3rd period

3/6/18

Mistakes of Radicalists 

       Inside a laboratory a lone desk light eliminates a lab assistant as she’s vigorously works in secret. Her phone light ups showing it is 2:00 in the morning with a text message asking if the dead was done. Quickly typing away on her phone she replies with “nearly”, soon after she gets up from her desk and makes her way to some switches on the wall. She flicks a few switches before walking back to her desk to collect her things, turn off the light and then leave, locking up before she goes.

       Over the next several month the weather started to decrease causing all scientists and climate change activists to think a miracle happened. However a few scientists that were paying attention to the ozone layer of the earth's atmosphere they noticed that it started to deplete significantly. The ozone layer absorbs UV light preventing it from affecting humans and the atmosphere. UV light could affect humans by causing skin cancer, and decrease in eyesight, apart from this there are many other affects to the environment. 

       One scientists in Alaska started to test the air to see what could have caused this, he found that there was an abundance of sulfuric aerosols in the air which produce sulfuric acid that damages the ozone. Sulfuric aerosols can spear naturally in the air when a volcano erupts, however not to the extent that the ozone would start to deplete. It is well known among climate scientists that sulfuric aerosols could help stop climate change but the consequences often outway the pro of adding them to the atmosphere.

       While these scientists were struggling to figure out how this could have happened, six months prior a group of misfits spent the early hours of the morning celebrating in a small apartment in Pittsburg. There was a knock at the door, one of the group got up and opened the door to let in a woman wearing a lab coat. She smiled as she was handed a beer and sat down. All eyes were on her as she told them that she had done it, that there dream of stopping climate change had been successful, this small group of radical climate change activist had manage to release sulfuric aerosols into the atmosphere to change the increasing temperatures, they changed the course of where our world seemed to be heading.

3/1/18

Period 3

Works Cited/Quotes 

“The researchers emphasize that even if all the attendant risks could be reduced to acceptable levels, solar geoengineering is not a solution to climate change.”

Burrows, Leah. “Mitigating the Risk of Geoengineering.” Harvard Gazette, 3 Jan. 2017, news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2016/12/mitigating-the-risk-of-geoengineering/.

“Reduced ozone levels as a result ozone depletion means less protection from the sun's rays and more exposure to UVB radiation at the earth's surface.”

environmental protection agency, united states. “Health and Environmental Effects of Ozone Layer Depletion.” EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, 28 Dec. 2016, www.epa.gov/ozone-layer-protection/health-and-environmental-effects-ozone-layer-depletion.

"The bigger the scale of the approach, the riskier it is for the 

environment"

Jackson, Robert B. “Assessing the Pros and Cons of Geoengineering to Fight Climate Change.” Assessing the Pros and Cons of Geoengineering to Fight Climate Change | Nicholas School, 6 Aug. 2009, nicholas.duke.edu/about/news/assessing-pros-and-cons-geoengineering-fight-climate-change. 

“Geoengineering methods are intended to reduce climate change, which is already having demonstrable effects on ecosystem structure and functioning in some regions.”

Russell, Lynn M., et al. “Ecosystem Impacts of Geoengineering: A Review for Developing a Science Plan” Ambio, Springer Netherlands, 20 Mar. 2012, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3393062/#__

    Cystic fibrosis was the cause of my surgery. I had been in and out of the hospital all throughout childhood, seen hundreds of specialists, and taken enough medications to fill up three pill boxes. I wondered if that was how my life would always be. But in 2025, the company Organovo announced that the first man-made living organ, a liver, had successfully been implanted in a cancer patient. I couldn’t believe it; this was too good to be true. But it was. It was now possible to use 3D printing technology to assemble living human cells into complex tissues. I was 31 years old at the time, and the life expectancy for someone with CF was about 39 years. I didn’t have much time left. I worked out a plan with my insurance company and began saving up money and had many consultations. Finally, I would be able to breathe like a real person.

     The surgery took 36 hours. During the operation and for another five days afterwards, I was attached to an artificial lung machine. The surgery was declared a success.

    “Alright Alice, take a slow breath in,” Dr Aliento said, placing a stethoscope against my back. Her soothing voice calmed me, and my inhale was steady. It felt… normal. I breathed in again. And again. I stayed in the hospital for 6 more days and was able to walk around. There was no wheezing, no coughing up blood or phlegm. They were perfect. 

    I returned to my shabby apartment. I looked around at the barren walls and rooms. I really had given up everything for this surgery. 

