Tuesday, November 6, 2018

Maya Brinster
Mr. Ippolito | Core Bio 10H
Current Event #7
November 5, 2018  

Eschner, Kat. “Humans Have Altered Almost the Entire Planet-We Need to Save What's Left.”
Popular Science, 1 Nov. 2018, www.popsci.com/preserve-wilderness.

For this week’s current event, I reviewed the article entitled “Humans Have Altered Almost the Entire Planet - We Need to Save What’s Left.” In this article, author Kat Eschner explains the irreversible implications of humans’ actions: “[The] majority of the planet has been influenced by humans to a degree that’s disrupted natural ecosystems.” According to recent studies, 77% of land and 87% of oceans on earth have been altered due to human activity. Humans have destroyed ecosystems which took hundreds of years to build and evolve around, which impacts almost all aspects of life. There are, however, a few places on earth that remain fully intact which need to be preserved. Countries have already begun to do so; 70% of the Amazon is located in Brazil, and president Michel Temer has stated that he will work to conserve as much as he can. Study author Oscar Venter of the University of Northern British Columbia also says that an upcoming biodiversity conference in Egypt will discuss ways to protect as much wildlife as possible.
Author Kat Eschner is an extremely influential writer. Her article made me realize how damaging people's’ actions can be to wildlife. Her writing impacts society by making everyone more aware of how their actions are impacting the life around us. Many people do the bare minimum to care for our earth by following “no littering” laws, or doing other minor actions. However, once people read this article, they (like me) will become even more interested in protecting our world and our environment, and will begin to take even greater steps towards this goal. If humans become more conscious of this, pollution and other destructive behaviors will greatly decrease, helping to preserve the world and make it a better and healthier place for all plants and animals.
This article was extremely compelling because Eschner’s writing is strong and sophisticated. She uses sentences that illustrate the decaying state of the planet, which greatly affect the impact of her writing: “In the ocean, areas that are free of industrial fishing, pollution, and shipping are almost completely confined to the polar regions.” I also love how she provides statistics from recent studies, which provide solid evidence towards her arguments and make them even more reliable. Although Eschner is an exceptional writer, there are still a few areas in which she could improve upon. I feel as if she should’ve provided even more background information on the world and how there are only a few untouched places on the earth. This would have drawn the readers in even more. I also feel as if her conclusion wasn’t as impactful as it could have been. To improve upon this, she should end her article with a strong concluding sentence that sums up everything she talked about. Overall, however, this article was extremely interesting to read and made me more aware of how damaging my actions really are.


6 comments:

  1. Riley Morgan
    Biology Mr. Ippolito
    November 6 2018
    Current Event 7

    Eschner, Kat. “Humans Have Altered Almost the Entire Planet-We Need to Save What's Left.”
    Popular Science, 1 Nov. 2018, www.popsci.com/preserve-wilderness.


    Maya, I thought your review on the article ““Humans Have Altered Almost the Entire Planet - We Need to Save What’s Left.” was very insightful. You did an excellent job explaining the articles contents in detail. I felt as if I was getting the full story and not just a portion of it. When you said that “According to recent studies, 77% of land and 87% of oceans on earth have been altered due to human activity” It was really valuable to have the exact percentages instead of just a generalization. You also did an extravagant job explaining the Articles significance! When you mentioned in your article that “However, once people read this article, they (like me) will become even more interested in protecting our world and our environment, and will begin to take even greater steps towards this goal” it made me stop and think about the environment around me and what I can do to help. I chose this article because I love to be informed about the environment especially human wise. The opening sentence you wrote which was: “majority of the planet has been influenced by humans to a degree that’s disrupted natural ecosystems” completely grabbed my attention and made me want to read.
    Overall I thought this review was very well written. it had just the right amount of detail. I do not feel as if there is anything major that needs to be changed. The only problem I noticed was a grammatical error in the first paragraph when you said that “Countries have already begun to do so; 70% of the Amazon is located in Brazil” you should of started a new sentence instead of putting the semicolon after the word so. This review was also somewhat wordy and long. In many instances such as: “Humans have destroyed ecosystems which took hundreds of years to build and evolve around, which impacts almost all aspects of life.” you could of lessened the amount of words in this sentence rendering it juicier and more impactful as well as making the length of the review less word wise.
    While reading this article I learned how much humans are really taking over the Earth and how it may be better for us, it is completely destroying and making worse conditions for every other living thing on the planet. I left the impression on me of the importance of needing to preserve the natural pieces of land we still have yet. This is why I chose this Article.

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  2. Isabella Bouvard
    Core Biology 10H|Block C-Odd/Mr. Ippolito
    11/19/18
    Current Events #8

    Eschner, Kat. “Humans Have Altered Almost the Entire Planet-We Need to Save What's Left.”
    Popular Science, 1 Nov. 2018, www.popsci.com/preserve-wilderness.

