The Influence of the Human Being on the Pollution of the Environment

KT Book Review:

In the light of recent pollution and environmental disasters in the Kurdistan region, it is useful to visit a highly esteemed book on these issues by prominent Kurdish scientist and environmentalist Dr Sadiq Shex Muhaidin Barzingy. The book was published in 2021 and since, Dr Barzingy has been awarded an honours PhD for his excellent and outstanding contributions in this field of literature. The PhD was awarded within the context that the committee of science in the college awarded him honours PhD degree dated 25th of March 2020 titled; “Human Influence on Pollution-being on the pollution of the environment”. Additional to the title of the book, the author stated “Horrible new Technology threats on the environment. At the start of the new century Mars will replace the Earth” The book consists of three chapters. In his preface the writer asks his reader to accept his work and its dedication to Kurdish environmental politics; a field in which he sincerely worked due to identifying and committing to fill a gap which existed in the Kurdish library. The environmental issues in the region of Kurdistan are arguably newly acknowledged, considering that a de facto state like Kurdistan has had other priorities in place throughout the years.

In the beginning of the book the writer defines the meaning of Ecology and how it can be understood to be connecting organisms to one another and to their physical surroundings. He came to define the environment in the smaller and larger context as divided into the Human and the Physical environment. The man-made environment has grown, the dense population can be identified as a heavier environment compared to the low population level in some other areas. The second type of environment identified is the natural environment. This encompasses all the non-living things occurring naturally, meaning non-artificial. In most cases this applies to the earth, this type of environment is comprised of living objects and non-living objects. This means all human beings and all animals have their own freedom but continually interact with each other. Although, their goals are different, along with their jobs and responsibilities in the natural environment. Depending on the different conditions of the natural environment, it changes from one area to another according to the content within said natural environment.
1:3 Relationship between humans and their environment: from the early stages when humans existed on the planet, they have worked hard to control the results of their environments. For that reason, they abide by the rules of basic production to enable them to achieve their main demands and lower priority needs. There are three main schools of thought that investigate this further.
1:3:1 School of Determination: Alan Simpol states that “human beings are the product of their environment … the environment influences their mind, and their soul.” Simpol elaborates that the environment arguably “controls” a human being. It is this thread of thought that defines the environmental school of determinism.
1:3:2 School of Possibilism: The main concept of this school is that a human being not only has the ability to follow the environment but also there are forces that they can move and they have their own ability to go forward. This school of thought indicates that the natural environment has a lot to offer humans. Thus, humans have the freedom to choose the environment and the choices within in. The human has the freedom to choose the one which they are able to adapt to most contently.
1:3:3 School of Probabilism: This school developed as a result of the competition between the two aforementioned schools. They believe a new school must come up with the new idea and new philosophy to intertwine the two schools. This school believes in the power of possibilities. It is arguably more realistic as it considers the relationship between the environment and humans.
The natural environment consists of two different type environments.
Complex environments require advanced sciences to create, govern, and deal with the environment. For instance, dry environments or extremely cold environments require a lot of work to tackle.
2. Straightforward environment: analysed with little effort
From the foregoing, we can say that humans are polarised in this way.
1. Intelligent humans who are able harness and control their surroundings whilst benefiting from all the environment’s output.
2. Primitive humans: unable to analyse and comprehend the numerous challenges they must overcome in order to confront and challenge their environment, and as a result, they give in to it.
According to the information above, we can determine a human’s level of adaptability and understanding in dealing with these 2 types of environments.

Arnold Joseph Toynbee, a prolific author of books encompassing philosophy of history, and researching international history as a professor at the London School of Economics and King’s College London, lived from 14 April 1889 to 22 October 1975. Toynbee was regarded as a preeminent expert on international affairs from 1918 to 1950. From 1924 to 1954, he served as Chatham House’s director of studies and authored 34 volumes of the Survey of International Affairs, considered a pinnacle text for international specialists in Britain.
His 12-volume A Study of History and Environment is his most famous work (1934–1961). Toynbee was a highly read and respected author with a prolific production of papers, articles, lectures, and presentations in addition to numerous books that were translated into numerous languages, scholar was discussed in the 1940s and 1950s.