    Years passed. I threw out most of my prescriptions. I finally got to join the rec league soccer team that I had always wanted to play on and could run better than anyone else. Organovo made me one of their big success stories and sent me money in exchange for positive reviews to drown out the opponents of operations like mine. Those types of people liked to stand outside hospitals and picket, chanting and yelling about the unnaturalness of it all. They were scared of the possibilities. ‘What if someone created a new race of stronger, better humans?’ they asked. I didn't care. I was alive, and that was all that mattered to me. 

    Just because humans had made such impressive medical advances didn’t mean we excelled at everything. Air pollution just kept on climbing. Smog covered every city in the world. People around me developed lung diseases that could only be attributed to the air quality, and these diseases became the number one cause of death in the world. Nobody left the house without a mask anymore. One day, I discovered that I didn’t need one. I accidentally left the house without a mask and expected to feeling the piercing burning sensation that my neighbors had described to me, but it didn’t come. Instead, I felt the same normalcy that I always had. It seemed that my created lungs had the capability to filter out and ignore the toxic air that caused everyone else so much suffering. I was elated, but deep down I felt guilty that this was not a privilege that many people enjoyed. 

    I go outside without a mask now. I get strange, sometimes even hostile looks from people in my neighborhood. My soccer league disintegrated, so I had to join one that practiced indoors. There weren’t any homeless people out on the streets anymore, and I feared it was because none of them survived.

    Over time, many people eventually got the same operation that I had, and for other body parts, too. Their lungs were even better than mine, able to filter air far more efficiently. I used to be envious, but of course I’m glad I was able to get my new lungs when I did. These people were all wealthy, I noticed. Middle class people desperately paid shady companies to give them the same procedure, but the success rate of those surgeries was less than half. 

    I love my new lungs; I always will. I wonder what will happen next? I heard Organovo is planning to print a full human body soon.

                                           3/5/18

                                           Period 3

It has been gruesome these past few months since first working on the enset crops in Ethiopia. The demand for enset has increased so much to the point where most of the prisoners from America were shipped to Ethiopia in order to further production of this fruit. My friend Arnold collapsed right in front of me as I was cutting down the leaves off one of the enset plants and was later announced dead due to dehydration and malnutrition. A week later a prisoner was shot dead while trying to escape the crop and the intense heat. Fortunately for society, they get to enjoy eating enset products every single day while not having to think about where it comes and who gets it so that they could enjoy it. Scientist were almost done solving the mystery behind the reproduction method for enset until the reality of A.I and technological advancements came into play which caused them to abandon their project in order to earn the big dollars by working in the industry.

America has become the hotspot for technology users and has gained all of the attention from huge countries like China, Japan, Russia and India. On the other hand, a lot crop land has been removed in heavily populated areas in order to make way for tech laboratories, industries and city expansions. This has caused a global hunger to come about but once the uses of enset were publicly introduced, the demand for this fruit had skyrocketed. All of this has lead to where I struggle to simply survive alongside the rest of the inmates in Ethiopia. However, me and a couple friends have developed a foolproof plan to get out of this hell hole. Tom or “Tricky T” as many of the inmates call him, has been secretly making out with one of the female guards and has gotten her to fall in love with him. His role for the first part of our plan is to drug the guard and make her believe she needs to unlock the doors for the janitors aka me and the gang so that we could get into the armory and get some tools that will give us an edge in getting out without anybody hearing us. This plot may seem something straight out of a movie and even ridiculous but in this day and age as long as an employee gets their pay they won’t really care about what happens at the end of the day because knowing that you can come home to a family and eat real food has never been such a good feeling. Or at least that is what I heard from the officers.

Besides escaping out of this prison, I haven't really thought of what I would do with myself afterwards. It’s not like I could hop on a plane thats on a one way flight to Hawaii or buy a bunch of food and then figure what I am to do next. In this era, everything is paid either with a fingerprint or retina scanner and all of your records can be viewed when paying up front. The prisons have been miles and miles away from the nearest sign of civilization so that if there were any chance of escapees, they would have a hard time finding food and being out of sight from police scouts that often roam outside of the prison perimeters. This is when the second part of our plan comes in: new identities. One of my other friends Julius, has a contact in Washington D.C who has access to every citizens registered identification and has control of essentially ‘creating’ people that aren’t even real. So after we escape,  Julius will call the man in charge if ids using a phone he stole from one of the cafeteria chefs so that he can give us fresh records and make it look like we are nobody. This of course would be an awesome way to go out but unfortunately we would have to live false lives and in a society where the weak live in these fake livelihoods, there is no way of telling where this could lead to next. 

                                         3/1/18

                                        Period 3 

Bosley, Mair. “Enset: Bananas on Steriods!” Kew Science, 17 July 2017, www.kew.org/blogs/kew-science/enset-bananas-on-steroids

“Another feature that makes enset special is its resilience - it can withstand drought, heavy rain and flooding much better than other crops.”