    For this week's current events, I decided to read Maya Brinster’s response on ““Humans Have Altered Almost the Entire Planet - We Need to Save What’s Left.” by Kat Eschner. Maya did an excellent job summarizing the article. Maya’s writing was very thorough, and included key details and quotes that made it easier for the reader to understand. For example, she includes the data: “According to recent studies, 77% of land and 87% of oceans on earth have been altered due to human activity” but is sure to add an explanation of this data: “Humans have destroyed ecosystems which took hundreds of years to build and evolve around, which impacts almost all aspects of life.” proving to the reader her understanding of the topic. Initially, I was very drawn in by the title that she provided in her post. My attention was immediately grabbed by the first paragraph as well, as Maya struck me with the material she presented about humans demolishing the Earth by taking part in pollution and other destructive behavior. I also really enjoy learning about our impact on the environment, and what we can do to help. This is something that I have always been particularly interested in, as to why I enjoyed Maya’s review on the topic. Part of the reason why I admired this analysis so much is that it was very easy to comprehend and effective to the reader overall.

    In general, there wasn’t many issues with this review. In my opinion, it was very well written and I enjoyed reading it. However, a couple issues stood out to me in particular. One of which is the white highlight that the text contained. For me, it made it very difficult to read at certain points as the contrast between the black and white was very clear. Maya can fix this by formatting her review in the post next time, this didn’t seem to be an issue with anyone else’s review. There was one sentence as well that I felt could be tweaked: “However, once people read this article, they (like me) will become even more interested in protecting our world and our environment, and will begin to take even greater steps towards this goal.” Instead of “they (like me)”, Maya could’ve grammatically changed this to something like “they, alike me” instead of having to use parenthesis. Although this was just simply on one occasion, Maya can refrain from using parentheses next time and check to see that the proper grammar is implied.

    Throughout the course of this article, I learned about the effects of humans in this generation on the Earth. While we should be preserving the habitat and climate, we are constantly destroying the planet and worsening the conditions of the environment. After reading Maya’s writing, I understood how important it is that we limit the amount of damage that we normally institute on wildlife and care for the Earth around us. It is crucial that we are responsible for the well being of our environment in order to uphold life on Earth. This is particularly part of the reason why I choose this topic, due to the controversy surrounding climate change due to human misconduct generally speaking.

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  3. Kathryn Haggerty
    Mr. Ippolito
    Core Biology
    November 13, 2018
    Current Event Comment 8

    Eschner, Kat. “Humans Have Altered Almost the Entire Planet-We Need to Save What's Left.”
    Popular Science, 1 Nov. 2018, www.popsci.com/preserve-wilderness.

    For this week’s current event, I read Maya Brinsters review on “Humans Have Altered Almost the Entire Plant - We Need to Save What’s Left,” by Kate Eschner. Maya did an amazing job describing every important detail in her article and summing up the article as a whole. On thing that Maya did that was very impressive was her use of quotes throughout the article in order to bring about her points. Finally, Mayas opening sentence was so captivating that it made me want to read the rest. In many previous articles, I tend to get bored after the first paragraph. However, Maya’s writing was very energetic and informative, making me want to read more.

    Maya did a great job in her review and there were not many mistakes that I could point out. First, her review was a little wordy at points and overall was particular long. As interesting as the topic was, it still was a little much and made me grow tired towards the end. Secondly, some of her writing was put into a white highlighter, which made it extremely hard to read. Even though she was just trying to highlight this information, it was still hard to piece together with the surrounding information. However, Maya did a great job and these were the only two mistakes I could pin point from her review.

    Overall, I learned about the effects of humans on the Earth in this article. I had no idea how much destructions we were actually causing for our planet. In terms, it is kinds saddening to see that we could be the cause the extinction in the future. We need to step up as civilians on this planet and work towards making it better in order for it to be preserved for many years to follow.

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  4. Teddy Wardell
    11/28/18
    Core Bio
    Current Event #9

    Eschner, Kat. “Humans Have Altered Almost the Entire Planet-We Need to Save What's Left.”
    Popular Science, 1 Nov. 2018,
    www.popsci.com/preserve-wilderness.