Genesis
Toynbee contends that rather than being the result of ethnic or environmental variables, “self-determining” civilizations emerge from more primitive societies in reaction to difficulties like harsh terrain, uncharted territory, blows and pressures from other civilizations, and punishments. He contends that the challenge is an essential prerequisite by which civilizations to emerge. Furthermore, the difficulties facing a civilization must be in a healthy medium in order for it to not to be completely destroyed by overwhelming trials, yet it will stagnate if there is insufficient difficulty.

According to him, civilizations can only advance if they successfully overcome one challenge before moving on to the next. He makes the case that varied environments and techniques to overcoming obstacles cause civilizations to grow in various ways. He contends that “Creative Minorities” are what propel growth because they identify answers to problems, which others subsequently imitate (otherwise known as miming.)

Decay
He contends that attacks from outside or a loss of control over the environment or the human environment are not what lead to the collapse of civilizations. Instead, it results from the “Creative Minority” deteriorating, which finally loses its creativity and merely becomes a “Dominant Minority”. He contends that worshipping their “past self” leads to vanity and a failure to appropriately meet the next challenge, which causes creative minorities to degenerate.

Universal State
He contends that the creation of a “Universal State,” which stifles political innovation, by the dominant minority is the tell-tale sign that a civilization has collapsed.
He contends that as civilizations fall apart, they create a “External Proletariat” and a “Internal Proletariat,” the latter of which becomes envious as it lives in poverty and anarchy outside the former and is held in slavery by the dominating minority.

He states, there is a “schism in the body social,” which results in:
•Self-control and abandonment work instead of creativity,
• The creative minority’s replacement of discipleship with truancy and martyrdom.

He contends that in such circumstances, people turn to archaism (the idealisation of the past), futurism (the idealisation of the future), detachment (the distancing from the realities of a collapsing world), and transcendence (meeting the challenges of the decaying civilization with new insight, as a Prophet). According to his theory, people who Transcend during a time of social decay give birth to a new Church with fresh spiritual perspectives, here a new civilization may emerge formed around where erasure of the former.

When Toynbee uses the word “church,” he is referring to a social structure or the shared spirituality of a common worship.

Climate and natural vegetation:
The term “climate” refers to the long-term atmospheric conditions in a specific region. The climate is the long-term accumulation of all these factors, whereas the weather is the air component and its fluctuations over short time periods.

Generally speaking, a region’s climate is thought of as its most important atmospheric feature. The best contemporary definitions of climate state that it is made up of the sum of all meteorological and atmospheric conditions experienced over a long period of time in a particular place. Climate encompasses both the typical amounts of climatic elements at various periods as well as the complete spectrum of its variability and its extremes. Climate encompasses more than aggregate weather of a place. It takes into consideration the season, particularly when referencing climatic values or indexes. Furthermore, the climate can change over a number of years as it has been identified that decades and millennia it varies, sometimes small changes, but occasionally large, amounts.

World Climate Zones

A climate zone is based on the local climate of a certain area. This covers the time of year, the temperature, the sort and frequency of precipitation. Climate zones are determined by the same key variables that govern a region’s climate. A region’s climate zone can be determined by the vegetation that is present there and how healthy it is. Regardless of whether the location is currently experiencing extraordinary weather, the climate zone of a certain place can be identified by analysing its plants. The type of vegetation that grows in a location can be used to identify its climate zone because vegetation is influenced by a region’s climate.

In general, all locations situated at comparable latitudes and locations will fall under the same type of climate zone. The climate regions referred to as the continental climates are the lone exception to this norm. Since there aren’t enough landmasses in the Southern Hemisphere to support a continental climate, these climate zones don’t exist at greater latitudes in that hemisphere.
Between the Arctic Circle and the Tropic of Cancer in the Northern Hemisphere and the Antarctic Circle and the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere, respectively, are the latitudes 40 to 60 where the Earth’s temperate zones are found. The temperate zones experience cooler average temperatures than the subtropics because solar energy enters them at significantly smaller angles. The length of a day varies seasonally throughout the year. The climate in temperate regions is less extreme, the amount of precipitation falls evenly throughout the year, and the vegetative season is longer.