Galer, Sophia Smith. “How We’Re Creating ‘Super Plants’ to Help Humanity.” BBC, 12 Sept. 2017, www.bbc.com/future/story/20170911-how-were-creating-super-plants-that-will-save-the-world.

“As well as being a staple crop in Africa it can make rope, medicine, shelter, animal feed and clothes.”

Turner, Jacquelyn. “The Ethiopian Banana That Flourishes in Drought and Heat.” The Daily Beast, The Daily Beast Company, 4 Dec. 2017, www.thedailybeast.com/the-ethiopian-banana-that-flourishes-in-drought-and-heat.

“It’s used for everything: fences, curtains, seat cushions, bags, string, rope, animal feed.”

“And the plant is naturally drought resistant, with one fully mature plant able to support five people for two to three months.”

Turner, J. (2017, Dec 04). The ethiopian banana that flourishes in drought and heat. The Daily Beast Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1972093569?accountid=415

“And yet enset feeds 20 million people in Ethiopia”

Wilting disease endangering enset plant. (2015, Nov 20). AllAfrica.Com Retrieved from https://search.proquest.com/docview/1735308964?accountid=415

“Sources also indicate that enset as an important plant increasing the long-term sustainability of food production by reducing soil erosion and the increasing soil fertility through leaf decomposition.”

IT has been ten years since the world has been turned into a desolate wasteland.  Natural resources have been nearly depleted and countries have been fighting for whatever resources are left. I am Delwato Hamza Yassin, the great, great, great grandson of the Hamza Zerihun Yassin, the man who almost saved the world. The year is 2222 and I'm living in Ethiopia. I moved to this country right before World War 17 just began. Lucky for me I had family in Ethiopia, the land of my ancestors'. My birthplace was actually in the city of Seattle, which was a beautiful city until it was destroyed as a way to cripple the United States Economy. Scientists in Seattle figured out a way to grow a Ethiopian Native plant called Enset, also known as the False Banana. It was gift from Ethiopia to the U.S. for helping them defeat an enemy who tried to destroy the Ethiopia's economy by trying to steal highly classified information on a new project created by my great, great, great grandfather. 

Sep 27 - Thursday

It has been a few days since I have written a journal entry and it's because I was on a mission which I can't reveal the contents, well not now. Unlike my other family members, I am not a scientist, I am a secret operative looking for who stole a large shipment of Enset from one of the farms in Ethiopia. I have said too much and must go before I get caught by the guards.

Oct 16 - Tuesday

I have finally completed my mission and found the thieves who stole the Enset shipment. They were hiding in a enemy country who has a lot to benefit from Ethiopia's destruction. These thieves tired to replicate Enset and I found plans of them plotting to destroy our Enset reserve which was hidden in the center of Ethiopia. Now it is time for me to interrogate the thieves to see where they obtained highly classified information.

Oct 19 - Friday

It took 72 hours straight to crack these thieves like a pistachio and I now know who the rat is hiding in plain sight.  The person is a friend of mine who was working as a researcher in one of the many Enset Labs in Addis Ababa. He was one of my best friend and now I must arrest him.

Oct 20 - Saturday

It's 9:30pm and I found my friend alone in his lab testing out a new strand of Enset created by my father. He looked over and greeted me as usual and asked, "How's spy business", pretending as if he was James Bond. I told him, "Same old same old." And then I told him that I found there was a snake selling away our precious resource to the enemies. I asked him if he knew anything about it, and he said no. I asked him, "How can you lie straight to my face like it was nothing." He began to walk away ignoring what I said, so I chased after him. He ran into one a huge greenhouse in the center of the research facility, but when I entered he was nowhere in sight. I looked up and there he was in midair with a knife in his hand. I moved out of the way and he landing in front of me. He told me that everything he did was to help improve the situation the world was in. I was in shock that he would betray his own country. While I was still shaken by what he said, he lunged right at me stabbing me in the abdomen and whispered in my ear, "It took you this long to figure out that I was a spy working for your enemies. Everything I told you was a lie even that day where your brother saved me from an enemy ambush which was lead by me." He got up and left me on the floor bleeding out to my death. I yelled out that he wouldn't get away with this, but he left and I passed out due to blood loss.

Nov  3 - Saturday

Another day passes as I lay in this hospital bed thinking about that treacherous day. I had that traitor in grasp but I let my emotions get the better of me and he escaped not only with me dignity but also with some Enset plants. Until I find that traitor, I will spend every minute hunting him down.