Acid Rain is Devastating, Period 5, Group D, 4th and Final Draft

Hello, and welcome to this informative speech on the negative effects of acid rain. As I'm sure you all are aware, I am Tony Hawk, and I'm here to tell you that life isn't all about popping a kick flip or doing a casual mctwist. There are dark sides to this planet, and one of the darkest things is the deviating menace known as acid rain. I used to think that acid rain was no big deal. I assumed that the only harm that it did to plants was fall on them and corrode their leaves and what not. Recently I realized that the effects of acid rain can last on an environment for hundreds to thousands of years. It isn't that acid rain simply burns plant life.

Acid rain's most dangerous effects is that it strips the land of all Calcium ions and Magnesium ions, both of those ions are staples of life as we know it, and it pollutes the water and air which can harm many organisms. This can harm an ecosystem along with its species, and can be a catastrophic phenomenon for forests around the world. The process through which the land is stripped of its Calcium and Magnesium ions is quite interesting. The Calcium is stored in the soil in insoluble compounds usually like Calcium carbonate or Calcium hydroxide. Originally scientists thought that acid rain didn’t affect the Calcium and Magnesium ions, but they were false. These compounds are bases that are insoluble in soil, and will stay insoluble until they react with acids found in acid rains to form soluble products and water. Once the soluble products and water are formed then the Calcium, or Magnesium, is stripped from the land and is taken very far away through streams and underground water. This can have a devastating effect on the environment. All of the plant life needs the Calcium to grow and survive but once the Calcium is stripped from the land, it takes a really long time to get it back. This isn't just a one year problem I'm talking about, and reducing the emissions of sulfur isn’t enough. This is a problem that will last for your lives and it is important that we fight acid rain to help our forests and lakes survive.

The way acid rain affects the water is just as bad as the depletion of Calcium and Magnesium. If you go to a lake and see that it is really clean and can see all the way to the bottom, you might think it is really healthy and good for it’s organisms. But, in a lot of cases the water only looks clean because the algae and the plankton are all dead. This happens when acid rain falls into the lake. When acid rain falls upon lakes, rivers, streams, etc., it can cause the water to become more acidic than normal. The Calcium level at Hubbard Brook has shrunk by more than 50% in the last forty-five years. The life forms can no longer live in the water because they cannot adapt to the sudden change in pH. What eventually happens is only a few species that can handle the acidity survive and the rest die, which greatly affects the biodiversity in the ecosystem and the food chain. When the biodiversity and food chain get affected in a negative way, this will overall change the ecosystem’s species composition and could possibly kill off more organisms due to the lack of food.

So how does acid rain directly affect humans? Acid rain itself is no more dangerous than normal rain. It will not hurt you if you walk on it or burn you if you swim in it, but the gases that are in acid rain such as Nitrogen oxides and Sulfur dioxide are harmful to humans. These gases react with water to form acid rain, and it isn't that acid rain is dangerous to us, but those gases are poisonous. Most of those gases aren't formed naturally on Earth, but mankind has found ways to create it’s own poisons. Scientists have found that these gases have been known to cause premature death and illness. There fortunately is a way for humans to help stop the formation of gases. We can support the Clean Air Act and cut back on fossil fuel use and gas emissions. It is important to understand acid rain. It is important to fight it because even though it will take a long time to make it better, it doesn't take that much time to make it a lot worse. It is devastating to the environment and harmful to human health, and it is important for us all to try and stop acid rain in it's tracks.

Lastly, acid rain affects not only humans and the environment, but it also affects the economy. As you can now see, acid rain isn’t just a simple droplet of water, when acid rain hits a lake or river, some of the fish will die. On a small scale this is devastating. A fisherman would no longer be able to catch the amount of fish needed to support himself and this would make his life a disaster. Now on a larger scale, when looking at buildings and statues, the once fine brick or stone has now become eroded and less attractive. The price of the statues and buildings depreciates with each shower of acid rain, making your once expensive possession cheaper and cheaper. The owner of something that is getting destroyed by acid rain could probably take out insurance on what they own, but this will only keep them from losing money. The real issue is the fact that acid rain has and always will erode things that are made of brick and stone, and unless we as humans do something about it, and this problem could become even more devastating.