The term “vegetation” is used to collectively describe the plant life found in a certain area. Concerned with flora’s contribution to ground cover is vegetation. It is also the biotic element that is most prevalent in the biosphere.

There are numerous important responsibilities for vegetation in the environment. Its ability to control the flow of numerous biogeochemical cycles is one of its most crucial roles. For example, the nitrogen cycle, and the carbon cycle, to name but a few. At both the local and global levels, vegetation is essential to maintaining an equilibrium of energy. The preservation of these cycles is crucial for both global climate and vegetation patterns.

The features of the soil are significantly impacted by vegetation as well. Volume, chemistry, and texture are all included in this. These in turn have an impact on the structure and efficiency of vegetation.

Additionally, vegetation serves as an environment for a wide variety of species. Vegetation provides a source of energy for animal species that consume plants.
One could argue that producing the majority of the oxygen in the atmosphere is global vegetation’s most important role. Vegetation produces significant amounts of air oxygen, which is essential for aerobic metabolic systems to survive and evolve.

The existence of vegetation is extremely beneficial to the human race, civilization, and development. It is a source of many necessities for people, including food, housing, and healthcare. Additionally, vegetation has a significant economic impact on the world. Examples include the production of food, timber, fuel, and other commodities all over the world as well as the usage of fossil fuels as an energy source.

How Climate Affects Vegetation

Vegetation is the most accurate indicator of a place’s climate. In particular, the temperature and amount of rainfall a location receives have a direct impact on plant development. There are frequently many trees and forests in areas with warmer climates, moderate to higher temperatures, and significant amounts of rainfall throughout the entire year. Less rainy areas are typically grasslands, or prairies as they are known in North America. Around the world, many grassland areas have been transformed for agricultural use. Even while some areas receive a lot of rain throughout the year, they lack vegetation because the warm, ideal growing seasons receive minimal rain. Arid or desert zones are those with little to no precipitation and little to no vegetation.

Environmental principles: Principle 1: The survival and well-being of individual human beings as well as the communities and societies in which they exist depend on the health of the natural systems that supply them with basic necessities.

Concept A: Natural systems’ products are vital to human existence as well as the health of our economies and civilizations.
Concept B: Ecosystem services offered by natural systems are crucial for sustaining human existence as well as the health of our societies’ economy and cultures.
Concept C. The state of a natural system’s ecosystem has a direct impact on the type, quantity, and dependability of the commodities and ecosystem services it offers.

Principle 2: Interactions between terrestrial, freshwater, coastal, and marine ecosystems have an impact on how well they function over the long term and how healthy they are.

Concept A: The geographic size, makeup, biological variety, and viability of natural systems are all impacted by direct and indirect changes to human populations and consumption patterns.
Concept B. The geographic expanse, make-up, biological variety, and viability of natural systems are all impacted by the methods employed to extract, harvest, transport, and consume natural resources.
Concept C: The growth and functioning of human societies have an impact on the geographic range, demographic make-up, biological variety, and resilience of natural systems.
Concept D: The geographic range, composition, biological variety, and viability of natural systems are directly influenced by the legal, economic, and political frameworks that oversee their use and administration.

Principle 3: Humans may depend on, gain from, and modify the cycles that natural systems go through.
Concept A. Cycles and processes are followed by natural systems in order for them to function.
Concept B: Human activities rely on and profit from the natural systems’ cycles and processes.
Concept C: Activities carried out by people can change the natural systems’ cycles and processes.

Principle 4: Both natural systems and human cultures are impacted by the interchange of material over time.
Concept A: The amounts of resources used, as well as the nature and amount of the by-products produced, directly affect how human activities affect natural systems.
Concept B: Human activity’s by-products can have positive, neutral, or negative effects on natural systems and are not easily prevented from doing so.
Concept C. Natural systems’ ability to adapt to adjustments brought about by humans depends on the nature of the system, as well as the extent, duration, and size of the activity and the nature of its by-products.