    For this week’s Current Event I read Maya Brinsters Review on the article, “Humans Have Altered Almost the Entire Planet - We Need to Save What’s Left,” by Kat Eschner. This article how the world can be negatively affected by humans. In addition humans affect most ecosystems in the world. I think that Maya did a very good job writing this article and did numerous things to improve the text. For example, Maya had a lot of details in her article which helped make it easier for the readers to understand and made the article much more interesting to read. Maya also did a great job in grabbing the reader's attention. She did this by stating interesting facts which benefited the article. This his helped the reader not get bored while reading. Another thing that Maya did well was give a strong opinion on weather or not she thought the article was good. She said that she enjoyed the article and we can tell from her response.
    Maya had a very solid article. However, I would have added some things to the text to make it even better. First, Maya had some grammar mistakes such as missing punctuation. This could have been easily fixed by proof reading the paper or using an application like grammarly to check the work. Another, thing that I would have changed is having a bit more explanation in the final paragraph. This would help the reader understand why you liked or disliked certain aspects of the article.
    I found this article very interesting and I learned a lot from it. One thing that I found to be interesting was the fact that a majority of the planet has been influenced by humans. This is a very alarming fact that describes for how we negatively can affect our world. Overall, I thought that this article was very well written and was very insightful.




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  5. Alex Doukas
    Current Event 13
    Mr Ippolito
    January 14, 2019

    Eschner, Kat. “Humans Have Altered Almost the Entire Planet-We Need to Save What's Left.”
    Popular Science, 1 Nov. 2018, www.popsci.com/preserve-wilderness.

    For this week's current event, I decided to read Maya Brinsters review on the article titled about Humans Have Altered Almost the Entire Planet-We Need to Save What's Left.” While reading this, I felt as if I was getting a complete, insightful depiction of the article. Maya clearly sited the articles content as well and used specific lines from the article to bring more information and interest in the topic. Maya also diligently explained the articles significance and incorporated her own beliefs and realizations while and after reading this article. In my opinion, incorporating your own perspective about the topic brings more questions or different interests for readers which is very important. I chose this article because I was a bit confused yet intrigued with the title itself, because of the fact that it is very vague so I wanted to learn and explore more with this mysterious title.
    Overall, I am very impressed with the Maya wrote about this article and with that fact, there isn't anything extremely important that could be altered or improved. A quick thing that I noticed was very little grammatical errors in one or sentences. Obviously, those are small errors that could be changed but revising the review once after finishing is always a must because you are able to notice any issues that need to be fixed. Although Maya’s writing was sophisticated and mature, there were sentences throughout the paragraphs that became long and wordy. She could have just shortened each sentences by finding ways to get to the point while still maintaining a well written review. But, Maya really did a great job explaining the key points that were located in this article and her writing was easy to read and understand as well.
    Overall, it was very interesting to read how as humans, we are having a negative effect on the earth. Certain things we read, we are astonished because we aren't aware of these things when we are just living life. It's interesting to see that you yourself could be earth enemy. This article review was a very intriguing and engaging read.

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  6. Ben Davis
    3-2-19
    Core Biology
    Current Event 4

    Eschner, Kat. “Humans Have Altered Almost the Entire Planet-We Need to Save What's Left.”
    Popular Science, 1 Nov. 2018, www.popsci.com/preserve-wilderness.

    For this week's current event I read Maya Brinster review of Kat Eschner’s “Humans Have Altered Almost the Entire Planet-We Need to Save What's Left.” Maya did many things very well in her review. She first started out by stating the main idea of the article. She wrote, “In this article, author Kat Eschner explains the irreversible implications of humans’ actions: [The] majority of the planet has been influenced by humans to a degree that’s disrupted natural ecosystems. Incorporating this at the start of the review made it easy for me to understand what she was going to write about. Another thing Maya did very strongly was include studies on this topic. Maya stated, “According to recent studies, 77% of land and 87% of oceans on earth have been altered due to human activity.” Including this into the review is very important as it validates the claim of the article. Lastly, Maya did a great job stating the overall importance of the article. She remarked, “Many people do the bare minimum to care for our earth by following “no littering” laws, or doing other minor actions. However, once people read this article, they (like me) will become even more interested in protecting our world and our environment, and will begin to take even greater steps towards this goal.” This was a great thing to include in the review, for it is a very realist perspective.

    Despite, the overall success of Maya’s review there are a couple of areas where she can improve. Maya can work on cutting out information that is not necessary. Maya should not have included, “Study author Oscar Venter of the University of Northern British Columbia also says that an upcoming biodiversity conference in Egypt will discuss ways to protect as much wildlife as possible.” While this information is correct she already had given examples like this one. Maya can improve on this by just reading the article and recognizing repetition. In Maya’s critique paragraph she talks about how strong and sophisticated the article was. Maya’s critique would have been better if she gave specific examples of the article being how the article was strong and sophisticated.

    Mainly, Maya’s review taught about the number of negative changes humans have made to our planet. I chose this article, due to that my last current event was about climate changes effect on marine life. This review gave me more information and an alternative perspective on humans impact on Earth. This article made realize that we humans need to do a better job of preserving our planet. This does not mean just following, no littering signs, but thinking about using less of what pollutes our planet.

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