Monday 27 July
Our friends are camping in Suffolk at the moment and have been posting some fabulous images of the vast East Anglian sky.
I know I take our atmosphere for granted. It is highly complex but very simple at the same time, and I am pretty casual in appreciating what it does for us and every living thing on the planet. Our atmosphere is BIG. But we are most directly influenced by what happens in the Troposphere; the relatively thin layer closest to the Earth.
We breath in a mixture of gases we call ‘air’. Around 78% Nitrogen, 21% Oxygen and the final 1% is a mixture of mainly Argon but also has some Carbon Dioxide in it. I have to stop and slap myself about that! It is exactly what we need to support life as we know it.
We breath in that cocktail of gases, use up the oxygen, which keeps us alive by mixing into our blood and servicing our biological machine we call our body. We then expell the inert gases (Nitrogen, Argon etc) AND Carbon Dioxide which we don’t need. That in itself is incredible. But then all of the living plants on the planet from Oak trees to grass and moss to algae in the oceans convert that CO² to Oxygen for us. We don’t have to pay them, thank them, buy them a pint..nothing. They do it for free. Now, I’m not a tree hugger but I will definitely pat the trunk of the next tree I come across and whisper a quiet thank you to the grass when I walk over my lawn later.
The coronavirus lockdowns led to reduced pollution globally, which in-turn, had an almost instant positive impact on the quality of our atmosphere (and rivers, seas and general quality of life).
We may very well need to leave this Earth at some stage in the future as our ability to sustain our ever growing population fails. Many clever brains including Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking amongst them believe we will inevitably have to. So, I am going to enjoy what makes life on this planet possible (and look so beautiful from space) and do my best to look after our atmosphere.
The Bald Birder 