Principle 5: A variety of factors and decision-making procedures are taken into account when making decisions that have an impact on resources and natural systems.
Concept A. There is a range of elements that are taken into account when decisions are made about resources and natural systems, as well as how those factors affect those decisions.
Concept B. How decisions are made about resources and natural systems, as well as how social, economic, political, and environmental considerations have evolved over time.

Environmental planning

Planning professionals can specialise in environmental planning. Environmental planners typically practise it, and it places a focus on issues related to the environment, such as assessment, policy, and issues including land use, and design. The biotic and abiotic elements/factors that surround us are what the name “environment” denotes. It involves the quality of the air, the water, which can be surface or groundwater, the soil, the flora, which includes the forests and fauna, the agricultural areas and their interactions with the built environment, etc. Environmental planning takes into account not only the environment but also any related challenges or problems. These frequently result from the interaction between the natural and constructed environments. Environmental planners are those with a focus on environmental planning.

Environmental pollution problem

Environmental pollution is the result of unfavourable changes in our environment that have a negative influence on living things, including humans, animals, and plants. A pollutant is an agent responsible for pollution. Pollutants can be either solid, liquid, or gaseous substances that are produced by either human activity or natural occurrences and are present in higher quantities than they would be in their natural abundance.

An average person needs 12–15 times more air than food. Thus, even a small amount of air pollution becomes substantial. Pollutants may be biodegradable, i.e. vegetables that naturally decompose quickly. Slow biodegradable contaminants can persist in the environment for a while.
Unwanted modifications to the environment cause air pollution.
Unwanted changes in the physical, chemical, or biological properties of the air cause air pollution and have a negative impact on all living things. The following factors determine whether air pollution has negative effects:

Concentration of pollutants
Duration of exposure to the pollutants
Type of the organism it affects
Causes of Air Pollution
Check out the causes of environmental pollution in the below-mentioned section:

1. Particulate pollutants which constitute metallic particles, dust particles, soot, aerosol, and smoke.
2. Gaseous pollutants in the air constitute carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, and sulphur dioxide.decades

Air Pollution
Air Pollution occurs due to undesirable changes in the physical, chemical, or biological characteristics of air that exert harmful effects on all living beings. Harmful effects caused by air pollution depend on the following:

Concentration of pollutants
Duration of exposure to the pollutants
Type of the organism it affects
Causes of Air Pollution
Particle pollutants
Gas pollutants

Nuclear bomb, war and Pollution
A key tool for preventing the development of nuclear weapons and the associated environmental effects is the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The NPT serves to stop additional radioactive contamination of the environment by restricting the development of nuclear weapons.
Nuclear weapons manufacture has increased the risk of nuclear annihilation both immediately through nuclear war and continuously and over an extended period of time through the production of nuclear waste. One of the most expensive and challenging projects ever performed is the “clean up” and environmental restoration of the nuclear weapons complex operated by the US DOE (as well as other nuclear facilities globally). To recover radioactive materials that have been intentionally or accidentally released into the environment, new technologies will need to be developed. Particularly alarming are the burying of radioactive materials and the dumping of nuclear waste into waterways.
The generation of nuclear waste has raised the risk of nuclear destruction both constantly and over a lengthy period of time, as well as quickly through nuclear war. The “clean up” and environmental restoration of the nuclear weapons complex run by the US DOE is one of the most costly and difficult operations ever undertaken (as well as other nuclear facilities globally). New technologies will need to be created in order to recover radioactive elements that have been unintentionally or accidentally released into the environment. The burial of radioactive materials and the disposal of nuclear waste in waterways are particularly concerning. Hanford is also home to the infamous “tank farm,” which is made up of 177 tanks that can hold millions of gallons of dangerous waste. A gaseous build-up of various chemical components and their decay products in about 50 of these tanks poses an immediate threat of explosion. Already, radioactive material from some burst tanks has seeped into the earth.

