm already caused and continued to destroy our ozone layer which was our only defense against the suns deadly rays.

Though climate changes did occur naturally through time we’d hastened this procedure due to our neglect and careless disregard for future generations. The temperature climbed by 2 degrees a year. Not considered a significant amount to laymen, but scientists knew how damaging this would be and continued their efforts to warn us before we reached the tipping point. Unfortunately, their pleas did not reach our leader’s ears.

The polar ice caps started to melt and sea levels rose to an alarming level. Not only did we face the danger of our oceans extending their boundaries, but fresh water from the icecaps blended with the salty waters of our great oceans and eventually interrupted the thermohaline circulation that helps to control our climate. This circulation is extremely important because it drives the worldwide current enabling it to maintain our temperature. It is our global conveyor belt and circulates from pole to pole. The slow cooling and heating drives the movement of the deep water in a polar southward flow which causes a vertical exchange of dense, sinking water with lighter water above. The warmer, fresher water flows up through the Great South Oceans to the Great Northern Oceans where it cools off and undergoes evaporative cooling and sinks to the ocean floor providing a continuous global circulation. The quickening of this process only hastened our demise.

Our disregard of this threat only added to our woes by changing our weather pattern drastically. Hurricanes became more powerful surpassing categories five, six, seven; some even reaching category eight. Increasingly powerful, swirling tornado’s beyond what man had ever witnessed became an almost every day occurrence and wrecked havoc with the mainstay of our food supply. Hunger and thirst due to depleting fresh water was now known by not only the poor, undeveloped countries, but expanded throughout our orb without pause. Riots soon turned into civil wars extending to all borders as these precious supplies dwindled at an extremely alarming pace.

We became a world at war. The land turned red with not only our blood, but from the glow of our now crimson sky that was filled with enormous amounts of carbon dioxide increased by the expulsion of methane gas that had been released into the ozone layer by the melting of our tundras.

Our planet seemed to take this treatment as an great insult and vented its wrath by quaking in anger. Volcanoes joined her rage and released lava along with its deadly plumes that filled our sky with a fine, volcanic dust that eventually covered our globe and added to the poisoning of our atmosphere. Fires raged and contributed to the darkening of our sky turning it black as pitch as the thick ash from volcanic eruptions combined with the smoke from numerous wildfires that now hid our sun from us.

Soon our world was covered in an ever-thickening ice as the temperature plummeted and ended all means of farming. Most of the population slowly starved; some turning to cannibalism in order to sustain their lives. The rest froze to death, but some of us managed to survive on the limited amount of food and water we’d hastily hoarded into deep caves we now inhabited.

Through our indifference we’d destroyed our blanket of protection and were now a doomed race; our world soon to become extinct of all life. Too late, our governments realized our fate and tried to save our sphere, but they were not able to turn back the hands of time. To save civilization and future generations space crafts were quickly built as arks in order to take the survivors from our orb known as Mars to a similar planet that will become our new habitat which we named Earth.

Will our children learn from our mistake? Will they protect their new world; or will they allow it to become drastically transformed as ours was? Will they also destroy their only means of existence? Will they -unlike us - keep their planet from certain death? Only time will tell.

Publication Date: 01-12-2010

All Rights Reserved

Dedication:
For all humanity. May we take heed.