The situation is equally bad in Russia. In the fjords of Murmansk, nuclear submarines, some still carrying nuclear bombs, are rusting away. In other places, rivers have been contaminated, and vast amounts of liquid radioactive materials have been stored in lakes and open reservoirs. At the Chelyabinsk nuclear weapons complex in Russia, a waste storage tank that was similar to that at Hanford erupted in 1957, causing a radioactive cloud to spread over more than 200 square kilometres of a rural area with many rivers and lakes. In the zone with the highest radioactivity, almost all of the trees were destroyed.

Global frameworks for regulating the development of chemical or biological weapons include updated strategic trade restrictions on potentially sensitive dual-purpose products, technologies, and materials; security and safety measures for chemical and biological weapons; and a continued commitment to and ability to enforce disarmament and arms control treaties.
the availability of hazardous information disseminated for scientific objectives, the uncounted laboratories investigating potential pandemic pathogens for military or civilian purposes.
Further advancements in synthetic biology and genetic engineering will make it easier and less expensive to create new infections or modify existing ones.
The COVID-19 outbreak has demonstrated that states are not well prepared to deal with biological threats. In order to prevent severe harm to communities, only quick medical countermeasures can effectively deal with any potential epidemic of a disease release or even a pandemic.

Chemical weapons: a consensus that is eroding?

Although deadly agents like sulphur mustard were employed during and in the intervening years between World Wars, the horrific outcomes of such attacks eventually sparked a global agreement to outlaw toxic chemical weapons—the most frequently employed and readily transferable weapon of mass destruction.
However, the nearly universal 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which represents this consensus, is in jeopardy. Children have died from the lethal nerve agent Sarin (or a “sarin-like” substance) as a result of the well-documented and indiscriminate deployment of numerous hazardous agents against the civilian population during the Syrian Civil War. There is a global risk that the hard-won consensus on prohibiting state-use of toxic chemicals will be further undermined by chemical, biological weapons, and pollution, even though the risk from readily available dual-use chemicals and from terrorists like the Aum Shinrikyo (now known as Aleph), who carried out the 1995 Tokyo attack, may always exist.

The final part of the book by the Author is his narrative on the south of Kurdistan and the level of pollution and how much it has affected civilians’ health and the environment. The author collected data over a period of time in 1998. He analysed the omission of cars in several area in the several districts of Kurdistan Reginal Government. The data below shown the omission from three type of vehicle in the cities of Sulamiani, Dhok and Hawler.

Dr Sidduque Shex Mahmoud Barzngy

About the Author:

He has published several science books:
1.Editing and rewriting scientific vocabularies from the science dictionary By Kamal Jalal Gharib (1968-1974)

2.Knowledge and Health teaching -Translated from Arabic to Kurdish with coordination with Muhammed Rashid Mahhmud, Osman Ali Shex and Mustafa Saleh Karim for schools of Year four in 1971

3. Physics book for school class 9, translated from Arabic to Kurdish ,1971 with coordination with Nori Arif Muhammed Saleh,Shirwan Ali Amin and Dr Najdat Badie Muhammed .

4. Physics of Mechanical and Sound for school class 10. Translated from Arabic to Kurdish with coordination with Shirwan Ali Amin nad Nawzad Muhaidain .

5. Physics of Electric and building, Translated from Arabic to Kurdish with the coordination with Nori Arif Muhamed SALIH and Nawzad Aumaer Muhaydin.

6. Editing physics books for class eight and nine and ten with coordination with Nori Arif Muhamed SALIH and Nawzad Aumaer Muhaydin. 1975

7. Printed the Dictionary of Zoology, Chemistry and Physics for schoold class nine and ten 1971. With the coordination with Nori Arif Muhamed SALIH and Nawzad Aumaer Muhaydin.

8. Mathmatical vocabularies -translated from Arabic to Kurdish for class school from 1-6

Almost another twenty books have been published and printed 25 articles from different Kurdish magazine on environmental consequences.